It has happened to the best of us: instead of working on our admissions essay for our dream school, we succumbed to temptation and find ourselves wasting hours away scrolling through Youtube and Instagram. More often than not, you’ll find yourself not actually consuming any information at all; in fact, you most probably scroll through articles and feeds that are not interesting enough for you to give them the time of day. These pieces of content are left unnoticed despite just how much work is put into them, and unfortunately for many applicants, this is just as true if not more with the university admissions office. For today’s article on College Admission essay help, we will be covering how to make a killer opening that will capture anyone’s attention.
The nature of admissions decisions
Most admissions office members process the admissions letters at lightning speed; this is especially true with the heavy number of international students applying to schools in the United States. There’s a population problem that is going to work against you, but you’ll also have to deal with the fact that not everyone is a fantastic writer. This can seem like an advantage for those who write well but remember this: after having read hundreds of terrible applications, most committee members may not be so thrilled about just reading in general.
If you have a topic that most other people write about, that just adds more wood to the fire, so try to make sure that the content of your admissions essay stands out among the rest.
If you’re going to get in to your dream school, you can’t expect to do it without the perfect opening to your essay. It counts, so make it shine. Show the admissions committee you have a story worth telling with College Admission essay help before it gets sent to the rejection pile.
Though the task of crafting fast attention-grabbing introductions may seem daunting –and trust us, it definitely is—we’ve compiled a set of dirty tips and tricks to give you a much-needed competitive edge against the rest of the admissions pool.
Firstly, some do’s and don’ts
Let’s start with the don’ts so you can quickly look for problematic parts of your admissions essay. If you happen to find any of these qualities in the introduction of your essay, revise it immediately.
“Don’ts” in an introduction
1. The introduction to your application talks about things already self-explanatory such as GPA and SAT or ACT scores. These generally shouldn’t be in the admissions essay at all, but it occurs so often that we found it important to place here.
2. Your introduction lets out too much information. This is oftentimes a bad idea as it makes the rest of the essay less interesting. Everything else may seem less interesting if you already have the climax in the opening.
3. You don’t put an emphasis on “You”, but you have an emphasis on the things you did. This tends to take away the personality and the “realness” of the whole experience. It applies to the rest of the essay too, but it is important in the introduction especially since it allows the admissions office to know you better as an individual rather than a statistic.
Do’s in an Introduction
1. Hint at what it is you want to do with your future career or what field of study you wish to pursue. There are exceptions to this, however. Sometimes you will have application questions that ask about something that has no way of being brought back to the topic of career prospects. In those cases, which oftentimes include private schools, do not fight it and try to wedge your plans for your career or studies into it. Simply answer the question.
2. Uses some form of imagery to draw reader’s attention. This is always a good idea; though there are times where a lack of imagery still works, most of the time imagery works very well in grabbing the reader’s attention.
3. Leave out some information. It is important to know which types of information to leave out in the introduction and what types to leave in. A good way of knowing is using what sounds very interesting or filled with the most action. Use it and describe it in the most out of context manner. This can be difficult, so you may want to consider editing services and College Admission essay help before getting your hands dirty with unique introductions.
Examples of good Introductions
Here are some free samples of what could work as a good Introduction:
1. The worst way to start the morning is to cry over spilled milk… literally.
Mentioning “literally” raises an important question: what happened to make the applicant literally cry over spilled milk? That’s the value in statements like this –they force the readers to raise questions about what happened.
2. I love camping, it has been a part of just about every family vacation I’ve been in; that is, until I’ve found myself stranded in the wilderness with no place to go.
This works wonderfully because it throws the admissions officers right into the action without letting them in on what exactly happened during the climax. Unless they read more and gives the applicant more attention than if they did not optimize the introduction.
3. My love for literature started when I found what was probably the weirdest book in my life. The book was red with no title, no known author, and no publisher.
Again, we make the introduction ambiguous enough that the readers will want to know more about the mysterious backstory of this book. It also is a good introduction to why the applicant wants to major in English / Literature.
How to find the right topic.
A good way to find topics is to start with a list. Everything that goes into this list will be the events that have made an impact that have changed the type of person you are in some way or another. This means that something has affected you in either a physical or a mental way or both that has made some sort of ripple effect on your life today. Even better would be if they are related to the career goals that you’ve had in mind or considered.
Topics that are in the early stages of your life such as elementary or middle school work just fine, but they’re not as strong as the ones in high school. Generally, the more recent the topic, the better. This is because a more recent topic will convince readers that your most recent and important years are more active.
Good topics don’t always have to be physically significant or extravagant either. More often than not, we receive questions about whether a topic is “interesting” enough; though a story about almost being eaten by a shark would without a doubt be more interesting than a visit to grandma’s house, it should be noted that there are plenty of applicants with boring topics who wrote fantastic admissions essays.
In other words, students with seemingly boring topics were still admitted to high-tier universities.
This does not mean one should forgo spending time looking for the right topic. The best way to think of it is like this: technically, one could enter heir dream school without the perfect essay topic. It is important, however, to
Here’s something you should avoid, however. Saying that you have a “dream job” or simply just fetishizing a certain field is a bad route to follow.
Having a “dream job” is mostly a cliché that only applies to a very select few people; even if you are a part of said select few, there are so many admissions essays that cover that topic that it would be impossible to write an interesting essay that stands out to begin with.
Instead, for topics relating to career prospects and goals in the future, frame your goals in a way that demonstrates you value what you are both skilled and passionate in. For instance, a lot of teachers love teaching students and working with them to understand the topics they’re passionate about. It would be unrealistic to say that all teachers enjoy every minute of teaching, some have moments where they simply don’t feel like dealing with the struggles of managing a classroom. This applies to all jobs.
Once you’ve had the topic chosen and the introduction in place, you’re ready to start with the next few sections! Remember: the introduction to the admissions essay is the most important section of the essay, so you want to place a lot of effort and time in editing to make sure it is absolutely perfect before clicking the “submit” button.
The introduction and the hook are no easy feat. The fact that they make up a huge chunk of the editing process doesn’t make it any more complicated. You may want to consider working with a free consultation to discuss how to tackle this maze and stand out among the rest of the applicant pool. If you don’t want to take any chances, schedule a free consultation for our experts to provide professional College Admission essay help.
