The time has come to ask a terrifying question: “is my common app essay good enough?” This question, of course, is impossible to answer. But in our experience, almost every piece of writing can be improved. We’ve put together a few tips on how to edit your common app essay, and most of these tips can also be used for your supplements:
Print it out, double spaced, and read through it slowly. Out loud.
Figure out exactly what your essay is about. If it’s a common app essay: what personality trait are you focusing on? If it’s a “Why X School” supplement, what offerings are you highlighting, and what stories are you using to do so? Are you using your strongest examples for everything? If something stronger comes to mind, revise away!
Once you’ve nailed down exactly what you’re trying to express, remove sentences that don’t align with that goal. You’d be surprised how much irrelevant information makes its way into common app essays. And despite multiple rounds of edits, it has the tendency to stay put. Remove the fluff that isn’t related to the main point of your essay.
Now, remove sentences that are wordy and/or repetitive. The essays that you’re writing are short essays. When you come across long sentences, say what you mean out loud. Then write it down and type it out in plain English. There is almost always a way to shorten things. Here’s an example: “My computer science class gave me the opportunity to practice coding languages such as Python during a group project.” While that may be true, you can also say “I coded in Python.” Space matters a lot, and longer isn’t always better! The best thing about cutting down long sentences is that it gives you the opportunity to layer in more pertinent information.
Are all of those lengthy clauses in your sentences necessary? Probably not. Transitions (from one topic to another) are crucial, and more often than not, you should leave those in. But take a look at how you’re starting out sentences, specifically supplements. Are you writing things like “When I was looking through the course catalogue, I was amazed to find so many offerings that align……..?” That’s almost 20 words! 20 words that could be used to explain your interest in a club. Be mindful of how much real estate you’re using up to flow from one idea to the next.
If you’re confused about why a sentence is in the essay, it can be removed. Things get jumbled up, we know. The Google document is 17 pages long. Copy and paste betrayed you, yet again. Sometimes we get so used to reading things, we gloss over them. Remove anything that isn’t critical.
Struggling with the best way to express something? We’ve been there: there’s one sentence, one paragraph, one idea --- and you can’t quite get it across. Here’s what we do with our TKG clients: put the essay down for a minute. Talk about something else, or better yet, work on something else. Then, do 15 minutes of free writing on the topic. Don’t judge yourself, just write. The actual writing material might not be usable, but more often than not, it’ll help get the wheels turning.
Let’s talk conclusions. As we wrote in the blog post we just linked, the conclusion to your common app essay should simply be the end of the story. Regarding supplements: you’re way better off allocating the would-be conclusion to more “data.” So, instead of writing three sentences about how you’ve always wanted to go to X school and that it’s the perfect fit, add in another class, or professor, that shows how well your interests align with the school.
Revisiting essays is hard work, but it’s worth it. Print out your essay, go through these tips, and then brainstorm some good material to squeeze into that extra space.
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