Applying for college may seem like a daunting task if you don’t start out on the right foot. You want to impress the admissions department, but you don’t want to over-embellish your application. When it comes to your college application, there is a fine line between showing you’re competent, versus showboating your skills excessively. These two key tips will help you wow the college admissions officers and stand out from other students.
1. Don’t Try Too Hard
Many students make the mistake of trying to write about what they think the admissions officer wants to read. This is one of the biggest mistakes you could make. While a story about your mission trip to Honduras may seem like good material for your application essay, the truth is that admissions counselors read hundreds upon thousands of essays repeating the same story — or a close approximation of it. Your college application essay should showcase what matters to you, not what you think matters to the applications committee. So don’t try too hard; use your writing to display your creativity and ingenuity. You’ll be better off than if you wrote about a cookie-cutter experience.
2. Follow Instructions Exactly
It always starts the same way: You’re on your fifth college application, and it seems painfully similar to the last four. You’re zooming through the instructions just to get to the end. That is time you most need to slow down and proceed with caution. While application instructions can seem generic and repetitive, they are put in place for a reason. Colleges want to see that you can take direction, so don’t skip a step just because it seems unnecessary and redundant. You may be unknowingly failing a test.
Applying for college is stressful enough — use these tips to help simplify the process. In the meantime, visit the prospective students section to get answers to your questions about college application at JSOM.
