College Admission Essays

College Admission Essays You want your message to be extremely accessible, so make it snappy! Do not wait until the end of the paragraphâ€"and definitely not until the end of the essayâ€"to present your argument. The introduction states what’s at stake, and the body presents the evidence. In the case of an argumentative essay, the evidence might be research. Everything on VirginiaLynne has been written by me, and most of the writing articles are developed from the instructional materials I've written for my own classes. Start a story with a vivid illustration, a story, a question, or a personal example. Generally speaking, cell phones have changed our family communication for the worse. These points should prove useful in guiding you through composing a short essay. Here are a few dos and don’ts in summary of this article. If you are stuck and cannot find a way to shorten your essay, try the necessity test. Take out every sentence in your essay to test whether your point has become weaker without it. If there is no noticeable difference in your essay after removing the sentence, then the sentence is not integral to the rest of the essay, and it can be removed. Try to include all of the necessary introspection and not present too many different points. It is better to have one or two well-articulated and supported points than many good points that are poorly supported. Be sure that your essay meets the word and page length requirement of the prompt. This will depict you as a goal-oriented and forward-thinking person without veering you too far from the main idea of your essay. While we always recommend not getting sidetracked in a 5-6 paragraph essay, it is even more crucial that you do not allow yourself to stray away from the point in a short essay. Any sentence that is not directly relevant to your thesis not only weakens your argument but also takes up valuable space. It is important to delineate the entirety of your argument at the very beginning of the paragraph. Obviously, parents complain about their teenagers spending too much time on their phones. Moreover, teenagers are annoyed that they can't get the attention of their parents, who are always working or shopping on their phones. Cell phones have changed our family communication for the worse. In a more personal essay, it might be made up of the author’s own experiences. Your thesis statement comes at the end of your introduction. Here’s the thesis statement from the Skyline College example above. It states the main point of the essay, which the author intends to make a case for. Parents complain about their teenagers spending too much time on their phones. Teenagers are annoyed that they can't get the attention of their parents, who are always working or shopping on their phones. Use any of these alternatives to add clarity and variety to your writing. Finally, transitions make your writing sound more professional and less like spoken language. Remember that a short essay should have all of the same components as a larger essay, but in less space. Once you have a clearer vision for your central idea or argument, it’s time to organize your info-dump. Prune out anything irrelevant and organize your outline into the classic structure. If you can pull a pain point into the introduction, even better. Everyone in every field has their set of problems. You should have some listed already from when you created your buyer personas. Limit your conclusion to no more than three sentences. Conclusions are important, but you do not waste time and space rehashing points that were already made. The strongest way to end a short essay is to include a brief summary of your main argument and a statement that includes the implications of your thesis on your future.