Minutes a day n e w y o r k

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I N T R O D U C T I O N
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www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com

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The College Application Essay
Most colleges and universities require students to submit a written essay with their application. The nearly 300
schools that use the Common Application (www.commonapp.org) present five topics from which you must select
and write on one. Other schools use similar types of topics, or even ask you to come up with your own.
No matter the topic, though, the purpose of this essay remains the same: to reveal something personal about
you that will give the admissions department a better idea of who you are and why they should accept you. This
isn’t the time to wow your reader with your insights into current social problems or the poetry of the seventeenth
century. Your audience, an admissions officer, want to learn about you. A successful college application essay trans-
forms you from a two-dimensional applicant into a dynamic, three-dimensional “real” person. And in most cases,
the more real you are to the admissions officer, the more likely it is that he or she will accept you.
Of course, the application essay also gives the reader a sense of how well you can communicate in writing,
and that ability is crucial to your academic success. After all, admissions officers are not only looking to see if you’re
a good fit for the university—they also want to see that you’ll be able to handle their curriculum and that you can
read and write effectively at the college level.
Here are some Common Application topics and writing requirements found on most other applications: