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College TNT
Helping students and families navigate to and through college!
College TNT
3 More Tips for Crafting a Standout College or Scholarship Essay: Part 2
In this episode, I'll explore essential tips for writing a strong college or scholarship application essay that reflect your unique experiences and voice. The episode emphasizes adding unique details to show your experiences, effective editing, and the importance of proofreading for clarity and impact.
Topics will include
- Importance of writing a personal essay specific to your experiences and using detailed examples to showcase your individuality
- Editing and proofreading as crucial steps in the writing process
- Techniques for ensuring your voice remains authentic through feedback, and some warnings against relying solely on spellcheck!
If you found these tips helpful, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to email me at jen@firstjenfm.com or reach out on social media on Facebook at CollegeTNT and on Instagram at College_TNT.
For more about me - my experience and my speaking, check out the links below.
You can reach me at jen@firstgenfm.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenschoen/
https://www.firstgenfm.com/speaker-high-school-educators-students-parents
Jennifer Schoen, phd.
Speaker 1:Welcome to College TNT. This is the podcast that helps you navigate to and through college preparing for college while you're in high school, navigating admissions and financial aid and scholarships to get into college, and then helping you make a smooth transition between high school and college. I'm Jennifer Schoen and I'm here to offer you some tips on writing a great essay, whether that is for a scholarship or if that is for your college application. Now, in the previous episode, I talked about three tips, which is following the directions which I know always sounds silly, but it's really important, especially regarding word count. Staying on the topic and selecting that topic you're going to think about that's meaningful to you and then giving yourself time to write, sitting down and saying I'm going to write a terrible first draft and then working with it a little bit over time to write something that really showcases something meaningful about who you are to the scholarship committee or the admissions committee. That's reading your application. Today I want to talk about how to make that application unique to you and also a few ideas on editing and proofreading that I think are super important and why that's important. So the very first thing I want to talk about is if you are writing your essay and you need to make it personal because it's something about you. So, unless they're specifically saying, hey, write a book report about a particular novel or something, you want to make this essay one that only you could write, and the best way to do that is to put in specific examples that showcase what it is you're talking about. So let me give you an example. I have read a lot of essays in my time that are very filled with cliches or very filled with something that anyone in that experience could write. Let me give you example.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of responsibilities to take care of my family, and these responsibilities can sometimes be overwhelming. They require me to fit in how I'm going to do my homework, how I'm going to work around issues with my family, and it's really difficult. I love my family, but these are very hard things to do. Really super general, and I know I'm giving you like just an essay snapshot right when I share this, but another way to do it is to write it something like this I am responsible for my younger sister and my younger brother and I can tell you that every day it is an experience. I get up in the morning and I get myself ready. But then I have to get my younger siblings up all in time for me to get to school and I have to help them get dressed and I have to feed them, and that is my brother. He'll eat anything, so he's really easy. My sister, who's younger, she loves to throw Cheerios on the floor, so not only do I have to feed her and make sure she's eating some of the Cheerios, I also have to clean them up off the floor. And then the essay goes on. But in the first one you could tell it's really general. A lot of people who help take care of family members could write that essay. But in the second one you get this great snapshot, this great picture of what that student's experience experience is like in the morning.
Speaker 1:So as you're writing your essay, think about what are some specific details that you could put in that is very true to your experience. Write those in and again, this is why you're writing. If you draft the first time you're sitting down, it may be terrible because you haven't put any of those experiences in yet. But then, as you go through, put those in. I like to think of it this way do you remember show-and-tell? I don't know if they still have show-and-tell, but hopefully they do. So show-and-tell you would bring in like Harry the turtle, right. You were like this is Harry the Turtle, right. And you'd be like this is Harry the Turtle, and Harry is great. Harry eats lettuce and you know, harry gets passed around and Harry's like oh my God, people are like Harry come out and Harry's probably horrified. But you see, harry, you're not just talking like Harry's a turtle and he's green and he crawls very slowly. No, people are seeing Harry. You want Harry, you want your essay to show and not just tell. So by creating those experiences where people can visualize what it is you're going through, whether that is, you know a job, you have family responsibilities, a cool club that you're part of, something you're passionate about, put in the details that help give me, the reader, a picture of what it is you're saying, and something you're passionate about. Put in the details that help give me, the reader, a picture of what it is you're saying and makes it unique to you. So that's my advice, that's my advice for you on how to put things in your essay. Write the words in the essay that make your essay unique to you. And again, whether that's for scholarships or whether that's for your college application, it's all the same. We want to know who you are. Okay, who you are. Who are you that we're going to give you some money to? Who are you that, and what are you going to bring to our campus? Those are the things that we're looking for Now.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to talk about is editing and proofreading. So when you're going through your essay and you've done a few drafts, it's pretty much ready. You want to put the final touches on it, because you're sending this to folks who want to come to my college and so they're putting their best foot forward. If I have to read a sentence several times over because I don't understand it, if the flow doesn't really work, it's kind of jumpy and I'm like wait, they talked about this here, then they're talking about this there. That makes it harder for me. Plus, I wonder like did you spend enough time on this? Did you take this seriously? Did you respect the people reading it by making it your best work?
Speaker 1:What you want to do is go through and, if you can read it out loud, even better. Have someone else read it out loud to you, because when someone else reads it out loud to you. Because when someone else reads it out loud to you, you hear it like I'm going to read it right and you can hear it and be like oh, whoa, whoa, I didn't mean to say that. Oh, that doesn't really make sense or flow very well there. Let me go back in and add a sentence or fix that or make that transition to the next paragraph a little better. Or you may hear it and be like, oh my, my gosh, I am such a fantastic writer, this is going to win me a wonderful scholarship. Either way, hearing it out loud is a really great way to go back and edit it. That's a way to do it. You can also give it to someone else and say I want you to read this for me and then tell me Two or three things that you learned about me from reading this. And if they're the same two or three things that you were hoping that the admissions or scholarship committees are going to get out of it, then you are really good.
Speaker 1:The essay said what you wanted it to. If they're giving you different things or they're not certain, then that means you still have some editing to do to get that content in there. I will caution you, get that content in there. I will caution you. You don't wanna give your essays to too many people to read because you want it to remain in your voice and not like Aunt Sue's voice, who's like oh honey, remember that time you did this and you did this. You should put this in and put this in. That's not what you want. You want it to be your voice. So go ahead and give it to one person, maybe two, take their advice, leave their advice, but make sure it's in your voice. All right, now we're getting to proofreading.
Speaker 1:Now proofreading when I read an application, I'm not sitting there with like a red pen and I'm like ooh, comma splice. Ooh, run on sentence. Ooh, they showed a period there. Ooh, that's a bad use of a colon. Because I'm an English major major, do I notice those things? Yes, but I'm more concerned with the content. First, but the grammar, punctuation and spelling is important because again, you're putting your best foot forward, right. So I don't want you to spend ages like what should I put here? Oh, my gosh, is this right? Don't worry more about the content than that, but polish that and proofread so you know, you got your commas and your periods and your colons all in the right place and don't just rely on spellcheck, because spellcheck can really put fun things in essays. Let me give you some some examples.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I call it pirate talk shows up in people's essays. So what I mean by that? People will write like I'm going to pack me bags for a trip. And I'm like I read I'm going to pack me bags for a trip like our matey pirate talk, which is fine if you are a pirate, but if you're not, the danger with that is spellcheck sees me, knows it's a word and so leaves it in there, so it will not correct that for you. Same thing with other words.
Speaker 1:I read an essay a student wrote and it said you know, my mother puts sin a lot of work, so p-u-t-s. No, p-u-t put lot of work, so put s, no, put sin, si n. And I read that and I'm like, oh, what is this essay gonna be about? Hmm, interesting, but again, puts is a word, put is a word, sin is a word. Spell check is not gonna catch that for you. So be wary of using spell check alone to fix all the problems in your essay. Okay, either read it carefully yourself or have that person you've given it to read, to check to make sure that all makes sense. So so I'm not really reading about any sin and I'm not reading pirate talk unless you're a pirate.
Speaker 1:The very last thing that you need to do is just give it a once over before you hit submit. Just make sure it's the right essay, it's going to the right school. You'd be surprised. When I was at the University of Washington, I would get an essay like and Washington State is my number one school. And I'm like oh, but you're applying to University of Washington. Like, are you telling me that on purpose? Did you send me the wrong essay? So double check all that For scholarships as well. Just give it a once over, because you're probably going to submit a lot of scholarship applications. Make sure you're sending it to the right place at the right time, hitting the deadline and send it in, and if you do those things, you're following the directions. You chose something that's meaningful to you, you're putting in details that make it unique to you, you're giving yourself time to write and then you're proofreading and editing and not just relying on spellcheck. You should be good to go and putting your best self forward on that application.
Speaker 1:I hope those were some good tips for you. I would be happy to hear from you what you thought of them. You can email me at jen that's jen at firstjenfmcom, or you're welcome to follow me on Facebook at College TNT, or on Instagram at college underscore TNT. I would love to hear from you. I would really love to hear any questions that you have. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can just put your comments below and I will be checking those out and replying as I can. So thank you so much again for listening to this and, if you're listening to this when it came out, I wish you a very happy holiday and a happy new year as we head into 2025. Thanks so much and I'll look forward to talking with you again in the next episode. Bye now.