Writing a college essay seems daunting, and it can be complicated without the right tools. To help with the process, we’ve broken the common app essay into individual parts. These are our ten favorite blog posts about how to put together your common app essay.
BLOG POSTS:
What is The Common App Essay?
If you’ve heard about the college essay but are looking for a general overview, start here. We explain what it is, what it isn’t, and a few key traits. Read about it here.
Pitfalls to avoid with writing your common app essay
We’ve worked with many TKG clients who have come to us with a first draft and in many cases, they’ve hit the ground running with a topic that we wouldn’t suggest. This blog post covers popular do’s and don'ts you may not be familiar with. Read about it here.
Brainstorming ideas for your common app essays
It’s normal for the brainstorm process to take a while. Before you start writing, make sure that you give yourself enough time to flesh out ideas that could turn into a solid college essay. We explain how to do that in this post.
Now that we’ve covered what you shouldn’t write about, let’s move on to settling on a story that might work. If you’re not yet comfortable with writing a creative nonfiction piece of work about yourself, read this post.
Identifying personality traits that you’d like to highlight is a good starting point for everyone. This blog post will help you identify those characteristics.
It’s possible that even after you’ve spoken to family and friends, their perception of you doesn’t resonate. When this happens, we often turn to shorter and more creative writing prompts to stimulate ideas. Read about it here.
You know by now that your essay should be a story with a beginning, middle, and end. If you don’t know how to do that, start with this blog.
First draft of your essay
The first sentence is always the hardest. This roadmap will help you mentally structure the piece.
Not happy with your first draft? We never are either. When you first start writing, don’t worry about word count and vocabulary. Read about the value of a bad first draft.
Editing your essay
At some point, you’ll start closing in on a near final draft. To remove redundant information and make use of every word at your disposal, follow these tips.
The majority of these blog posts are related to brainstorming because we’ve found that coming up with a topic and writing your first draft is the hardest part of the process. Once you’ve written your first draft, you should read the final blog post on editing and use those tools to fine tune your work.
We’ve tried to simplify the process as much as possible, but if you’d like to work with someone one on one, contact us here.