There are a few things you can do to make the process
of writing your application essays a little easier for
yourself. Adopt the following strategy or modify it to
suit your temperament, but do something like this:
[1]
Collect all your application materials into one pile
and compare the essay topics you'll have to work on.
Note the similarities and group together the applications
that overlap in their requirements.
[2]
Choose one essay to work on first, and give yourself
no more than 8 days to come up with a complete draft.
Stick to this time-line religiously: giving yourself
a frame within which to come up with essay ideas can
do wonders for those little gray cells up there.
[3]
Don't wait till the weekend to do the first essay. Make
it a Thursday or a Friday, or whatever, but don't do
it on the weekend because if you do, you're likely to
revert to that blanked out slo-mo state that is the
bane of all essay-writing.
[4]
Jot down any ideas, phrases, sentences, dialogue bits
that come to you in the next few days. Don't bank on
being able to remember them cold once you sit down to
write. Note them down as you think them up.
[5]
Within the 8-day period, give yourself 2 days to write
a complete draft of your first essay. Don't wait till
day 8 to start drafting it.
[6]
Once it's done, put your first essay draft away for
a couple of weeks and begin to work on the next one.
[7]
By the end of four weeks, you'll have complete drafts
of four applications and you can then begin to revise
essay number 1. During the preceding four weeks, you'll
probably have come up with more ideas, some refinements
of what you've already written, ways of expressing yourself
more clearly or more strikingly or simply better.
[8]
Do at least 2 revisions of each essay, but make sure
to space them out by a week or so in order to be able
to see them afresh when you return to them.
[9]
Have a teacher or one of your parents or perhaps an
older sibling or your aunt and uncle read the essays
and tell you what they think of them. Consider their
feedback as objectively as you can and incorporate the
suggestions that you believe will make the essays [1]
read better, [2] represent the person you are more faithfully
and accurately, [3] capture the reader's interest more
securely.
[10]
Have a third person proofread each essay for spelling
and punctuation errors, send the essays out and get
ready for a long wait.
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