by Jack Bates

Created on: May 09, 2008

Several years ago a book came out detailing what it took to write a good college entrance essay. I still remember the one that dealt with the best piece of advice anyone had ever given to the writer. It began with a quote: "Move your ass!" It went on from there to talk about how the person speaking to the writer wanted him to move out of the way and the writer used it springboard from there.

I still share the essay with my junior and senior classes. I use it to show the importance of including personal experience inside the essay. The college, after all, wants to know something about the person it is considering. It wants to know there is a real person out there. Writing from experience takes the writer down the road to success.

With the advent of the Internet came several websites that now list past entrance essay topics. Collegeboard.com provides some of the best examples and offers some keen insight on how to approach various types of questions. The site breaks down these standards into essays that deal with "you", "why us?", or "creative" aspects that the colleges use to find out about the reader. Internationalstudent.com is another resource that provides insight into crafting the ideal entrance essay. This site also gives examples of past essays that have successfully gotten the writers into places like Stanford, Harvard, or Georgetown.

I often give my students a day in the media center to visit these and other sites to read these sample essays. I ask them to find three examples of what they feel is good writing and print those essays. The next step is to grab highlighters, and ink-up those pages with what they feel are strong examples of whom the writer is and why the student-reader thinks they know something about the writer. In other words, what in the writing makes that writer 'real' to the reader?

The last step is to give my students a list of topics from which to choose to write a mock entrance essay. I give them roughly forty-five minutes to choose, write, and refine before handing it in to me. Another day is spent in the media center allowing students to edit and type out their papers. The following day I set the scene for them to be the college admissions readers as I randomly hand out essays from a different class and ask them to read it. I ask that they read the essay and in the end, make a decision on whether or not the writer would be accepted at their college. The reader must write a detailed response as to why and how the reader reached the decision.

The process for writing the strong college entrance essay should begin long before the students pick up the application or meet at a testing site. Practice, deconstruction, and experience are essential for writing the perfect entrance essay.

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