how to close a college application essay

College Reality Check

How to Close a College Essay (With 10 Examples)

Writing a conclusion can be quite difficult because, often, it can be challenging to look for something useful or interesting to say at the end of the piece.

And even though there are easy formulas for writing conclusions, which, the school adds, can be tempting to use, it’s usually best to refrain from relying on them as they do not allow you to end your composition with a bang.

As someone who is about to write a college essay, it’s definitely a good idea to steer clear of any of those!

What you will submit together with your college application can spell the difference between going to your top-choice school and attending a second- or third-choice school.

Needless to say, it’s just as vital to carefully think about how you will jump-start your college essay as how you will wrap it up with a strong and winning conclusion .

Terrified that the conclusion you have in mind might bring your entire college application essay down and flush any admission chances to your dream school down the drain?

Below, I will give you some strategies on how to close your written submission successfully.

But first, let’s talk about this very important matter every college-bound teen, especially one whose goal is to get admitted to a selective institution of higher education, needs to know before writing a college essay…

Three Worst Options to Close a College Essay

There are numerous ways to wrap up a college essay in a way that could make those hard-to-please admissions officers reckon that you would make for a wonderful addition to the campus.

But then on the other hand, there are also things you may mistakenly commit that can weaken your application and even cause a rejection letter to be sent your way.

Needless to say, you should avoid them at all costs if getting denied is not an option!

A terrible concluding paragraph can wreak havoc on your essay no matter how flawlessly and impressively written the introduction and main body are — a single problematic part is all it takes to ruin everything.

Therefore, other than having a clear idea of how any college application essay is best closed in exchange for good news when college admissions decision time comes, it’s also a must for you to be acquainted with conclusions that are absolute no-nos.

And, of course, other than being familiar with them, you should make sure that none of them will mar your college essay.

Here are some endings to dodge whatever happens:

1. Giving a summary

When it comes to writing either an academic essay or a research paper, there’s a rule that everyone should abide by without any hesitation or doubt: the conclusion should briefly talk about the key points or arguments.

So, in other words, the written piece should end with a summarization, which is why it’s referred to as a concluding summary.

The addition of any new information or idea is considered unthinkable, although a synthesis of some of the most important matters included in the composition is welcome and, in most instances, expected.

However, it’s a completely different story if what’s being written is a college essay.

If the goal is to make sure that your college essay won’t take away from the strength of your application, refrain from restating just about everything you talked about briefly in the concluding paragraph.

Not only is it redundant and, therefore, completely unnecessary but also makes it appear as though you ran out of ideas before bringing the piece to a full stop.

A college application essay can be as short as 250 words to as long as 600 words — ending yours with a brief summary might look like you just want to meet the word count requirement, which is not the only thing that admissions officers want.

And speaking of whom, giving a summary at the end of your college essay could come across as you saying:

The admissions committee member who will read my essay might fail to completely get the point of my composition because of its complexity and innovativeness, so I should summarize it to make sure that he or she will understand everything.

Again, here’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time, which means that I am totally banking on my ability to correctly solve practically any mathematical problem there is to have a successful career as an aerospace engineer one day.

2. Using cliché transitions

First things first: no cliché should make it to your college essay or any other written piece you will write from hereon. The use of a cliché immediately extends the fact that you lack originality and, worse, sincerity as a writer.

Definitely, you don’t want your college essay to be interchangeable with someone else’s.

And that is why ending yours with something that starts with a trite transition, most especially as a way to restate everything you have talked about, is prohibited.

College admissions officers have laid their eyes on some of the most original personal compositions of junior and senior high schoolers, and it’s effortless for them to catch clichés.

In conclusion or in essence — needless to say, using such a hackneyed phrase is a disaster as it’s both resorting to the use of a cliché as well as committing one of the mortal sins of concluding a college essay, which is summarizing.

The following are some examples of cliché transitions that lead to a summary to steer clear of:

• All things considered
• As has been demonstrated
• In a nutshell
• In summation
• On a final note
• To conclude
• To make a long story short/long story short
• To put it briefly
• To wrap things up
• When all is said and done

It’s important to note that a good essay, including a college essay, uses transitions between paragraphs to maintain a logical and smooth flow of the written piece.

Without them, your submission may make it hard for the reader to get from one point to the other.

It’s not that college admissions officers are dense — it’s just that your college essay’s paragraphs are disjointed.

Found yourself in a rut and feel that starting your conclusion with a cliché transition is the way to go?

Proceed with drafting the concluding paragraph. Once you’re through, scrap the trite word or phrase you opened your conclusion with as well as the rest of the sentence and see how that works.

3. Stating hopes of acceptance

It’s no secret that you submitted a college application essay because it’s one of the various admissions requirements. And it’s no secret, too, that you completed all admissions requirements because you wanted to get accepted.

Therefore, expressing your hopes of receiving an offer to enroll is stating the obvious.

As mentioned earlier, high school teens gearing up for their postsecondary education careers are usually limited to 250 to 600 words when writing a college essay.

Needless to say, ending your composition with an entire paragraph devoted to how much you want to attend the institution is a complete waste of precious space.

Because you can submit a college essay containing only as many words, it’s of utmost importance to make the most out of the opportunity to be able to flex your thoughts, creativity, originality and superb writing skills.

There is no point squandering the word limit by your college essay’s conclusion coming across as saying:

I would really appreciate it if you could add my college application to the pile of accepted applications because I have been dreaming of earning an undergraduate degree from University X since time immemorial.

There’s nothing wrong with associating the college career you have envisioned for yourself with what you talked about in your college essay. However, there is no need to explicitly mention it or, worse, beg to be admitted to the institution.

But it’s not just the obvious fact that you want to get accepted that you should avoid mentioning.

Instead of ending with a high note, your college application might exit with a whimper if, for example, you highlighted a number of your personal skills and strengths and unique experiences and then concluding everything with something like:

Clearly, I am a hardworking individual.

It’s apparent that I would make for a great engineer because of my math skills.

5 Winning Ways to Wrap Up a College Essay

There are many different ways to ruin a perfectly remarkable college application essay with a mediocre or appalling conclusion.

It’s a good thing that there are also numerous ways to turn your written composition from one good essay into a one-of-a-kind essay with the right concluding paragraph — all you have to do is choose from some recommended ones.

You are not going to have a shortage of options when it comes to closing a college essay the right way.

Because some are simply better than the rest, which, it goes without saying, could help you ace the admissions review process, it’s important that you decide on something that suits your writing style and personality, too.

See which of these strategies in ending a college essay can give you that a-ha moment:

1. Going back to where you began

Some people call it full circling. Others refer to it as bookending.

No matter the name, one thing remains true: this particular style of closing a college application essay involves seamlessly tying the conclusion to the introduction by reintroducing a word, phrase, individual or the point of the opening paragraph.

What’s really nice about opting for this approach is that it allows you to hem your composition.

Of course, to be effective, the main body of your college essay should veer away from the introduction, to the point of making sure that the readers almost forget what you just talked about at the onset, only to suddenly remind it of them in the end.

When executed correctly, this style can give your written submission a satisfying and self-contained appeal to it.

Suppose that you opened your college essay talking about how a large rock fell on and fractured your leg in 3rd grade. A great ending to it using this particular approach would look something like this:

A rock may once have crushed my legs, causing me to spend a fraction of my childhood donning a leg cast, but, in high school, I established a rock band — and we crushed every gig on and off campus!

2. Peeking into the future

Any essay ending on a positive or hopeful note can always put a smile on the reader’s face.

Needless to say, a concluding paragraph that talks about a bright future ahead allows you to highlight your academic and career goals, giving the audience a much better idea of what sort of college student and professional you could be.

While you should refrain from ending your college application essay by talking about how much it would mean the world to you to get accepted to your dream school, you can make college admissions officers realize you’d make for a wonderful addition to the campus without blatantly doing so by mentioning your hopes and dreams.

Just take a look at this conclusion to an essay of a student applying to a college specializing in engineering:

I can’t wait to see the very first rocket ship I helped design blast off from earth, exposing the crew to the lowest G forces possible for I, as a terrible roller coaster rider, cannot stand high accelerations on the body myself.

3. Ending things with an action

As far as concluding your college application essay with an action goes, the sweeter and shorter, as a general rule of thumb, the better. But it’s also important to wrap things up at the critical moment: right after your piece’s high point.

Making admissions officers wish it hadn’t ended so soon is the main goal.

With them wanting more, they won’t be able to stop thinking about you.

And if you’re still in their mind long after they have taken a look at your application and the rest of the supporting documents, it’s not unlikely for them to want to see you on the campus instead of allow another institution to welcome you.

Here’s an example of ending your college essay with an action that can cause the reader to want more:

After taking a deep breath, I approached the lectern to the thundering applause of the audience.

4. Leaving with a dialogue

Talking about things you have personally experienced and lessons you have arduously learned in your college application essay is always nice.

After all, your piece is something that gives admissions officers a different perspective of you, as a teener who is preparing to work on an undergraduate degree, beyond your GPA, standardized test scores and extracurricular activities.

Just like what was mentioned earlier, summarizing is off-limits when it comes to concluding a college essay .

But there’s a nifty way to reiterate the main point of your composition without simply giving a recap of everything you have cited from the very beginning. And it’s by ending your college application essay with a dialogue.

In most instances, the shorter and crisper the dialogue, the better the effect. It’s like abruptly ending your submission, too.

However, closing yours with words spoken to someone keeps the reader from having to do the guesswork since your point is implied, anyway, which is a textbook connect-the-dots scenario.

Planning on highlighting in your college application essay the fact that you developed a sense of social responsibility? Here’s how you can close it without merely giving a summary:

“I will talk to you later,” I said to my best friend on the phone. “I’m currently on my way to help feed the hungry.”

5. Revealing the central idea

It’s true that the introduction is meant to give the reader an idea of the topic of the essay as well as the various points that will be made about it.

But because a college application is no ordinary essay, there are instances when your composition can make a bigger impact if you save your main point until the very end.

Execute it correctly and you can keep admissions officers gluttonously devouring the intro and main body of your personal essay until they get to the concluding paragraph, which, hopefully, would end in you getting an acceptance letter.

Needless to say, you will have to hold back what you are trying to say long enough.

But the biggest challenge that comes with disclosing the central idea last is keeping the readers engaged and interested adequately for them to keep reading until they reach the end and learn what you have been trying to say all this time.

Failure to do so may leave admissions officers eagerly wanting to reach for another application essay that would make more sense.

Giving snapshots of how you shopped for your first bicycle with your dad in 2nd grade, how you first cannonballed in the water at Bandemer Park in Ann Arbor, Michigan and how you founded a running club in your high school could end in this:

By the time I earn a bachelor’s degree in sports science, hopefully, I have also run my very first Ironman Triathlon, which would serve as an homage to some of the most important and memorable moments of my life thus far.

Read Next: How to Start a Compelling Essay About Yourself

Independent Education Consultant, Editor-in-chief. I have a graduate degree in Electrical Engineering and training in College Counseling. Member of American School Counselor Association (ASCA).

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How to End a College Essay: 10 Tactics & Strategies

How you end your college application essay can have an important impact on how your reader experiences your essay: while we’ve seen essays that are really solid even without an incredible ending (meaning: please don’t panic and add stress to an already stressful process), we’ve also seen college essays whose endings took the essay up another level.

And we think that there are clear techniques and strategies that virtually any writer can use to uplevel the conclusion section of their college application essay.

So below, we’ll offer 10 specific approaches to endings—split into 5 that you can do with little to no planning and 5 that require some planning ahead and/or rewriting—that you can use to strengthen your personal statement.

In this post, We'll cover:

How to think about college essay endings, 3 college essay endings to avoid.

• The Two Essential Qualities of An Outstanding Ending
• 10 tactics, strategies, and techniques for making your ending stand out

A. Tactics (small changes that requires less planning ahead)

• 1. Connect to your values
• 2. The bookend or callback
• 3. The road forward
• 4. Save your thesis (or your whole intro) for the end
• 5. Connect to your career

B. Strategies (may require big changes, or more planning ahead)

• 6. The “why us?” set-up
• 7. Back to the beginning, but something’s changed
• 8. The twist/reveal
• 9. The “theater of the oppressed” ending
• 10. The ellipsis ...

Okay, so think of a movie you’ve seen that you really enjoyed for most of the way through… and then the kinda boring or cliche ending lost you. Do you want to invite that movie to hang out at your college for the next few years? Probably not.

Three mistakes we see students make when it comes to ending their personal statement include thinking that you:

Should just restate the thesis (because English class)

Have to have a great ending in mind before you start

Shouldn’t worry much because the ending isn’t all that important

But we’re here to tell you that:

Yeah, probably don’t restate your thesis—in fact, many great personal statements don’t even have an explicit thesis.

You can write a great ending even after you’ve written the rest of your essay.

A great conclusion can be an essay-maker. It can take your personal statement from “pretty good” to “outstanding”

This post will show you how.

So let’s. Talk. Endings.

By the way: I’m using the term “we” instead of “I” here because I co-wrote this piece with my long-time friend, Andy Simpson. He has 15+ years experience guiding students on essays and, like me, geeks out on this stuff.

A great personal statement ending answers the question “So what?” or “Why does this matter?”

But how do you do it?

First, how not to do it.

Don’t just repeat or restate your thesis . We know, your teacher told you to (ours did too). And it might not be a bad idea for the conclusion to your AP US History or AP English Lang/Lit paper (although even there, maybe change the phrasing a little). But probably don’t do this on your personal statement. It can feel repetitive, or basic. And you are not basic.

Don’t end with a cheesy quote or something that anyone else could have written . We’re talking about quotes like, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” or phrases like, “I learned that everything happens for a reason,” or “I learned that I too can make a difference.” And if you’ve written a draft already, take a quick look at your last lines. Could someone else have written them? If so, a) we’re glad you’re here, and b) delete them and keep reading.

Be careful not to refer to things that you haven’t really shown earlier in the essay. Sometimes we’ll read essays that end with something like, “I’m grateful for all the lessons these experiences have taught me…”  but we don’t really know what those lessons are because the author didn’t tell us in the essay. If you refer to all the hard work you’re proud you did, for example, show us the hard work earlier in the essay.

What goes into a great ending?

The Two Essential Qualities of an Outstanding Ending

A great ending often has two qualities: surprise and inevitability . H/T Aristotle

Think about a great film ending—usually you feel some combination of “Whoah, I totally didn’t see that coming,” and “Ah, right, it probably had to end like that.”

We’re talking about The Sixth Sense , Inception , or Titanic . And totally j/k re: Titanic because that was a TERRIBLE ending—both Jack and Rose could’ve totally fit on that door. The boat sinking was a shocker, though, right? Does every great movie have both those qualities? No. And must you have both those qualities to get into a great college? No. But these are two good qualities to keep in mind as you read this post and write your essay.

10 TACTICS, STRATEGIES, AND TECHNIQUES FOR ENDING YOUR COLLEGE ESSAY

We’ll split this list into three categories:

Tactics: Things you can do once you’re pretty much done, or if you aren’t willing to rewrite your essay much.

Strategies: Things that, to make work, you kinda’ either have to have planned out ahead of time or be willing to rewrite some stuff.

Techniques : Small things you can do or apply to the tactics and strategies.

Important note: Not every personal statement ending will fit into these categories; they are just some ideas you can try based on some approaches we’ve seen work well for other students.

1. Connect to Your Values

This one is one of the easiest. It basically works like this: Look back through your essay and ask yourself, “What values am I showing?” 

Then don’t name those values too much in the body of your essay, but do name them explicitly in your conclusion. 

Here’s an example (note the values in bold ): 

Upon reflection, I found that my answer didn’t exist in books or research, but somewhere very close from the beginning—my intuition. In other words, I didn’t need an elaborate and intricate reason to prove to myself that health is an inalienable right for every human being—I needed self-reflection. So I ask again, “Does every life matter?” Yes. “Do I have solid, written proof?” No. Paul Farmer once said, “The thing about rights is that in the end you can’t prove what is a right.” To me, global health is not merely a study. It’s an attitude—a lens I use to look at the world—and it’s a statement about my commitment to health as a fundamental quality of liberty and equity .

To read the entire Does Every Life Matter essay, click here. 

Why This Ending Works

If you read the entire essay (at link above), you’ll see the author touches on a few different themes in his essay—heritage, community, moral behavior, etc.—but he doesn’t make them super explicit until the end. Once he names them at the end, we (as readers) go, “Ah, that’s what we thought you were talking about.” 

Ending with values is also a pretty good idea because a) it shows your ability to self-reflect, and b) highlights some qualities that, oh, by the way, will be useful in college and beyond. 

Heads-up that this doesn’t work quite as well if you’ve already clearly named the values earlier in the essay—in fact, it can feel repetitive. So, if you’re trying this approach, a) make sure you didn’t already explicitly name the values earlier and, if you did, b) delete or rephrase those parts of your essay so that when you name the values at the end, it won’t feel as repetitive. 

And by the way—did you notice how the whole paragraph above felt repetitive? That’s because, if you were reading carefully, we already wrote before the example, “Then don’t name those values too much in the body of your essay, but do name them explicitly in your conclusion.” So, to edit, we should cut that sentence (and that’s what we’d have you do in your essay).

You’ll find another example of this type of ending in the Makeup essay (check out the mentions of “scientific inquiry,” “voice,” “connect me with others,” and more in those last lines).

2. The Bookend or Callback

Bookending involves referring to something you’ve set up earlier in the essay. It’s something comedians do a lot and refer to as a “callback.” For a few examples, check out How Dave Chappelle Delivers a Callback starting at 1:05. (Trigger warning: There’s some adult language in that video. If you prefer, here’s the Wikipedia link explaining the same concept.)

Here’s an example of a callback in a personal statement: 

The essay begins ... 

“I have been pooped on many times. I mean this in the most literal sense possible. I have been pooped on by pigeons and possums, house finches and hawks, egrets and eastern grays. “

And the essay ends ... 

“The upshot is that I simply cannot walk away from injustice, however uncomfortable it is to confront it. I choose to act, taking a stand and exposing the truth in the most effective manner that I think is possible. And while I’m sure I will be dumped on many times, both literally and metaphorically, I won’t do the same to others.”

To read the entire “Poop, Animals, and the Environment” essay, click here.

What We Like about This Ending/Why It Works

This one is great because, on the one hand, the ending catches the reader by surprise (we didn’t see that coming!). But it also feels inevitable (because she’s calling back to something she set up at the start). That’s that surprise + inevitability we mentioned a minute ago. (Thanks, Aristotle.)

One thing that’s cool about this tactic is that you can do this once the rest of your essay is already written. And, if you do it well, it’ll feel like you planned it all along. 

If you’d like one more example, check out the Endodontics essay, whose author was pretty much done but still felt like the ending was missing something. So he went back, added the detail about “mineral white or diamond white” near the beginning, then wrote a last line that linked back to it. And yet when you read it you get the sense he’d planned his ending from the beginning.

Quick note: While you shouldn’t feel like you have to use humor, the cleverness in the endings of both the “Poop” and “Endodontics” essays mentioned above do leave a nice last impression.

3. The Road Forward

There’s something beautiful and inspiring about an open road. The sense of potential and possibility it offers. The invitation it makes.

So it can be nice to end an essay with language that feels like an open road—that ends with a sense of exploration and, maybe, a little excitement.

Here’s an example from a personal statement:

“I see a reflection of myself in the divide at the 38th parallel because I see one part isolating itself in defense to outside threats, and another part coming out to face the world as one of the fastest-developing nations. Just as my shy persona before debate and extroverted character after debate are both part of who I am, the Korean civilization is also one. And just as my parents expect much from me, the first of my family to attend college, I have grand expectations for this field of study.”

To read the entire “With Debate” essay, click here.

This conclusion opens with a nice metaphor, demonstrating both the author’s ability to think creatively and generate insight. It also reminds us of the growth we’ve seen the author go through over the course of the essay. Finally, this conclusion leaves us with a nice combo of purpose and potential—and in my experience, when an admission reader senses they may be able to help someone realize their potential, they’re usually pretty excited to do that.

Who This Might Work Well for: Students Who Have Faced Challenges

If you’ve worked through significant challenges in your life, this ending might work especially well for you. Here’s an example: 

“I know I’m not like many students my age, but I'm happy with who I am. I am the student who works on the weekends scrubbing restrooms, carrying trash bags and mopping kitchen floors. I am the student who won't give a second thought to missing a party to help my parents babysit my sisters or accompany them to a new job. I know that one day I will not take my family to a bowling alley to clean it but to enjoy it. And who knows maybe one day I will learn to bowl.”

To read the entire “Bowling” essay, click here.

This author answers “so what” by sharing how her experiences have shaped her values and sense of self. The details here, in conjunction with those in the body, give us a sense of the strong character she’s developed. And the hope and vulnerability of the final lines make us as readers hope for the same things for her.

But this is important: Please don’t think you need to force this—don’t build a hopeful tone at the end simply because you think that’s what your reader wants. Do so if it reflects your experience.

• Adrian’s Personal Statement
• The Little Porch and a Dog

4. Save Your Thesis (or Your Whole Intro) for the End

“But wait,” I hear you say, “I thought you were not supposed to put a thesis in your personal statement.”

Actually, I said don’t just repeat or restate your thesis. If you don’t state the main point of your essay in your body paragraphs, you might decide to include it at the end. 

There are two ways you can do this, and we’ll discuss them one by one:

Variation A: The “Put Your Thesis at the End” Approach

Putting your thesis at the beginning can sometimes lead to a personal statement that feels a bit too much like one of those essays in which an author builds an argument and supports it with evidence. And although it could be argued that you’re building an “argument” in your personal statement—an argument demonstrating that you’ll bring a lot of value to a college campus—this method isn’t quite the same. We’ve found that by explicitly naming their thesis at the start, then supporting it with bits of evidence, some students create a slightly less interesting story simply because the ending often isn’t all that surprising.

One way to avoid this is by delaying the thesis ‘til the end.

In the “ Hiking ” essay, for example, the author describes a few positive experiences he’s had with Boy Scouts. But he waits until the very end to share an insight that ties all the experiences together.

Check out the “Hiking” essay here.

Heads-up: The next thing we’re about to share won’t really make sense unless you read the “Hiking” essay. 

What’s neat about this personal statement is that the author touches on a few different values/sides of himself in the body paragraphs … but it’s not until the final paragraph that he claims these different sides of himself as identities. Check out that final line again: “When I'm hiking, I'm not merely a hiker ; I'm a historian , a conservationist , and a teacher all in one” (bold emphasis mine).

This ending works because, earlier in the essay, the author describes (i.e., shows us) these parts of himself through specific examples and details, then he names them (i.e., tells us) explicitly at the end of the essay. Note that if the author instead had decided to open his essay with that line, it kinda’ would’ve spoiled the ending of the movie (or, in this case, essay). The reader might’ve thought something like, “Okay, cool, guess I don’t really need to read the rest—thanks for saving me some time.” Ending with this sentence, however, creates a sense of both inevitability (since the final line pulls together the essences of the separate paragraphs, and surprise (because we didn’t think to name these different sides of him in quite this way—as identities he claims/roles he plays).

Note: To make this surprising, it was important for the author to not name these identities along the way, instead saving them for the end. 

Variation B: The “Put Your Thesis at the End” Approach

Here’s an example from a student who chose to put not just one sentence in her conclusion, but her entire intro paragraph: 

“My home is a dynamic and eclectic entity. Although I've lived in the same house in Cary, North Carolina for 10 years, I have found and carved homes and communities that are filled with and enriched by tradition, artists, researchers, and intellectuals. While I may not always live within a 5 mile radius of a Bojangle's or in close proximity to Lab 304, learning to become a more perceptive daughter and sister, to share the beauty of my heritage, and to take risks and redefine scientific and personal expectations will continue to impact my sense of home.”

To read the entire “Home” essay, click here.

Like the author of the “Hiking” essay above, this student does a nice job of pulling together the examples by zooming back to a wider frame of reference (but doing so with specific phrasing and language). Note that the author could have opened her essay with this paragraph, but doing so would have yielded a much more predictable (read: boring) essay. 

Instead, she shows images and experiences in the body paragraphs so we get to “watch the movie” of her life before she tells us what they mean to her. 

Note: In order to make this work, the author had to make sure the central topic of the essay (in this case, “home”) was super clear. She does this by repeating the word “home” at the ends of the first, second, and fourth paragraph, and in the middle of the third paragraph (she chose not to mention the word in the same place each time just to offer some variety). So if you try this one, make sure the topic/theme of your essay is clear.

5. Connect to Your Career

Quick PSA: College is not just a career conveyor belt (and colleges generally don’t see themselves that way). It’s a place where you can learn a lot about yourself and the world while, hopefully, meeting some awesome people. 

Having said that, describing in your conclusion how your experiences relate to your career can be effective for a couple reasons: 

It can be similar in effect to The Road Forward—we as readers like imagining the exploration ahead for the writer, and we may even want to help them on their journey.

Mentioning a future potential career can also set you up for one of the most common supplemental essays, the “Why us?” essay. If you take this approach, you can even think of your personal statement and the “Why us?” as effectively two parts of the same essay, where Part I (the personal statement) tells the story or stories of how you’ve arrived at your career path, while Part II (the “Why us?”) describes how you’ll make use of the specific opportunities at whatever college(s) you’re applying to. Some students structure their whole application like this, btw.

Here’s a quick example of a student who mentions his career at the end of his personal statement, which explores his long-held love of mazes and games:

“A few years ago I grew tired of working within the constraints of most internet games and I wanted to program my own, so I decided to learn the language of Scratch. With it, I created several computer games, incorporating such unordinary aspects of gameplay as the avoidance of time-travel paradoxes, and the control of "jounce," the fourth derivative of position with respect to time. Eventually, I came to realize that Scratch was too limited to implement some of my ideas, so I learned C#, and my potential expanded exponentially. I continue to study programming knowing that the more I learn, the more tools I have to express my creativity. To me, studying computer science is the next step of an evolution of boundary breaking that has been underway since my first maze.”

To read the entire “Mazes” essay, click here.

This conclusion has a few nice elements to it: It functions to bookend the essay (see above); it provides a wider frame/context for the specific details and experiences shared in the body paragraphs; and as mentioned above, it sets the author up for any “Why us?” essay he’ll write.

The “ Endodontics ” essay also ends this way, but where the “Mazes” author added the career connection near the end of his writing process, the “Endodontics” author actually planned his entire essay around the career that he mentions in his conclusion. 

Which brings us to our next point: There’s a deeper way of writing about your career ...

6. The “Why Us?” Set-Up

What it is: A conclusion that sets up nicely for a (separate) “Why us?” essay. In some cases, the personal statement is even planned around a specific program that will be discussed in a “Why us?” essay. This can work especially well if, while researching colleges, you found The Perfect Program for you—like one that basically checks all your boxes.

The key to making this strategy work is to write your personal statement in a way that does not simply replicate the content you’ll share in your “Why us?” essay. Instead, think of your personal statement as kinda’ like sharing your “origin story” (yeah, like in a comic book or Marvel movie). 

For an example of an essay that shares a budding activist’s origin story, check out the personal statement, “ The Instagram Post .” The ending reads: 

“My role model Ruth Bader Ginsburg says, “dissent[ers] speak to a future age... they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.” Retrospectively, I realize that The Post was my voice of dissent―through it, I initiated a campus-wide discussion and openly challenged the majority opinion of my school for the first time. As I aspire to become a civil rights attorney and the first Asian woman on the Supreme Court (I hope it doesn’t take that long!), I am confident that I will continue to write and speak out for justice ―for tomorrow.”

To read the entire “The Instagram Post” essay, click here.

If you read the whole personal statement, you may find the ending somewhat surprising (in that you perhaps didn’t expect at the start of the essay that the author would eventually say she wanted to become a civil rights attorney) and inevitable (because this path makes sense given the trajectory she has been on since her Instagram post).

But this is really just Part 1 of her journey. The next chapter (i.e., Part 2) is essentially what she maps out in her “Why us?” essay. 

You can read her “Why us?” essay for Michigan at this link . 

Note how the first line of her “Why us?” essay not only references the end of her personal statement, but also expands on other interests—all of which she’ll explore in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) concentration at Michigan. 

This works particularly well because she isn’t repeating too much from her personal statement; she’s expanding on it. Look at this sentence from her “Why us?” essay in particular: 

“The interdisciplinary nature of PPE perfectly suits my desire to understand human beings through different lenses. I strongly believe that social and geopolitical issues must be approached in a multidimensional context--complex relationships between individuals and communities demand equally sophisticated analyses.” 

These sentences help us understand her “why” and connects back to some of the themes and values of her personal statement, but here we get some more elevated language. Later in her “Why us?” essay, she names specific opportunities and classes in the PPE program that will help her achieve the goals she’s named.  

For another example of this type of ending, check out “ The ‘Not Black Enough’ East-Asian Influenced Bibliophile ,” which is a bit more open-ended, but still works well. To see that student’s “Why us?” essay, click here .

7. Back to the Beginning, but Something’s Changed

What it is: You link back to the person you were at the beginning of the essay and reflect on how you’ve changed. This is similar in approach and effect to bookending, but (as you’ll see if you read the full essay linked below) it takes a lot more planning ahead (whereas bookending can often be the last thing you think of). This kind of ending will inherently show growth and reflection, two nice qualities to demonstrate in your writing. 

Here’s the start of an essay that uses this strategy ...

“It was Easter and we should’ve been celebrating with our family, but my father had locked us in the house. If he wasn’t going out, neither were my mother and I.”

And here’s the ending:

“My Easter will drastically differ from past years. Rather than being locked at home, my mother and I will celebrate outdoors our rebirth and renewal.”

To read the entire “Easter” essay, click here.

By mirroring some language from the opening, you can achieve the same kind of closure that basic bookending does. But here, there’s an added element of growth, development, understanding—we see how the author has more fully stepped into themselves through the course of the narrative. There’s also a similar effect to a few of the other approaches we’ve discussed in that when we see this growth, we cheer for the writer.

8. The Twist/Reveal

What it is: You set up an expectation in the reader through the structure and focus of your essay, then pivot against that expectation in your ending. This is effective for the same reason that movies with (good) twist endings are effective—we enjoy the surprise, the revelation, the way the ending requires us to recalculate all that we’ve just seen. It also indicates a certain degree of skill and understanding as a writer, since setting up a twist that we don’t see coming isn’t easy.

Note that this is similar in effect to The Twist opening described here .

Check out the ending of this essay:

“The more I scratch off from my goals list, the more it brings me back to those days handling spatulas. Anew, I ask myself, “Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life?” I want a life driven by my passions, rather than the impositions of labor. I want to explore new paths and grow within my community to eradicate the prejudicial barriers on Latinos. So yes, this IS how I want to spend the rest of my life.” 

T o read the entire “¡Ya levantate!” essay, click here.  

When the writer ends the first third of his essay with “This was the scene that ignited the question in my head: ‘Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life?’ The answer was no. So I started…,” we’re expecting the rest of the essay to explore how their life has led them to an understanding of how they do want to spend the rest of their life. And they do. Sorta :). But the recall at the end and the twist in a new direction offer a satisfying reveal and require a re-evaluation of what has come before.

Note that this example also shares elements with the “Back to the Beginning, but Something’s Changed” approach.

The “Theater of the Oppressed” Ending

What it is: You put the ending of the essay in the reader’s hands. You don’t resolve it.

Check out the ending to this essay: 

“Living in a low-income immigrant household has taught me to appreciate all I’ve been given.  Testifying in court helped me grow as a person, has made me more open-minded and aware of the problems facing my community. And my involvement in the urban farm has led me to consider a career as a nutritionist. Though neither of my parents attended college, they understand that college is a key factor to a bright future and therefore have been very supportive. And though we don't yet have the house with the small porch and the dog, we're still holding out hope. I believe college can help.”

This one hits hard each time we read it. Those last lines are powerful, the culmination of a moving story. And the author leaves what happens next in the reader’s hands.

This technique is similar to a technique used by Theater of the Oppressed (hence the name), where actors onstage play out a conflict and then, instead of resolving it, pause to seek out input and ideas from the audience members. In the case of the personal statement, the “audience” is the college admission officer and the author says, in effect, “It’s up to you to help finish this story.”

Note that this kind of ending only works with certain kinds of challenges/circumstances. For another example of this strategy, check out the “ Growing Up in Lebanon ” essay: “And I look forward to becoming the first man in my family to finish college.” We know this is somewhat similar to the example above, but we imagine this strategy could work with other endings—and if you’ve seen one or written one, feel free to share it with us by emailing [email protected]. We’d love to see it.

10. The Ellipsis ...

What it is: Leave something unanswered, like an ellipsis. What’s an ellipsis? It’s the dot dot dot at the end of a sentence that looks like this: ...

You’ll find one example in the “Dead Bird” essay at this link . You’ll find another example in the “I Shot My Brother” essay at this link . 

We’re not going to post a super in-depth analysis of these two essays simply because it’ll ruin the ending of these two (very good) pieces of writing. 

But we do want to say a few things about this type of ending:  

For this type of ending to work, a) the author must create a sense of suspense so that the reader wonders—and actually cares about—what will happen next, but then stops before revealing what happens next, and b) there must be a limited set of possible paths for the reader to imagine. In other words, it can’t be completely open-ended (i.e., “anything is possible”). 

In the “Dead Bird” essay, for example, we sense that either a) she has come to a deeper understanding of the trauma she experienced, or b) she hasn’t. 

In the “I Shot My Brother” essay—and we’re going to keep it a little vague here so we don’t ruin the ending—we sense that the author’s brother is about to reveal a) good news, or b) bad news. We also sense that the author will share with his brother the essay and it will either a) turn out well, or b) turn out poorly. 

In each of these cases, though, we think we can guess how it’s going to go … and it also doesn’t really matter what happens next because already the author has gone through a major change (who they are at the end is very different from where they started).

This type of ending is really hard to pull off. We’d recommend you not obsess over using this type of ending at the expense of writing an essay that demonstrates all the skills, qualities, values, and interests that you’ll bring with you to college. 

We’re actually not sure that these two essays are necessarily the best personal statement examples because, while the authors do exhibit great sensitivity and writing ability, we’re not sure these personal statements show... the skills, qualities, values, and interests that the authors will bring with them to college as well as they might. 

Check out the “ If Ink Were Ants ” essay for a personal statement example that we believe does more clearly show great qualities…and ends with an actual ellipsis. Now, you don’t have to end yours with an actual dot dot dot, but you’ll see how the author does a nice job of setting up where she might go in the future without spelling it out explicitly. 

In short, if you use this method, we’d recommend making your ending somewhat but not completely open-ended.

A Final Word on Endings

Having said all this … do you have to write an awesome ending to get into a great college? Not necessarily. Great students get into great schools with personal statement endings that are just so-so. The “ Arab Spring in Bahrain ” essay ending, for example, is arguably just okay, and that student still got into a Very Famous School That You Have Heard of. (We don’t like to name schools, as it can lead to copycatting.

But a great ending can leave a great last impression, as you’ll see in the examples above.

So pick one and get crackin’!

Action Item: Choose one (or more) of these ending techniques and try it out. If it doesn’t work, try another.

Andrew Simpson, CEG’s Editorial Director, has worked as an educator, consultant, and curriculum writer for the past 15 years, and earned degrees from Stanford in Political Science and Drama. He feels most at home on mountain tops and in oceans.

Top Values:  Insight/Growth | Truth | Integrity

Ethan Sawyer (he/him) is the founder of College Essay Guy which means he has been eating/sleeping/breathing college essays for most of his waking hours since 2003. Each year he and his team reach more than one million students and counselors through the College Essay Guy blog, online pay-what-you-can courses, workshops, books, and one-on-one work.

Through his work he has supported, advised and counseled thousands of students through the complicated college search and application process, all while staying true to his core values of providing ease, purpose and joy in the process.

Top Values: humor, connection, family 

How to End a College Essay – With Examples

June 16, 2023

Figuring out how to end a college essay can feel like the difference between success and failure. Common scenario: You’ve done the heavy lifting of brainstorming, developing, and revising your Common App essay, but now you sit and stare at the cursor pulsing on your screen, like a stress tick in your eye. What to say that you haven’t already said? How to tie it all together without sounding tired and stressed? It is true that your conclusion serves as a sort of benchmark for the strength of your overall essay. If your conclusion feels impossible to write after several attempts, this might be a sign that you need to go back and look over the strength or purpose of your essay overall.

The good news is, your final paragraph doesn’t need to be a graveyard of redundancy, clichés and tired summary! And even better, you have options about how to end a college essay. It doesn’t have to be formulaic or look like a friend’s conclusion. Amidst a dizzying array of “do’s and “don’ts,” here is a list of three straightforward options, along with examples, for how to successfully (and relatively painlessly) end your college essay.

Option 1: Save something for the end

It might be helpful to think of your essay like this: You are a tailor cutting a garment from a beautiful piece of fabric. You have plenty of fabric to work with because you are approaching your overall essay as a process: brainstorming, writing, revision, repeat. The writing process is cyclical. You begin with an idea, which leads you to another, and before you know it, you’re approaching your original idea from a different angle. In the midst of this process, you will unearth images, memories, meaningful moments, memorable things people in your life have said, and so on. When this happens, intentionally tuck away 1-2 of these items with the idea that you can use them to craft your final paragraph. Following are some examples of students who tried to save something for the end:

Strong Example:

Shortly before her death, my grandmother gave me a string of pearls. Whenever I look at these tiny treasures from the sea, I am reminded that despite our complex relationship, we made many meaningful memories together. Each pearl reminds me of an event, or place: Her 80th birthday party; deep sea diving in Florida; impromptu singing lessons around her piano. Along with the memories, the pearls are a symbol of her finest qualities—qualities she passed on to me: tenacity, loyalty, belief in the deep goodness of humanity—and a touchable reminder that I am in part who I am because of her.

This is a strong example  because the student chose a concrete image—an image that we can imagine seeing or touching—and uses it to deepen his reflection on his relationship with his grandmother. Images are memorable, so this reflection will echo longer in the reader’s mind; this is a classic example of showing AND telling.

How to End a College Essay (Continued)

Weak example:.

Travel is a great way to learn about the world and ourselves. My family would go on amazing trips together, and thinking back on those trips is a really good reminder of all the special memories I have made with them. One time we went to Columbia as a family, and it was very special to me. I tried so many different foods and met so many new people. I even got to use some of the Spanish I learned in school on this trip.  This trip really increased my passion for traveling. Having the opportunity to learn in a different setting while getting to experience new cultures is something I am really looking forward to during college.

This is a weak example  because it does feel as if the student ran out of gas at the end. Notice the use of general adjectives such as amazing and special , and the fact that while a specific place is mentioned—Columbia—nothing specific is said about the country, or the family’s experience there. What foods did the student try? What, besides getting to speak Spanish, made the trip special? There are golden opportunities in this example for where the writer could have invoked one of the five senses—taste, touch, smell, site, or sound—and did not.

Option 2: Leave the reader with a thought to keep the conversation going

You can choose to end your college essay by saying something about your story or topic that you did not feel you had the opportunity to say before.  Sometimes, at the end of an essay on a difficult or complex subject, you feel unable to just “wrap things up” like a pretty Christmas present. Is something still ambiguous for you? Does something still haunt you? Did you hold something back? Tell the reader about it. If it helps, imagine that you are having a conversation with a broader audience than an admissions counselor. If it helps, imagine that your audience is a friend, teacher, or family member.

The ideology behind color blindness doesn’t make you progressive, it makes you a coward. Talking about race should not be controversial. I shouldn’t be petrified to talk about racism to a group of white people . Petrified because I’ll most likely be shut down condescendingly like a parent scolding their child. I shouldn’t worry over the natural curls of my hair because it will seem ghetto and unprofessional.

Nor should I get excited when I see a movie that has at least one black person in a somewhat lead role. I should not have to read white literature, learn white history, and speak white English , but spend only one week learning about slavery. I shouldn’t have to read articles calling Edris Elba “too street” to play James Bond and Viola Davis “less classically beautiful.” So, why is it so hard to talk about racism? What about it make your spine tingle and the hairs on your skin raise?

This is a strong example because, wow! There is a lot of passion and specificity in this student’s reflection on race and racism. From her own curls, to literature and pop culture, this writer is not only giving her audience a piece of her mind, she is putting the ball in the reader’s court with that final question.

Also, think of it like this: What if this writer has hit upon the heart of her paper in her conclusion? What if, by “getting it all out,” she found a way to strengthen her thesis, and her overall purpose for her essay? In the lovely book on creative nonfiction called Tell it Slant , one writer describes the writing process this way: “The essayist attempts to surround a something—a subject, a mood, a problematic irritation, by coming at it from at all angles, wheeling and diving like a hawk, each seemingly digressive spiral actually taking us closer to the heart of the matter.” Trust your writing process, even if feels like you keep circling back to your starting point.

Speaking up for others is important. For example, after the death of George Floyd, Americans showed their support by protesting. Professional athletes have showed their support for the Black community by taking a knee during the national anthem, and regular people spread of awareness on social media. These are all crucial steps to the end of racial injustice in America. I learned that using your voice can make enormous impacts. In the future I’d really like to show my support in protests, by taking part in them, for these injustices.

This is a weak example because while it does mention several specifics, such as protests after the death of George Floyd, and professional athletes “taking the knee,” there isn’t enough of a connection between these examples and the writer. The details in this paragraph could really have been written by anyone (and those are the kind of conclusions you want to avoid writing at all costs!). In the sentence, for example, where the writer says, “I learned that using your voice can make enormous impacts,” s/he misses the opportunity to personalize this learning experience. Even if s/he did not have the opportunity to protest, etc., s/he could have delved deeper into his/her reactions and emotions to the events mentioned, or event discussed what they wished they’d have done to speak up.

Option 3: Don’t try to be fancy

Are you the kind of person who prefers facts and figures over emotions and descriptions? Do you dislike talking about yourself? Do you prefer taking apart machines to playing Wordle? Then this option is for you. When ending your college essay, being clear is better than being fancy. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to write well. It just means that you can choose to focus more on being straightforward—describing a process, ending with a clear purpose for the future—than being colorful or edgy. The most important thing about the whole college essay writing process, after all, is about showing your authenticity.

It took time and patience, but by observing how various students worked and how I could best help them, I became an effective and efficient Homework Coach. Because I volunteered longer than anyone else, I became the lead Homework Coach. I passed on my hard-won knowledge about developing teaching strategies to the tutors in training so they too could be successful in teaching a variety of subjects. I enjoyed my time helping others and even received a community service award from the President of the United States. Going forward, I plan to continue using my skills as a tutor to help friends and classmates with their homework.

This is a strong example because the student clearly describes a learning experience, what he took from it, and what he hopes to do with it in the future. The writer is obviously proud of his accomplishments, but does not feel the need to “dress them up” by using fancy vocabulary, clichés or empty adjectives.

Which brings me to this point: You don’t need be the daughter of a professional clown, or have ridden an alpaca ten miles to school in order to have something worthwhile to say. Hard work speaks for itself, and often, being authentically you starts with acknowledging day-to-day life lessons and everyday accomplishments.

Weak Example

I started working as a lifeguard at my community pool as a skinny 16-year-old. I remember my first day like it was yesterday. It was 90 degrees, and my red Nike one-piece felt like a melting popsicle as I watched others having fun and cooling off in the water. I remember that there was a mom there with a set of twin toddlers, and I nervously kept an eye on them. Being a lifeguard is all about responsibility and teamwork. My lifeguard team has an outstanding record of keeping swimmers safe. As a student majoring in business, I know that having teamwork skills will be very important, especially because I will probably have to work with a team when I begin my career as well.

This is a weak example because the writer strays from her focus of being a lifeguard, and what she learned about responsibility and teamwork. The reflective, narrative details about the heat, the swimsuit, and the mom with twins, not to mention the cliché “I remember…like it was yesterday,” detract from her overall purpose. Don’t get me wrong: using narrative details to talk about life lessons is not a wrong approach; however, focus first on clarity and your overall purpose for writing.

How to End a College Essay – Final Thoughts

Remember, when ending your college essay, you have options! Consider trying each of these 3 approaches and see which you like best. And as you think about and brainstorm your essays, check out these links, too:

• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example ;
• 2023-2024 Common App Essay Prompts
• Why this College Essay—7 Tips for Success
• College Essay

Charity Gingerich

With a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing, Charity has served as an English and creative writing lecturer at several universities. Charity has received many awards for her work, including the Russell MacDonald Creative Writing Award,  Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Poetry, and The Hopper Poetry Prize. Her writing has been featured in FIELD, The Kenyon Review, and Indiana Review, among others.

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How To End A College Essay - 6+ Strategies, Tips & Examples

Reviewed by:

Former Admissions Committee Member, Columbia University

Reviewed: 3/25/24

Are you having trouble writing a conclusion for your college essay? Here’s how to end a college essay with expert tips and examples. 

‍ Writing the perfect ending for your college essay is no easy feat; it can be just as challenging as starting your college essay . But don’t fear - we’ve got you covered! This complete guide will discuss everything you need to know about how to end a college application essay. Follow along for tips, examples, and more.

Let’s get started!

How to End Your College Essay

After an energetic essay , it’s essential to end on a high note. Your conclusion should be clear, concise, and, most importantly - memorable. 

Here are some strategies on how to end your personal statement. 

• Circle back to the opening using a "full-circle" structure.
• Unveil the central point or revelation within your narrative.
• Consider the future implications or possibilities.
• Conclude with a decisive action or resolution.

Remember, your ending shouldn't summarize the essay, repeat points that have already been made, or taper off into nothingness. You don’t want it to just fade out–you want it to go out with a bang! Keeping it interesting at this stage can be challenging, but it can make or break a good college essay. 

What Makes an Essay Ending Great?

A good ending of an essay reflects your voice and personality, avoiding clichés or generic statements that lack originality. End on a positive, forward-looking note that demonstrates your excitement for the future and your readiness to take on new challenges.

6 College Essay Endings Examples and Tips

Let’s go over some college application essay ending examples. Follow along to learn different powerful strategies you can use to end your college essay.

1. End the Essay With The Lesson Learned Statement

One of the best things you can do in your college essay is demonstrate how you can get back up after getting knocked down. Showing the admissions committee how you’ve learned and grown from a challenging life event is an excellent way to present yourself as a strong candidate. 

Think of this method as the ending of a good novel about a complex character: they’re not perfect, but they try to be better, and that’s what counts. In your college essay, you’re the main character of your story. Don’t be afraid to talk about a mistake you’ve made as long as you demonstrate (in your conclusion) that you learned something valuable.

Here’s an example of a college essay ending from a Harvard student using the “Lesson Learned” technique:

"The best thing that I took away from this experience is that I can't always control what happens to me, especially as a minor, but I can control how I handle things. In full transparency: there were still bad days and bad grades, but by taking action and adding a couple of classes into my schedule that I felt passionate about, I started feeling connected to school again. From there, my overall experience with school – and life in general – improved 100%."

Why It Works 

This is a good example because it effectively demonstrates the "Lesson Learned" technique by showcasing personal growth and resilience. 

The conclusion reflects on the experiences and challenges faced by the applicant, emphasizing the valuable lessons learned and the positive changes made as a result. It shows maturity, self-awareness, and the ability to overcome obstacles, which can leave a positive impression on admissions committees.

2. End the Essay With the Action-Packed Conclusion Method

As you see in the movies, ending your college essay in action can leave an impactful impression on the admissions committee. In the UMichigan example below, the student ends their essay on an ambiguous, energetic note by saying, “I never saw it coming,” as the last line. 

You can also achieve this approach by ending your essay with dialogue or a description. For example, “Hi Mom, I’m not coming home just yet,” or “I picked up my brother's phone, and dialed the number.” These are examples of endings that leave you “in the action”–dropping off the reader almost mid-story, leaving them intrigued. 

Here is an example of an “action-packed” college essay ending from a UMichigan student .

"No foreign exchange trip could outdo that. I am a member of many communities based on my geography, ethnicity, interests, and talents, but the most meaningful community is the one that I never thought I would be a part of…

On that first bus ride to the Nabe, I never saw it coming.”

The example from the UMichigan student provides a strong ending to the college essay by using an "action-packed" approach. It engages the reader with an unexpected twist, creating intrigue and leaving them wanting more. 

The phrase "I never saw it coming" adds a sense of anticipation and curiosity, making the conclusion memorable. This technique effectively leaves the reader with a lasting impression, showcasing the applicant's storytelling skills and ability to capture attention.

3. End the Essay By Going Full Circle

As you may know, a “full circle” ending ties the story’s ending to the very beginning. Not to be confused with a summary, this method is an excellent way to leave a lasting impression on your reader. 

When using this technique, tie the very first sentence with the very last. Avoid over-explaining yourself, and end with a very simple recall of the beginning of the story. Keep in mind if you use this method, your “full circle” should be straightforward and seamless, regardless of the essay topic . 

Here is an example of a “Full Circle” college essay ending from a Duke student :

“So next time it rains, step outside. Close your eyes. Hear the symphony of millions of water droplets. And enjoy the moment.”

In response to the beginning: 

“The pitter-patter of droplets, the sweet smell that permeates throughout the air, the dark grey clouds that fill the sky, shielding me from the otherwise intense gaze of the sun, create a landscape unparalleled by any natural beauty.”

This example of a "Full Circle" college essay ending is effective because it masterfully connects the ending to the beginning of the story. The essay begins with a vivid description of a rainy day, and the conclusion seamlessly brings the reader back to that initial scene. 

It emphasizes the importance of savoring the moment, creating a sense of reflection and unity in the narrative. This technique allows the reader to feel a sense of closure and reinforces the central theme of the essay, making it a strong and memorable conclusion.

4. End the Essay By Addressing the College

Directly addressing your college is a popular method, as it recalls the main reason you want to attend the school. If you choose to address your school, it is imperative to do your research. You should know precisely what you find attractive about the school, what it offers, and why it speaks to you. 

Here is a college essay ending example using the “College Address” technique from a UMichigan Student:

"I want to join the University of Michigan’s legacy of innovators. I want to be part of the LSA community, studying economics and political science. I want to attend the Ford School and understand how policy in America and abroad has an effect on global poverty. I want to be involved with the Poverty Solutions Initiative, conducting groundbreaking research on the ways we can reform our financial system to better serve the lower and middle classes.”

This is a good example because it effectively utilizes the "College Address" technique. The student clearly articulates their specific intentions and aspirations related to the University of Michigan. 

They showcase a deep understanding of the university's offerings and how these align with their academic and career goals. This kind of conclusion demonstrates genuine interest and a strong connection to the school, which can leave a positive impression on admissions committees.

5. End the Essay With a Look To the Future

Admissions committees want to know how attending their school will help you on your journey. To use this method, highlight your future goals at the end of your essay. You can highlight what made you want to go to this school in the first place and what you hope to achieve moving forward. If done correctly, this can be highly impactful.

Here is a college essay ending example from a med student using the “Look To The Future” technique:

“I want to tell my peers that doctors like my grandfather are not only healers in biology but healers in the spirit by the way he made up heroic songs for the children and sang the fear out of their hearts. I want to show my peers that patients are unique individuals who have suffered and sacrificed to trust us with their health care, so we must honor their trust by providing quality treatment and empathy.

My formative experiences in pediatrics contributed to my globally conscious mindset, and I look forward to sharing these diverse insights in my medical career.”

This is a good example because it effectively ties the applicant's personal experiences and aspirations to their desire to attend the specific school. It showcases a clear passion for medicine and a genuine desire to make a positive impact on patients' lives. 

By highlighting the applicant's unique perspective gained from their experiences in pediatrics and emphasizing their commitment to providing quality care and empathy, it demonstrates a strong connection between their goals and the opportunities offered by the school. 

This kind of conclusion helps the admissions committee understand how the applicant will contribute to the school's community and align with their future ambitions.

6. End the Essay by Showing You’ve Learned What Not to Do

Admissions committees are unimpressed by clichéd and generic conclusions that fail to demonstrate an applicant's individuality or genuine interest in the institution. Unfortunately, many students fall into the trap of providing vague recaps of their academic journey without adding any unique insights or future aspirations. 

Below is an example of such an unimpressive conclusion:

"In conclusion, I've learned a lot throughout my life, and I hope to continue learning in college. College will be a new chapter for me, and I'm excited to see where it takes me. I'm looking forward to the opportunities and experiences that lie ahead, and I can't wait to grow as a person. College is the next step in my journey, and I'm ready to embrace it with open arms."

Why It Doesn't Work

This is a bad example because it's overly generic and doesn't offer any specific insights or compelling reasons why the applicant is interested in the college. It simply states the obvious without adding any depth or uniqueness to the conclusion. Admissions committees are looking for applicants to stand out and showcase their genuine enthusiasm for the institution, which this conclusion fails to do. So, make sure to avoid essay topics that don’t genuinely excite you.

If you want 190+ examples of good college essays , we’ve got you covered. Learn how to craft the perfect college essay from introduction to conclusion and everything in between.

​​3 College Essay Endings to Avoid

You want your essay to have an impactful ending - but these methods may have the opposite impact. Now that you know some effective ways to end your college essay, let’s go over some methods to avoid. 

1. The Summary

Remember that you’re writing a college essay, not a high school assignment you need to scrape through. Avoid simply summarizing the points you made during your essay. This method can come off as lazy and ultimately leave a negative impression on the admissions committee–or no impression at all. Instead, end the essay on a high note, with a point of action, or with your future goals. 

2. The Famous Quote

Some students start their college essay with one, and some end it with one. Neither is a good idea. Avoid using a famous quote anywhere in your essay, as it can give the impression that you don’t know what to write. The admissions committee wants to get to know you –they already know the famous quotes.

Unless you’ve done thorough research and are quoting someone affiliated with the school, you should avoid quotes altogether in your college essay.

3. The Needy Student

In your college essay conclusion, avoid begging for admission. You don’t want to come off desperate in your essay. Saying things like “Please consider me” or “I really want to attend” doesn’t say anything about you and doesn’t read smoothly. Instead, demonstrate who you are and how you’ve learned and grown in your life. Focus on you, not them!

Tips and Strategies on How to Approach Essay’s Conclusion

When it comes to nailing your college essay's conclusion, here are some practical tips to keep in mind:

• Sum It Up : Your conclusion should be a neat little bow that wraps up your essay. Summarize the key points you've made throughout, but don't just regurgitate what you've already said. Instead, try to offer a fresh perspective or insight that ties everything together in a meaningful way.
• Look Ahead : Your conclusion is also a great opportunity to connect your past experiences with your future goals. Show the admissions committee how attending their college fits into your grand plan. They want to see that you have a clear vision for your future and that their institution plays a key role in helping you achieve it.
• Get personal : Don't be afraid to get specific and personal in your conclusion. Use vivid anecdotes and details to make your writing come alive. The more authentic and genuine you can be, the more likely you are to leave a lasting impression on your reader.
• Show your growth : Admissions committees love to see how you've grown and changed as a result of your experiences. Use your conclusion to reflect on the lessons you've learned and how you've matured. This shows that you're self-aware and ready to tackle the challenges of college life.
• End with a bang : Your final sentence should be like a mic drop moment. Leave your reader with something to think about, whether it's a thought-provoking question, a powerful quote, or a call to action. The key is to end on a strong, confident note that leaves a lasting impression.

Your college essay's conclusion is your chance to make a final pitch. It should reinforce your suitability for the college and leave a strong, positive impression on the admissions committee. So, take your time and craft it carefully—it's worth the effort.

FAQs: How to End a College Essay

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about how to end a college application essay.

1. How Do You Conclude a College Essay?

The end of your college essay should be strong, clear, and impactful. You can talk about your future goals, end in a moment of action, talk about what you’ve learned, or go full circle. Whatever method you choose, make sure to avoid summarizing your essay.

2. What Is a Good Closing Sentence?

A good closing sentence on your college essay is impactful, meaningful, and makes the reader think. You’ll want to ensure the reader remembers your essay, so conclude with something unique that ends your story with a bang.

3. What Words Can You Use to End an Essay?

Avoid saying “to conclude,” “to summarize,” or “finally.” Your essay should end on a high note, like the ending of a movie. Think of moving sentences such as “I never saw it coming,” “I’ll always remember what happened,” or “I’ve learned so much since then.”

Access 190+ sample college essays here

Final Thoughts

By following our tips, you should be on track to write a stellar college essay with an impactful ending. Think of what you’ve learned, what you’ll do in the future, and where you can end the story that would leave a lasting impression. 

If you’re still having a hard time ending your college essay, you can always contact an admissions expert or tutor to help guide you through the process. 

Good luck with your essay!

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How to End a College Essay: The Do’s and Don’ts

Last Updated: January 16, 2024 Fact Checked

Strategies to End Your College Essay

• Things to Avoid

Expert Interview

This article was co-authored by Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed. and by wikiHow staff writer, Sophie Burkholder, BA . Alexander Ruiz is an Educational Consultant and the Educational Director of Link Educational Institute, a tutoring business based in Claremont, California that provides customizable educational plans, subject and test prep tutoring, and college application consulting. With over a decade and a half of experience in the education industry, Alexander coaches students to increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence while achieving skills and the goal of achieving skills and higher education. He holds a BA in Psychology from Florida International University and an MA in Education from Georgia Southern University. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources.

Deadlines are whizzing by, primary-colored pennants are waving, and keyboards are clicking and clacking…it’s college admissions season! Beyond the test scores and grade point averages, your personal statement is your one chance to show colleges who you are—and for some reason, wrapping up that essay can be the hardest part. We spoke to expert academic tutor and educational consultant Alexander Ruiz to give you strategies for concluding your college essay, along with the examples included in this comprehensive guide to college essay conclusions.

Things You Should Know

• End your college essay by returning to an idea or image you included in your intro or as your hook. This callback satisfies your reader with a full-circle effect.
• Look to the future to conclude your college essay on a positive and hopeful note. Describe your goals and the impact you’ll have on the world.
• Finish your college essay with a lesson learned. After sharing life experiences, describe what you’ve learned and how they’ve prepared you for your next step.

Ask the wikiHow College Coach

• As expert educational consultant Alexander Ruiz explains, universities are “trying to understand ‘How do you see that you fit within our school?’ Even though the prompt is asking ‘Why did you choose the school?’, it really is truly asking ‘How do you fit within the student body? How do you fit within our campus?’”
• Example of a “college address” conclusion: I want to be part of the long legacy of civil rights activists and leaders, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have studied within the walls of Boston University. I’ve planted the seeds of this work through my two years of volunteering and campaigning in local elections. If admitted to your globally renowned Political Science program, I will be thrilled to grow my skills in Public Policy Analysis and ultimately serve the dynamic and deserving communities of Greater Boston.

• Example of a “full circle” conclusion: This year was a challenge in many ways. But I know that when I drive across those state lines again next fall, I’ll be looking back at the swirling blues and grays of the Boise sky, already anxiously awaiting the next time I get to come back home.
• Example intro hook for above conclusion: As my parents drove us across the Idaho state line, I looked out at the cloud-covered sky and thought: Well, this sure doesn’t look like home.

• Example of a “lesson learned” conclusion: Having the opportunity to travel around Latin America—bouncing between coastal towns like Sayulita and sprawling cities like Buenos Aires—I learned the importance of understanding other cultures and their perspectives. In expanding the limits of my physical world, I also had the opportunity to expand my worldview.

• Example of a “look forward” conclusion: When my great-great-grandchildren fasten their shoes with a futuristic version of Velcro and head down the road to school, they will do so with excitement and purpose. They’ll look forward to the day’s tasks of digging in the garden for Biology, journaling on their socio-emotional well-being in Health class, and debating the issues of their times in Social Studies. An education system built around students, their needs, and their futures—as a hopeful member of your teaching college, that is a future I am enthusiastic to have a hand in.

• Example of a “last-minute reveal” conclusion: After multiple paragraphs of stories from swim meets throughout the writer’s life, they conclude with, I wasn’t just swimming to beat the stopwatch hanging around my coach’s neck. I was swimming because it gave me freedom, a place to reflect, and an ability to push back against even the strongest currents.
• This strategy is difficult to pull off, as our instinct is to put our thesis right at the top. However, when it comes to college admissions, academic tutor Alexander Ruiz warns against “the five-paragraph format, the intro, body, body, body, conclusion.”
• As Ruiz continues to explain, “When it comes to telling your story and sharing how valuable your experience will be to a school, [the five-paragraph format] is not going to be able to portray that in a way that's going to be very attractive. So I think that one of the main mistakes that people make is saying these quantitative measures are going to speak for themselves, and they don't put enough work into being able to tell their story in their essays.”

• Example of a “plot twist” conclusion: Every law office I interned at over the past four years, despite their intensity, was instrumental in shaping my path and who I am. They prepared me for college and a career and gave me a clear view of what I wanted to do: not study law. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed every minute of learning about the inner workings of our legal system, but now I want to put that knowledge toward my true passion: helping foster kids via a social services career.

• Example of a thought-question conclusion: After all, with no other world to compare ours to, who are we to say a better world isn’t possible?
• Example of a “call to action” conclusion: Now that I’ve spent some thousand-odd words advocating for voter rights, voter registration, and rattling off anecdotes of my door-to-door campaigning, I just have one question left: are you registered to vote?

Things to Avoid in Your College Essay Conclusion

• Don’t: In conclusion, my family’s struggle with poverty over the past five years taught me much about resilience.
• Do: Tonight, my dad will put food on the table, as he always manages to. My mom will kiss him on the cheek as soon as she walks in the door from work, sighing as she finally sits down for the day. Despite all the challenges of the last five years, I’ve watched my parents overcome every obstacle with resilience and grit—and what I’ve learned from them is something I wouldn’t give up for the world.

• Don’t: I’m a hard worker.
• Do: Juggling rigorous academics with grueling morning soccer practices has taught me the value of hard work and discipline.
• Don’t: Climate change is a problem.
• Do: My generation is already suffering the real-time effects of climate change, like our snow days turning to smoke days as wildfires burn around our homes.

• Don’t: Please consider me.
• Do: As shown by the four years I volunteered at my local children’s hospital, community service is a priority for me in my future personal and professional life. Seeing what your university does for its surrounding neighborhood and the people there, I feel confident I would be a natural fit at your school.

• Don’t: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
• Do: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined I would be the lead in my senior play. Cut to now, and I’m singing my heart out to an applauding audience of parents and peers. From this moment forward, I will always understand and uphold the value of betting on yourself, even when you don’t know the outcome.
• Don’t: College will help me reach my dreams.
• Do: I’m enthusiastic about starting my next chapter—attending a school that will help me grow, learn, and take my next step toward my dream of becoming a doctor.

Expert Q&A

• Be specific in your essay—admissions officers want to hear about you and your life, so tell details about who you are and your experiences. [10] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Be authentic—admissions officers have read enough college essays to know when someone is phoning it in. Be true to yourself, write how you speak, and let your personality shine through. [11] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Show enthusiasm—if you’re talking about the school or your future, show excitement for what the next four years will hold for you. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about preparing for graduation, check out our in-depth interview with Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed. .

• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/conclusions/
• ↑ https://www.collegeessayadvisors.com/write-amazing-closing-line/
• ↑ https://essaypro.com/blog/how-to-write-a-conclusion
• ↑ https://students.tippie.uiowa.edu/sites/students.tippie.uiowa.edu/files/2022-05/effective_claims.pdf
• ↑ https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/how-to-write-your-best-college-application-essay-493692/

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How to end a college essay

How to end your college application essay (with examples).

Bonus Material: PrepMaven’s 30 College Essays That Worked

We’ve all been there: you’ve just about finished creating a brilliant, gripping piece of writing. All that’s left is to wrap it up with the perfect ending…but how do you give your essay the kind of ending that sticks with the reader, that wraps everything up neatly?

With college application essays, the stakes are even higher: the right ending can ensure you stand out from the thousands of other applicants and wow admissions officers. 

At PrepMaven, we’ve helped thousands of students do just that: create compelling, memorable admissions essays that land them acceptances at top-tier universities. 

In this post, we’ll specifically break down how to put those finishing touches on your Common App essay (or any other personal essay), providing examples so you can see exactly how each technique works. 

You can also feel free to hit the button below to download a free collection of 30 successful essays that worked, many of which provide great examples of these very strategies. 

Download 30 College Essays That Worked

Jump to section: Necessary elements of a college essay ending Reflect Connect to your narrative Look ahead to college 3 specific ways to end your college essay (with examples!)   The full-circle callback   The return with a difference   The statement of purpose Next Steps

Necessary elements of a college essay ending

In this section of the post, we’ll cover the beats that every college essay ending should hit to be maximally successful. Later, we’ll show you specific tricks for ending the essay–structures that you can easily integrate into your own writing. If you’d like to jump there, click here: specific ways to end your college essay .

Regardless of which specific technique you use to wrap up your essay, though, it should still help you accomplish the key things we list below. The fact is, college admissions counselors are really looking for pretty specific things in these essays. 

Whatever the structure, tone, or style of your admissions essay, you should be sure that the conclusion does all of the following:

Connect to your narrative

Look ahead to college.

If you’ve read our other posts on how to structure your application essay or how to start it , you probably already know a big part of your personal statement should involve a story. 

But it can’t be just a story: just as important is an element of reflection, which is best developed at the conclusion of your essay. 

What do we mean by reflection? Simply put, you need to think through the story you’ve laid out throughout the entire essay and articulate what it says about you, why it matters. In essence, the reflection is your answer to the question, “So what?”

For example, if you write an essay about giving up professional dance, your reflection might be about how that choice led you to view dance differently, perhaps as something that you can value independently regardless of whether you pursue it as a career. You might then expand that reflection to other elements of your life: did that changed viewpoint also apply to how you view academics, the arts, or other extracurriculars? 

Or say you wrote an essay about overcoming an obstacle to your education. Your reflection might then touch on how this process shaped your thinking, altered how you view challenges, or led you to develop a particular approach to academics and schoolwork. 

The key here is that you really show us the process of you thinking through the important changes/lessons/etc. at play in your essay. It’s not enough to just say, “This is important because X.” Admissions committees want to see you actually think through this. Real realizations don’t usually happen in an instant: you should question and consider, laying your thoughts out on paper. 

Rhetorical questions are often a great way to do this, as is narrating the thought process you underwent while overcoming the obstacle, learning the lesson, or whatever your story might be. 

A suggestion we often give our students is to read over the story you’ve written, and ask yourself what it means to you, what lessons you can take from it. As you ask and answer those questions, put those onto the page and work through them in writing. You can always clean it up and make it more presentable later. 

Below, we’ve selected the conclusion from Essay 2 in our collection of   30 Essays that Worked . In that essay, the writer spends most of the intro and body discussing their love for hot sauce and all things spicy, as well as how they’ve pursued that passion. Take a look at how they end their essay:

I’m not sure what it is about spiciness that intrigues me. Maybe my fungiform papillae are mapped out in a geography uniquely designed to appreciate bold seasonings. Maybe these taste buds are especially receptive to the intricacies of the savors and zests that they observe. Or maybe it’s simply my burning sense of curiosity. My desire to challenge myself, to stimulate my mind, to experience the fullness of life in all of its varieties and flavors.

In that example, the student doesn’t just tell us “the lesson.” Instead, we get to see them actively working through what the story they’ve told means and why it matters by offering potential ways it’s shaped them. Notice that it’s perfectly okay for the student not to have one clear “answer;” it actually works even better, in this case, that the student is wondering, thinking, still figuring things out. 

That’s reflection, and every good college application essay does it in one form or another. 

Who, on paper, are you? We know–it’s a brutal question to try to answer. That’s what these essays are all about, though, and these college essay conclusions are the perfect place to tie everything together. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you should try to cram elements of your resume or transcript into the end of your essay–please don’t! When we say the conclusion should “connect to your narrative,” we mean that you should write it while bearing in mind the other aspects of your application the admissions committee will be looking at. 

So, the conclusion of your college essay should work to connect the story and reflection you’ve developed with the broader picture of you as a college applicant. In a way, this goes hand in hand with reflection: you want your conclusion to tie all these threads together, explaining why this all matters in the context of college applications. 

You might, as in the above “hot sauce” essay example, allude to an element of your personality/mentality that your personal statement exemplifies. In that example, we can clearly see the writer showing off some scientific knowledge (“fungiform papillae”) while also highlighting their “curiosity” and desire to challenge themselves. 

This helps the reader see what this whole story is meant to tell us about the applicant, connecting to who they are and what they’re looking for. 

Or, you might connect this reflection to your academic goals. Or else you could connect elements of your story and reflection to some passion evident in the rest of your application. Often, the best essays involve a mix of all of these connections, but there’s no “right” or “wrong” connection to make, so long as it develops convincingly from the story you’ve told. 

There are numerous ways to go here, and it doesn’t have to be super heavy-handed or to take up much real estate. Simply bear in mind that these essays gain an additional sense of balance when they resonate with other elements of your broader high school narrative. 

Though it’s true these college essays are, in part, ways to demonstrate your writing skills and ability to respond concisely to a complicated essay prompt, their primary purpose is to show a college admissions counselor why you’re a good fit for their college. 

So, a strong college essay ending should draw strong connections to your future as (hopefully) a college student. As with the previous point, this is one that you don’t need to go over the top with! Don’t take away from your story by suddenly telling us how smart you are and what great grades you’ll get. 

Instead, you might want to suggest how the experiences you write about have prepared you for college–or, even better, how they’ve shaped what you hope to get out of the next four years. 

Generally, this is a small and subtle part of your conclusion: it might be a sentence, or it might even be the kind of thing that you imply without stating directly. The idea is that a college admissions officer reading your essay will walk away with some idea of why you’d be a good fit for college in general. 

In the example we quoted above, the essay does this fairly subtly: by describing their desire to challenge themselves and stimulate their mind, the writer is clearly alluding to the exact kinds of things college is for, even if they don’t come right out and say it. 

A successful college conclusion will contain all three of these elements. You can find thirty fantastic examples of such conclusions in the sample college essays below.

Read on for 3 specific techniques to end your college admissions essay. 

3 Specific ways to end your college essay (with examples!)

Each of the essay endings we cover below is designed to help your essay develop a sense of closure while simultaneously accomplishing all of those tricky things it needs to do to wow admissions officers. 

While all of these endings have been proven to work countless times, how you incorporate them and which you choose matters–a lot!

Because every student’s essay is (or at least should be) unique, we recommend getting a trusted advisor to offer guidance on how to wrap up your essay. You can get paired up with one of our expert tutors quickly by contacting us here . 

Now, for the techniques. 

The full-circle callback

This is probably the most classic ending structure for college essays, and with good reasons. The premise is simple: your essay’s conclusion will return to the image, story, or idea that your essay began with. 

Take a look at the below example, which includes just the first and last paragraphs of Essay 12 from our collection of 30 essays that worked . In this essay, the writer uses a discussion of food to explore their integration into American society as a Russian immigrant. 

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” – Franz Kafka […] So, Kafka, I hope that next time a memorable quote comes to mind, you think before you speak. Because when peanut butter cleaves to the roof of my mouth, I think about what it means “to cleave:” both to adhere closely to and to divide, as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural weakness. And I think about my dual identity, how the Russian side and American side simultaneously force each other apart and bring each other together. I think about my past, feeling a little ashamed, and about my present and future, asking how I can create harmony between these two sides of me. That, Kafka, does not sound like solved questions to me. This student started with a quote from Kafka (a risky move, but check out our post on “ How to start your college essay ” to see why it was a good choice in this case). After spending the majority of the essay exploring how American and Russian foods can serve as a shorthand for their relationship to their Russian-American identity, this author ends with a final paragraph that returns to the Kafka quote and continues to work through it. 

Why does it work?

In part, people just love a full-circle ending, the idea that something ends up back where it began. 

Specifically, this ending helps the student tick off all three of our boxes for what a conclusion must do: 

• They reflect (by thinking further about the quote and even the specific word “cleave”)
• They connect to their narrative (by bringing it back to their own identity)
• They look ahead (by highlighting their desire to create harmony in the future)

Check, check, check–plus, they come up with a clever enough one-liner at the end, slamming poor Kafka for a perhaps hyperbolic quote. 

The Return with a difference

This one is quite similar to the full-circle callback, but shouldn’t be confused with it. With this ending technique, you do indeed return to whatever you began your personal statement with. The emphasis, however, is on some significant change or perspective shift. The below example, once again taken from Essay 18 in our collection of 30 college essays that worked, makes what we mean more clear: 

I first encountered Naruto Uzumaki when I was seven and was immediately captivated by his story. An orphan navigating the world alone, without guidance or love, Naruto was misunderstood and often despised, deemed a threat by his village. Although my loving and supportive family was intact, I sympathized with Naruto. Even more, I appreciated his grit and audacity, thrilled by the way he managed to rewrite his own narrative, forging a new path and transforming himself into a hero.    […] Today, I am the protagonist of my own story. Hard work, baby steps, large leaps, occasional setbacks, countless revisions and refinements- all are essential to my journey of discovery. Ranging from unraveling the mystery of dark gravity, to writing a handful of papers that scrape a few flakes off the mountain of the unknown, my narrative is evolving; I am a work in progress and a champion of insight, advancement, and positive change. 

This essay starts by describing the appeal of Naruto’s story to the writer. When the writer concludes by saying that “I am the protagonist of my own story,” it’s clearly a reference to that initial introduction. 

The focus, however, is on the difference or shift: the author is no longer primarily captivated by Naruto’s story; instead, they’re excited to be carving out their own. It’s a return, but with a (big) difference, and that difference is precisely what allows this conclusion to succeed in hitting each of those key elements: 

• It reflects (highlighting the theme of discovery and the hard work that it took to get to this point)
• It connects to the broader narrative (making reference to this student’s interests in science and research)
• It looks ahead to college (emphasizing the continued growth this student looks forward to)

It isn’t a coincidence that essays using the four techniques we’re outlining here succeed so well in capturing the key elements of an application essay conclusion. While these techniques can’t guarantee success, they certainly set you up for it: the structure of each of these methods makes it much easier to give college admissions counselors exactly what they’re looking for. 

The Direct Appeal

Compared to the previous techniques, this one is a lot more direct. It involves finishing your essay by directly addressing how the story you’ve been telling has shaped your future desires, often by articulating some goal you plan to accomplish or by highlighting the importance of college. 

You might think of it as leaning much more heavily on the “look forward to college” element of the conclusion. This ending technique can be risky, and really depends on how effectively you’ve been able to convey your story up to this point. 

Whereas the other ending techniques we’ve mentioned can, in general, only help the overall quality of your essay, this one can backfire. It tends to work best for essays that highlight some particular struggle you’ve overcome, or some injustice you plan to address. 

Take a look at an excerpt from Essay 29, which discusses the writer’s experiences as lower-income student attending an expensive private school, for a good use of the direct appeal: 30 college essays that worked : 

    Today, the drug-ravaged apartments of Southern Trace are transformed. Gentrified shortly after we moved, they boast a different crowd—Lisa and Linda have since been priced out of their homes and evicted. Heroin-addicts are replaced by “prettier” middle-class families; police rarely need visit their homes. Though dysfunctional, my childhood neighborhood was a community—people wrought with problems but filled with compassion, with beauty. But where was their voice when developers began to renovate? Who was there to listen? This community is an intrinsic part of me: I want to be their voice. And, with my understanding of the socioeconomic palette, maybe I can provide the canvas to blend the world of my childhood with the privileged society of Cincinnati Hills.  

Although this essay actually combines a few of our ending techniques (returning to something discussed in the introduction), it’s a great example of when a direct appeal works. This student shows a nuanced understanding of a complex socioeconomic issue that hits close to home. Their “pitch” at the end of this essay is simple: “I want to be their voice.” 

In this particular essay, the direct appeal works because it feels honest, like it comes from a real place (though you’ll have to read the entire essay to really see that). In terms of our 3 criteria, it easily fits the bill: 

• It reflects on this student’s “dysfunctional” neighborhood and how those issues shaped the student’s viewpoint. 
• It connects to their broader narrative, both by highlighting their own identity and their “understanding of the socioeconomic palate.”
• It looks ahead to college, clearly articulating how the student’s long term goal–fighting for economically marginal communities–is an outcome of this story and a motivation for them to attend college. 

This is a perfect example of the direct appeal in action. In another, weaker essay, however, simply saying something like “I want to be their voice” might not work at all. If the actual story were weaker, if the student’s background were less carefully explained, it might have simply come off as preachy or presumptuous. 

The techniques we’ve outlined here will take you far. But, as always when the stakes are this high, we really recommend getting a professional opinion on your college essays. Our college essay tutors aren’t just fantastic writers: they’re expert editors who can ensure that you don’t miss anything in your own essays. Get paired with one quickly by reaching out to us here . 

In the meantime, click the link below and check out our collection of 30 sample essays, which include the full text of all the examples used above. 

Mike is a PhD candidate studying English literature at Duke University. Mike is an expert test prep tutor (SAT/ACT/LSAT) and college essay consultant. Nearly all of Mike’s SAT/ACT students score in the top 5% of test takers; many even score above 1500 on the SAT. His college essay students routinely earn admission into their top-choice schools, including Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth. And his LSAT students have been accepted In into the top law schools in the country, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Law.

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How to End a College Application Essay

Finalizing your personal statement—the most common document applicants think of when they think about the college essay —is arguably the most painstaking phase of the entire writing process. As you tweak and polish, you find yourself agonizing over details or second-guessing phrases, sometimes for hours on end. 

Because even after writing countless drafts, your common app essay probably won’t feel completely perfect.

And it’s not going to be perfect. It’s 650 words long: it’s impossible to fully sum up every quality that defines you in such a small space. So you’re going to need to focus your essay on specific traits and messages you can bring to life. It can be compelling to capture even just one deeply held conviction, principle, or characteristic meaningfully. 

In order to do that, you’ll probably need to make some hard decisions about which parts of your story to keep and which to cut. And this is easier said than done. 

But as Stephen King has said: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

This article dives deep into how to make these final polishes to your college essay so that you feel confident that you are ready to submit your best application story—one that admissions officers will remember. Read on to learn all about challenges you’ll face, goals to keep in mind, and specific tips on how to end your college application essay.

Challenges with college essay conclusions

In final edits, you must strive to keep only what’s most important: the content that is really working for the specific purpose of your essay. You may become attached to some of your ideas or anecdotes as you write, and this makes it even harder to take the birds-eye view of your work when revising. But cutting unnecessary details is vital.

Trim the Fat

This is the first challenge of finalizing a college essay : trimming the fat. Figuring out which words to cut, and which to keep. Making the hard decisions to scrap some details in favor of others. 

In order to do this, you’ll need to take a step back from the essay. Ideally, you should give yourself several days between finishing your draft and going back to look over its conclusion. Getting this high-level perspective on your own story takes time, but later in this article we share concrete suggestions on how to do exactly that.

When considering this challenge, however, it is often helpful to bear in mind that the essay is written for a real person to read. The Admissions Officers at your dream college are looking to empathize with you. In order to do that, your message needs to be clear and cohesive, not all-encompassing. And this can only be accomplished through intent: knowing what content is most important, and what can be done away with.

Navigating Feedback

Another challenge you are going to face is that so many people may want to give you their opinion on your personal statement. Parents may all of a sudden remember that they wanted to look at it. Even cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, teachers, friends, and others may give opinions.

And they’re probably going to have conflicting ideas. Because in the end, a college application essay is, to some extent, subjective. When you aim to communicate something honest and authentic about yourself, people are going to feel different ways about it. They will have their own conclusions and biases because of your personal relationship with them. They may unknowingly try to get you to show the person they think you are, rather than the person you believe yourself to be. 

Such contradictions are confusing. They may distress or overwhelm you. So be especially careful about who you show your personal statement to in these final stages. It’s best if this is just one guide or mentor you’ve worked with throughout the drafting process. And bear in mind that in the end, it is your opinion that matters most. You are going to have to decide that it’s done. Not that it’s perfect, but that it’s done.

Don’t Compare

The last big challenge you are likely to face is the dangerous inclination to compare your own common app essay to those of others, to ask classmates about their topics for their personal statements, or even to read through their essays.

This can even lead you to search for “sample college essay” online. You may find essays from other students who were accepted to your dream college and have done an entire analysis of their own application. And though these essays may serve as great inspiration and models before you begin writing, this level of comparison is going to hurt you rather than help you once you get to the stage of ending the essay. Resist looking at anybody else’s essay when your essay is the only one to focus on.

Goals to aim for when finalizing your common app personal statement

Though you’ll be focused only on your own college application essay, there are some helpful general goals you should keep in mind so that you are able to step back and review it from another person’s point of view.

There are a few vital things that a personal statement should do for your application. In some ways, you can think of this essay as your way to make a less formal impression on the admissions officer, as if you were introducing yourself at a party. You want to be the person who they speak to for just five minutes, but who they remember vividly. To do that, your college application essay will need to accomplish several goals.

The first of these goals is to arrive at a deeper level of substance. This is often the challenge that most intimidates students. You might think you need to arrive at some grand, philosophical insight into the world.

But that’s unrealistic, for most of us. Instead, think about this goal in a relative sense. Compared to the rest of your college essay , your conclusion should add something new. Ideally, this substance would be thought-provoking: a connection to something else in your life or a crystalized indication of why this is so meaningful to you. Or it may simply be just a principle stated directly and elegantly, which captures the lesson you’ve taken from the story you’re sharing.

This doesn’t mean that your conclusion must be grand and expansive. In fact, the bigger your ideas get, the more likely you are to end up writing something that is vague or cliche. The deeper level of substance has to be specific to your story. Your immediate lived experience. It can range from the mundane to the abstract: as long as it builds meaningfully upon the reflection you’ve developed earlier in the essay, it can give the reader something to ponder.

And that connects to the second goal of finalizing the personal statement: to be clear and memorable. This also primarily concerns the essay’s conclusion, because that is almost always the last part to fully come together.

Yes, you are going to be building in nuance and subtlety in these final edits: that’s important, as it helps you to refine and differentiate your message. Yet, though you want to put sincere effort into these details, so the admissions officers can tell you really worked hard on this college essay, you also can’t afford to be convoluted.

Thus, it’s best if you clearly define your final takeaway: that belief, connection, or principle you are stating. This message has to be tangible and immediate in order to be memorable. If it’s too hard to figure out what exactly the main point is at the end, you’re going to be in trouble!

The last vital goal of the Personal Statement is less explicit: your college essay should give an indication about what this whole story means about not only your present self, but your growth in the future.

Whether you’re writing an emotional story, an intellectual curiosity story, a social story, or a story about none of these things, you must remember the perspective that you are still just a teenager. You have a lot of your life in front of you, and colleges really need to see that you are looking to grow further beyond this point: that this person who you are today is not the person you will be forever. That you are intent on developing and challenging yourself in new ways moving forward.

This indication about the future is not something that needs to be clear and straightforward. It’s something that should be a part of your thinking when you go back over the essay, ideally with one other person who has been involved in the process with you. Is it clear to them how your lessons from the essay will inform your future? If not, or you seem perfectly content with who you already are, then you have good reason to reflect on what you really want beyond college.

Tips on writing a strong college essay conclusion

Alright: you’ve understood your challenges and set your goals. You’re in the very last stages of editing. Here are the concrete things that you should be doing when you are revising your personal statement through to the final paragraph.

The first thing to do is to cut out absolutely any platitudes or pithy phrases. Platitudes are general statements that have been made countless times before and will be made countless times again. These include any statements about “people” in general, or huge ideas about what “art” is, or what “society” is like. If you use these types of sentences, then you no longer seem to have original ideas. The habit can lead you to make sweeping, general assertions that make the entire essay seem less personal.

And you absolutely need to avoid that like the plague. Because the main point here is to communicate your perspective. So cut out those platitudes, and similarly, do away with any glib or pithy phrases.

The conclusion is not the place for witticisms or jokes. They might be woven in earlier in the essay, if it’s important to you to highlight your humor—you’ll have opportunities to do that. But trying to infuse the conclusion of your college essay with laughter is almost always the wrong way to go. You need to show that you are capable of earnestness: of stating something substantial about yourself. Misplaced humor can subvert this and is best avoided.

Do a live editing session with a trusted counselor, consultant, or mentor, and read your entire college application essay aloud during this time.

Does the college essay really sound like you, or perhaps, a slightly more poised and polished version of you? That’s okay, but it should still sound authentic. It should still have your voice, replete with quirks or phrasing habits.

The second strong way to double check the essay’s authenticity is to imagine the essay up on a wall, in a huge library of other essays. Could your best friend in the world, without knowing anything other than the story in the essay itself, pick this off the wall? Would they immediately recognize that this was your story and no one else’s? If you can confidently answer yes to these questions, then you can trust that your essay is genuine.

Finally, do one important check to tie together the entire essay: make a Mission Statement for your story.

• Write out in a simple sentence the one message about who you are that the admissions officer will remember. This Mission Statement should look something like: “I am the student who _________ and who will ____________.” 

What goes in the blank spaces? The first should be filled with the character traits you want to capture or the behaviors you are proudest of. The second space should make note of the person you want to become or the impact you want to have in the future .

When writing out this sentence, be as precise as possible. Don’t use vague, generic traits like “kind” or “helpful”—focus on specific personal qualities that define you. Perhaps you are resourceful, or bold, or compassionate, or gritty, or resilient, or intensely curious. Don’t be afraid to connect these traits to your actions. If you are enthusiastic, perhaps you are skilled at motivating others toward a unified goal. If you are compassionate, perhaps you make people feel comfortable sharing their vulnerability.

Likewise, when considering your future self, you want to show a sincere vision for your personal growth. It shouldn’t be all about making money, increasing status, or building a high-profile career. It should be a reflection of your self-awareness. What are the parts of yourself that you are not yet satisfied with? How can you build yourself toward them? If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, look to your inspirations—the people you look up to. Notice how they behave and what they can do that you admire.

Many successful essays begin with a compelling Mission Statement that help the author to shape a memorable college application essay. Let’s examine a few examples:

• “I am the student who uses limited resources creatively to expand future opportunities for other young people, and who will work to increase the scope of the underserved groups I impact.”
• “I am the student who has an insatiable drive to create order from chaos, and who will continue tackling bigger and more complex problems using logic and deductive reasoning.”
• “I am the student who cares deeply to understand and examine threats to mental health, and who will use this understanding not only to provide personal support for others, but to work on shaping policies and initiatives that affect the wellbeing of broader society.”

Note that the structure of each of these sentences is simple, but the student in each sentence has changed the Mission Statement slightly to reflect what makes them special. So once you’ve gathered the traits, actions, behaviors and decisions that you feel define you, don’t be afraid to get creative.

Writing a Mission Statement you believe in will help you when you go back to read your college application essay aloud. It should give you clarity on whether you are really communicating your message—and only this message—as compellingly as I can.If you notice that you are trying to pull in too many other random details, reel your story back to its Mission Statement. 

We hope these tips have given you clarity on how to end your college application essay. If you follow these steps through to the last paragraph, we are confident you will arrive at a common app personal statement you are truly proud of.

Found these tips useful? Simplify your college application experience with expert college admissions consulting. Collaborate with our skilled College Consultants to craft compelling applications.

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How to Write a College Essay | A Complete Guide & Examples

The college essay can make or break your application. It’s your chance to provide personal context, communicate your values and qualities, and set yourself apart from other students.

A standout essay has a few key ingredients:

• A unique, personal topic
• A compelling, well-structured narrative
• A clear, creative writing style
• Evidence of self-reflection and insight

To achieve this, it’s crucial to give yourself enough time for brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.

In this comprehensive guide, we walk you through every step in the process of writing a college admissions essay.

Table of contents

Why do you need a standout essay, start organizing early, choose a unique topic, outline your essay, start with a memorable introduction, write like an artist, craft a strong conclusion, revise and receive feedback, frequently asked questions.

While most of your application lists your academic achievements, your college admissions essay is your opportunity to share who you are and why you’d be a good addition to the university.

Your college admissions essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s total weight一and may account for even more with some colleges making the SAT and ACT tests optional. The college admissions essay may be the deciding factor in your application, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

What do colleges look for in an essay?

Admissions officers want to understand your background, personality, and values to get a fuller picture of you beyond your test scores and grades. Here’s what colleges look for in an essay :

• Demonstrated values and qualities
• Vulnerability and authenticity
• Self-reflection and insight
• Creative, clear, and concise writing skills

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It’s a good idea to start organizing your college application timeline in the summer of your junior year to make your application process easier. This will give you ample time for essay brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.

While timelines will vary for each student, aim to spend at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing your first draft and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Remember to leave enough time for breaks in between each writing and editing stage.

Create an essay tracker sheet

If you’re applying to multiple schools, you will have to juggle writing several essays for each one. We recommend using an essay tracker spreadsheet to help you visualize and organize the following:

• Deadlines and number of essays needed
• Prompt overlap, allowing you to write one essay for similar prompts

You can build your own essay tracker using our free Google Sheets template.

College essay tracker template

Ideally, you should start brainstorming college essay topics the summer before your senior year. Keep in mind that it’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic.

If you want to write about a common essay topic, such as a sports injury or volunteer work overseas, think carefully about how you can make it unique and personal. You’ll need to demonstrate deep insight and write your story in an original way to differentiate it from similar essays.

What makes a good topic?

• Meaningful and personal to you
• Uncommon or has an unusual angle
• Reveals something different from the rest of your application

Brainstorming questions

You should do a comprehensive brainstorm before choosing your topic. Here are a few questions to get started:

• What are your top five values? What lived experiences demonstrate these values?
• What adjectives would your friends and family use to describe you?
• What challenges or failures have you faced and overcome? What lessons did you learn from them?
• What makes you different from your classmates?
• What are some objects that represent your identity, your community, your relationships, your passions, or your goals?
• Whom do you admire most? Why?
• What three people have significantly impacted your life? How did they influence you?

How to identify your topic

Here are two strategies for identifying a topic that demonstrates your values:

• Start with your qualities : First, identify positive qualities about yourself; then, brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities.
• Start with a story : Brainstorm a list of memorable life moments; then, identify a value shown in each story.

After choosing your topic, organize your ideas in an essay outline , which will help keep you focused while writing. Unlike a five-paragraph academic essay, there’s no set structure for a college admissions essay. You can take a more creative approach, using storytelling techniques to shape your essay.

Two common approaches are to structure your essay as a series of vignettes or as a single narrative.

Vignettes structure

The vignette, or montage, structure weaves together several stories united by a common theme. Each story should demonstrate one of your values or qualities and conclude with an insight or future outlook.

This structure gives the admissions officer glimpses into your personality, background, and identity, and shows how your qualities appear in different areas of your life.

Topic: Museum with a “five senses” exhibit of my experiences

• Introduction: Tour guide introduces my museum and my “Making Sense of My Heritage” exhibit
• Story: Racial discrimination with my eyes
• Lesson: Using my writing to document truth
• Story: Broadway musical interests
• Lesson: Finding my voice
• Story: Smells from family dinner table
• Lesson: Appreciating home and family
• Story: Washing dishes
• Lesson: Finding moments of peace in busy schedule
• Story: Biking with Ava
• Lesson: Finding pleasure in job well done
• Conclusion: Tour guide concludes tour, invites guest to come back for “fall College Collection,” featuring my search for identity and learning.

Single story structure

The single story, or narrative, structure uses a chronological narrative to show a student’s character development over time. Some narrative essays detail moments in a relatively brief event, while others narrate a longer journey spanning months or years.

Single story essays are effective if you have overcome a significant challenge or want to demonstrate personal development.

Topic: Sports injury helps me learn to be a better student and person

• Situation: Football injury
• Challenge: Friends distant, teachers don’t know how to help, football is gone for me
• Turning point: Starting to like learning in Ms. Brady’s history class; meeting Christina and her friends
• My reactions: Reading poetry; finding shared interest in poetry with Christina; spending more time studying and with people different from me
• Insight: They taught me compassion and opened my eyes to a different lifestyle; even though I still can’t play football, I’m starting a new game

Brainstorm creative insights or story arcs

Regardless of your essay’s structure, try to craft a surprising story arc or original insights, especially if you’re writing about a common topic.

Never exaggerate or fabricate facts about yourself to seem interesting. However, try finding connections in your life that deviate from cliché storylines and lessons.

Admissions officers read thousands of essays each year, and they typically spend only a few minutes reading each one. To get your message across, your introduction , or hook, needs to grab the reader’s attention and compel them to read more..

Avoid starting your introduction with a famous quote, cliché, or reference to the essay itself (“While I sat down to write this essay…”).

While you can sometimes use dialogue or a meaningful quotation from a close family member or friend, make sure it encapsulates your essay’s overall theme.

Find an original, creative way of starting your essay using the following two methods.

Option 1: Start with an intriguing hook

Begin your essay with an unexpected statement to pique the reader’s curiosity and compel them to carefully read your essay. A mysterious introduction disarms the reader’s expectations and introduces questions that can only be answered by reading more.

Option 2: Start with vivid imagery

Illustrate a clear, detailed image to immediately transport your reader into your memory. You can start in the middle of an important scene or describe an object that conveys your essay’s theme.

A college application essay allows you to be creative in your style and tone. As you draft your essay, try to use interesting language to enliven your story and stand out .

Show, don’t tell

“Tell” in writing means to simply state a fact: “I am a basketball player.” “ Show ” in writing means to use details, examples, and vivid imagery to help the reader easily visualize your memory: “My heart races as I set up to shoot一two seconds, one second一and score a three-pointer!”

First, reflect on every detail of a specific image or scene to recall the most memorable aspects.

• What are the most prominent images?
• Are there any particular sounds, smells, or tastes associated with this memory?
• What emotion or physical feeling did you have at that time?

Be vulnerable to create an emotional response

You don’t have to share a huge secret or traumatic story, but you should dig deep to express your honest feelings, thoughts, and experiences to evoke an emotional response. Showing vulnerability demonstrates humility and maturity. However, don’t exaggerate to gain sympathy.

Use appropriate style and tone

Make sure your essay has the right style and tone by following these guidelines:

• Use a conversational yet respectful tone: less formal than academic writing, but more formal than texting your friends.
• Prioritize using “I” statements to highlight your perspective.
• Write within your vocabulary range to maintain an authentic voice.
• Write concisely, and use the active voice to keep a fast pace.
• Follow grammar rules (unless you have valid stylistic reasons for breaking them).

You should end your college essay with a deep insight or creative ending to leave the reader with a strong final impression. Your college admissions essay should avoid the following:

• Summarizing what you already wrote
• Stating your hope of being accepted to the school
• Mentioning character traits that should have been illustrated in the essay, such as “I’m a hard worker”

Here are two strategies to craft a strong conclusion.

Option 1: Full circle, sandwich structure

The full circle, or sandwich, structure concludes the essay with an image, idea, or story mentioned in the introduction. This strategy gives the reader a strong sense of closure.

In the example below, the essay concludes by returning to the “museum” metaphor that the writer opened with.

Option 2: Revealing your insight

You can use the conclusion to show the insight you gained as a result of the experiences you’ve described. Revealing your main message at the end creates suspense and keeps the takeaway at the forefront of your reader’s mind.

Revise your essay before submitting it to check its content, style, and grammar. Get feedback from no more than two or three people.

It’s normal to go through several rounds of revision, but take breaks between each editing stage.

Also check out our college essay examples to see what does and doesn’t work in an essay and the kinds of changes you can make to improve yours.

Respect the word count

Most schools specify a word count for each essay , and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit.

Remain under the specified word count limit to show you can write concisely and follow directions. However, don’t write too little, which may imply that you are unwilling or unable to write a thoughtful and developed essay.

Check your content, style, and grammar

• First, check big-picture issues of message, flow, and clarity.
• Then, check for style and tone issues.
• Finally, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Get feedback

Get feedback from 2–3 people who know you well, have good writing skills, and are familiar with college essays.

• Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your content, language, and tone.
• Friends and family can check for authenticity.
• An essay coach or editor has specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and can give objective expert feedback.

The checklist below helps you make sure your essay ticks all the boxes.

College admissions essay checklist

I’ve organized my essay prompts and created an essay writing schedule.

I’ve done a comprehensive brainstorm for essay topics.

I’ve selected a topic that’s meaningful to me and reveals something different from the rest of my application.

I’ve created an outline to guide my structure.

I’ve crafted an introduction containing vivid imagery or an intriguing hook that grabs the reader’s attention.

I’ve written my essay in a way that shows instead of telling.

I’ve shown positive traits and values in my essay.

I’ve demonstrated self-reflection and insight in my essay.

I’ve used appropriate style and tone .

I’ve concluded with an insight or a creative ending.

I’ve revised my essay , checking my overall message, flow, clarity, and grammar.

I’ve respected the word count , remaining within 10% of the upper word limit.

Congratulations!

It looks like your essay ticks all the boxes. A second pair of eyes can help you take it to the next level – Scribbr's essay coaches can help.

Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.

Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.

A standout college essay has several key ingredients:

• A unique, personally meaningful topic
• A memorable introduction with vivid imagery or an intriguing hook
• Specific stories and language that show instead of telling
• Vulnerability that’s authentic but not aimed at soliciting sympathy
• Clear writing in an appropriate style and tone
• A conclusion that offers deep insight or a creative ending

While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.

You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

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How to Write a Personal Essay for Your College Application

What does it take to land in the “accept” (instead of “reject”) pile?

How can you write an essay that helps advance you in the eyes of the admissions officers and makes a real impression? Here are some tips to get you started.

• Start early.  Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself time when you don’t have other homework or extracurriculars hanging over your head to work on the essay.
• Keep the focus narrow.  Your essay does not have to cover a massive, earth-shattering event. Some people in their teens haven’t experienced a major life event. Some people have. Either way, it’s okay.
• Be yourself.  Whether writing about a painful experience or a more simple experience, use the narrative to be vulnerable and honest about who you are. Use words you would normally use. Trust your voice and the fact that your story is interesting enough in that no one else has lived it.
• Be creative.  “Show, don’t tell,” and that applies here — to an extent. The best essays typically do both. You can help your reader see and feel what you are describing by using some figurative language throughout your piece.
• Make a point. As you finish your final body paragraphs ask yourself “So what?” This will help you hone in on how to end your essay in a way that elevates it into a story about an insight or discovery you made about yourself, rather than just being about an experience you had.

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We’ve all heard about the dreaded “college essay,” the bane of every high school senior’s existence. This daunting element of the college application is something that can create angst for even the most accomplished students.

• AA Amy Allen is a writer, educator, and lifelong learner. Her freelance writing business,  All of the Write Words , focuses on providing high school students with one-on-one feedback to guide them through the college application process and with crafting a thoughtful personal essay. A dedicated poet, Amy’s work has also been published in several journals including  Pine Row Press ,  Months to Years,  and  Atlanta Review .

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6 Steps To Drafting The Perfect College Admissions Essay

So, you’re stuck writing your college essay . I’m assuming that’s why you stumbled upon this blog post and decided to read it.

Now, if you’re anything like I was in high school, you’re freaking out. You’re breaking down because you think that everyone else in the world has it together and knows what they’re doing. Except for you.

Trust me, though–coming from someone who’s been in your exact shoes–you’re not the only one feeling this way. In fact, it’s completely normal to feel lost at this stage.

There really hasn’t ever been a time where you’ve been asked to write an essay that seems like it could dictate your future–that could dictate your college, your job, and maybe even your happiness later in life.

It’s only understandable that you feel this way. Popular culture has definitely exaggerated the role of the essay in the college admissions process .

You may have heard the phrase, “It’’s the most important part of the college application.” It’s where you show your voice , they tell you. It’s the only place to show your character , they say. It’s the only part that really matters , you might have heard. 

Phrases like these are the exact reason that the essay may seem daunting at first: the reason you might be freaking out, breaking down, or a combination of the two.

The first step to writing your essay is to let go of this misconception! Remind yourself that the essay is not the only factor dictating your admission into college. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, because that might end up hurting you more than helping.

Studies have repeatedly shown that stressing out actually negatively impacts your performance. So let’s take a deep breath, tell ourselves that the essay, contrary to popular belief, isn’t the only factor dictating your admission, and move onto step one.

Step One: Choose Your Topic

One of the biggest mistakes you can make on your college essay is starting too early. Don’t feel rushed to “jump right in,” or “get started right away.” Arguably the most important part of the college essay is actually brainstorming beforehand.

A great writer can be bogged down by a difficult writing topic and a poor writer can write an amazing piece with a good one. Take your time to think of a good topic to write about; you’ll thank yourself later.

How do you choose ‘the right’ topic? We’ll, that’s the hard part. Ask the college admissions officers, who’ve seen essays about topics ranging from a major death in the family to Costco samples.

Luckily, though, there are some general tips that can guide you in the process of choosing a topic . Let’s go through them below. 

1. Choose something substantial

This one’s crucial. You know the Costco sample essay that I mentioned earlier? The reason it worked is because the student who wrote it was able to tie the theme of the essay into a larger meaning: a bigger purpose statement about who they are and what they wanted out of the experience.

A good rule of thumb to go by is that your topic must be something that you have lots of experience with: something that you can talk about at lengths without boring the reader (or yourself). 

2. Don’t choose something too depressing

This is a HUGE misconception: a misconception that I too had when I was writing my essay. A lot of students tend to think that sob stories are what get you accepted. The sadder the story, the higher the chances of acceptance, right? 

Not really. As we can tell by the hundreds of essays about things like pizza, Costco, video games, and more; colleges like a playful, light topic just as much, and maybe even more, than they do an overly sad story.

Remember: the people reading your essays are real people with real emotion. The last thing they want to do is read stories all day about depressing topics. So use them sparingly, if at all.

3. Show your personality!

This is the last tip I’ll give you about choosing a topic since the idea should come from you. Let your strengths shine through in what you’re writing.

For example, if you’re naturally a funny person, consider a comedic topic that’ll get the admissions team laughing. If your friends would describe you as a naturally quirky person, write your essay about something quirky. Maybe there’s a food you really like or a place you’ve always enjoyed visiting. 

Other than those general guidelines, the world of college essay topics is an endless one. Let’s stop here and think long and hard about the statement you want to make with our essay. 

Step 2: Write the Introduction

Now that we’ve chosen a topic, we can move onto the fun part: writing! Let’s start with the introductory paragraph . This paragraph should be short but carry value.

The introductory paragraph is probably one of the most important ones in the whole essay. Why? It’s the first thing that the college admissions panel is going to read.

They’ve already seen your stellar grades, looked at your amazing standardized test scores, and gone through all your special extracurriculars. But this is the first thing that they read that shows them YOU.

This is their first impression of you beyond just numbers and lists. Make it count.

How do you do that? Write something that will immediately catch the panel’s attention: something that will make them want to keep reading. 

One way to do this is by using a strategy called “en media res.” This phrase, which literally translates to “in mid-story,” refers to the writing technique of starting your piece in the middle of a story. Consider this example: 

“Fred lay unconscious on the bed. Nurses called his name helplessly, waiting for him to wake up. His wife sobbed loudly in the corner, pleading the doctor to save him. The doctor shook his head in failure and looked down at the floor in disappointment.”

Pretty effective start to an essay, right? If you were the admissions officer reading this paragraph, chances are that you would want to keep reading.

We want to know who Fred is. We want to know what the narrator is doing in the room. We want to know what happened to Fred. Will he survive?

Here’s another example:

“The shapes in my surroundings slowly blend into smudges. My head feels dizzy. I grab the closest chair and sit down. I see eyes. People turn their heads to stare at me. I don’t like the attention. I want it to stop. Faint voices call my name I’m the background. They get quieter and quieter until I don’t hear them anymore. The world goes blank, and that’s the last thing I remember.”

This introductory paragraph also does a good job of drawing the reader in. After reading this introduction, we’re left with a lot of similar questions.

Who is the narrator of the story? Why is the world around them metamorphosing? Are they okay? What happened to them at the end?

These are all questions that we will hopefully get answers to if we keep reading.

That’s one way to get your reader’s attention. Start with a story that will have them on the edge of their seat. Remember, what’s the point of writing a whole essay that the reader doesn’t want to keep reading? There is none.

Let’s take a minute to stop here and draft an introduction. Remember to make sure that it has the reader questioning. An introduction that doesn’t leave the reader thirsty and seeking more answers probably isn’t the best one.

Step 3: Writing the Body

Now that you’ve written your introductory paragraph, it’s time to move onto the body of the essay. In these paragraphs, we want to explain what we spoke about in the introduction.

Perhaps for the first example we looked at above, the narrator is a medical assistant in the emergency department. They could lead off of the introduction with a statement like:

“This was my very first experience in the emergency department as a medical assistant. And it is one I’ll never forget. Fred passed away that day, but life in the emergency room continued. I continued to trail behind the physician; documenting notes, taking vitals, and most importantly, observing his work.” 

See how we are given answers to our questions in this short body paragraph? The writer does a good job here of tying what they described in the introduction into what they’ll be talking about in the rest of the essay, which we can guess will be their experiences as a medical assistant.

That’s exactly what these body paragraphs should do. Take what you described in the introduction and tie it into your topic. Think of the introductory paragraph as a teaser of sorts.

All you’re doing here is drawing the reader in and capturing their attention. The body is where the real substance is.

Let’s look at an example of a body paragraph suitable for the second example we gave earlier. 

“The next thing I remember is being in the nurse’s office. She let out a surprised gasp as my eyes barely opened. I swallowed. ‘What happened?’ I managed to groan. The nurse took a deep sigh. ‘It’s the football,’ she said. ‘It’s too much for you.’ This only made me want to keep playing. My mom, my dad, my friends, and many others tried to stop me after this incident. They told me I wasn’t  built for it: that I wasn’t strong enough. But that didn’t stop me.”

In this example we can see that the author electively ties his introductory paragraph into the rest of his essay, which we can tell will be about his love for football. 

Just like the authors of these two examples, it’s important that you don’t have an out of place introduction with no ties to your topic. Like any good essay, the topic should flow smoothly from one paragraph to the next.

Use the body paragraphs to tell the reader more about you, whether it’s about your dedication to the emergency department or your love for football.

This will probably be the most time-consuming part of actually writing your essay. Make sure you give yourself enough time to do this. Even if it’s just one paragraph every one or two days, give this section some thought.

Think, write, and then re-write. Ideally, you should have one or two paragraphs in the body with some solid content. Be descriptive, but don’t extend your essay TOO long. The worst impression you can make on your reader is one of boredom.

Step 4: Conclusion 

Now comes the conclusion. What was the point of writing the essay or telling the story you just did? We can tell the reader here.

The concluding paragraph should really hone in on what you want the admissions committee to know about you. Here’s your chance to tell them why your story matters: how it has impacted who you are as a person and what you stand for today.

Let’s look at the emergency department student. Here’s an example of what they might say in their conclusion:

“Every day I met hundreds of patients like Fred. I got to know patients with terminal illnesses, I comforted patients who had no other family, and I held patients’ hands as they breathed their last breath. It was in that same room—the same room in which Fred passed—that I realized the emergency room is where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. After some reflection, I now realize I want to dedicate my life to helping those like Fred. I want to be the one to give patients advice, to give them hope, and to give them support when there’s nobody else available to do so. I see my future as an emergency physician: a future that I will someday pursue.”

The author of this essay is trying to communicate one main point to the admissions committee: their hopes to be a future physician. Through the concluding paragraph, they tie in both the introductory and body paragraphs to make a statement about themselves.

They do a pretty good job, in fact, of conveying themselves as a passionate, determined, and caring student. These are all qualities that an admissions committee would love to have at their school.

This general rule of using the concluding paragraph to communicate character and growth to the admissions committee can be applied to any topic, really!

Let’s look at what the second student (the football player) might write for a conclusion. 

“Through the highs and lows of high school, football transformed itself into my best companion. I often look back on that one period, when everyone in my life was discouraging me from playing, and question what would have happened if I had given up. I wonder how my life would’ve been different. Whether it was early-morning drills on the field, late-night gatherings with the team, or just deep pep talks from my coach, football is something I can’t live without. I learned that only recently.”

This essay conclusion also does its job of driving home the point that the author was trying to make all along: his love for football. Through the thoughtful wording and language, he is able to sell himself to the admissions committee as a mature, driven, talented, and committed student. What college wouldn’t want such a student on their campus?

Now it’s time to write yours. Take a moment to really think about what qualities you want the admissions committee to notice in you.

If you’ve always been a super driven student, tell them that! If you are described by all your friends as compassionate and caring, make sure the admissions committee knows that! If you’ve been completely committed to one thing your entire four years of high school, make sure the admissions committee gets that.

Remember, this is the last real paragraph that you get to make a lasting impact on the admissions committee. Think from their perspective about why they would want YOU out of thousands of other applicants on their campus. Make sure you get that star quality across, because this might be your last chance to do so.

One final piece of advice about the concluding paragraph: it’s always best to stick by the general rule “show, not tell.” You might have heard this phrase thrown around and have maybe even been told to implement it in your writing before.

If you’re still a little confused as to what it means, here’s an example to help.

Telling the admissions committee that you are a dedicated student would look something like this:

“I am a dedicated student, who puts utmost effort into everything that I do. That is what got me on to the junior varsity basketball team.”

Pretty solid end to an essay, right? You’ve told the admissions committee that you’re a dedicated student. That’s what they’re looking for, right? A job well done?

Well, maybe. There’s a more effective way to conclude this essay that will still allow the author to SHOW the readers that they are a dedicated student. This way is much more effective than the first. Let’s take a look at an example:

“And that’s why, through the 365 days of the year, I never stopped trying. I woke up in the morning and practiced on the court. I spent my evenings at the gym, lifting weights. I lay in bed at night, reciting all the drills in my head. It was as if my life was a broken record, repeating itself day by day. But as the lore has it, all hard work pays off. As a student on the Varsity basketball team 4 years later, I won’t once say that I regret it. Not once do I wish I could choose a different–or easier–path. As they say, practice truly does make perfect. I am a living example of that.”

Wow! That made a huge difference, didn’t it? In both the above paragraphs, the author is communicating to us that he is a dedicated student. In both the paragraphs, the admissions committee will have the same exact takeaway: the writer is dedicated.

What’s the difference, then? Well, in the first, the student is TELLING us that he is a dedicated person. In the second he is SHOWING us. And it makes a world of difference, as you can see. 

Step 5: Extensions

Alas, we come to the final paragraph of your college essay: the extension paragraph. If your high school English teachers taught you anything like mine, you were told that the concluding paragraph is the last: that it closes out the essay and leaves the reader with some final thoughts.

A good college essay is structured a little bit differently. How? Well, usually, in your college essay, you want to say something specific about the school you’re applying to: a few lines that show the admissions committee that you’ve done your research about their school and aren’t just applying for the name prestige or because your best friend told you to.

In other words, you should use the extension paragraph to tie everything you just talked about in the intro, body, and concluding paragraphs into why you want to go specifically to that school. 

An important factor (that’s only becoming more important in the college decisions process) that dictates whether you get accepted into a school or not is fit. The admissions committee is not only looking to decide whether or not they want you at the school, but they’re also looking to figure out whether you want yourself there.

Realistically, college admissions officers know you’ve applied to other schools. They want students who see that school as their number one choice. They want students who will attend that school over any of the other schools they applied to.

The strategy here is simple. Show the college that you’ve done your research about the school and that you have a vision for yourself there.

Mention some student organizations, clubs, or events that you see yourself participating in at school X, and tie those organizations, clubs, or events into the content of the rest of your essay.

It may sound difficult at first, but it’s easy once you’ve done your preliminary research!

Let’s look at what the pre-med applicant may write in this section of the essay:

“College X is where I see myself starting this long, but rewarding pathway to medicine. Taking classes like class Z with Dr.Y will allow me to begin exploring my passion for micromedicine, and learning about the techniques that I too will someday use in my physician’s practice. I also would like to meet students with similar interests as me in organizations like X, which will allow me to be inspired by the ideas and innovations of others. As a world-class research facility, I also hope that college X will give me the scientific inquiry skills that I will someday use in my own practice. Through an intellectual, collaborative, and research-driven environment, I am sure that College X is the place for me to jump-start my career in medicine.”

See how this student put together everything they talked about in her essay and matched it to opportunities that they found on the campus? This shows the admissions committee that they have a solid reason for wanting to come there. They know what they’re talking about, and it shows in the essay. 

A shorter but just as effective version of the extension paragraph written by the football player is given below:

“With a world class football team, I’ve had my eye set on college X since the day I stepped back into the locker room after my accident. From the supportive coaches to the amazing camaraderie between teammates to the general culture school X has built around sports, I see myself thriving at college X for the next four years.”

Once again, this student shows the college that he has a solid reason for wanting to attend the university he is applying to. More than the prestige or name brand, he’s attracted to the opportunities that the college will provide him with. And that’s what colleges want to see.

Step 6: Proofread, proofread, PROOFREAD!

Finally, we’ve arrived at the end of the essay. Hopefully, you now have a solid draft that you are proud of. 

But, wait! We’re not done yet. Actually, not even close. It turns out one of the most important steps of the essay awaits us ahead.

Besides the brainstorming part, this is probably the most important part of the entire process of writing the college essay. As in any essay, you must proofread.

As a general rule of thumb, read over your own essay first, at least twenty times before showing it to other people. This first round of proofreading mainly acts as a general safety net to catch any grammar errors, spelling mistakes, or redundant phrases that seem to have slipped into your essay.

Each time you read through, make sure to read slowly and read as if you are a neutral third party audience who is reading the essay for the first time. This makes you much more likely to catch mistakes and/or errors in phrasing.

Also make sure that wherever you can, you’re showing, not telling . You would be surprised at how big of a difference that can make in the final results.

Now, we can move on to running the essay by other people. Have parents, teachers, other students, and even older alumni from the school you are applying to read over your essay. This is vital!

Often, since you’re the one who wrote the essay in its entirety, you become blind to the mistakes and errors in your writing. Reading over something so many times can make it harder to pick out specific sections that need improvement in your writing.

By showing it to people you trust, you’re getting multiple opinions on what can be changed, tweaked, or even completely omitted from your essay. The more opinions you can get, the better.

Once you’ve had at least 5 to 10 people read over your essay, congrats! You’re done with the most daunting part of the college application. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back, and turn your application in with confidence.

Author: Anisha Holla

Anisha Holla graduated as the valedictorian of her high school, and has since been named a National Merit Scholar, a National AP Scholar and a Coca-Cola Scholar. She is currently one of 20 Eugene McDermott Scholars at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she studies Psychology on the pre-med track. She loves to play her piano, flute and guitar; and one of her favorite hobbies is trying out new food places in the area. Holla is fluent in Spanish, Hindi and Kannada, and newly conversational in Mandarin. After graduation, she plans to either pursue a career in psychiatry or an MBA .

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How to Write College Application Essays

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

College Application Essay Fundamentals 

How to prepare to write your essay , how to approach different essay types, how to structure your essay , how to revise your essay, how to find essay writing help , resources for teaching students how to write a college essay, additional resources (further reading).

Of all the materials in a college application, the essay provides the greatest opportunity for you to set yourself apart. Unlike the transcript or resume, the essay is creative and expressive; in it, you can show the admissions counselors who you are and what you can do (that is, how well you can write!). A good application essay should have a memorable main idea, a cohesive structure, and a strong introduction and conclusion. Although essay topics can vary by college, the most common prompts deal with personal experiences and aspirations for the future. This guide   contains a diverse set of resources to help you orient yourself to the college application essay and, ultimately, to write the most competitive essay possible. 

The college application essay is a requirement for admission to almost all institutions of higher learning. Though in some ways it resembles essays you've written in class or on standardized tests, in other ways it's a unique writing exercises with its own particular requirements. Use the resources below to help you understand how the essay should be structured and what kind of content to include. 

"How Long Should College Application Essays Be?" (Learn.org)

This webpage guides you through some basic tips on writing the college essay—including essay length, sticking to the prompt, and maintaining an original tone. 

"College Application Essay" (College Board)

This webpage from the College Board discusses the different types of application essays, what length you should aim for, and most importantly, why colleges value this aspect of the application so much. 

"College Essays, College Applications" (College Board) 

The College Board's website is a great resource for any student looking to apply to college. This webpage contains several links to helpful resources, including sample essays and genuine student interviews. 

"Timeline for College Applications" (College Essay Guy)

This colorful, one-page guide from a college application specialist offers an illustrated timeline for high school students looking to apply for college. 

Before putting your ideas down on paper, it's important to conceptualize your essay, to craft strategically your tone and style, and,  crucially, to choose a topic that suits you and the school to which you're applying. The resources in this section include writing tips, lists of common mistakes you should avoid, and guides dedicated to the college application essay.

How to Plan Your Essay

"3 Common College Essay Mistakes to Avoid" (CNBC)  

This article from CNBC broadly outlines the most common mistakes students make when writing their college application essays. Although these mistakes may seem obvious, even the most experienced writers can fall into these common traps.

"7 Effective Application Tips" (Peterson's)

This article from Peterson's (a company providing academic materials for test prep, application help, and more) lists seven pieces of advice designed to make your writing pop. 

"The Secret to Show, Don't Tell" ( The Write Practice Blog)  

You've heard it before: show, don't tell. This is a great writing tip, but how do you pull it off? Here, the writing blog  The Write Practice  outlines how you can make your writing more descriptive and effective. 

"Passive Voice" (University of North Carolina)  

Avoiding passive construction is a subtle yet effective way to upgrade any piece of writing. Check out this webpage from a university writing center for some tips on recognizing and avoiding passive voice. 

"Using Appropriate Words in an Academic Essay" (National University of Singapore)

There are many ways to upgrade your vocabulary. Often, words can be replaced with more impressive substitutes, phrases can be shortened or lengthened depending on context, and transitions can be used for a smoother flow. The link above expands on these strategies and offers several others. 

How to Brainstorm Topic Ideas

"Bad College Essays: 10 Mistakes to Avoid" (PrepScholar)

This article from a well-known tutoring service and test prep program describes what to avoid when writing your essay. Essays that are too graphic, too personal, or too overconfident are all problematic, and this article explains why. 

"5 Tricks for Choosing Your College Essay Topic" (CollegeXpress)

Lost on how to choose a topic? This webpage from CollegeXpress outlines five sources of inspiration you can mine for ideas as you're getting started.

"The College Admission Essay: Finding a Topic" (The Choice Blog)

This article from New York Times  blog The Choice  breaks down three essential questions to ask yourself when choosing a topic for your college essay. 

"COLLEGE ESSAY GUIDE: Choosing a Prompt for the Common Application" (YouTube)

In this five-minute video, a Yale student discusses how to choose a college essay prompt and how to approach the essay writing process. His channel is filled with original videos on the college application process. 

"Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises" ( CollegeVine Blog)

Approaching the Common App essay prompts can be difficult. This blog post explains several tactics you can use to narrow down your options, such as writing down a list of your greatest convictions.

"Using First Person in an Academic Essay: When Is It Okay?" (WritingCommons.org)

Most high school students are told to avoid using the first person point of view; this can be confusing when writing college essays, which typically ask what  you  think. This article breaks down when (and why) it's acceptable to write in the first person. 

Although all college essays serve the same purpose - articulating why you should get into a college - they come in different kinds. While topics on the Common Application are relatively consistent from year to year, personal statements and so-called "supplemental essays" vary by institution. Each of these essays requires a slightly different approach. The resources in this section will prepare you to answer the various types of essay prompts you're likely to encounter. 

Common Application Essays

CommonApp.org

The Common Application's official website is the best place to start getting acquainted with the service to which the majority of US colleges and universities now subscribe - a service which allows you to streamline your application process and minimize duplication of materials.

"What's App-enning" Blog (Common App)  

The Common App runs a blog with a wealth of information on common application-related news, including periodic updates on common application essay prompts for each application cycle. You can practice brainstorming with old prompts, or even start preparing your application by looking at this year's prompts.

125 College Essay Examples (PrepScholar Blog)

Here, PrepScholar provides a variety of Common App essays that got their respective applicants into their desired schools. Along with the body text of the essays, the website provides analysis on  what  makes the essays so great. 

A Few Essays That Worked (And a Few That Didn't) (NYTimes Blog)

This article analyzes unsuccessful essays, illuminating the ways in which they fell short. Although you should exercise caution and adjust your approach to your specific school, it's always good to pick up on general things to avoid. 

Personal Statements

What Is a Personal Statement? (PrepScholar Blog)

Although personal statements and Common App essays are similar, not all personal statement essays are administered through the Common App. This article from PrepScholar's blog will provide you with everything you need to know about writing a personal statement.

Examples of Successful Statements (Purdue OWL)

The Purdue OWL online writing lab collate links on this page to several successful personal statement. It can be useful to read successful statements and to consider how and why the statements made an impact on their readers. 

Past Threads on Advice for Writing Your College Essay (Reddit Post)

Although not about the personal statement  per se , this Reddit post has links to several past threads that may be of use to any prospective college applicant. 

What 10 Things Should Your Personal Statement Include? (Which University UK)  

This site outlines ten things to consider when writing a personal statement, including outlining what you will bring to the course, not what the course will bring to you. 

Supplemental Essays

How to Write Great Supplemental College Essays (IvyWise Newsletter)

Supplemental essays can often be challenging, asking a range of questions from the mundane to the oddly specific. This article from college application site IvyWise will break down example prompts to make them more approachable. 

Write Your Supplemental Essays (College Essay Guy)

Looking for a comprehensive guide to supplemental essays? Look no further than this page provided by the "College Essay Guy," who breaks down how to write supplemental essays that ask different kinds of questions. 

An Awesome Guide to the UChicago Supplement (Dyad)

Dyad, a college mentoring service, walks you through how to approach UChicago's supplemental essay question. Although the article is specific to UChicago, it contains general tips that are helpful to any college applicant. 

Reading My Yale Supplement Essay (YouTube)

Josh Beasley is back in this short YouTube video, where he reads the supplemental essay that got him into Yale and extrapolates advice for current and prospective applicants. 

A college application essay (like any academic essay) should have an introduction, a conclusion, and body paragraphs. Additionally, it should have overall coherence (that is, it should make a point) and cohesion (that is, it should flow well from paragraph to paragraph). We've collected the most relevant resources here to help you structure your college essay correctly and efficiently. 

How to Make Your Essay Stand Out 

College Essays That Stand Out From the Crowd (NYTimes)

This NYTimes article includes links to several recent essays that caught the eyes of the admissions readers by taking risks. You can even listen to an essay being read aloud by a current Princeton student.

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays (Gen / Kelly Tanabe)  

If you have some time on your hands, this hefty PDF document contains 50 essays from successful Ivy League applicants. After reading these essays, consider what they have in common and how they might be a model for your own essay.

Make Your Application Essay Stand Out (CampusExplorer.com)

In this article from CampusExplorer, you'll find general tips on how to make your essay more appealing to the admissions readers. The writers include general writing tips as well as more targeted advice for the tone and audience of the application essay.

How to Write a College Application Essay that Stands Out (Boston University)

This short video from BU's own admissions department touches briefly on what impresses their admissions readers, including risk-taking, memorable stories, and honesty. 

Essay Structure (Monash University)

This chart from Monash University visually demonstrates how your content should be organized in order to keep your argument or story on track. 

How to Write an Introduction

How to Start a Personal Statement: The Killer Opening (Which University UK)  

Any good introduction both forecasts what your essay will be about and catches the reader's attention. This page will give you some helpful advice on starting your essay with a bang. 

How to Start a College Essay Perfectly (PrepScholar Blog)

This article from PrepScholar shows you how to "hook" your reader at the start of your application essay with colorful language, a vivid story, and an "insightful pivot" to your main point.

Let Me Introduce Myself (Stanford University)

This article from Stanford U's alumni page details the first-line openings of the essays for some current Stanford undergrads. 

Five Ways to NOT Start Your College Application Essays (PowerScore)

In this article, you'll learn five techniques to avoid, as they typically land a college application essay in the "reject" pile; these include beginning with dictionary definitions or famous quotations. 

How to Write a Conclusion 

Ending the Essay: Conclusions (Harvard University)

Harvard's writing center suggests bringing closure to your essay (that is, wrapping up your argument) while still expanding outward to broader applications or insights in your final paragraph.

Concluding Paragraph (Easybib)  

Although you may have used Easybib to make a bibliography before, did you know they have many resources on how to write a good essay? Check out this page for succinct advice on what your conclusion should entail. 

5 Ways to Powerfully End Your College Essay (College Greenlight)

This blog post instructs you to end with action (that is, a story or anecdote) rather than summary, giving you five ways to do this effectively, including addressing the college directly.

How to Write the Best Conclusion for a College Application Essay and Supplement (Koppelman Group)

The Koppelman Group, a college application consulting firm, warns you, above all, not to end "in conclusion" or "to conclude." They also provide targeted advice for the Common App and Supplement essays, respectively. 

No essay is perfect in its first-draft form; college application essays in particular are limited by word counts that can be difficult to meet. Once you've communicated your ideas, you'll want to edit your essay in order to make sure it's the best it can be. You'll also need to cut or add words to make sure it's within the specifications set by the institution. The resources in this section include tips and tricks for revising your college application essay. 

3 Ways to Increase Word Count (WikiHow)

Complete with illustrations, this WikiHow page outlines several ways you might go about substantively expanding your essay. These tips include clarifying points, reworking your introduction and conclusion, adding new viewpoints and examples, and connecting loose threads. 

Admissions 101: What an Essay Word Limit Really Means (Veritas Prep) 

In this blog post, Veritas Prep's college preparation tutors assure you that being a little over or under the limit is acceptable, recommending ways you can think about the word limit's purpose.

College Essay Word Limit - Going Under? (College Confidential) 

In this College Confidential discussion forum, students discuss the possible ramifications of writing under the word limit for a college essay. 

How to Increase Your Essay Word Count (WordCounter)

This article from WordCounter outlines different ways you might go about meeting word count, including addressing different viewpoints, adding examples, and clarifying statements. 

Hitting the Target Word Count in Your College Admissions Essay (Dummies.com)

This article details how to hit the target word count. Scroll down to the middle of the article for advice on where you should cut words from to meet word count. 

Some Tricks to Reduce Word Count (EastAsiaStudent.net)

This article recommends simplifying your style, deleting adverbs, deleting prepositions, and revisiting connectives and adjectives to reduce word count. 

Advice on Whittling Your Admissions Essay (NYTimes) 

In this New York Times article, Andrew Gelb discusses how to go about cutting down your admissions essay in order to meet the requisite word limit.

How to Shorten an Essay Without Ruining the Content (Quora) 

This Quora post from a concerned student yielded useful community responses on how to effectively shorten an essay without losing the original message. 

Feel like you've hit a wall revising your essay on your own? You're not alone, and there are plentiful resources on the web through which you can connect with fellow college applicants and/or professional tutors. The links in this section will take you to free services for improving your college application essay, as well as two of the top paid writing tutor services.

College Confidential Forums 

College Confidential is a free, public forum in which you can post your essay and receive feedback from current college students, current college applicants, and even teachers or other experienced users. 

/r/CollegeEssays (Reddit)

This subreddit is a great place to look for crowdsourced help on your essay, ask questions about college essays, or even find a private tutor. 

Essayforum.com

Essayforum.com provides another platform for students to share their application essays. Although this link takes you to the site's forum for applicants to undergraduate degree programs, you can submit and review essays in other categories as well.  Varsity Tutors

Varisty Tutors offers tutoring services from freelance tutors based on location. Prices and services vary, but their site is easy to use and there are many tutors available to choose from.

Princeton Review

Princeton Review, one of the largest providers of college preparation tutoring (ranging from standardized test preparation to essay help) offers online essay tutoring services with a free trial period. 

Using in-class time to prepare your students to write college application essays is, of course, rewarding, but can also be challenging. If you're a teacher looking to incorporate the college essay into your curriculum but you're not sure where to start, take a look at the useful resources below.

TeachersPayTeachers

College Essay Writing

This product includes material for more than one full lesson plan, including powerpoint presentations, assessments, and homework on the topic of college essays. 

Narrative Writing Ideas and Prompts

Appealing to students 9th grade and up, this product includes lesson plans, handouts, and homework for developing narrative writing for the college essay process. 

College Essay: Comprehensive 7-Session Workshop Series

This PDF includes entire courses, manuals, and handouts designed to teach students the ins and outs of the college essay process, either in an individual or group setting. 

College Essay Revision Forms & Rubrics

These PDFs provide students with visual organizers and rubrics to assess their own writing and learn how to become better college essay writers. 

Free Resources

Teaching the College Essay (Edutopia) 

Teaching your students about writing the college essay can be incredibly intimidating -- as a teacher, how should you approach the process? This article from Edutopia outlines how to go about introducing the college essay to your students. 

Essay Lesson Plan Ideas for College Applications (EssayHell)

If you're a teacher looking for a concrete lesson plan on college essays, this guide recommends using the first day to discuss the importance of the essay, the second day for brainstorming, and so on. Click on the link above to examine their full guide. 

Help Your Students Write a Killer College Essay (EdWeek Blog)

This blog post goes over various techniques designed to help your students choose an appropriate topic and write their essay with passion. 

The Biggest College Essay Mistakes & How to Fix Them (Talks With Teachers)

Looking to help your students avoid the minefield of mistakes in the college essay field? Check out this post from Talks With Teachers, a journal that shares "inspiring ideas for English teachers." 

Curious to read more about college application essays, or to see fun and unusual examples of what students have written? The articles, blog posts, and books in this section are a good place to start surveying the field.

One Over-the-Top Admissions Essay (Huffington Post)

This piece from the Huffington Post talks about a humorous response to a Stanford supplemental essay topic, the so-called "letter to my future roommate."

College & University - Statistics and Facts (Statista.com) 

In the process of writing your college essay, you may find yourself wondering who exactly goes to college, how many colleges there are in the United States, etc. This site gives the up-to-date statistics for various US demographics, both in aggregate and by university, as well as other information.

Who Made That College Application? (NYTimes)

This piece from the NYTimes outlines the history of the college essay from its origins in the 1800s, to the first "modern" college application, produced by Columbia University in 1919, to the present.  

How They Got Into Harvard (Staff of the Harvard Crimson)

This highly-rated collection of successful Harvard application essays, available on Amazon, is both an entertaining read and an instructive resource for anyone looking for exemplary essays to use as models. 

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College Application Personal Statement – Chapter 5: The Closing Paragraph

Over and over in our chapters up to this point, we’ve stated explicitly that your personal statement must convey qualities that reveal your character to the admissions reader. It’s not coincidental that the closing sentences of your personal statement essay should also leave the reader with a final burnished image. In the best case, you tie together your narrative with mature reflection. Therein lies the impact of your writing.

How to End a Personal Statement for a College Application Essay

This is the moment where you may sit back with your draft and ask yourself why you’ve chosen your specific topic. What’s motivating you? Where does an experience leave you now? From your answers, you can sketch your final paragraph. Don’t avoid ambivalence; life doesn’t provide easy answers, so be willing to close your essay on a reflective note that shows you have an eye on the future – with all its questions and possibilities. Let’s consider some examples.

One student wrote about a first-ever drive across several state lines in a single day. He concludes his essay this way:

And so on a Sunday morning I found myself embarking on a journey; on a Sunday afternoon I found myself arriving. It was a Kerouac affair in many ways, and while I wasn’t on the road in the same free-spirited sense that he was, I looked ahead and knew, as Robert Frost wrote, that there are miles to go before I sleep, and above all, that I will always try to keep moving.

By evoking a “beat generation” writer and a renowned poet, both of whom had incisive ways of describing journeys, this student underscores his own unending voyage.

In the following excerpt, the student uses the final paragraph to describe a dose of realism. Despite (or perhaps because of) his understanding of what the years immediately ahead hold for him through education, he’s not deflated by the prospect of not following a current dream. So, reality and dream converge within the confines of his bedroom/studio:

The path I was choosing was taking me to college, not to a record deal in L.A. Within the contours of this realization, I recognized the conclusion of my childhood. Up on the horizon, I caught the first glimpse of my adult life. Still, even now, when the mood is right and no one is home, I sling my axe over my shoulder and crank the amplifier up to 11. With the lights low, I strike the sexiest of poses and gaze a dead stare into the mirror. I let the first chord ring. Despite everything, I am Bryan, Rock Star.

Remember how detail can enrich an essay? Life’s intricacies are worthy of written expression; they surround us in every moment, down to the smallest mote of dust. One student decided to reflect on her grandmother’s cat that ate a beautiful hummingbird. Everything happened on a small timescale, in a small dimension. But the event was worthy of the student’s reflection this way:

Reflecting on this encounter, which seemed horrifying at the time, I awakened to a purpose of life: to take advantage of the time that is given me and utilize it to the best of my abilities. I began to more avidly pursue my long-term goals with the understanding that I may never see them achieved, but that simply striving to achieve them could be as rewarding as actually accomplishing them. That hummingbird helped me to resolve, even as a young girl, that no matter what happens tomorrow, my dreams and goals give purpose to my life today.

We trust that you see in this sample how “everyday” events can spark serious thinking. In this case, the specific incident blossomed into a personal view of the broad possibilities of “tomorrow.”

Self-reflection. Not the glossy, ready-for-anything language of a teenager trying to impress a reader with nothing but young optimism, but rather careful weighing of that place between light and dark, between hope and a little despair. We recall a student who wrote about a wilderness therapy program that changed his life. The moment itself could have been a banal one – lighting a campfire “from scratch” – for the very first time. She summed it up this way in her personal statement for the Common Application:

My feelings at this moment could not be articulated by words alone. It was the feeling of that first bike ride without the training wheels; that feeling you get when you finish organizing your room and you take a step back and marvel at that uncanny event; the way I felt when I was a kid building Lego sets, showing my masterpieces to all my friends. I had finally completed something! And that was just the beginning. College will be the next step to complete.

The images of the bike ride and Lego bricks certainly resonate. The student asserts in her final words that college will be another kind of completion.

I contend that it’s with imagination - thinking about infinity and solving Rubik’s Cubes - that I further my passion and obsession with problems. I don’t just solve problems; I search for the next ones, the intractable, the impossible. Cultivating my love of problems is how I solve problems. Sure, I can crack Ernö’s code in a few seconds, but his glowing, multicolored influence will remain with me for a lifetime. Here. You try.

Nice invitation. Rubik and his intractable cube lead us, somehow, to Rodin’s famous bronze of the “Thinker” that sits in a Paris museum garden. Look how the image is incorporated into these closing words:

Through debate, I learned the particular power of doubt; it produced that awareness with which I now approach the world. What seems like a right answer may not necessarily be so – rather just a shade of gray. I’ve never been fond of the label ‘critical thinker,’ because at heart I consider it a strange redundancy; yet, for lack of a better word, that phrase describes my metamorphosis. Imagine, if you will, Rodin’s masterpiece come alive, crouched over, waging a war of ideas between his ears. 

The reflection includes a “shade of gray.” This student conveys an understanding of those in-between places in life.

The impact of your words will be underscored via colors, smells, touch – even taste. These all can have a place in your personal statement and bring insightful closure to your thoughts. Never fear being personal, because that’s where your impact lies.

In our next college application blog post, we turn our attention to the supplemental essays that many colleges require . One of the more common prompts is especially challenging and used by quite a few institutions.

Need help with your final paragraph? For personalized help with this or any other aspect of your college application essay, you can take advantage of our $99 special by contacting the JRA Educational Consulting Learning Center nearest you.

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As an active member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, and the Secondary School Admission Test Board, Jason Robinovitz is part of a professional network of admission directors, educators, psychologists and other educational consultants. Additionally, Jason is a founding member of the National Test Prep Association, the first non-profit industry group for test prep professional nationwide.

Present a Consistent Picture of Yourself in Your College Applications

College application personal statement – writing that great opening line.

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How to Write a Winning College Application Essay

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Ah, college application essays – the necessary evil of college-bound high school seniors everywhere. If you’ve just finished your junior year of high school, then these may very well be in your near future.

Since Thomas and Martin have been doing a series of podcast episodes about how to get into college , I thought it would be appropriate to write up an article about how to write a college application essay – one that stands out and that makes a great impression .

Maybe you’re thinking,

“Crap, how do I even write this kind of essay?”

Don’t worry. I was in your same position four years ago, and I learned a lot through both my own college application process and through my subsequent years as an English major who wields commas like shurikens.

Today I’ll share some of that knowledge and teach you how you can craft an essay that really bolsters your overall application.

Want to listen to an audio narration of this article? Just click play below:

Additionally, you’ll find this narration included in the College Info Geek Podcast feed . If you haven’t already, you may want to subscribe!

Why Your College Essay Matters

When you’re juggling transcripts, forms, dates, and everything else, it’s easy to brush off the college application essay as “just another part of the application.”

However, while it’s true that the essay isn’t the only thing that matters to college admissions officers, a great essay can actually compensate for less than stellar grades. On the flip side, a  bad essay  can overshadow all of your other accomplishments.

In general, it’s the only part of the application where you have the opportunity to show the college who you really  are. Most of the other parts of the application are just lists and statistics: GPA, courses taken, a list of extracurriculars, maybe some work or volunteer experience. This stuff matters… but it doesn’t make you special.

This is especially important to note if you’re aiming to attend a very competitive school – everyone applying is going to have a high GPA, a laundry list of advanced classes, and will have been president of every student organization since the dawn of mankind. Also, some of them will secretly be robots.

So treat a college application essay as a tool for standing out in ways the robots can’t. It’s a lot like the cover letter you write when applying for a job – it’s your chance to reveal the person behind the accomplishments and statistics.

Even if you’re only applying to a couple schools that you know you can get into, it will still serve you well to write a compelling admissions essay. Standing out from everyone else could put you in the running for additional scholarships and will also simply make a good impression , which never hurts.

How to Pick the Right Essay Topic

It’s impossible to write an article covering every possible essay prompt you could encounter in the college application process. Just within the U.S., the types of questions vary somewhat among different schools – to say nothing of what you might encounter at schools in other countries.

There are some general commonalities, though. For some good examples, here are the five questions from this year’s Common Application  (a kind of “master application” accepted by many U.S. colleges and universities):

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
• Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
• Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

As you can see, these questions are all very open-ended. And they’re supposed to be. Colleges want to give you as much freedom as possible to show them who you are. The prompts are just supposed to be starting points.

That said, you can set yourself up for success from the start by choosing a topic that lets you show your strengths. Don’t pick a prompt just because you think answering it will make you sound “impressive.” This quote by former Stanford University Dean of Admissions Robin Mamlet focuses on course selection, but it applies perfectly to essays as well:

“Colleges want to see a student who studies French because he adores French, not a student who studies Chinese because she’s been told it looks better to an admissions office.”

Trust me, colleges don’t care which question you answer. It’s how you answer it that matters.

Whatever application process you’re going through, you’ll likely have a choice of several questions. Don’t get overwhelmed trying to pick the right one. My suggestion is to just read through them and narrow down to one or two that really speak to you.

From there, get out a piece of paper and start brainstorming ideas for each. At this point, nothing is off the table. Put down anything you can think of that might work as an essay. The more ideas, the better, as you often find your best ideas only after getting the obvious ones out of the way .

What NOT to Write About

Speaking of obvious ideas, the biggest piece of advice I can give about writing college essays is this: avoid the obvious. There are so many ways to succeed at these essays, so long as you keep your approach interesting. And the best way to be interesting is to avoid boring, overused answers that admissions officers will have read literally thousands of times.

Here are a few things to avoid writing about:

• That time you really “grew as a person.”
• How you met your current boyfriend or girlfriend.
• Anything that comes across as narcissistic.
• Anything…creepy. I’m not sure how else to put this, but there are some things best left unshared in your college app.
• Anything full of superlatives (it was the best day of my life, it was the most awesom e thing I’ve ever done, etc.)
• Most of all, anything trite.

Really, the success of your essay will come down not to what you write about , but how. In general, it’s much easier to stand out on the basis of how you approach your topic than what you say.

For the most part, it’s unlikely that you’ve experienced anything extremely uncommon in the relatively short amount of time you’ve been a human. Most high school students lead lives that don’t deviate too far from the norm – except that one quiet guy in your class who sits next to the window near the back. He’s almost certainly either a genius mech pilot or the subject of some prophecy in an alternate dimension that he’ll be transported to.

Now, it’s certainly  possible  that you happen to be that guy, and I definitely encourage you to highlight any uncommon experience you’ve had on your essay. For instance, if you’ve climbed Mt. Everest or visited space or helped cure a rare disease, then yeah, you should probably mention that at some point.

However, most people don’t have such novel experiences. And that’s just fine. Don’t think that your life is too “boring” to provide material for a great essay.  With the right approach, you can still write an essay that wows.

What the Heck Should I Write About?

Okay, so we’ve covered what to avoid. But what in the world should you talk about?

As I mentioned before, it’s best to start with brainstorming . Once you’ve followed the process I described and have a list of, say, 10-15 topics, I recommend doing a bit of free writing for each.

If you’ve never done it before, free writing is just taking a topic and writing anything that comes into your head. Just take a blank document or sheet of paper, set a timer for 10-15 minutes, and start writing.

The point of this exercise is twofold:

• It helps you get all the obvious stuff out of your head first. When you begin to write an essay, it’s normal to fall back on clichés. That’s okay to start – it gets you in the flow of writing. But we want to get that stuff out of the way as quickly as possible so we can move on to the not so obvious.
• When free writing about a topic, you may stumble onto an idea even better than your original. For instance, you might start by thinking you’re writing an essay about how marching band taught you the value of hard work…only to realize halfway through writing it that what it really taught you was the importance of committing yourself wholeheartedly to a goal and following through on it.

If you’re really stuck even coming up with topics to brainstorm and free write, here are some general categories of things to get you started:

• Sports you’ve played.
• Clubs you’ve belonged to (or, better yet, started).
• Organizations you’ve been a part of.
• Volunteer work you’ve done.
• Notable accomplishments (for instance, creating your own personal website or blog).
• Notable experiences (traveling to the North Pole, doing a homestay in another country, meeting the President).
• Notable abilities (fluency in multiple languages, wilderness survival skills, Iron Chef-level cooking abilities).

These are all jumping off points for the essay. They’ll get you started, but simply writing about these things alone isn’t enough. More work needs to be done in order to craft an essay that makes you truly  stand out. 

To do that, you’ll first want to avoid making some common mistakes.

How to Avoid the Biggest Essay-Writing Mistakes

The two biggest mistakes that most students make when writing a college app essay are:

• Being too vague.
• Focusing on  events instead of feelings.

Let’s look at both of these issues in more detail, and then cover some ways of fixing them.

Big Mistake #1: Being Too Vague

“Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.” –  Rhys Alexander

Vagueness isn’t a problem unique to admissions essays. It’s something all writers struggle with – including myself; I struggled with it while writing this very article.

So why do we have a tendency to write vaguely? I believe the main cause of the problem is that there’s a disconnect between what we know in our heads and what we put down on paper.

With all the knowledge you have of a topic, it can seem that a few simple sentences are enough to do it justice – but that’s rarely the case. You have to remember that the person reading your essay knows nothing about you , save for a few basic statistics.

Furthermore, they likely know nothing about the subject of your essay. Even if they do, they certainly don’t have the same knowledge and perspective that you have. To close this gap, you need to be as specific as possible.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve decided to write about your time in high school marching band; specifically, you’re recounting the first time your performed with the band in front of a crowd (I use this example because it’s something I’m personally familiar with).

Here’s what a first attempt at describing this might look like:

The first time I marched in front of a crowd, I was so nervous. We got into formation, took the field, and began to play. It was all a blur, and before I knew it, it was over. As I walked off the field after that first performance, I felt prouder than I ever had.

It’s not bad – it sets the scene and tells a story, and it even includes some emotional language. But it could be way more specific.

Here’s another version of the same idea, only this time it’s more focused and detailed:

The first time I marched in front of a crowd, I was so nervous that I could barely hold up my saxophone. As we stood there on the football field ready to begin, I looked up into the stands and noticed for the first time how huge the crowd was. So many eyes on me. What if I screwed up? Before I had time to think, though, I saw the drum major take the stand and give the signal. I brought my instrument to my lips and did everything just as we had rehearsed. I didn’t even have to think – I just knew what to do. The next five minutes were a blur. After the last note had faded, we turned in formation and marched off the field. Leaving the field that day was the first time I realized the power of devoting everything I had to a goal and following through.

See the difference? This second version isn’t going to win any awards, and it definitely needs more work, but the specificity is there. Note all the details. If the person reading this essay had no idea about marching band or music, this description would give them enough detail to empathize with the writer.

A good rule of thumb is this: write what you think is enough detail…and then write twice as much. The right amount is probably somewhere between the two.

Big Mistake #2: Events vs. Feelings

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

Now we’ve arrived at the second common mistake: describing events instead of feelings . Many admissions essays focus too much on what happened and not enough on how it made you feel and what you learned from it.

Remember, you’re not Sergeant Joe Friday writing up a police report. You’re not writing a newspaper article. And you’re certainly not telling your story just for the heck of it. You’re trying to show who you are and what you’re about.

To do this, you need to get away from simply summarizing events. For instance, let’s say you spent a summer during your high school years doing a homestay in another country while learning a new language .

When writing about an experience like this, it can be really easy to get wrapped up in all the cool things that happened. But you can’t forget to talk about what matters . You need to talk about what you learned, about how this experience changed you, and how it helped form who you are today.

Talking about your feelings and the lessons you’ve learned is hard. Especially in a way that doesn’t sound cliche. Once again, the key is to be specific .

Want some examples? John Hopkins University has a page full of essays that worked ; one in particular, entitled  “Breaking Into Cars” , showcases what the writer learned from his experiences well.

On a more technical note, the individual words you use can make or break your essay. This could be the subject of an entire blog post – which would probably put anyone who doesn’t share my interest in arcane things like subordinate clauses and intransitive verbs right to sleep. So, to keep this section short, here’s a quick list of words I think you should avoid:

These are just filler words that we lean on for convenience. To craft an outstanding essay you have to get past these overused descriptions.

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” – Dr. Seuss

To round this article off, here are a few additional pieces of advice for writing a successful admissions essay:

• Proofread, proofread, proofread. Sadly, one of the easiest ways to stand out is to have correct spelling and grammar. Don’t let stupid mistakes pull down the quality of your essay. Proofread this thing more than any essay you’ve ever written.
• Edit, edit, edit. After you’ve checked for mechanical errors, you need to go back through your essay and edit it. Look for things like consistency of tone, style, and form. Does the way the essay is organized make sense? What could be clearer? What do you need to add? What should you cut? If you need some help, check out this guide from Purdue.
• Get a second, third, and even fourth opinion. Once you’ve proofread and edited the essay till you’re sick of it, let a few people you trust look over it. Anyone who knows about writing will do. If they’re willing, get one of your English teachers to read it. These people will point out things you never would have noticed on your own.
• DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. Look, we all procrastinate. It’s part of human nature. But please, please, please do not not procrastinate on your admissions essay. Everything I’ve covered in this article matters only if you give yourself enough time. If you start the day before the application is due, all I can say is good luck.
• Relax. You can do this. The college application process is stressful, and the essay can seem like an insurmountable hurdle. But you can do it! You’re going to be fine.

I hope that after reading this post you feel a bit more confident in your ability to write your college admissions essay. It may feel scary and impossible, but with right approach (and enough time), you can write an essay that showcases your unique personality and impresses admissions officers.

What questions do you have about writing college admissions essays? If you’re already in college, do you have any advice for current high schoolers? Share your thoughts in the comments section below, or post about it in the College Info Geek Community .

Photo Credits: Featured Image by Klaas, Woman looking up by Tachina Lee, Untitled by *_Abhi_* ( CC BY 2.0 ), Red Pill/Blue Pill by tom_bullock ( CC BY 2.0 ), facepalm by Tim Green ( CC BY 2.0 ), pen and notebook

Sample College Admission Essay 1 with Feedback

Introduction.

We've discussed in a general sense what makes a good essay, but it's always helpful to look at specific examples and hear how admissions officers evaluated them. Included below is a sample essay. It's well-written and avoids the common admission essay pitfalls discussed in previous videos (listing off accomplishments like a resume, writing about someone else instead of making it personal, etc.), so it's not simple to know how an admissions officer will react. Read the essay, and then proceed to the follow-up video to hear from admissions.

Sample essay 1

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you (500 word limit).

A misplaced foot on the accelerator instead of the brakes made me the victim of someone’s careless mistake. Rushing through the dark streets of my hometown in an ambulance, I attempted to hold back my tears while two supportive Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) comforted me. Although I suffered a minor knee injury, the trauma of that accident still lingers.

Fast forward six years to the present. Now I am sitting in the back of the ambulance, a rookie EMT, with my purple gloves on, stethoscope around my neck, and a red medical bag in hand. I am also making sure we have the proper medical equipment stocked, including neck collars and long body boards. As I step out of the ambulance, a bitter breeze nips at my face. Shattered glass, two crushed car hoods, and traffic everywhere, the scene is put into perspective as I can finally see what is happening. I stop in my tracks. It is my accident all over again.

“Get the collars and boards, there is a possible back injury,” my partner whispers to me. I fetch the items, still attempting to deal with my conflicting emotions. Using the help of five other EMTs, we extricate the victim from the car and secure him to the stretcher. While in the ambulance, I realize now that circumstances have been reversed. This time, clutching the patient’s hand, I tried to soothe him, and he slowly calms down. I keep my composure and actively tried to help the patient feel as comfortable as I did. Keeping all of his personal belongings close to me, we wheel him into the busy emergency room and transfer him safely. As we leave, he looked into my eyes and I could feel his sincere gratitude. Rather than being an innocent victim, like the current patient was, I am now the rescuer.

Even though I felt the horrid memories rushing back, I kept my duties as a rescuer in the forefront of my mind. Keeping my cool in the face of extreme pressure I came out of the call a changed person: someone who can see a problem, regardless of any bias I may have, and focus only on what is happening at that instant. Confidently facing my own terrors, I felt as if conquering my fears allowed me to face my duties with a grounded and compassionate outlook.

Tears stream, limbs hurt, children cry: I am there, with a smile on my face, a stethoscope around my neck, compassion in my heart, happy to help and proud to serve.

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12 Tips On How To End a College Essay

EssayEdge > Blog > 12 Tips On How To End a College Essay

Right after the moment you have the text of your essay in front of your eyes, you may think about how to end a college essay properly to make it an outstanding one. The process of writing might seem difficult. However, now it is the final step to get everything done. 

Table of Contents:

College essay conclusion: why is it important?

Think about the moment when you did something well. You understand that you passed the long way from the beginning till the end. Finally, you got a fantastic result. It is a very satisfying moment when you realize that. The same regards your college essay conclusion . 

Writing the conclusion is that part of the essay when you can breathe out and understand that you are on the home stretch. However, it doesn’t mean that you can relax and chill. Take into consideration that commencement is way easier than completion. Therefore, get ready to spend time to write a memorable final part of the whole text. 

The conclusion is a crucial part of your essay as it summarizes the opinion about you. The reader finally understands who you are and what you want. Having a meaningful conclusion in your essay, you may force the reader to change his mind in the way you want. After reading your essay’s ending, the admission tutor has to decide what are their further actions. Conclusion for college essay isn’t something mutual for every applicant. It is the final of the story that you have represented in the main body of your essay. So, it’s time to gather your thoughts and write an incredible essay ending. 

How to conclude a college essay and not fail it

If you are struggling with how to conclude a college essay and not screw it up, here are a few aspects for you that you must avoid. 

• Don’t summarize It is good to have this skill when writing a usual essay. In the case of a college essay, it won’t work correctly, as you will only waste words to repeat the content mentioned above. 
• Avoid cliches. And again, talking about the college essay , it is not a great idea to use such words as “to conclude” and “in conclusion.”These phrases may just simplify writing. Therefore, the impression of it can be worst than you expect. 
• Leave the doubts away. Sometimes people are used not to do their tasks in advance. If the same happened to you, just leave your nerves and doubts away. Make up your thoughts, put more effort into the working process, and move on. 
• Don’t write the begging. Everyone realizes the purpose of your essay. Therefore, it is terrible to write down something like begging for permission to receive the admission offer. It is better to end the story from the main body rather than write something unrelated to it. 
• Don’t refer to the content that is already mentioned. Reiteration isn’t in need owing to the fact that it will grab the reader’s time and won’t bring any new or important information into the writing. 
• Plagiarism. Sometimes you can see samples of successful essays, and there comes a thought, “I want the same one to be mine.” In no way can you copy-paste that into your writing. You can think of remastering your essay that it looks alike. However, you mustn’t use strangers’ thoughts and pieces of writing as their rights are reserved. 

If you still wonder how to write a conclusion for college essay , be sure that you have edited your paper and don’t have those common mistakes mentioned above. After reducing such points, your essay will undoubtedly look better. If you are still preparing for the writing process, try to avoid such faults in the text. 

Need help? Check out EssayEdge editing services:

How to close a college essay: tips for doing is successfully 

Here comes the question of how to close a college essay ? The last paragraph must be immersive and impressive. So, here are a few tips to help you to make it done well. 

• Have a break. Don’t try to write the whole text at a heat. Devote some time for yourself due to the fact that the writing process is kind of fatiguing. You may feel tired, so take your time, meet your friends, and have some fun. To some extent, try not to think about the essay for some time. Then, indeed, come back to the process.
• End positively. Everyone wants to believe that every story has a lively final. The same fact regards your essay. It is better to end with something pleasant and useful rather than tell a terrifying tale. You can do it just in case when your main paragraph is about something terrible that happened to you. 
• Analyze. It is a good idea to write down your analysis of what happened to you before. How the described thing impacted your life and what experience you can share right now. 
• Ask for feedback. Once you have the whole family at home, read out loud your essay for them. Ask your family members for feedback. What impressed them the most and what they wouldn’t like to have heard. It makes sense as, in this way, you can analyze what is unnecessary in your essay. The point that impressed them the most might seem to be a good concept for your closing paragraph.
• Embed new knowledge. Even if you write the concluding part for the whole text, don’t hesitate to implicate new knowledge into your essay. For instance, you have read an article about how to start a college essay , or the best ideas to restructure your essay, impact that into your text. Thus, you can change your mind about the conclusion. 
• Check it! When everything is written down, and you understand that it is a masterpiece, peruse it many times. Refer to college essay editing if you feel that you need it. Ask your relatives and friends to tell you their opinion on your writing. It will take a few minutes, but it is an essential step before submitting your essay. Therefore, your student becoming depends on it. 

College essay conclusion examples

Using college essay conclusion examples is an excellent way to find a piece of inspiration. Here below, you can find an example of closing from an admitted student. Try to realize how it works and what the pattern is. 

The door opened. She came in and said plenty of words. I didn’t listen to her speech. My new computer grabbed my interest. My chained glance was on it. She realized everything at once. I was seven at that time. My mother understood that nothing more matters to me than a computer. Since that time, I have been firmly believing that I want to become an engineer. I’ve passed a long way, and here I am now, ready to open new doors and make another important step into a successful career. 

In the piece of text above, the author connected the story about his first computer from the main body. The information has a positive final, and now the reader can understand the applicant’s background. Moreover, it doesn’t’ have cliches or summaries. That’s why it is an uncommon one. 

Concluding the results of the done work is such a satisfying process. The same is about your college essay. You have made a big way to have the final result, and here it is. 

Writing the essay is a crucial step to success. Paying attention and putting effort into it can make it an outstanding one. Refer to the tips, check everything, and finally achieve a result – admission offer.

For more information on how to end a college essay , read EssayEdge blog!

You’ve finished your introduction, crafted several main body paragraphs, and need to make the last step — write a conclusion. Do you lack motivation for the last effort? Check examples and use our guidelines to finish your last paragraph faster. If you can’t find the motivation to tackle editing/proofreading, send us a message like “Please, review my college essay.” We’ll gladly help you.

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College admissions

Course: college admissions   >   unit 4.

• Writing a strong college admissions essay
• Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes
• Brainstorming tips for your college essay
• How formal should the tone of your college essay be?

Taking your college essay to the next level

• Sample essay 1 with admissions feedback
• Sample essay 2 with admissions feedback
• Student story: Admissions essay about a formative experience
• Student story: Admissions essay about personal identity
• Student story: Admissions essay about community impact
• Student story: Admissions essay about a past mistake
• Student story: Admissions essay about a meaningful poem
• Writing tips and techniques for your college essay

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Video transcript

Application Essays

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you write and revise the personal statement required by many graduate programs, internships, and special academic programs.

Before you start writing

Because the application essay can have a critical effect upon your progress toward a career, you should spend significantly more time, thought, and effort on it than its typically brief length would suggest. It should reflect how you arrived at your professional goals, why the program is ideal for you, and what you bring to the program. Don’t make this a deadline task—now’s the time to write, read, rewrite, give to a reader, revise again, and on until the essay is clear, concise, and compelling. At the same time, don’t be afraid. You know most of the things you need to say already.

Read the instructions carefully. One of the basic tasks of the application essay is to follow the directions. If you don’t do what they ask, the reader may wonder if you will be able to follow directions in their program. Make sure you follow page and word limits exactly—err on the side of shortness, not length. The essay may take two forms:

• A one-page essay answering a general question
• Several short answers to more specific questions

Do some research before you start writing. Think about…

• The field. Why do you want to be a _____? No, really. Think about why you and you particularly want to enter that field. What are the benefits and what are the shortcomings? When did you become interested in the field and why? What path in that career interests you right now? Brainstorm and write these ideas out.
• The program. Why is this the program you want to be admitted to? What is special about the faculty, the courses offered, the placement record, the facilities you might be using? If you can’t think of anything particular, read the brochures they offer, go to events, or meet with a faculty member or student in the program. A word about honesty here—you may have a reason for choosing a program that wouldn’t necessarily sway your reader; for example, you want to live near the beach, or the program is the most prestigious and would look better on your resume. You don’t want to be completely straightforward in these cases and appear superficial, but skirting around them or lying can look even worse. Turn these aspects into positives. For example, you may want to go to a program in a particular location because it is a place that you know very well and have ties to, or because there is a need in your field there. Again, doing research on the program may reveal ways to legitimate even your most superficial and selfish reasons for applying.
• Yourself. What details or anecdotes would help your reader understand you? What makes you special? Is there something about your family, your education, your work/life experience, or your values that has shaped you and brought you to this career field? What motivates or interests you? Do you have special skills, like leadership, management, research, or communication? Why would the members of the program want to choose you over other applicants? Be honest with yourself and write down your ideas. If you are having trouble, ask a friend or relative to make a list of your strengths or unique qualities that you plan to read on your own (and not argue about immediately). Ask them to give you examples to back up their impressions (For example, if they say you are “caring,” ask them to describe an incident they remember in which they perceived you as caring).

Now, write a draft

This is a hard essay to write. 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. You may want to start by just getting something—anything—on paper. Try freewriting. 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? What do you want them to feel? Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, organization, or anything else. Just get out the ideas you have. For help getting started, see our handout on brainstorming .

Now, look at what you’ve written. Find the most relevant, memorable, concrete statements and focus in on them. Eliminate any generalizations or platitudes (“I’m a people person”, “Doctors save lives”, or “Mr. Calleson’s classes changed my life”), or anything that could be cut and pasted into anyone else’s application. Find what is specific to you about the ideas that generated those platitudes and express them more directly. Eliminate irrelevant issues (“I was a track star in high school, so I think I’ll make a good veterinarian.”) or issues that might be controversial for your reader (“My faith is the one true faith, and only nurses with that faith are worthwhile,” or “Lawyers who only care about money are evil.”).

Often, writers start out with generalizations as a way to get to the really meaningful statements, and that’s OK. Just make sure that you replace the generalizations with examples as you revise. A hint: you may find yourself writing a good, specific sentence right after a general, meaningless one. If you spot that, try to use the second sentence and delete the first.

Applications that have several short-answer essays require even more detail. Get straight to the point in every case, and address what they’ve asked you to address.

Now that you’ve generated some ideas, get a little bit pickier. It’s time to remember one of the most significant aspects of the application essay: your audience. Your readers may have thousands of essays to read, many or most of which will come from qualified applicants. This essay may be your best opportunity to communicate with the decision makers in the application process, and you don’t want to bore them, offend them, or make them feel you are wasting their time.

With this in mind:

• Do assure your audience that you understand and look forward to the challenges of the program and the field, not just the benefits.
• Do assure your audience that you understand exactly the nature of the work in the field and that you are prepared for it, psychologically and morally as well as educationally.
• Do assure your audience that you care about them and their time by writing a clear, organized, and concise essay.
• Do address any information about yourself and your application that needs to be explained (for example, weak grades or unusual coursework for your program). Include that information in your essay, and be straightforward about it. Your audience will be more impressed with your having learned from setbacks or having a unique approach than your failure to address those issues.
• Don’t waste space with information you have provided in the rest of the application. Every sentence should be effective and directly related to the rest of the essay. Don’t ramble or use fifteen words to express something you could say in eight.
• Don’t overstate your case for what you want to do, being so specific about your future goals that you come off as presumptuous or naïve (“I want to become a dentist so that I can train in wisdom tooth extraction, because I intend to focus my life’s work on taking 13 rather than 15 minutes per tooth.”). Your goals may change–show that such a change won’t devastate you.
• And, one more time, don’t write in cliches and platitudes. Every doctor wants to help save lives, every lawyer wants to work for justice—your reader has read these general cliches a million times.

Imagine the worst-case scenario (which may never come true—we’re talking hypothetically): the person who reads your essay has been in the field for decades. She is on the application committee because she has to be, and she’s read 48 essays so far that morning. You are number 49, and your reader is tired, bored, and thinking about lunch. How are you going to catch and keep her attention?

Assure your audience that you are capable academically, willing to stick to the program’s demands, and interesting to have around. For more tips, see our handout on audience .

Voice and style

The voice you use and the style in which you write can intrigue your audience. The voice you use in your essay should be yours. Remember when your high school English teacher said “never say ‘I’”? Here’s your chance to use all those “I”s you’ve been saving up. The narrative should reflect your perspective, experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Focusing on events or ideas may give your audience an indirect idea of how these things became important in forming your outlook, but many others have had equally compelling experiences. By simply talking about those events in your own voice, you put the emphasis on you rather than the event or idea. Look at this anecdote:

During the night shift at Wirth Memorial Hospital, a man walked into the Emergency Room wearing a monkey costume and holding his head. He seemed confused and was moaning in pain. One of the nurses ascertained that he had been swinging from tree branches in a local park and had hit his head when he fell out of a tree. This tragic tale signified the moment at which I realized psychiatry was the only career path I could take.

An interesting tale, yes, but what does it tell you about the narrator? The following example takes the same anecdote and recasts it to make the narrator more of a presence in the story:

I was working in the Emergency Room at Wirth Memorial Hospital one night when a man walked in wearing a monkey costume and holding his head. I could tell he was confused and in pain. After a nurse asked him a few questions, I listened in surprise as he explained that he had been a monkey all of his life and knew that it was time to live with his brothers in the trees. Like many other patients I would see that year, this man suffered from an illness that only a combination of psychological and medical care would effectively treat. I realized then that I wanted to be able to help people by using that particular combination of skills only a psychiatrist develops.

The voice you use should be approachable as well as intelligent. This essay is not the place to stun your reader with ten prepositional phrases (“the goal of my study of the field of law in the winter of my discontent can best be understood by the gathering of more information about my youth”) and thirty nouns (“the research and study of the motivation behind my insights into the field of dentistry contains many pitfalls and disappointments but even more joy and enlightenment”) per sentence. (Note: If you are having trouble forming clear sentences without all the prepositions and nouns, take a look at our handout on style .)

You may want to create an impression of expertise in the field by using specialized or technical language. But beware of this unless you really know what you are doing—a mistake will look twice as ignorant as not knowing the terms in the first place. Your audience may be smart, but you don’t want to make them turn to a dictionary or fall asleep between the first word and the period of your first sentence. Keep in mind that this is a personal statement. Would you think you were learning a lot about a person whose personal statement sounded like a journal article? Would you want to spend hours in a lab or on a committee with someone who shuns plain language?

Of course, you don’t want to be chatty to the point of making them think you only speak slang, either. Your audience may not know what “I kicked that lame-o to the curb for dissing my research project” means. Keep it casual enough to be easy to follow, but formal enough to be respectful of the audience’s intelligence.

Just use an honest voice and represent yourself as naturally as possible. It may help to think of the essay as a sort of face-to-face interview, only the interviewer isn’t actually present.

Too much style

A well-written, dramatic essay is much more memorable than one that fails to make an emotional impact on the reader. Good anecdotes and personal insights can really attract an audience’s attention. BUT be careful not to let your drama turn into melodrama. You want your reader to see your choices motivated by passion and drive, not hyperbole and a lack of reality. Don’t invent drama where there isn’t any, and don’t let the drama take over. Getting someone else to read your drafts can help you figure out when you’ve gone too far.

Taking risks

Many guides to writing application essays encourage you to take a risk, either by saying something off-beat or daring or by using a unique writing style. When done well, this strategy can work—your goal is to stand out from the rest of the applicants and taking a risk with your essay will help you do that. An essay that impresses your reader with your ability to think and express yourself in original ways and shows you really care about what you are saying is better than one that shows hesitancy, lack of imagination, or lack of interest.

But be warned: this strategy is a risk. If you don’t carefully consider what you are saying and how you are saying it, you may offend your readers or leave them with a bad impression of you as flaky, immature, or careless. Do not alienate your readers.

Some writers take risks by using irony (your suffering at the hands of a barbaric dentist led you to want to become a gentle one), beginning with a personal failure (that eventually leads to the writer’s overcoming it), or showing great imagination (one famous successful example involved a student who answered a prompt about past formative experiences by beginning with a basic answer—”I have volunteered at homeless shelters”—that evolved into a ridiculous one—”I have sealed the hole in the ozone layer with plastic wrap”). One student applying to an art program described the person he did not want to be, contrasting it with the person he thought he was and would develop into if accepted. Another person wrote an essay about her grandmother without directly linking her narrative to the fact that she was applying for medical school. Her essay was risky because it called on the reader to infer things about the student’s character and abilities from the story.

Assess your credentials and your likelihood of getting into the program before you choose to take a risk. If you have little chance of getting in, try something daring. If you are almost certainly guaranteed a spot, you have more flexibility. In any case, make sure that you answer the essay question in some identifiable way.

After you’ve written a draft

Get several people to read it and write their comments down. It is worthwhile to seek out someone in the field, perhaps a professor who has read such essays before. Give it to a friend, your mom, or a neighbor. The key is to get more than one point of view, and then compare these with your own. Remember, you are the one best equipped to judge how accurately you are representing yourself. For tips on putting this advice to good use, see our handout on getting feedback .

After you’ve received feedback, revise the essay. Put it away. Get it out and revise it again (you can see why we said to start right away—this process may take time). Get someone to read it again. Revise it again.

When you think it is totally finished, you are ready to proofread and format the essay. Check every sentence and punctuation mark. You cannot afford a careless error in this essay. (If you are not comfortable with your proofreading skills, check out our handout on editing and proofreading ).

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. Figure out what material you can cut and cut it. For strategies for meeting word limits, see our handout on writing concisely .

Finally, proofread it again. We’re not kidding.

Other resources

Don’t be afraid to talk to professors or professionals in the field. Many of them would be flattered that you asked their advice, and they will have useful suggestions that others might not have. Also keep in mind that many colleges and professional programs offer websites addressing the personal statement. You can find them either through the website of the school to which you are applying or by searching under “personal statement” or “application essays” using a search engine.

If your schedule and ours permit, we invite you to come to the Writing Center. Be aware that during busy times in the semester, we limit students to a total of two visits to discuss application essays and personal statements (two visits per student, not per essay); we do this so that students working on papers for courses will have a better chance of being seen. Make an appointment or submit your essay to our online writing center (note that we cannot guarantee that an online tutor will help you in time).

For information on other aspects of the application process, you can consult the resources at University Career Services .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Asher, Donald. 2012. Graduate Admissions Essays: Write Your Way Into the Graduate School of Your Choice , 4th ed. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Curry, Boykin, Emily Angel Baer, and Brian Kasbar. 2003. Essays That Worked for College Applications: 50 Essays That Helped Students Get Into the Nation’s Top Colleges . New York: Ballantine Books.

Stelzer, Richard. 2002. How to Write a Winning Personal Statement for Graduate and Professional School , 3rd ed. Lawrenceville, NJ: Thomson Peterson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How To Nail Your College Application Essays

My conversation with erin edwards of ee college essays.

I recently spoke with Erin Edwards of EE College Essays . Erin has been editing people’s essays for nearly twenty years and loves helping students express their unique character and strengths so they can achieve their goals and create opportunities for themselves.

In our conversation, Erin shares:

The six pillars of college application success

The importance of the application essays in gaining admittance into college

How to make your personal statement stand out

The role of parents/guardians in the college essay and application process

Why AI is not a proper tool for writing college admissions essays

The importance of starting early with scholarship applications and essays

Click here to listen to my conversation with Erin:

You can connect with Erin at EECollegeEssays.com or on Facebook or Instagram .

Erin was kind enough to stick around for my Podcast Patrons and Paid Substack Subscribers to provide some additional thoughts on how to best include narratives in your essay without becoming cliché. That content can be found below the paywall:

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I reviewed my Yale admissions file to see what the Ivy League school really thought about my application. What I learned surprised me.

• I reviewed my Yale admissions file to see what the Ivy League school thought about my application. 
• Most of my scores weren't that impressive, but they really liked my genuine attitude and excitement.
• Reviewing my application reminded me how far I have come as a student. 

"Brian spoke so fast it was electrifying."

This was the first quote from my Yale interviewer. She wrote those words in my admissions file, a document I finally got my hands on three years after being accepted into Yale University .

I remember that interview like it was yesterday. It was a Zoom call — my application cycle happened at the crux of pandemic remote learning — and I was wearing my father's old, oversize dress shirt. The interviewer was lovely. Some of my answers to her questions probably didn't make sense, and she was right. I definitely forgot to breathe in between my sentences.

But viewing my admissions file years later gave me a peek into what my interviewer was actually thinking that day, and I learned what really got me into Yale.

I reviewed my application as a junior with the registrar

Every student in the US can review their college admissions file under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. I emailed my university registrar, and within 45 days, a member of their support staff reached back out to schedule a virtual meeting. Picture-taking and recording were not allowed, so I jotted notes by hand.

There was very little verbal interaction between me and the staff member. She screen-shared my admissions file and let me read in silence. Something told me she understood the emotional weight of this moment for students, and I appreciated that. It is intimidating for any teenager to package their identity into a 650-word common application essay and a questionnaire — but it is arguably even more so to witness retrospectively how everything was judged.

I got a behind-the-scenes look into Yale admissions when they read my application

Each aspect of my application was rated out of nine points. My readers gave me a six for my extracurriculars and for my first teacher recommendation. They gave me a seven for my second teacher recommendation and my counselor's recommendation. I received an "outstanding" for my interview and a 2++ for my overall rating. The overall rating is given on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 being the highest, and pluses were a good sign.

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In all, my ratings weren't exactly bad, but they weren't extraordinary either. The numbers on the pages stared back at me — cold, formulaic, and transactional. It felt strange to be reduced to a system of numbers, knowing that something as qualitative as extracurricular activities could still be broken down and scored.

Beyond the ratings, however, what truly stood out were the comments left by the admissions officers . Many of the comments were on my character, my essays, and the possible contributions I would make as a student.

"I teared up reading Essay 1," one reader wrote of my common application essay. Another said of the same essay: "His Chinese New Years are untraditional in that they remind him of his family's financial struggles."

I got emotional. All the memories of writing that essay came flooding back. I remembered how difficult it was to start it. I knew there was no easy way for someone to understand me without first knowing my background. I wanted to prove that I deserved a seat at the table where legacy students and the wealthy continue to outnumber their first-generation, low-income peers like myself.

I kept reading and found more comments from admissions officers that moved me: "He treats his mom well;" "He seems to have a truly good heart;" "One of the most intelligent, sincere, jovial students ever met;" "I have no doubt that Brian would push his peers at Yale to stand up for what's right;" and "I come away with compelling impressions that the student would contribute significantly to the undergrad community."

I searched for a negative comment. There were none.

I didn't deserve this, I muttered under my breath. Here I was, a junior in college, no longer a 4.0 student , my post-grad plans murky, balancing two part-time jobs and hoping to make it out of midterms alive. It felt good knowing that someone had rooted for me to be here.

The process reminded me how far I have come

Coming from an underserved household where no one had gone to college, I had always looked at the Ivy League application process skeptically.

Without the resources to enroll in SAT test prep and the financial safety net to pursue unpaid leadership positions and resume-boosting activities at school, I had doubted the "holistic" admissions process many colleges boast. My critiques about Yale remain numerous.

But at least in their comments, the admissions committee gave me grace in that they reviewed my application in light of my circumstances. I might never know exactly what happened in that reading room. Still, a couple of lessons ring true, based on my own viewing experience and my conversations with others who had done the same: Good character and potential are the key; I didn't need to be perfect.

And finally, I — not anyone else — needed to give me the fighting chance of applying in the first place.

"GPA is outstanding, especially in context," an admissions officer said. "This is a home run."

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When are the application deadlines for college.

Senior Associate, JPMorgan Chase

Many prospective college students prepare for months to ensure their college applications are filled out just right. From preparing essays , getting test scores, and asking for letters of recommendation, it can take a lot of energy to make sure you have all the required information to complete a college application.

But when are college applications due? Keep reading as we break down the ins and outs of college application deadlines, along with questions you may have about these deadlines.

When are college applications due for “early decision”?

Most colleges have early decision and early action deadlines that predominantly fall on November 1 for the next academic year. For example, if you’re applying early decision or early action to be in the incoming freshmen class of 2025, the application deadline will likely be on November 1, 2024.

If you apply early decision, and get accepted by a school, you must attend. For early action, you’ll likely receive an admission decision by February of the following year, but you can take a couple of months to decide if you want to attend or not – your decision isn’t binding.

Even though November 1 is often the norm for colleges who offer early decision and early action application options, this deadline can vary by school, so make sure to check the deadlines for each school you’re interested in and make a note of them.

When are college applications due for “regular decision”?

According to College Board, a national nonprofit that helps students with college admissions, you’ll likely see deadlines for regular decision applications between the months of January and February. Many schools have a deadline of January 1, if it’s helpful to keep a general deadline in the back of your mind. So, for instance, the regular decision deadline to apply to college for the fall of 2025, would be January 1, 2025.

Just like with early decision and early action, this’ll vary by school, so make sure to check the exact deadline for each school you’re interested in applying to.

When are college applications due for transfer students?

If you’re considering transferring schools in the next academic year, you’ll want to keep an eye out for transfer specific deadlines. Some schools have the same application deadlines whether you’re applying to transfer or are applying as a first-year student, while others have different deadlines for transfer students. Because of that, you’ll want to check the deadline for each school you’re interested in applying to as a transfer student.

Many colleges and universities have a transfer application deadline of March 1 for the next academic year.

Common FAQs about college application deadlines

When’s the common app due.

Students utilize the Common App to apply to different schools. This standardized admission application is supported by over 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities and allows you to share your personal information, essays, activities, grades and more in one platform to the schools of your choice.

While the app’s purpose is to simplify the college application process, the deadline to submit the Common App to the schools you want to apply to is based on the individual schools’ deadlines. The Common App opens to students on August 1 for the next academic year.

Can you send college applications after the deadline?

Whether or not you can submit college applications after the deadline will depend on the school. Some will accept late college applications in rare circumstances such as a family emergency, medical illness, or natural disaster. You'll want to contact the school’s admissions office as soon as possible to find out if you can submit a late college application.

Can you send college applications before receiving teacher recommendations?

If you’re applying to colleges through the Common App, you can send your application to schools before submitting letters of recommendation. If a school doesn’t use the Common App, or you’re applying to a school via its individual application regardless, you’ll want to ask the school’s admissions office if this is permissible.

Can you send college applications before receiving SAT or ACT scores?

Whether or not you can send college applications in before supplying ACT or SAT scores with an application will depend on the school. Most colleges do allow students to send updated SAT or ACT scores after you’ve submitted your application, though.

It’s also important to note that some schools don’t ask for or make it optional for students to supply standardized test scores like SAT or ACT scores with their applications.

Final thoughts

You may feel nervous when it comes to preparing your college applications , but staying on top of deadlines is one way you can feel more at ease. Because many schools have different deadlines, you may consider jotting the deadlines down for the schools you’re considering applying to months in advance, so you’ll be ready when the deadlines arrive.

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Regions Riding Forward® Scholarship Contest

Their Story. Your Voice.

Your voice is your own. But it's also been impacted by others. Who, we wonder, has inspired you? Let us know by entering the Regions Riding Forward Scholarship Contest. 

You could win an $8,000 college scholarship

For the opportunity to win an $8,000 scholarship, submit a video or written essay about an individual you know personally (who lives in your community) who has inspired you and helped you build the confidence you need to achieve your goals.

The details

The 2024 Regions Riding Forward Scholarship Contest consists of four (4) separate Quarterly Contests - one for each calendar quarter of 2024. Regions is awarding four $8,000 scholarships through each Quarterly Contest.

Each Quarterly Contest has its own separate entry period, as provided in the chart below.

The entry deadline for each Quarterly Contest is 11:59:59 PM Central Time on the applicable Quarterly Contest period end date (set forth in the chart above).

No purchase or banking relationship required.

Regions believes in supporting the students whose passion and actions every day will continue to make stories worth sharing. That’s why we have awarded over $1 million in total scholarships to high school and college students.

How to enter, 1. complete an online quarterly contest application.

Enter the Regions Riding Forward Scholarship Contest by completing a Quarterly Contest application.  The second Quarterly Contest runs from April 1, 2024 through June 30, 2024. Complete and save all requested information. 

2. Prepare your Written Essay or Video Essay

For each Quarterly Contest, the topic of your Written Essay or Video Essay (your “Essay Topic”) must be an individual you know personally, who lives in your community. Your Written Essay or Video Essay must address how the individual you have selected as your Essay Topic has inspired you and helped you build the confidence you need to achieve your goals.

Written Essay and Video Essay submissions must meet all of the requirements described in the contest Official Rules. Your Written Essay or Video Essay must be (i) in English, (ii) your own original work, created solely by you (and without the use of any means of artificial intelligence (“AI”)), and (iii) the exclusive property of you alone.

Written Essays must be 500 words or less. You can write your Written Essay directly in the application, or you can copy and paste it into the appropriate area in the application form.

Video Essay submissions must be directly uploaded to the contest application site. Video Essays must be no more than 3 minutes in length and no larger than 1 GB. Only the following file formats are accepted: MP4, MPG, MOV, AVI, and WMV. Video Essays must not contain music of any kind nor display any illegal, explicit, or inappropriate material, and Video Essays must not be password protected or require a log-in/sign-in to view. You must upload your Video Essay to the application, and you may not submit your Video Essay in DVD or other physical form. (Video Essays submitted via mail will not be reviewed or returned.)

Tips to Record Quality Videos on a Smartphone:

• Don’t shoot vertical video. Computer monitors have landscape-oriented displays, so shoot your video horizontally.
• Use a tripod. Even small movements can make a big difference when editing.
• Don’t use zoom. If you need to get a close shot of the subject, move closer as zooming can cause pixilation.
• Use natural lighting. Smartphone lighting can wash out your video.

3. Review and submit your Quarterly Contest application

Review your information on your Quarterly Application (and check the spelling of a Written Essay) and submit your entry by 11:59:59 p.m. Central Time on the applicable Quarterly Contest period end date. The second Quarterly Contest period end date is June 30, 2024.

4. Await notification

Winning entries are selected by an independent panel of judges who are not affiliated with Regions. If your entry is selected as a Quarterly Contest winner, you will need to respond to ISTS with the required information.

Eligibility

For purposes of this contest:

• The “Eligible States” are defined as the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
• An “accredited college” is defined as a nonprofit, two- or four-year college or university located within one of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.

To be eligible to enter this contest and to win an award in a Quarterly Contest, at the time of entry, you must:

• Be a legal U.S. resident of one of the Eligible States.
• Be age 16 or older.
• Have at least one (1) year (or at least 18 semester hours) remaining before college graduation.
• If you are not yet in college, begin your freshman year of college no later than the start of the 2025 – 2026 college academic school year.
• As of your most recent school enrollment period, have a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.0 in school (and if no GPA is provided at school, be in “good standing” or the equivalent thereof in school).

View Official Rules

NO PURCHASE OR BANKING RELATIONSHIP REQUIRED. PURCHASE OR BANKING RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. The 2024 Regions Riding Forward Scholarship Contest (the “Contest”) consists of four (4) separate quarterly contests (each a “Quarterly Contest”): (1) the “Q-1 Contest;” (2) the “Q-2 Contest;” (3) the “Q-3 Contest;” and (4) the “Q-4 Contest.” The Q-1 Contest begins on 02/01/24 and ends on 03/31/24; the Q-2 Contest begins on 04/01/24 and ends on 06/30/24; the Q-3 Contest begins on 07/01/24 and ends on 09/30/24; and the Q-4 Contest begins on 10/01/24 and ends on 12/31/24. (For each Quarterly Contest, entries must be submitted and received by 11:59:59 PM CT on the applicable Quarterly Contest period end date.) To enter and participate in a particular Quarterly Contest, at the time of entry, you must: (a) be a legal U.S. resident of one of the Eligible States; (b) be 16 years of age or older; (c) have at least one (1) year (or at least 18 semester hours) remaining before college graduation; (d) (if you are not yet in college) begin your freshman year of college no later than the start of the 2025 – 2026 college academic school year; and (e) as of your most recent school enrollment period, have a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.0 in school (and if no grade point average is provided at school, be in “good standing” or the equivalent thereof in school). (For purposes of Contest, the “Eligible States” are defined as the states of AL, AR, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MS, MO, NC, SC, TN and TX.) Visit regions.com/ridingforward for complete Contest details, including eligibility and Written Essay and Video Essay requirements and Official Rules. (Limit one (1) entry per person, per Quarterly Contest.) For each Quarterly Contest, eligible entries will be grouped according to form of entry (Written Essay or Video Essay) and judged by a panel of independent, qualified judges. A total of four (4) Quarterly Contest Prizes will be awarded in each Quarterly Contest, consisting of two (2) Quarterly Contest Prizes for the Written Essay Entry Group and two (2) Quarterly Contest Prizes for the Video Essay Entry Group. Each Quarterly Contest Prize consists of a check in the amount of $8,000 made out to winner’s designated accredited college. (Limit one (1) Quarterly Contest Prize per person; a contestant is permitted to win only one (1) Quarterly Contest Prize through the Contest.) Sponsor: Regions Bank, 1900 Fifth Ave. N., Birmingham, AL 35203.

© 2024 Regions Bank. All rights reserved. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender. Regions and the Regions logo are registered trademarks of Regions Bank. The LifeGreen color is a trademark of Regions Bank.

2023 Winners

High school:.

• Amyrrean Acoff
• Leon Aldridge
• Kharis Andrews
• Colton Collier
• Indya Griffin
• Christopher Hak
• Aquil Hayes
• Jayden Haynes
• McKenna Jodoin
• Paris Kelly
• Liza Latimer
• Dylan Lodle
• Anna Mammarelli
• Karrington Manley
• Marcellus Odum
• Gautami Palthepu
• Melody Small
• Lauryn Tanner
• Joshua Wilson
• Mohamed Ali
• Kayla Bellamy
• Lauren Boxx
• Alexandria Brown
• Samuel Brown
• Thurston Brown
• Conner Daehler
• Tsehai de Souza
• Anjel Echols
• Samarion Flowers
• Trinity Griffin
• Kristina Hilton
• Ryan Jensen
• Miracle Jones
• Shaniece McGhee
• Chelby Melvin
• Lamiya Ousley
• Kiera Phillips
• Gabrielle Pippins
• Ethan Snead
• Sydney Springs
• Kirsten Tilford
• Tamira Weeks
• Justin Williams

2022 Winners

• Paul Aucremann
• William Booker
• Robyn Cunningham
• Kani'ya Davis
• Oluwatomi Dugbo
• Lillian Goins
• Parker Hall
• Collin Hatfield
• Gabrielle Izu
• Kylie Lauderdale
• Jacob Milan
• Jackson Mitchell
• Carmen Moore
• Madison Morgan
• Kaden Oquelí-White
• Kaylin Parks
• Brian Perryman
• De'Marco Riggins
• Brianna Roundtree
• Sydney Russell
• Carlie Spore
• Morgan Standifer
• Ionia Thomas
• Ramaya Thomas
• Jaylen Toran
• Amani Veals
• Taylor Williams
• Alana Wilson
• Taryn Wilson
• Aryaunna Armstrong
• Hannah Blackwell
• T'Aneka Bowers
• Naomi Bradley
• Arianna Cannon
• Taylor Cline
• Catherine Cummings
• Margaret Fitzgerald
• Chloe Franklin
• Camryn Gaines
• Thomas Greer
• Kayla Helleson
• Veronica Holmes
• Logan Kurtz
• Samuel Lambert
• Jaylon Muchison
• Teresa Odom
• Andrew Payne
• Carey Price
• Emily SantiAnna
• Curtis Smith
• Jered Smith
• Mariah Standifer
• Maura Taylor
• Anna Wilkes

to submit an obituary

Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:00pm, Call 610-915-2226

(Proofs will be provided for accuracy only, they will not be styled/formatted like the finished product)

Obituaries submitted on Saturday, Sunday and Holidays are accepted from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. by email only [email protected]

(No proofs will be furnished. Pricing will not be available until the next business day after 10:00am by calling Dianne at 610-915-2226)

Obituaries received after Deadline will not be published in the following edition of the paper.

Sending Procedure:

Email is the preferable method for receiving Obituaries (and the only method on Saturday, Sunday and Holidays), they can be sent to [email protected] (Feel free to call and confirm that we’ve received the email)

Formatting:

Obituaries will continue to visually look the same as they currently do, but you will no longer be restricted in what you can say (ex. As much Family can be listed as you’d like; Wording like “Went to rest with the Lord” is now permissible)

There is a cost for each obituary. Pricing and payments are only available Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 4:00 pm. All weekend and holiday submissions will be provided a cost the next business day.

Exceptions:

All New accounts, Out of State Funeral Homes and Private Parties will require prepayment upon approval of the obituary. Weekend and Holiday staff are not authorized to set up a new account or process payments

Deadline for the above is before 4:00 PM Mon – Fri. only (Holiday schedules may vary).

Prepayment required submissions will be handled on the very first business day following the weekend and/or holiday schedule. A complete name, address and best contact phone number are required upon submittal of your obituary request to set up your account. A proof will then be emailed for review but placed on hold until payment is received.

Sponsored Content | The 7 Best Essay Writing Services in the U.S.

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Sponsored Content

We’ve identified the top seven online essay writing services, picking only the cream of the crop based on a multitude of genuine reviews and comprehensive research from our side..

PaperHelp has very high customer service ratings, with a 4.7 out of 5 rating according to more than a thousand reviews as of April 3, 2024. Ease of use, quality of custom papers, and value for money are the most-cited reasons for the high ratings given to the company by undergraduate students.

We consider PaperHelp to be the best essay writing service in the United States and beyond due to the consistently high quality, originality, and value for money it provides to its customers.

The company allows the customer to be involved in the paper-writing process from its very beginning. You can get updates from the writer, review the essay while in progress, and request free revisions if needed. You get three revisions for free, which is usually more than enough to get the required result.

PaperHelp offers a variety of writing services, including essay, research paper, thesis, and dissertation writing for every level of academia.

In addition, PaperHelp gives plenty of bonuses and discounts for both new and regular customers. There is also a great loyalty program that enables students to save money on future orders, making it a good choice for resellers.

• Great value for money, affordable
• Suitable for most academic assignments, including Ph.D. papers
• Papers are always plagiarism-free
• Great loyalty program for regular customers and resellers
• Most essential extras are paid and expensive
• It takes quite some time to find a suitable writer for Master’s degree assignments

No matter the level of academia you are working in, PaperHelp can provide high-quality, original, written-from-scratch, plagiarism-free essays at a great value. We highly recommend PaperHelp to students as the top college essay writing service in the United States.

    2. BBQPapers — The Best Essay Writers, Premium Service

BBQPapers offers high-quality research papers and essays, plagiarism-free, and a high level of customer service. In addition, the company claims to have professional-level editors in the top 2% of academic excellence write and review your essays.

BBQPapers have a process whereby each paper is checked against the web and its own database for originality. BBQPapers also offers free revisions within ten days, accurate citations, professional editing, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

BBQPapers offers incentives in the form of loyalty program discounts and a “pay as you go” zero-interest plan option for projects priced over $500. The company also offers standalone editing and proofreading services and custom services for odd academic assignments.

This service guarantees security and confidentiality to its customers and guarantees the quality of the papers it produces for students.

Pricing is around $6 per 100 words, with editing and proofreading priced separately as standalone services. This is a bit pricey for writing services in the United States compared to the others we reviewed.

• The best quality among all essay services, writers are Ph.D. and M.A. degree holders
• Extra long money-back guarantee (60 days)
• Pay as you go option for expensive papers
• 99% of the writers are native speakers of English
• Essential add-ons are free
• Prices are above average
• Writing samples are not available

Customer satisfaction with BBQPapers is high. Students appreciate the quality and security this essay service offers to them and have been largely pleased with the final results, garnering good grades for their submissions.

   3. MyAdmissionsEssay — The Best Service for Application Essays

Even though the name suggests that this company specializes solely in admission essays, this website offers writing assistance with various academic tasks to all levels of academics, from high school to Ph.D.

In addition, this professional essay writing service boasts a pool of diverse writers with a variety of language skills. Your paper will be written from scratch by a well-educated writer in that particular field of interest. College papers are delivered quickly, as soon as 3 hours turnaround time.

Students may give specific instructions and have access to the writer during the process, as well as opportunities for revision to get the paper edited to their satisfaction.

This company guarantees confidentiality, safety, and plagiarism-free original content written according to scholars’ instructions.

MyAdmissionsEssay has some great reviews on the site, but there are not many available. Customers appreciate the quality of the writing and the quick delivery times.

The pricing of this essay writer service is competitive and affordable, and the service offers 24/7 online support to its customers. The company’s online pricing table is transparent and easy to navigate.

• Best and affordable option for personal statements
• Professional editing & proofreading service
• Quick turnaround
• Truly confidential service
• Limited payment options, the service doesn’t accept PayPal
• Minor typos and grammar errors found in final product

This service seems best for personal statements and simpler essays. Some customers complain of minor mistakes or formatting errors, and students dislike the limited payment options offered by MyAdmissionsEssay.

   4. WritePaperForMe — The Cheapest Paper Writing Service

WritePaperForMe made our list because of its reputation as a truly cheap essay writing service with good quality and customer support.

This service provides the best value for money. If you’re a student on a budget, this is a great service to consider for a simple and original essay with fast delivery at an affordable price.

WritePaperForMe promotes customer-centered service with round-the-clock support as well as free revisions to get your paper exactly where you want it before you submit it. This essay writing company also offers complete confidentiality to college students using its essay services.

Using WritePaperForMe is safe because it has been rated 4.8 out of 5 stars for customer satisfaction, according to hundreds of customer reviews on SiteJabber and other review platforms. In addition, most reviews state that students received good results. Generally, quality and efficiency were also highly rated, but mostly with simple requests.

WritePaperForMe is a place where you can hire a cheap essay writer who is knowledgeable enough to write a short, simple essay that you just don’t have enough time to write yourself.

This site has hundreds of writers online and takes pride in the speedy delivery of good-quality papers. The WritePaperForMe website also provides quite a few essay samples listed by category. Students have free access to these essays and excellent customer support for ordering the perfect paper to suit their needs, regardless of topic.

Some customers complained that some of the writers struggled with research-intensive assignments like research papers and dissertations, but the general response to this service was positive.

• Quick and truly affordable
• Great customer service
• Might not be the best option for anything but essays
• Plagiarism report is a paid add-on

We would advise hiring a more professional paper writing service for more in-depth and important papers. WritePaperForMe might not be ideal if you need someone truly knowledgeable to work on your STEM research/term paper, thesis, or dissertation.

   5. GradeMiners — The Fastest Writing Service

This college paper writing service has gone through some changes over the last couple of years. With time, customer reviews of this site are becoming better and better.

GradeMiners is striving to improve its quality, and it shows. This academic writing company is getting high ratings for speedy delivery, updated satisfaction guarantees, and incentives for return customers.

Those incentives are now present in the form of daily discounts and exclusive email offers for return customers who sign up for the newsletter, something that wasn’t available back in the day.

In addition to academic writing services, GradeMiners also offers homework help and problem-solving assistance for high school and college-level students.

This service has fewer professional college essay writers than other sites, and the company generally employs ESL writers. This service offers writing in everything from academic papers to thesis and dissertations.

GradeMiners offers a money-back guarantee as well as free revisions for up to 30 days. The company received a 4.6 out 5 customer rating and claimed to deliver 70% of its orders earlier than the specified deadline.

In spite of claims, discounts, and guarantees, reviews on some services are mixed. Pricing is of great concern because there is no dedicated pricing table for services.

• Great option for rush orders and last-minute papers
• Extra long revision period of 30 days
• Writers are professional enough to handle most papers
• The prices are somewhat high
• Mostly ESL writers

Overall, GradeMiners prices out as a more expensive option than other comparable services. For some students, the trade-off for fast delivery makes it worthwhile.

   6. EssayPro — One of the Most Popular and Reliable Services

EssayPro offers features and perks that other essay writing websites do not. For example, it allows you to browse its writing staff and choose your own writer based on their academic qualifications, areas of interest and expertise, as well as past customer ratings and reviews.

Once you’ve chosen your paper writer, you have access to free unlimited editing, a free title page, and around-the-clock customer support.

EssayPro is certainly a legit essay writing website that offers professional services and has the best reputation for quality, security, and customer satisfaction.

In addition, the company guarantees confidentiality and anonymity so that no one ever knows that you outsourced your essay.

Some customers complain that this service is overpriced, but we found EssayPro to be quite competitive in terms of price. Papers with a shorter return time will be more costly. The more lead time you give, the more writers will garner you a break on the price.

Access to the writer during the process and unlimited editing capability make EssayPro one of the most highly regarded and popular college essay writing services out there.

• Popular and trusted site
• There’s an option to choose your writer yourself
• Round-the-clock support
• No phone support
• Isn’t the best option for theses and dissertations

To make its services affordable, EssayPro mostly hires ESL writers with excellent academic credentials, giving customers a pool of talent to choose from and making the best fit possible for the subject matter being addressed.

   7. EssayNoDelay — Legit Writing Service for ESL Students

EssayNoDelay is a reputable college essay writing service that comes highly recommended. It is an international company based in Bulgaria that employs hundreds of writers, most of whom are ESL.

The company provides excellent customer service via live chat and email. Turnaround times are fast for delivery, but customer service response to student emails can take up to a week, even for emergent requests.

This service, out of all the ones we reviewed, has the deepest discount for first-time customers and returning requests, but you can expect to pay significantly more for subsequent orders.

This online paper writer service has decent pricing but could do better by adding loyalty programs or better discounts for returning customers.

The quality of work from EssayNoDelay is generally good, and reviews are positive. This service boasts that 91% percent of its clients have returned to place more than 5 orders. Most complaints are with regard to minor grammatical or formatting errors in the work.

This company guarantees to provide an original, plagiarism-free paper, with a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee on its work.

• The best loyalty program among other sites
• Good quality
• Mostly caters towards ESL students, it’s hard to find a writer from the U.S., the UK or Canada
• While first order is cheap, repeat orders are way more expensive

EssayNoDelay has proven to be a cost-effective custom essay writing service that provides professional writing assistance to students at all levels of academia.

Paper Writing Services: Common Questions, Answered

How long does it take to have my essay written for me.

Depending on your chosen service, your essay can be written within hours, days, or weeks. The longer the lead time you allow for some services, the deeper the discounts. You can expect to pay more for rush orders.

The complexity of the paper you order can also impact the turnaround time. If you need to monitor the process, make suggestions to the writer, edit the work, or request revisions after the paper has been produced, it will add time to the process.

We suggest you don’t wait too long to place your order, there are sometimes unexpected issues that can delay the delivery of your paper, and since deadlines and due dates in academia are mostly fixed, it’s up to the scholar to make sure there is enough time for the professional writer to complete the order including proofreading, editing, and revisions if required.

It’s recommended that you keep in contact with the writing service and the hired writer, in particular, to make sure that everything is to your satisfaction to avoid delays.

The responsibility falls to the student or scholar to ensure that essays are submitted to teachers and professors on time with all requirements met regardless of academic level.

Will my essay be written by a professional essay writer?

Some of the reliable essay writing services we have listed hire professional writers at all levels of academia.

Most services will allow the customer to choose the writer based on their field of expertise, academic credentials, and customer reviews posted on the website.

In addition, most websites enable the customer to select either a Native English speaker/writer or an ESL expert.

Some colleges consistently check students’ writing styles, so if you’re an ESL student, it makes sense to hire an ESL writer so that your paper only stands out a little from your own writing.

The most popular sites profile the college essay writers who are the most requested and most highly reviewed to promote them to customers.

Other services will assign the best essay writer based on the type of paper, subject matter, and level of academia needed to complete the task.

All of the services we reviewed guarantee their results and hire experts who are true professionals in their fields or have the academic experience to write with authority on the subject they specialize in.

Most of the services allow you to monitor the process. If communication is an issue, or if you are unhappy with the results, their guarantees allow you to substitute another professional to satisfy your requirements.

How much does it cost to purchase an essay?

If we’re talking about undergraduate writing assignments, the typical price for a single page is about $11-20. It usually varies depending on how fast you need your essay written. On average, a typical three-page college essay written in three days will cost you $50-110.

We advise you to be wary of some cheap essay writing services selling papers for prices lower than $9. While the price may seem appealing, it’s best to steer clear of such sites because they hardly ever deliver papers of subpar quality, let alone high-quality, plagiarism-free essays.

Is it safe to buy essays online?

Yes, you can be reasonably certain that buying papers and essays online through any of the academic writing companies that we have reviewed here will be safe and secure. By using any of these sites, your personal data will be kept confidential and fully protected.

Your school should never learn that you hired an online essay writer to produce a paper for one of your classes. This is a valid concern when employing a writing service to write a paper for you. The possibility that your teacher or professor will learn that you bought your paper online is small.

Here’s the thing. The only way these college paper writing services can continue to thrive and stay in business is to keep student data confidential and safe. Most of them post a security and confidentiality guarantee on their websites. Some students opt to give a pseudonym or merely their initials to help guarantee themselves anonymity.

The companies we mentioned in this review keep their databases secure and do not sell or share student data. In most cases, they have a customer satisfaction guarantee which covers security and quality.

If a company is offering a 100% money-back guarantee, you can wager that they are doing their utmost to avoid giving any refunds.

Are online essay writing services legit?

As with any kind of service you employ, it’s always a case of “buyer beware.” The responsibility falls on the customer to do their due diligence in choosing a reputable and honest and online essay writing service from which to purchase papers.

However, be wary of basing your decisions solely on customer reviews, as many of these companies are plagued by scores of negative reviews from scam sites provided by rival essay writing companies.

Look for well-established websites with a large pool of writers, and be sure to utilize the live chat feature that is on most of the websites, to ask the questions that are pertinent to your situation.

You want to be sure that you employ a writing service with professional paper writers who specialize in your field of study. At the higher levels of academia, you need to be sure that the writers have the academic experience and credentials to produce the quality level required for a thesis or dissertation.

When special formatting and citations are required, you will need to do diligent interviewing of your essay writer to be assured that they are able to produce the quality of content that you require.

What if I am not satisfied with my paper?

The majority of the services you will consider have a process whereby you get edits and revisions for free within a specified period of time after the completion of the work.

In some cases, future edits and revisions will be charged a fee.

Many services also offer a customer satisfaction guarantee which means that the expert essay writer you engage (that the service contracts with) promises to revise the finished product to your satisfaction, or you are entitled to 100% of your money back.

We understand that it rarely goes to that extreme. Most of the time, you will be able to obtain a final product to your satisfaction on the first try, even without asking for a revision.

If you want to achieve that, please provide the most descriptive order instructions that you can. This way, you can avoid the revision process and save yourself and your writer some time.

Part of making sure that the best outcome is to choose a writing service that employs proficient and professional essay writers in your area of study and that you give clear and explicit instructions as to the formatting, citation, and style of essay you require.

We also recommend that you check in regularly with your writer throughout the process so that you may be able to catch any issues that may arise and be able to correct them right away.

What are the main drawbacks of essay writing services?

The main drawbacks of using companies that write essays for you are the expense and the risk of discovery. While most essay writing services online are not too costly, getting into larger projects with extensive proofing and editing can become expensive, especially on a student’s budget.

While these sites generally guarantee security and confidentiality, there is always the chance that your professors/teachers may notice a change in the quality or style of your essays and figure out that you purchased the work rather than producing it.

The other drawback of using the services of essay writing websites is that you don’t benefit from the work the same way you would have if you had done the work.

If you are doing the research and the citations, you will be enriched by the process and gain knowledge in the subject from doing the work.

Using a writing service only gives you the benefit of the result, the grade, or the points you gain, rather than a more profound knowledge of the subject matter.

This has the potential to trip you up later in life when you may be called upon for that knowledge in your field of study and lack the expertise because you paid someone else to do the work.

Professional essay writing services fill a need in providing writing assistance to students at all levels of academia, but they should only be used infrequently and in urgent or timely situations where the student or scholar is unable to provide a quality essay on the subject assigned.

We understand that there are circumstances where a writing service can be a real lifesaver. Still, we caution students not to abuse these services or use them as a replacement for acquiring knowledge in their chosen field of study. Instead, when the need arises, choose a reputable service that guarantees good quality work.

The news and editorial staff of the Delco Daily Times had no role in this post’s preparation.

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