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The college essay: Shooting your own foot?

The college essay: Shooting your own foot? . Expository Writing. Shooting Yourself in the Foot. A Phony Life-Changing Experience – Have you ever been a different person since the day you lost the big game while learning a valuable lesson? Doubtful. An admissions officer wont buy it!

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The college essay: Shooting your own foot?

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  1. The college essay: Shooting your own foot? Expository Writing

  2. Shooting Yourself in the Foot • A Phony Life-Changing Experience – Have you ever been a different person since the day you lost the big game while learning a valuable lesson? • Doubtful. An admissions officer wont buy it! • Making Everything Peachy Keen – Avoid telling how you encountered a problem, found a solution, and lived happily ever after. • Self-congratulation does not play well in an essay, and neither does the superficial sense that everything works out in the end.

  3. Shooting Yourself in the Foot • Social Problem of the Year Bandwagon – Remember Hurricane Katrina? Want to guess how many essays were written that year about responding to disasters and taking care of refugees? • Don’t touch global warming or similar topics with a ten-foot pole. Don’t write about an issue that everybody is else is talking about. • Melodrama – Straining for the dramatic always ends badly. • Do so, and you’ll get something like, “the last gleaming rays of the sun bathed the field in a soft orange glow as we strode confidently from the huddle to begin the fourth quarter.”

  4. Shooting Yourself in the Foot • Quoting Pop Lyrics – What sounds profound on your iPod may seem silly or trite in an essay. • Bob Dylan, Boxcar Willy or something similarly out of the ordinary – okay. Rebecca Black – do I even have to say it. • Edit, Edit, Edit. From main idea to weak verbs, edit your work. • P.S. Don’t trust spell check!

  5. The College Essay Fiske, Edward and Hammond, Bruce. Real College Essays That Work. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006. Print.

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