This article is published in the 2017 I’m First Guide to College
DO:
• Analyze the prompt and rewrite it in your own words before beginning your essay
• Begin with a strong “hook” to pull your reader into your essay
• Write about a subject you are passionate about
• Choose a topic and a subject that is unique to you and displays positive aspects of your personality, such as perseverance, courage, sense of humor, etc.
• Focus your essay on one specific scene or point in time
• Use a rich, vivid vocabulary with lots of figurative language and sensory details
• Write in the first person
• Use dialogue when appropriate
• Show your thinking and learning process throughout the essay
• End with a sense of closure, like a lesson learned
• Proofread your own essay by reading out loud
• Ask others to read your essay and give their feedback
DON’T:
• Answer only part of the prompt
• Use clichés to start your essay (or at any point in your essay!)
• Write about a topic because it’s easy or obvious
• Choose a subject that many other people can write about
• Try to tell your whole life story in your essay
• Use your essay only to brag about your accomplishments or make excuses for bad grades
• Write “he said,” “she said” dialogue
• Use slang, vulgarity, or curse words
• Plagiarize essays or part of essays from any source
• Use a thesaurus extensively to try to make yourself sound smart
• Start every sentence with “I”
• End your essay exactly the way it began
• Go above the specified word count
• Send your essay without proofreading it and having at least three others review it