How to Reach that Elusive Final Draft

Writing your college essay can be really intimidating, and it's hard to know where to even start. We are going to give you an outline of steps to follow with tips to help you complete each one. Maybe you are just getting started, or maybe you just want tips for a specific step. Either way, this should (hopefully) make the process go a bit smoother and make you feel more prepared as you begin to write one of the scariest essays of your high school career.

Step 1: Brainstorming the Perfect Idea

If you haven’t read our last article about “What to Avoid When Choosing a College Essay Topic”, you should definitely check that one out before you begin this step. Brainstorming can be hard and it can feel like you’re just sitting there forcing yourself to come up with random ideas. We recommend that you start by thinking about every important, time consuming facet of your life: work, extracurriculars, family, volunteering, etc. Then, start thinking about all of the random things that have happened to you, whether that be a cool trip abroad, a scary moment in your life, a time you got injured. These don’t have to be big moments, just things that come to mind. Jot down every single one of these ideas. You can also write down sentimental items in your house and try to determine if you could write a whole essay about it. Confer with people close to you about shared memories or things that they view about you as being unique. Maybe identify a few traits you know you want to portray to colleges and think about times that you’ve exemplified these.

Once you've come up with a list of 10-15 things in your life, start to think about how each one could be evolved into an essay about who you are as a person. You’re not trying to create some lifetime trauma that somehow makes you worthy of a college education for getting through it, so it’s time to let that uneducated underclassmen mindset go. What you are really trying to do is think of how you can spin a random occurrence or details about your life into an interesting story that showcases who you are as a person while connecting to other broad facets of your life.

Once you have written this list and maybe walked away, had some time to dwell over the various ideas, sit back down and pick your top 5. Now write an introduction for each one. It doesn’t have to be long, just 3-5 sentences. Were you able to write a thesis statement? Do you see this essay going somewhere? It should become pretty apparent which essays have potential and which ones need to be set aside. Now, don’t throw away any of these ideas, even from your original list. They may not be the right thing for your main essay, but chances are most of those could be used for short answer ideas.

Now, take your top few introduction essays and write down all of the traits each one could possibly showcase. Which ones are more important? We like to use something called the 4-square exercise, where you come up with 4 equally important traits for each topic. Keep asking yourself why whatever you’re sharing would be important to colleges.

Step 2: Outline

Once you have identified your top few topics, write outlines for each one. Include an introduction, thesis statement, 4 body paragraphs, and a conclusion (In your final essay, you probably won’t have space for 4 body paragraphs but we recommend you have ideas for at least 4 so that you can pick the 3 strongest ideas that are easiest to develop and most important to colleges). Start by writing your body paragraphs, then write your thesis. Keep in mind that while each paragraph might be a little different from the last, they all need to move the story along and display important information about you. Don’t worry too much about the conclusion at this point, as you probably don’t know where your essay is going to take you. Keep in mind that this should show a growth action in some form. Once you have written the rest of your outline, go back and write your thesis based on those body paragraphs. Does this answer the essay prompt? Keep this question in mind as you go through your essays.

Step 3: Rough Draft

There isn’t much to say about this, and you probably (hopefully) don’t need too many tips on this step by this point in your academic career. Pick your favorite outline and write it. Our best advice is just write a stream of consciousness from your outline. It doesn’t need to make sense, nor does it need proper grammar or sentence structure or word choice. The ideas don’t even need to be connected. Maybe once you start writing, you’ll go off on a tangent and get another idea for a new body paragraph. Maybe you’ll end up hating one of your body paragraphs and tossing it completely. That’s great and that’s part of the process. Just let it happen and don’t stress about where this rough draft seems to be heading. With that said, once you write this rough draft, decide if you think it's malleable enough to turn into your final essay.

If you’re not sure about it, pick up a different outline and write that one. It’s okay to write a few bad essays before you find the right one. You might hate all of them and have to go back to your random pile of brainstorming ideas. Let yourself be indecisive and try different things until you find something that feels just right. Be careful about letting other people give you opinions in this step, as you want to make sure your topic is portraying you how you want to be portrayed, and parents, friends, and teachers might not always understand this. It is so important that your essay portrays you, even if you don’t love you, because trust me, essay readers can tell when it doesn’t.

Step 4: Editing

Everyone’s favorite step! Not. We know this is tedious and stressful and time consuming. Just get it done. Your first editing step should be to pick a rough draft that you like best at this point and do your normal edits. Remember, you just wrote something stream of consciousness so chances are, it doesn’t make sense. Your parents don’t want to read that nonsensical pile of thoughts so go through and connect the ideas, add your transition sentences, and fix all the grammar that you can. Figure out which paragraph doesn’t fit or feels like it could be blended in with the other ones and get your essay back down to three body paragraphs.

A good trick to utilize is to highlight any actions, emotions, thoughts, etc. that display something important about you. This allows you to see what traits you’re actually portraying to schools. Once this has been fine tuned, take a look at your thesis and conclusion and make sure all of the ideas you talked about were actually introduced and the whole essay is cohesive.

Now, go to the top of your essay and hit a hard return after every

single

sentence.

Go through each and every sentence to fine tune the language, grammar, word choice, and conciseness. These essays aren’t very long, so you want to ensure that you’re making every word count. Think about unnecessary language such as hyperbole, the overuse of adjectives, and lists. This is the best way to edit for grammar mistakes and awkward language as well.

Once you have done all of these editing steps, make an outline of the rough draft you have created. Start from the top of the introduction, mark your thesis statement, go through the points of all of the body paragraphs, and make sure all of it makes sense. This usually helps with figuring out your conclusion as well. At the end of this, reread your essay.

Step 5: Send Your Essay to 3 People

Only 3 people, and none of them should be a friend applying to colleges as well. Ideally, one is a family member or very close person that knows your voice well (we would make an exception if you wanted to show both parents). They will know whether you are representing yourself in the best light or not. The second one should be someone who barely knows you, such as Atx Bright Tutoring. This is great because it shows how you would be perceived by an essay reader, who doesn’t know you personally. They can tell you if anything comes off as strange or doesn’t read well. The last one should be someone who knows you academically, such as a teacher or tutor. They can tell you if you are representing yourself well, but also if you should add anything. We don’t recommend sending this to more than three or four people because the more people that edit your essay, the less voice your essay will have.

IMPORTANT: Don’t let anyone directly edit on your document. Let them make comments on the side or on a separate piece of paper so that you can apply them in a way that still feels like you. You don’t want your essay to lose personality or become too stiff/formal, as this will make it a boring and forgettable read for admissions counselors. We promise you, the more people who edit your essay, and the more changes that are made to your essay by anyone other than you, the less your essay will shine.

Step 6: Final Draft

You’ve almost made it to the finish line at this point. By now, you’ve made the edits other people have suggested and you should be feeling pretty confident in your essay. Go back through, maybe repeat some of your editing tricks to make sure it’s just right.

Step 7: Title

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about this part, and hopefully you didn’t either. The title is important because it is the first thing that your reader will perceive about your essay. You don’t want it to be something boring or non-descriptive. You want something catchy and memorable that also gives the reader a little insight as to what they’re about to read. This way, after they’ve read 1,000 essays, they can remember your title and instantly know what it was about and think, yeah, I want the kid who wrote *insert title here* to come to my school.

These tips should make your writing experience a little smoother and hopefully give you some confidence in yourself. Just remember, everyone else is in the same boat and has the same fears. The only thing that matters in this essay is you. Be selfish, don’t let others change your words, and let yourself shine. And remember, this college essay is only a part of a much broader application, so stop placing so much pressure on it.

Let us know if you have any questions about this article or college applications in the comments!

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