College Admissions Essay
This year college admissions deadlines came up very quickly for me. Colorado School of Mines and Technology invited me to apply by September 15th for their priority 1 deadline. So instead of being able to apply later in the year I had to get everything together immediately. The most difficult thing that I needed to get together had to be the personal essay. Personal essays are just that, personal. They aren't meant to show how well people did in their classes, it's to help the admissions staff get to know the people applying. As long as this essay shows who you are it can be about literally anything. And I decided to write about some misadventures that I had on a 50 mile adventure trek.
Having to make just about every decision in this assignment meant that I had to use a lot of self directional skills. The only direction I had of what to write about was that the essay had to grab the attention of the admissions staff and that it needed to show off my personality. It was enterally on me to choose a topic and meet this deadline.
I'm actually really proud of myself that I was not only able to meet this deadline, but the essay was also pretty well written. The final draft of my college admissions essay was surprisingly fun to read and it will definitely help the admissions staff members get to know me, even though I struggle with making decisions when it comes to writing.
In fact, being a good decision maker is the number one way that I improved my self directional skills in writing this essay. At the start I was so nervous about making the right choices that I put off writing it. But by the end I was able to figure out what worked and what was extra stuff that needed to be removed from the essay to make it more concise.
And honestly making the essay shorter was the most difficult part of this assignment. The word limit for the common app website is 650 words and I managed to write 975 words. So I effectively had get rid of an entire page of my essay by either saying stuff more concisely or by saying less. Even though I had gotten much better at making choices in writing by this point, I was very scared of getting rid of the wrong things. And on top of that I had a little over a week left before the deadline to make these changes.
That's why if I could start over and change one thing about how I did this project I would've started writing this essay much, much earlier, probably during summer break. If I had started earlier I could've spent much more time polishing the essay and making it flawless.
In my eyes just about every high school and college early admit writing course that I've taken up until now have really served to help me write this essay. I wouldn't have the creativity or writing skill to write a college admission essay without those classes.
As far as applying what I learned in doing this assignment to future learning I think I can apply it to any class I put myself through in the future. The way that I improved my time management and work ethic will be invaluable in college.
Having to make just about every decision in this assignment meant that I had to use a lot of self directional skills. The only direction I had of what to write about was that the essay had to grab the attention of the admissions staff and that it needed to show off my personality. It was enterally on me to choose a topic and meet this deadline.
I'm actually really proud of myself that I was not only able to meet this deadline, but the essay was also pretty well written. The final draft of my college admissions essay was surprisingly fun to read and it will definitely help the admissions staff members get to know me, even though I struggle with making decisions when it comes to writing.
In fact, being a good decision maker is the number one way that I improved my self directional skills in writing this essay. At the start I was so nervous about making the right choices that I put off writing it. But by the end I was able to figure out what worked and what was extra stuff that needed to be removed from the essay to make it more concise.
And honestly making the essay shorter was the most difficult part of this assignment. The word limit for the common app website is 650 words and I managed to write 975 words. So I effectively had get rid of an entire page of my essay by either saying stuff more concisely or by saying less. Even though I had gotten much better at making choices in writing by this point, I was very scared of getting rid of the wrong things. And on top of that I had a little over a week left before the deadline to make these changes.
That's why if I could start over and change one thing about how I did this project I would've started writing this essay much, much earlier, probably during summer break. If I had started earlier I could've spent much more time polishing the essay and making it flawless.
In my eyes just about every high school and college early admit writing course that I've taken up until now have really served to help me write this essay. I wouldn't have the creativity or writing skill to write a college admission essay without those classes.
As far as applying what I learned in doing this assignment to future learning I think I can apply it to any class I put myself through in the future. The way that I improved my time management and work ethic will be invaluable in college.