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Writing the Common App essay? Read This First!

Writing the Common App essay? Read This First!

Which prompt you pick matters less than the story you choose to tell and how you tell it. When you begin to get ready to write, you should employ a process that begins with understanding the questions being asked. Turn over all your cards. For some people that involves brainstorming, for others it doesn’t. Whether you brainstorm or not, write with no regard for length; just get all the ideas on paper. Then organize the parts of the story that are really important or the parts that came out well, and begin trimming irrelevant content, shortening sentences and fixing verbs, getting rid of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. At the end of the process, you should have an essay that tells the reader something about you. It should be a story that no one else could tell but you. And hopefully the writing sounds like you—a polished version of you, a you in a suit-and-tie or blouse-and-blazer, but you nonetheless.