{"id":69,"date":"2007-11-08T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T05:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admissions.me.holycross.edu\/2007\/11\/08\/application-essay-tips\/"},"modified":"2007-11-08T01:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T05:38:00","slug":"application-essay-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/2007\/11\/08\/application-essay-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Application essay tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;float: left\" src=\"http:\/\/me.holycross.edu\/blogimages\/jrichardson.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Jrichardson\" \/> Hi everyone!\u00a0 After 17 flights, 4 buses, 2 boats, many a rental car, taxis and trains, I&#8217;m finally wrapping up the 2007 fall travel season and coming home!\u00a0 \u00a0Its been a wonderful fall, and all of the travel has been very interesting; I feel blessed to have met so many dynamic and intellectual students along the way!\u00a0 From Flekke, Norway, to Tucson, Arizona, its all been very exciting.<\/p>\n<p>Travel tip of the day: GPS.\u00a0 If you don&#8217;t have one of these, get one &#8230; you&#8217;ll never be lost or frustrated over maps or directions again.\u00a0 I would personally endorse the Garmin line.\u00a0 I rented one of these while in Arizona and New Mexico, and am now poised to invest in my own &#8211; &#8211; a lifesaver!<\/p>\n<p>So now its time to come back home and begin the &#8220;climb to the top of the mountain&#8221; as I call it &#8211; &#8211; the mountain of applications.\u00a0 While we will likely receive more than 7,000 applications this year, one of the aspects of our process in which we take a tremendous amount of pride is the lengths we go to attempting to get to know each candidate.\u00a0 Every application is read multiple times, by different people, each evaluating the various credentials we find within.\u00a0 We rely on your transcripts &#8230; and what you teachers say about your work ethic and perseverance &#8230; and how well you did in your interview &#8230; and of course, how well your essay is written.<\/p>\n<p>The Essay is undeniably one of the most important parts of your application materials.\u00a0 By now, we hope, you&#8217;ve created your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commonapp.org\/\">www.commonapp.org<\/a> account, begun your application, and have presumeably been able to breeze through the first several pages which require you to complete your name, address, parents information, etc.\u00a0 Presumably one of the items you&#8217;ve left for last is the essay.\u00a0 Either you&#8217;ve decided to continue pondering the questions and are still debating which of the five you&#8217;d like to tackle, or you&#8217;re just outright procrasinating.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Do not procrastinate<\/span>.\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Get to work.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Please spend a lot of time working on this.\u00a0 We spend a lot of time reading it, so we hope you spend a lot of time writing it.\u00a0 A well written essay stands out not for its length, but rather for its content, imagery, and to what extent it &#8220;speaks to us&#8221;.\u00a0 A few pieces of essay advice:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Take me there.\u00a0 Make me <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">react<\/span>.\u00a0 Allow me to see, smell, or hear (or do all of those) the subject about which you are writing.<\/li>\n<li>Take caution on this windy road to a well written essay &#8230; you will never know who will be reading this masterpiece.\u00a0 As you&#8217;ve seen through the blog and potentially through your other interactions with our staff, we have men, women, young, old(er), a priest, lay people, democrats, republicans &#8230; you will never know who will be reading your masterpiece.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid humor; this can be very dangerous .. for the same aforementioned reasons .. you&#8217;ll never know who will be reading this.<\/li>\n<li>Proofread &#8211; Proofread &#8211; Edit &#8211; Proofread\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Edit &#8211; Proofread.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 An essay which is free of grammatical and syntax errors says you care about your application and whether you not you are admitted; an essay which is less than perfect says something else &#8211; &#8211; I&#8217;ll leave that to you to imagine what it says.<\/li>\n<li>Answer the question.\u00a0 Whichever question you choose to answer, write about the subject.\u00a0 Avoid tangents.\u00a0 Get to the point already.<\/li>\n<li>Always bring it back to speak about yourself.\u00a0 Its wonderful for us to read all about the influence your Grandmother\/father had on you, but Grandma isn&#8217;t applying to be a part of the Holy Cross community .. you are .. so always bring it back to talk about yourself.<\/li>\n<li>Feel good about your finished product.\u00a0 Write about those things you enjoy, believe in, or to which you are committed.\u00a0 Doing this will show; not doing this, will show.<\/li>\n<li>Spend more time on this, collectively, than on any other aspect of your application.\u00a0 Make it good .. this is the only piece of writing you are required to submit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, there are applications to read &#8230; I best get to work.\u00a0 Good luck!<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh Auntie Em &#8230; there&#8217;s no place like home!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi everyone!\u00a0 After 17 flights, 4 buses, 2 boats, many a rental car, taxis and trains, I&#8217;m finally wrapping up the 2007 fall travel season and coming home!\u00a0 \u00a0Its been a wonderful fall, and all of the travel has been very interesting; I feel blessed to have met so many dynamic and intellectual students along &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/2007\/11\/08\/application-essay-tips\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Application essay tips&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-james-richardson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}