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College admissions
Course: College admissions > Unit 4
Lesson 3: Admissions essays- Writing a strong college admissions essay
- Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes
- Brainstorming tips for your college essay
- How formal should the tone of your college essay be?
- Taking your college essay to the next level
- Sample essay 1 with admissions feedback
- Sample essay 2 with admissions feedback
- Student story: Admissions essay about a formative experience
- Student story: Admissions essay about personal identity
- Student story: Admissions essay about community impact
- Student story: Admissions essay about a past mistake
- Student story: Admissions essay about a meaningful poem
- Writing tips and techniques for your college essay
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Student story: Admissions essay about a meaningful poem
Want to join the conversation?
- Where can we see the actual essays??(5 votes)
- I do not believe they are provided. You can google sample essays online though.(3 votes)
- How can I describe myself in one single story? I m more than just one incident of my existence ...there r multiple incidents that changed me...can I include more than just a single incident? If yes, how to represent it?(3 votes)
- It's pretty unpopular; most sites I've seen recommend focusing on one topic and keeping it narrow. In some cases, though, you probably could include more than one story, but just make sure to tie it all together.
If you just list multiple things that changed you - maybe you failed your first volleyball tryout but became star player your junior year - and then add another important event - your dad lost his job and you had to work extra hard one summer - it could seem to lack focus and cohesiveness.
And remember, most colleges want to see how it changed you for the better! Not just how it changed you. An essay on how you were always bullied in school isn't that great. An essay on how you were always bullied in school but learned to be brave, stand up for yourself and even make friends with the bullies has great potential.(3 votes)
- I said that is sad(0 votes)
Video transcript
- One of UVA's application supplements is kind of, name a piece of literature or artwork, or music that has
challenged you, inspired you. So I wrote about a poem or a
play called A Raisin in the Sun and it's based on Langston Hughes' poem about a raisin in the sun. And it's about this
African American family growing up in Chicago in about the 1950s. And all they ever want is a house. They kind of live in cramped,
like government apartments. And the whole story the mother is talking about wanting a house and being able to have a
little patch for her garden and just a place that
they could call their own. And I talked about that in
the context of my family because we lived in like
a very shoddy apartment. My dad actually still lives there, so six of us to this apartment. And it was you know very
cramped and lots of bugs and mice, and things that
you shouldn't be living with. And so I kind of grew
up always fantasizing about living in a house and just the thought of
being able to go to college and being able to not
live in a shoddy apartment was a huge kind of incentive for me. But I talked about as I got older, how my
kind of views shifted and instead of kind of
just having a house for me. I just wanted a house for my parents and so I talked about you know if I can go to college,
if I can go to your school I would love to graduate with a job and just be able to one day maybe kind of long lines down the road but
be able to purchase a house for my parents just like that
family in A Raisin in the Sun and how that's all they wanted. And I also related the book to my family because the parents, the father
especially worked all day and he was never really seen. And so nobody really knew who he was, and that was a huge kind
of stressor on the family. And so I talked about how when
you do have financial burdens it's hard to do things like have traditions and go on vacations. And when you are kind
of so focused on money, it's hard to kind of
find that loving balance withing a family because there are just
so many outside factors that are influencing it.