Help+Getting+Started+(from+The+College+Board)

=**[|From The College Board:]** =  =[|Choosing a College Essay Topic] =

**What You Write About Says Something About You**
Underlying all essay questions is choice. The essay question may be direct and ask you to choose something about yourself to discuss, or it may be indirect and require you to write about something such as an event, book, or quotation.

**Why Your Choice of Essay Matters**
The college regards your choices as a way to evaluate your preferences, values, mental processes, creativity, sense of humor, and depth of knowledge. Your writing reflects your power of persuasion, organizational abilities, style, and mastery of standard written English.

**Your Preferences:** Your essay topic reveals your preferences. Are you an arts person or a hard-facts science type? Certainly, there is a difference between the person who'd like to talk about the Cold War with Machiavelli and someone who'd like to get painting tips from Jackson Pollock. **Your Values:** Choice also reflects values. The person who drives a beat-up, rusty, 1971 Volkswagen is making a statement about how she wants to spend her money and what she cares about. We say, "That dress isn't me" or "I'm not a cat person." In choosing, you indicate what matters to you and how you perceive yourself. **Your Thought Process:** Choosing shows how you think. Are you whimsical, a person who chooses on impulse? Or are you methodical and careful, a person who gathers background information before choosing? Questions about you and about career and college reflect these choosing patterns. Even a question about a national issue can show your particular thinking style, level of intelligence, and insight.
 * Here is what colleges look for: **

**Think About Topics**
The topic you select for your essay can also reveal much about who you are. Yale's application instructs: "In the past, candidates have used this space in great variety of ways.... There is no 'correct' way to respond to this essay request...." No answer is wrong, but sloppy, general, insincere, or tasteless responses can hurt your cause. Some of the best essays—the memorable and unusual ones—are about very similar, just more focused, topics. Essays about your family, football team, trip to France, parents' divorce, or twin can be effective as long as they're focused and specific: a single Christmas Eve church service, a meal of boiled tongue in Grenoble, or dipping ice cream on a summer job. ---  =[|Recipe for a Draft] =

**How to Kick-Start Your College Essay**
Sometimes the hardest part of writing a college admissions essay is just getting started. Here's a quick exercise to get pen to paper (or keyboard to computer). **Step 1: Think about yourself** What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your best qualities? Are you a plugger? An intellectual? A creative type? Curious? Passionate? Determined? **Step 2: Choose a positive quality you'd like to convey to the admissions committee** Don't pick an event or something you've done. President of the Nuclear Awareness Club is not a personal quality. Focus on a quality of your mind or of your character. Complete this sentence: "I am a very _ person." **Step 3: Tell a story** Set a timer for 20 minutes. Pretend you're taking an exam at high school and responding to, "Tell a story about an experience or time when you showed you were a very _ person." Use the characteristic you identified in Step 2. Write or type non-stop for 20 minutes; force yourself to keep telling the story and what it reveals until the timer goes off.

**You're Done**
Okay. That's it. You've got a rough draft for your college application essay. Look at the college application forms and see what questions they ask. No matter what the questions are, you've already identified the important characteristic you want to convey to each college.