How to write a good admissions essay
Prompt A
Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.
This prompt is pretty self- explanatory. Pick someone who has basically changed your life or (perhaps not so dramatic) made you who you are today. [/B]
My Advice:
Try to approach the essay by first introducing the person with a short biography, emphasizing characteristics of this person that molded you. Emphasize an instance or a characteristic that you found the most significant and discuss that in the essay. Remember to try and make the essay in a story- like format instead of an explanatory one. And do not list the characteristics of the influential person and how each affected you like that of a hamburger style format. I wrote about how my dad overcame language barriers and settled our family in the United States.
Prompt B
Choose an issue of importance to you—the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope—and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.
My Advice:
Basically, this prompt is not as hard as it seems. Since the prompt allows you to write personal, school related, local, political, or international issues, some people think that they ought to write a very dense and impersonal essay. This is not the case. You still have to make your voice shine out in this essay, and you can still do this even with a dense topic. And like the prompt states, try to link this topic (whether dense or not) to your own life.
Prompt D
Submit this essay in place of Essay A when applying for admission to architecture, art history, design, studio art, or visual art studies/art education.
Major-specific essay
Personal interaction with objects, images and spaces can be so powerful as to change the way one thinks about particular issues or topics. For your intended area of study (architecture, art history, design, studio art, visual art studies/art education), describe an experience where instruction in that area or your personal interaction with an object, image or space effected this type of change in your thinking. What did you do to act upon your new thinking and what have you done to prepare yourself for further study in this area?
My advice:
For this prompt, first introduce the object, image, or space that affected you. Discuss what it is, describe it, and tell about how it changed your thinking whether negatively or positively. Be careful with actually choosing the object, image, or space. Try to choose something that really has affected you. The last part of this prompt basically just wants you to write about your taking action of this new thinking. The reader simply wants to see that you not only changed, but you took actions based off of this change (new thinking).
Optional Essay
In addition to the two required essays, some applicants choose to submit a response to Essay C. Essay C is optional and cannot be submitted in place of a required essay. Students submitting Essay C do so in order to submit additional information to the university about special circumstances.
My Advice:
Essay C is pretty self- explanatory. If you have a special circumstance such as you are a first generation college student, come from a poor family, etc. that caused you to have a lower GPA or test score than all the other applicants, then write about it in essay C. I basically wrote about how I was in the International Baccalaureate program and how I always go for challenging courses even if they pull down my GPA.
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