Are you planning to write your college essay and are wondering what makes bad college essays?
It is challenging to write excellent college essays. You must have heard that the best college essays are error-free but what are the errors to avoid?
Basically, there are usually errors in everything. There might be grammatical or punctuation errors as well as choosing the wrong choice of words, but are these the only mistakes you must never make to avoid writing bad college essays?
Bad College Essays
Bad college essays are essays lacking the necessary features that make excellent college essays. The purpose of this article is to arm you with the knowledge of the mistakes to avoid increasing your chances of creating an outstanding piece of work.
Read on to find out what makes bad college essays and the 10 mistakes you must never make.
Bad College Essays: 10 Mistakes You Must Never Make
• Writing at the Last Moment
The National Association for College Admission Counseling classifies college or application essays as the most important soft factor that colleges consider when making admission decisions. This is to say that writing at the last moment is one of the worst mistakes you could make even if your essay is excellently written.
• Lack of Familiarity with the College
You must be familiar with your choice of college to be able to write a college essay that compels them.
Surprisingly, most colleges, even medical colleges look for applications that express more genuine interests an applicant has for the school. You would agree that you will rather be friends with a person who is genuinely interested in you too.
You must highlight and express the qualities or features that attract you to the college you’re applying for. Else, your essay will be bland and read as insincere.
• Choosing the Wrong Topics
If you will choose the wrong topic, it will be a lot better to instead explore specific moments in your life that reveal character in action. This is because the easiest way to begin a bad college essay is by choosing a wrong and boring topic.
If you must, ensure you choose the right topics whose content will highlight your great sides, express your character, personality, strengths, and talents enough to impress the commission.
In all, ensure you avoid personal, offensive, overconfident, racist, or other controversial topics.
• Lacking Ambition and Vision
To state the above, you must answer these questions:
• Why are you going to college?
• What are the genuine reasons you are applying to a particular college?
• Also, what are the reasons you are applying for the field you have chosen?
These three questions could help bring your ambition and vision into your college essay. Your admission officers already know you are aiming for a better job and pay after college but they don’t want you stating the obvious. They would rather admit an applicant who has a clear and powerful vision for his future.
To avoid this mistake, you must answer the questions in a way that convinces your readers that you will do something great with your education.
• Not Determining Your College Essay Goals
Before you start your college essay, determine what you want your admission officers to think or perceive of you after reading your essay. While you must not lie or come off as too showy that you highlight even the unreasonable details, ensure you put in the necessary details.
Basically, your college essay must not highlight a personality your resume or pre-college coursework already highlights, for instance, that you are studious and hardworking. It should serve to highlight other aspects of your life.
• Focusing Only on What the College Must Offer You
The admission board first considers students who can enhance the educational experience of other students as well as uphold the college’s prestige. This is one of the goals your college essay should meet. You already have an edge by being an international student, a great example is when applying to the college of animation in Japan, you must find ways to communicate the things you can contribute to the college.
You must not assume that the admission board will figure this out themselves. It will be important to highlight them in your college essay. For example, being an international student means you are offering other students an opportunity for cultural diversity. Take some time to consider other contributions you can make and high them.
• Lack of Emotions
Research reveals that the 10 colleges that received the most applications in the fall of 2020 with an average of 84,865 college essays. This shows that there are more people writing college essays and yours need to be unique to stand out. Your message won’t stand out if it lacks personality and emotions.
Put in emotions and personal feelings as you can. Put in enough necessary details too while paying attention to certain feelings. While you are at this, ensure you infuse creativity in your writing. Also, avoid using sophisticated language too.
Generally, your commission already understands that you are not an expert but you’re expected to put in some effort. Do this by using your range of vocabulary to convey your emotions as well as other information in the most creative ways.
• Too Much Information
While it is important to highlight your strengths and talent and visions to convince your admission officers that you are one of the right candidates for their college, know when to stop and take out the unnecessary details.
Every human is flawed; however, your application is not the best place to show that. Also, it is not the place to express your fears, negativities, and regrets unless you are highlighting the positives that came out of these negative and difficult experiences.
• An Untidy Social Media Space
Your social media page is one of the ways you are accessed, away from your college essay. While no college tells you this, ensure you pause, get your social media cleaned up before you hit the submit button.
Clear your page of every post, pictures, or tags that might disrupt your positive image.
• Poor Grammar and Punctuations
It is important to go over your college essay many times before you hit the submit button. Clear out all poor grammars, tenses, incorrect spacing, and punctuation mistakes before you submit.
Avoid using slang and abbreviations. College essays are not text messages. They must be as professional as possible even while being simple.
Also, avoid exceeding the word limit already specified in the instructions to follow. Your admission officers know when you have exceeded and this could be interpreted as your inability to follow strict guidelines and lack of self-control.
Conclusion
College essays are not one of the easiest things to write but be sure to create an excellent piece of work when you have avoided the mistakes listed above.
