How To Craft Winning Admission Essays

• Dec 04, 2022
• 5 min read

• Tags: Academic Writing, Dissertation

Crafting winning admission essays is one of the most demanding tasks of applying to universities and schools for higher education. Everyone looks for the secret sauce to enhance the essay to create one spectacular, unforgettable piece to serves as a golden ticket to their dream college. In this article, we let you in on a tried and tested secret sauce of admissions essay writing success. 

How to write an admission essay?

Let’s first understand the purpose of writing an admission essay. Some schools and colleges provide an essay prompt you have to write on, while some of them don’t need you to write one at all; just clear the test if there is one or fill the form and you’re in (Mostly in case of distance learning courses and community colleges).

Top graduate and business schools see thousands of applicants vying for a few slots every year. It’s critical that the Admissions Committees (AdCom) learn the most about applicants to narrow down only on the best from the pool of applicants. The essay question or topic is such that it goes beyond dry personal information on the admission form to explain your personality, experiences, and perspectives.

Be mindful of what to include in the essay and how you structure it. Our editors share 7 essential tips for writing winning college application essays.

1. Plan your essay

An exceptional essay is not written in a day or even a week. Start early – at least 5 weeks before the deadline. This is serious business, okay? There’s a lot you must do: Create an outline, writing, lots of rewriting, deleting the fluff, highlighting the main takeaways, getting feedback, setting it aside for a while for a bit of revision.

While all of this is something you can do on your own, only the final and most crucial measure: editing and proofreading should be left to professionals.

Yes, that’s all the writing it takes to create a winning admission essay to get into your dream college.

2. Explain why you are a standout applicant

“Show, don’t tell” remember that snippet from Writing 101? Use it when you’re writing the essay. Skillfully describe examples that show you embody traits and beliefs of winners.

You can do this by briefly elaborating on how extraordinary achievements led to your personal growth; any exceptional hardships, setbacks or personal experiences that shaped your personality or academic credentials, work history or community-service involvement. Mentioning such efforts goes a long way to establish you as a credible candidate.

3. Describe how you are a perfect fit for the program

Do your research and understand the core and cultural values of colleges you’re applying for. This gives you an idea about what the AdCom is looking for in the fresh batch of students. Our editors make sure to check if the school’s mission statement has been naturally incorporated in the admission essays that we process.

Each particular program looks for certain qualities in the candidates they want to pick. Like an MBA school looks for leadership, teamwork, and intelligence in potential candidates. Medical schools look for students who are headstrong, resilient and dedicated.

4. Keep it short

You don’t want to exceed the given word limit, the ballpark figure for which is 500 words. You might think that’s a lot to write, but as you finish, you mostly would’ve crossed that limit. So it happens, when you finally get into a good groove of writing it all down. You’ll end up writing a lot that’s superfluous or doesn’t fit in.

Be ruthless with chopping out such unnecessary parts. Our editors have a laser-sharp vision for what stays to make a remarkable essay and what gets the cut! 

5. Attention-grabbing  opening & closing paragraphs

The AdCom goes through thousands of essays every day, they’ve seen it all. They only skim through a generic piece and put it aside without giving any second thought about it. Our editors suggest you powerfully word the first paragraph in a way that draws your reader into reading the entire text with full attention and by the last paragraph they’re convinced that you’re the one. You can spin magic with words!

Learn more about the MEAL plan for creating effective paragraphs.

6. Get Feedback

It’s best to rely on English teachers or an editing service like PaperTrue for detailed constructive feedback. You could also pass around your essay to your confidants in parents, friends, and family. This will help you improve the essay immensely as people who know you also know those facts of your personality which you haven’t added or have overstated in your write-up.

7. Edit and proofread

Even the best writers in the world need an editor to assess their work. The second pair of eyes naturally catch mistakes that you might have missed. An outsider’s view also helps identify ideas and sections that are ambiguous. Our experts say such worries are commonplace in most admission essays.

It’s important to rework the wording and sentences for clarification before you submit your application. The final copy should be such that the readers are convinced at a single glance. Leave no stone unturned in doing so!   

Feel free to take us granted for checking spelling, grammar, punctuations, slang and making it 100% error-free. 

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Manish

Manish is a serial entrepreneur, business coach, and the Founder of PaperTrue. His vision is to make impeccable English communication possible for everybody, so they can write effectively and gain the academic and professional success they deserve.