How To Write a Graduate School Application Essay, University Work Advice
How To Write a Graduate School Application Essay
9 June 2020
Going to school again is a life-changing experience. You are now a working professional of perhaps years of experience in your area. Now, you’re considering going to graduate school to give your career a boost. This needs you to get back to your desk to write an application letter. Remember? This is now different. In your undergrad essay, you had little to pay attention to. Now, you need much more focus and you’ve got experience you want to show. Here are some great tips to get you started.
Self-Reflection
You might have wondered how to write a graduate essay once you’ve made your decision to go back to school. To write an essay for graduate school or a graduate admissions essay, you need to start with basics. You should focus on yourself and self-reflect. Meaning, you should think about yourself are as a professional, student and a person. To do so, you might wish to list your strengths and weaknesses as well as your professional goals.
This could be random at first. As you advance, you might find some patterns emerging, though. These patterns will be so helpful for you to construct a winning narrative about yourself. In fact, choosing a topic (coming soon) is perhaps the most important part in writing graduate school essays. For a starter on how to pull together your experiences, education and skills into an interesting narrative, go to annotated bibliography topics. In short, your graduate essay is your most condensed story.
Structuring Your Essay
The graduate school essay is simply an essay. Structured similarly, a graduate admission essay is made up of an introduction, body and conclusion. This is where, however, an admission and a general essay depart. That is, an admission essay is different in many ways compared to, say, an academic paper. In a graduate essay, you develop an argument informed by your personal, professional and academic experiences. There is, moreover, a fine balance you should always maintain. In your graduate essay, you are balancing out professionalism and a personal story in one space.
This is, in fact, tricky for many and, as discussed shortly, could make you sound “offbeat.” That’s why, you must ensure you pick your most relevant and revealing experiences about yourself. At first, you might find yourself stuck. That’s okay. It’s all too common to find it hard to write about yourself. Plus, many are not already good at writing. That’s why, looking for online writing services could be okay. You should be careful, though, not to copy your paid essay as is. Your graduate school committee are hyper alert to plagiarism. So, make sure you introduce some teaks to your paid essay so you make it your own.
Choosing Your Topic
Topics in graduate essays are seminal. They are simply your building material in your essay. As mentioned, you should maintain a balance in choosing your topic. Typically, graduate essays combine a range of professional, academic and personal experiences. Failing to develop a balanced narrative of all could lead to an automatic rejection of your application. That’s why, your essay must be a real attention grabber. Typically, stories are great attention grabbers.
That said, not every story could be told not every experience could be reported. In your graduate essay, you want to highlight your best in a most relevant and compelling way. There are so many ways to do this. For example, you could tell only one story in your life cutting across different professional, academic and personal lines. Or, you could tell only an anecdote and keep your essay more straightforward in tone. In whatever form you choose to tell your personal story or write your essay, make sure you are always authentic. For great insights about choosing your topic, you might wish to go to pay for essays online.
Getting Too Personal
Your essay should be personal yet not too personal. As mentioned, you should always keep a healthy balance between your professional and academic self vs. your personal self. But, let’s be true about it. There isn’t, honestly, one universal recipe about how personal a graduate essay should be. Or else, why do many people find it super hard to write a good graduate essay? So, picking a “right” personal note is something you should practice a lot. Think of a specific incident in your professional, academic or personal life. This should from a basis to develop your own unique story as an applicant.
Then again, despite all power in stories, you should avoid mentioning controversial or sensitive issues. The admission committee reviewing your application is super alert to controversies in admission essays. So, perhaps you should do some more research about your program (if you’ve not yet) to pick your right tone. By looking deeper at your program’s website, you’ll be able to know how to address your admission committee better. This will also show you’ve read about your planned program in depth. In short, maintain your personality yet stay away from being too personal.
Asking for Help
For sure, you can always ask for help. But, you should avoid at all costs a “copy-and-paste” approach in your graduate essay. That’s, you might reach out for help from a professional service or from a friend. However, you should be make your essay more personalized.
The last thing an admission committee would want to read is yet another “ready-made” essay. So, invest as much effort as you can “pouring” yourself into your graduate essay. Do extensive research. Look for patterns. Develop parallel narratives. Rewrite. Make help your last resort. For insights into asking for help writing your graduate essay, go to write my essay.
Drafting and Proofreading
Crafting your graduate essay is hard work. Not once but, perhaps, several times. That’s why, drafting is a very common process in writing your graduate essay. Typically, your first draft will be far from perfect. Don’t give up. Look at what you might believe is not right.
Check your sentence structure, flow and paragraphing. If needed, you might change your topic altogether. Also, you might need to reread your application essay questions. This is very important to keep you on track and, more importantly, so you answer the required questions correctly. Keep drafting your essay until you feel satisfied but also ask someone else to read it. Once you feel comfortable about it, proofread your final copy before you apply.
How To Write a Graduate School Application Essay Wrap Up
Your graduate essay is your passage to your next career level. You might have lost touch with college years. Still, writing a good graduate admission essay is a must for a successful application. You should self-reflect, structure your essay, choose your topic, avoid getting too personal, ask for help and draft and proofread.
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