It is without a doubt that every teenager and young adult fears the dreaded question during all common app essay help counselling appointments: “So, what do you want to do in your future?”
More often than not, the question is given a miserable answer of, “oh, you know…” with the trailing off as a clear sign of uncertainty. This is common and totally okay; but as far as university applications are concerned, they are no strangers to asking these questions. In this article, we’ve gathered the best Common App essay help and advice needed as well as a few extra samples to approach some problematic university application questions concerning careers and future aspirations.
Important Disclaimer: the following sample university application questions are limited to a very small word count; if you are tackling questions that require answers this short, semicolons will be especially useful for questions such as these.
College Admissions Essay Help: Career Questions
Question 1
What are your career objectives and what steps are you taking to achieve them? What alternatives are you considering? What geographical region do you hope to work in? (maximum 500 words)
Let’s first take this question with a little bit of pragmatism here. Most people do not apply for university already knowing EXACTLY what they want to do. Most applicants are in their senior year of high school, not having hit their twenties yet. It’s important to know that it is okay to write that you are not concretely certain of what it is you’d like to do for the future.
Let’s repeat that: it is okay to write that you are not concretely certain of what it is you’d like to do for the future! There are plenty of applicants who have written papers and admitted that they did not know with full certainty what they wanted to do for the future. They succeeded.
Now, as for the point above, it is also important to consider that most of the successful applicants mentioned above have at least some idea of what it is they want to major in or specialize in or aim for in their future. (Common App essay help can help, but it is up to the applicant to decide their future.)
You’ve probably also noticed much to your disdain that this is not just one question, but four. There are four questions inconveniently squeezed into a miserable 500 words or fewer word requirement; at first, such an application essay may seem impossible to even conceive.
You may want to consider having only one field of the four that you are just somewhat uncertain about. We highly recommend the rest of the three fields be rather concrete. This should give the right balance between certainty and uncertainty: You only want a hint of uncertainty in some senses while the rest of your plans appear more well-thought-out and actualized; this will make you appear more well-prepared in front of the university applications office without making yourself seem too overconfident or arrogant about your future.
When the application asks what the applicant’s objectives are and their steps taken, the latter is rather straightforward. Remember to emphasize the most important parts about how you’ve spent your time to achieve your career goals. (you don’t need to lie, but you should overemphasize and use imagery and strong words to make your experience)
The former is not so much an easy task; you should think of It as the bird’s-eye view of what you think is the significance of the future career. This means that you should be thinking about what it is that you want to achieve in your career path. (Do you want to make a strong impact in medicine? Do you want to raise money working in finance to give the life your family and parents deserve? Do you want to help animals better than most other veterinarians?) Because the application is limited to only 500 words or fewer, you should consider making both the introduction of the dream career as well as the objectives into one concise paragraph. Two paragraphs would work fine but you may find yourself short on space.
For those who have not taken any steps to further their career goals: Don’t say you haven’t taken any steps at all; but do not lie and say you’ve taken tremendous ones either! Instead, just take a few weeks or so to implement the right research and life experience/ career opportunities to give you supplemental material to write about. For instance, a few weeks of research and doing odd jobs to find out what you know you like and don’t like in a job is a fantastic topic to write about for this part of the question and doesn’t take long! Best of all, it makes you appear more focused and involved in your career even if it only takes a few weeks of effort!
This part is a bit self-explanatory, but we think it necessary to mention here in case you may not be aware: when you explain what steps you took to fulfill your career goals, be sure to describe at two or more different things you’ve done. For instance, getting involved in an internship –as helpful and impressive as that is—is not going to be as impactful as if it were paired with contributions to school clubs related to your field of choice. Showing that you’ve taken multiple initiatives in furthering your career goals will make you appear more serious and less wishy-washy than the rest of the university application pool.
Question 2
What communities are you excited about getting involved in and how do you believe you will add value to them? (maximum 300 words)
One of the important things to consider before even answering this question is this: No, please do not answer this question with anything related to career prospects or work.
The only exception to the rule above is if this were the only question the university placed for its application essay. If you already have somewhere in your application anything related to your plans to achieve your career goals or your dreams and aspirations for the future, it is wise to not talk about that anymore in the next question. The other questions are there for a reason: to allow the university admissions office to discover more about who you are as a person.
Because this question is asking about the communities you would like to be involved with in the university, this is, in a sense, somewhat related to what you would like to do in the future. It’s not career-related, but even extracurricular activities in the future are things that require foresight. Remember: a lot of questions in the university application process for all schools usually have at least one question pertaining to your foresight of the future. This is oftentimes career-based but community and extracurricular-based ones like the following do exist.
We recommend not involving yourself with more than two activities. Obviously, having more than two topics would make it impossible to fit into the 300 words or fewer requirement, as it would stretch your topic and context too thin. The other reason you don’t want to have more than two communities to talk about is because you may end up writing yourself as the “overachieving-without-passion applicant”. This means you may make yourself appear like the type to get involved with as many activities as possible with only the quantitative value in mind in order to appease university admissions officers.
Another trap you may want to look out for is introducing the communities you are involved in. Most applicants will tackle this question by talking about what their community is and why they are excited for it; by the time they are finished typing this, they would have lost as much as over 250 words. Instead, a smarter way to approach this is to be concise without jeopardizing the context.
Introduce the community or communities you are going to talk about in a brief sentence or independent clause (remember: semicolons will be your friend in short essays like this). Talk about how you will contribute to the communities you aspire to join by connecting it to the reason why it means so much to you. You can do this by being more direct and literal about how you will contribute to the community; as for how important and meaningful the community is to you, be subtler and more implicit about it. This will let you save more space and write eloquently without losing any information.
College Admissions Essay Help: Conclusion
This is not the easiest task to do either: being subtle enough to not be obnoxious but clear enough for admissions officers to understand is one thing; pairing that with being more literal about your aspirations to join a community is another. If you can’t execute this properly and precisely, or simply don’t know if you are, you very much should consider professional university application editing and Common App essay help from our experts.
