Kuidas kirjutada esseed (2)

The Essay Writing Manual

Brain Storming

The process of writing the application essay can be broken into five very basic parts:
 Brainstorming
 Selecting the essay topic
 Writing the essay
 Revising the essay
 Coming up with the final draft
1. BRAINSTORMING: Brainstorming is the process of coming up with ideas spontaneously from free flowing writing or talking.
To brainstorm, you can simply sit down with a pen and jot down every idea that comes into your head. Another approach is to simply start writing and see where you end up. Record as much information as you can recall, such as schools attended, courses taken, jobs held, research projects undertaken. Work on taking yourself deeper into the introspection process by tackling more specific topics. Here are some questions you might want to consider :
 What am I like?
 How do my friends characterize me?
 What are my personality traits?
 Have I ever experienced a moment of epiphany?
 Why is (some color) my favorite color?
 Why is (some movie) my favorite movie?
 How have my favorites influenced my life?
 What have I done ?
 What are my major accomplishments?
 Why do I consider them accomplishments?
 What extra curricular activities have I participated in?
 Have I strived hard for something and achieved it? Why did I succeed?
 Have I strived hard for something and failed to achieve it? Why did I fail?
 What was the most difficult time of my life?
 How did my perspective of life change due to that difficult time?
 Where do I want to go?
 What would I most like to be doing right now?
 Where would I like to be?
 Who would I most like to be with?
 What are my dreams for the future?
 What do I intend to do to achieve these dreams?
 What will I be doing ten years from now?
 How does this university fit in my plans for the future?
You can also brainstorm using the following questions:
 What might help the evaluating committee in understanding me better?
 What distinguishes me from other applicants?
 What are my career aims?
 What skills do I possess that would improve your chances for success in this field ?
 What has stimulated my interest in this field of study ?
 Why should an admissions committee be interested in me?
 Why am I interested in this field?
Some other topics are suggested below to stimulate your thinking :
 The most memorable experiences
 The most influential ideas, people and events in your life
 Your likes and dislikes
 Your academic, career and personal goals
 Your key strengths
 Your favorite written work , quotations, intellectual activities
 The attributes you most respect in others
 Times when you have shown leadership , creativity and ingenuity
 Times when you have helped others
You don't have to cover all the topics stated above . All you have to do is try going from topic to topic and write around three to five items for each question or topic then move on to the next one. You can skip any topic you want to, there is no compulsion. The whole point of this exercise is to generate a mass of information that will help you in selecting your topic for the essay. Try to make your topic focused and broad at the same time, it sounds paradoxical but it's not.
If the topics above do not help in stimulating your creativity and eliminating the writers ’ block, try following some of these steps:
 Ask help from parents , friends or colleagues
 Consider your childhood
 Consider your role models
 Read sample admission essays
 Goal determination
Once you have generated the list of potential topics, look over it and revise . Add something if you want to and remove things you feel you might not be able to write about. Do this as many times as you can over the period of one week and develop your thoughts. Another good idea would be to show your list to people who know you and get feedback from them.
If you do not come up with an idea for your essay, even after reading all these instructions - do not worry ! Coming up with ideas is difficult and sometimes requires a lot of time. The only way to write a good essay is to have experiences to support your essay topic. Don’t let this essay stress you out. Try to have fun with the brainstorming process; it might even reveal things you never consciously realized.
Once you have completed the brainstorming process, you’ll have a rough idea of what you actually want to write about. You should now also have the idea of what impression you are seeking to make on the admissions committee. Now, you must confront the problem of selecting the topic that will allow you to synthesize your important personal characteristics and experiences in a coherent whole while simultaneously addressing your desire to attend that particular college

Selecting the Essay Topic

The key to a strong essay is a good topic. When selecting a topic, you should keep in mind to choose a topic that allows you to demonstrate your skills and individuality, a topic that answers the essay question while telling the reviewers what they really want to know. To begin with, you should first read the essay question carefully and try to understand what the reviewers want to know, keep in mind that essay questions are designed to let the reviewers judge why you should be admitted to that particular college.
There are several different kinds of essay questions. Some of the most common types of essay questions and the purposes behind them are given below:
Key Influence Questions:
Definition : Key influence questions require you to write about something that has a certain influence on your life.
This influence can be in form of a person , a movie, an event, some world issue , a work of literature - anything.
Ideal response: While responding to this question, you should keep in mind that the influence you decide to write about is just as important as what you intend to write about it. You have to make sure that the influence you choose something valued and casts light on your strengths. Write about how that certain thing has influenced your thoughts, ideas and goals and how it has made an impact on you and made you a better person.
Goal Questions:
Definition: This kind of question can take two forms : it can ask you to directly write about your goals, or it can ask you to write a personal statement that will include your goals and your qualifications. The question usually focuses on academic, career and personal goals.
Ideal response: Firstly, you should state your goals clearly . Let the reader know that you have a clearly defined set of goals that you are directed by and that hold utmost importance to you. You may also distinguish between your short and long term goals in the process. Secondly, you should write about how this specific college fits in your plans for achieving your goals.
Open - ended Questions:
Definition: Open-ended questions are non-specific, they do not require you to write about a specific thing rather they can be something like, “ Please provide any additional information about you that you would like us to know”. If the open-ended question is optional, don’t feel an obligation to answer , only try to answer it if you really have something important to share with the review committee.
Ideal response: If an open-ended question is the only essay question your application includes, you are left with a wide variety of options, you can write anything you wish to. But the most ideal thing to do would be to treat them as key influence or goal questions because these two are the most common types of specific essay questions. You may want to write about more than one thing in the essay, but it is recommended that you decide to write in depth about one certain thing.
Growth questions:
Definition: Personal growth type questions ask you to write about specific things that have been milestones in your growth and how they have helped you grow into the person you are. Some of these questions include: “What is the greatest obstacle you have overcome?” and “What has been your greatest accomplishment?”
Ideal response: While responding to a personal growth question, you should be careful not to dwell on the event itself, rather focus on how it has made a difference in your life and turned you in the person you are right now.
Creative Questions:
Definition: Creative questions allow you to express your thoughts and feelings about something - they give you the freedom of expression. Some creative questions can “Choose an issue of international concern and discuss its importance to you” or “Why have you chosen this career?”
Ideal response: While responding to creative questions, again, as mentioned before, you should not focus on the issues ; rather try to write about how they make a difference to you or why they hold importance for you. Also make sure that you demonstrate within the essay how you can succeed in a competitive college setting without actually mentioning it.
Sometimes the topics you choose can be impossible to write about even though they may seem easy at first, and sometimes even boring topics can be made interesting creatively approached. If the answer to any of the following questions is "no" then you really need to rethink your topic and select a new one.
 Can you offer supporting material in relevance with your essay topic?
 Will your topic include material different from that already mentioned in the application?
 Will the admissions officer still remember your topic after having read hundreds of essays?
 Can you fully answer the question asked of you?
 Can you keep the reader interested right from the very first word?
 Can you give personal examples ?
Never try to write about something that has already been mentioned in your application such as your GPA or your test scores. It is also a very bad idea to write something that you do not feel comfortable with and that does not let your thoughts move in a flow. Also, you should watch out for topics you cannot give concrete personal examples of.
While deciding on the topic of your application, keep in mind that you have to keep the reader interested while at the same time, revealing something about yourself in a way that makes you an ideal applicant. It is therefore much more practical to write something about yourself rather than choosing heavy topics such as peace in the Middle East or Life and Death . Watch out for national and international issues because it is very difficult to be well informed.
You should focus more on your personal concerns and talk about things that hold meaning for you, rather than just write about what "they want to hear ".
If you are planning to make your essay funny and writing it in a humorous way, you have to be very, very careful. It is strongly recommended that you should not try to make your essay funny. Almost always, this is done poorly and not appreciated by the admissions committee. There is nothing worse than not laughing at something that was meant to be funny or amusing.
A good essay tells a story about the applicant - it's not a life history; rather it is a glimpse into the life of the applicant. Treat your essay as a snapshot , each of us has different selves at different times: sometimes we are clowning about, while other times we are demonstrating wisdom. Pick one of your better selves, one that seems interesting, rich with meaning and alive with imagery and write an essay about it. There, does that not sound easy?
After you have gathered your thoughts and research and come up with a topic to write about, you are ready to write the first draft of your essay. You may want to break up your essay into different parts by creating an outline before you start writing your essay.

Actually Writing the Essay

Clear writing is the result of clear thinking. The first and foremost task you are now facing is to decide what you want write in the essay, the essay is very short so you have to be highly selective. You should remember the nature of the audience and decide on two or three main points that you wish to tell the reader. Decide which aspect of yourself do you want to present to the readers and stick to that impression, do not be inconsistent. Each of your paragraphs should deal with one main idea and the essay should be in a logical flow, because the organization of your essay reflects the organization of your mind.
It has been repeated over and over again, you should be very careful of using one main idea as the basis of your essay. If you keep on hitting your reader with lots of information, it's going to end up in information overload - and no admissions officer likes that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you should try to make that one central idea different because if you use one of the hundred most frequent used ideas, you will not be doing anything to help yourself.
The first draft is a preliminary version of your essay and it will always be rough and imperfect and in need of revision. But this essay will contain the ideas that you will carry on till your final draft. To make the task of writing the essay easier, constantly keep in mind the audience it is intended for and what the audience will be looking for.
Each essay has four very basic parts:
Title:
This is a very vital part of your essay and the first impression the reader gets of you is through the title. Often, most students forget this small, but very important part of the essay that leaves a bad impression on the reader and the essay looks as if it is carelessly written - which of course, does nothing to help your cause .
Thesis:
Your thesis is the main idea you are intending to carry throughout the essay. It is the guiding theme that sets your essay tone . In a way, the thesis is a one-sentence answer to your question. You make a claim in your thesis statement and spend the rest of the essay supporting this claim.
How do you come up with a thesis?
Coming up with your thesis requires a great deal of thinking on your part. You should carefully focus on your topic and try to find an angle, which makes it interesting and probably different from what the others will be writing. The thesis statement should be something that people do not usually think about and when they read that line, they are automatically drawn towards the essay to see what it really holds. The thesis statement is the central orienting concept of your essay.
Body :
As mentioned before, you write your essay providing evidence supporting your thesis statement. All the evidence and supporting paragraphs you write after your thesis statement are collectively known as the body of your essay.
What should the body contain?
Firstly, your body should support your thesis statement. An essay whose body contradicts its thesis statement is indeed a very bad essay. Start with describing your thesis statement in detail, then go on to provide evidence supporting the claim made in your thesis. Describe how your perception and behavior was changed by what you are writing about and how it influenced you. While writing the first draft, you do not need to worry about the order you’ll be providing the evidence in: just make sure you know what you’ll be writing about.
Conclusion :
Finally , the closing paragraph of your essay is known as the conclusion. The conclusion of your essay provides a link between the thesis statement and the body. Keep in mind that you should never summarize your essay in your conclusion; try to introduce a new idea in the conclusion – an idea that will leave your readers thinking.
How to decide what to write in the conclusion?
Connect your thesis statement with the body of your essay, then go ahead and describe how this turn of events or whatever you have written about relates to you being an ideal applicant, and how does it relate to your decision to apply for college admission. It is a good idea to use rhetorical devices in the conclusion as long as it’s not very overdone. The main point is to connect your changes to your current plans.
Types of essays:
You can write three types of essays. You should judge by the clues given in the application to decide what kind of a logical structure you should use to tie up your points together in a coherent whole. Here are some patterns for prose exposition:
Narrative : The advantage of this kind of structure is that it is linear and therefore comparatively easy to organize. A narrative essay progresses from beginning to end and can be broken into small manageable parts. While writing a narrative, make sure that you balance interpretive points with specific facts.
Analytic: An analytic essay is an essay that evaluates and answers the question “Why?” In this kind of an essay you may have to use a structure that first gives an overall answer, and then discusses various aspects.
Break it into memorable stories and use lots of specific details in this type of essay.
Technical: Technical essay is an essay that is used to show your readers how much you can contribute to a certain field and you might have to write about your involvement in a certain issue. In this essay, you have to be careful and use clear factual references, as well as a statement giving the reason why this topic is of your interest.
How you write is just as important as what you write. You should constantly keep asking yourself what would make you interested in the essay if you were the reader and put yourself in the shoes of the admission officer and find answers to questions like “Why should I choose this applicant?” Do not just rely on your own opinion, show your essay to others and seek their opinion.
6