Essay

Best practices for Common App essays

Some tips about formatting and entering your essays on Common App

Model essays

Essays that worked at Johns Hopkins

Essays that worked from a range of universities

(scroll to the bottom of the page for links)

Common App Prompts

Prompts for 2019-2020 can be found here.

What if I want to revise an essay I submitted to Common App?

Sounds like that might just work. (but I wouldn't do this unless necessary) Look here.

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Chapel Hill supplementary essays

Prompts and advice can be found here.

Essay advice

8 tips from College Board Big Future can be found here.

From UNC Chapel Hill Admissions blog 2017

But one of the biggest problems about giving so much attention to this getting-to-know-you business is that it obscures what is arguably an even more important purpose of the admissions essay, which is that it allows us to assess your writing ability. You will write in college, a lot. Regardless of your major. You will write after college too, a lot. And how well you write helps us determine how well you will perform all the tasks required of you in the classroom – whether in English Composition, Biology 101, or International Business. All of which is to say, the criteria by which we will assess your essay are undoubtedly the same criteria your teachers have used to evaluate much of your writing in high school: how well is your essay organized? Do you communicate a main idea? Are you using standard grammar, spelling and punctuation? Do you demonstrate appropriate and varied use of vocabulary? If you swerve from any of these expectations, do you do so purposefully and effectively? And finally, does your essay communicate your unique voice? Which should be good news! This little admissions essay exercise is nothing new after all. You’ve already done this, time and time again. No sweat.

[emphasis mine]

From UNC Chapel Hill Admissions blog 2010

I guess I would say I get frustrated when the essay doesn't help me get to know the student as a person. It's always so easy to tell when a student is just writing the thing that they think will most impress the admissions committee, rather than what they're truly passionate about. Overly formal essays also tend to be quite stiff and I don't find them particularly helpful.

As with any piece of writing, keep your audience in mind. Remember that the person reading your essay reads hundreds (even thousands) of essays every year. Think about how you might make yours stand out. Weighty, emotional topics are often the most difficult to address, so beware. Simple subjects often make great essays.

Julie, UNC Chapel Hill admissions blog

http://unc-admissions.blogspot.com/2009/06/final-2010-essay-questions.html

Qualities to work toward in an application essay:

• Addresses the prompt

• Vivid details

• Focus—the essay has a main idea and all the parts connect to that main idea

• Well-organized

• Has a narrative quality—tells one or more stories

• Unique

• Audience—use various readers to get an idea about how an audience might respond

• Correct—consider getting a free account at Grammarly and uploading your document