Admissions with Umid: Motivational Essays • How important are | Freshman Academy

Admissions with Umid: Motivational Essays

• How important are motivational essays?

It goes without saying that a motivational essay is one of the key components of your application. Upon reading your essay, the admissions counselor can draw a picture of who you are as a person and how prepared you are for the academic rigor at college. In this respect, your personal statement can either boost your application or downgrade it. Given the high stakes, writing a motivational essay is not easy. It takes much time and effort to produce quality work, which is often the result of scores of failed drafts and countless sleepless nights. Personally, it took me about a month to settle on the essay topic and another month to put it on paper.

• When should I start writing motivational essays?

Based on my previous response, you have probably guessed that you should start as early as possible. Again, you will have to write lots of essay drafts that will end up in a trash bin. You will be frustrated with your writing and feel stressed about the deadlines. This is a normal part of the process, so by starting early, you can give yourself plenty of time to write and polish your essay. The application cycle opens on August 1st, so do check out the essay prompts on that very day.

• Should I ask other people to proofread my essay?

Yes! To understand why, we can compare SAT preparation with writing a personal statement. In the SAT, you can always track your progress and be sure that a score of 1500+ is good enough for virtually any university you apply to. However, when writing a personal statement, you are rarely sure if the quality of your work is on par with what is expected from you. A third-person perspective, especially of someone who knows you well, can help you gauge if you effectively convey your ideas in your writing. So, do find people (close friends, parents, or teachers) who would read your essay and potentially give you extremely valuable feedback. Your essay might seem perfect to you, but others can point out grammar mistakes, awkward phrasing, or weak paragraphs which you could have easily missed.

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