Honor Scholar Program Admission Essay Prompts

Honor Scholar Program Admission Essay Prompts While revising and reworking the drafts is more of a “global” process, this step also includes changing phrases and fixing grammar, punctuation, and style errors in the work. Not everyone is a born writerâ€"in fact, pretty much no one is. And this is why it is absolutely essential that you give yourself some time to not only finish the first draft of your essay but to edit and revise your work and even rewrite the essay again if necessary. Jacob Imm is a communications specialist in the North Central College Office of Marketing and Communications. He has 10 years of collegiate communications experience and has worked with hundreds of college students. You may want to start by just getting somethingâ€"anythingâ€"on paper. Think about the questions we asked above and the prompt for the essay, and then write for 15 or 30 minutes without stopping. What do you want your audience to know after reading your essay? Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, organization, or anything else. Not only does this show colleges that you’ve have done your homework, but it also demonstrates your interest in the college â€" and colleges want to admit students who are likely to enroll. Show your knowledge of the college by mentioning specific courses, professors, places of interest, and more. For help getting started, see our handout on brainstorming. Our elite team of editing experts has helped thousands of academics, researchers, students, and business professionals improve their writing and achieve their goals. Claiming that you have good study habits is another empty claim. Detailing the exact study habits that have helped you succeed in school, backed up with the GPA on your application, carries much more weight. Using words in your essay that you don't typically use in your daily conversations can sound awkward and forced. Words have nuance to them, and simply inserting a word from the thesaurus is a great way to destroy that nuance. Thesaurus abuse is a lazy and easily spotted trick, and seasoned admissions officers will see right through it. In addition to the personal essay, we also require the Stanford Questions, which you can access in either application once you add Stanford University to your list of colleges. You must submit the Stanford Questions online through the Coalition or Common Application. Simply asserting that you have what the university is looking for is not convincing; anyone could make the same claim as plausibly as you if you don't back up your claims with evidence. Stating that you believe in integrity, for example, is an easy claim that's made by thousands of politicians and used car salespeople every year. If you want to demonstrate your integrity, share a story that illustrates how you passed up an opportunity to exploit an advantage that was unfairly gained. For strategies for meeting word limits, see our handout on writing concisely. Get it out and revise it again (you can see why we said to start right awayâ€"this process may take time). And, one more time, don’t write in cliches and platitudes. Every doctor wants to help save lives, every lawyer wants to work for justiceâ€"your reader has read these general cliches a million times. It’s probably much more personal than any of the papers you have written for class because it’s about you, not World War II or planaria. Keep the details straight, and if there’s something you want to reveal in the essay, just be sure it’s about your thoughts and feelings, not an important fact you left out elsewhere. When you apply to Stanford, you apply to the university as a whole, not to a particular major, department or school. We encourage you to indicate prospective majors and career interests in the application, but please know you are not bound by these selections in any way. Both applications include essay prompts for your personal essay. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University. At the same time, don’t go against what you’ve written on the rest of your application. If you feel that you're overusing a particular word, think of alternatives on your own without consulting a thesaurus; using words that you're familiar with will help you avoid misusing them. When tailoring responses to individual college prompts, it’s important to use specific details you’ve learned through visiting and research. If you find that your essay is too long, do not reformat it extensively to make it fit. Making readers deal with a nine-point font and quarter-inch margins will only irritate them.