Replacing College Admissions Anxiety with Excitement

Let's Strategize and Compose Your College Admission Essay

The first step towards college admissions essay success is replacing your anxiety with excitement.

In my last article, I outlined five tips to help applicants write compelling reflective essays. If you're overwhelmed by all the components of the Common App, you are not alone. Let's try to reframe your perspective.

Instead of letting stress expand into procrastination or worsen your anxiety, use it as a motivator. Your college admission essay is an ideal opportunity to name your best qualities (to yourself) and then try to display those attributes on the page. You care deeply about your future, and that's why you've found EAE... to level up.

Here are a few more ways to transform your mindset when facing intricate college writing tasks.

Overcome College Admission Writing Stress

KNOW WHO YOU ARE

You're an interesting individual with tons of life stories to share. Pick one and free write! Before you sit down, make the space optimal for comfort and reflection. Shut off distractions. Yes! An hour of uninterrupted time will yield your best thinking self! Now, imagine life memories swirling overhead and your hand reaching up to grab one. Spend a paragraph with it to see how it applies to your writing prompt. If it fits well, it will provide a few paragraphs before you even look up; if it doesn't, choose another until you find one that works, making you sit up with confidence because you can't stop writing.

Do you have a support system of readers you trust?

I'd love to help launch you into your college years — read more about how I help college applicants.

PLAN WELL

Select key phrases from the writing prompt as headings to organize your thoughts and paragraphs. Remember, an admission essay is not your life story, but rather a selective moment that best showcases your character and individuality. A brief narrative scene always reads better than applicants saying flatly that they are fabulous.

Let yourself capture a memory that best serves the writing prompt, and then craft the essay to demonstrate your core qualities.

YOU ARE ENOUGH, AND YOUR STORY HAS VALUE

Now is not the time to pretend to be someone else. Identify your core values (Are you sincere? Hardworking? Determined?) and confidently showcase them. The most memorable essays sound like a person thinking or trying to make sense of something emotionally complex.

Your college admissions officer is looking for that diamond in your essay that confirms you are a welcome addition to their program. Speak with self-assuredness and embrace your core values.

USE AI WRITING TOOLS WISELY

Be resourceful, not a plagiarist. Don't employ vocabulary you wouldn't aspire to use in your everyday speech. The first time I spoke the words perhaps and however in the same conversation, the words washed over me like an instant makeover, and I swear I stood a foot taller!

Write your own paragraphs. Afterward, use AI to replace clunky pronouns and to find transitional phrases or more effective verbs. Lucky for you, number two pencils are not involved, and your admission essay isn't the twelfth one you must handwrite, stamp, and send through snail mail. My point?

AI can't extract your best self from a Common App writing prompt or point to the amazing human you'll be one day. Only you can do that.

EAE ELIMINATES COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ANXIETY

I started Effective Admissions Essays (EAE) because I know how stress-inducing the Common App essay is for seniors and their parents. EAE is a safe place (I imagine it as a bridge) for applicants to see farther into the future of their college careers. I've graded thousands of college essays over the last twenty years. Now, it's a genuine pleasure to accompany college hopefuls while they write, revise, and polish their admission essays.

For added encouragement, let's start a conversation.

drb@effectiveadmissionsessays.com

Next week, we'll discuss strong introductions and the essay as a road trip!

Go Further with EAE