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We know that this stuff can be a little tricky. If writing were easy it wouldn’t be a useful way for colleges to weed people out. But putting a little extra time into your conclusions can make a huge difference in how an admissions officer feels after reading your work. Every essay and supplement are different, so these are guidelines, not rules. If you’re breaking them in an interesting way, !
Since college essays should be all about strengths and values, ending your essay by explicitly returning to them is also a good idea. By leaving your admissions officers with a discussion of your strength or value, you emphasize its importance. You communicate exactly what you want them to know about you before they move on to the next application. Concluding an essay by looking forward is a great way to demonstrate how the strengths you write about in your essay will serve you in college and beyond. Admissions officers read college essays with an eye toward how a student will do in college. By ending your essay with a forward-looking perspective, you can make that job easy for them. Some conclusions are only about intentional meaning-making. This option is especially good for skilled writers who can make their reflections poetic. Concluding with a pointed reflection also ensures that you leave your admissions officers with the specific ideas you want them to take away from your essay. These kinds of conclusions show a maturity of thought and perspective—always good strengths to show in your college applications. It may take you several drafts to get it right, and that’s okay. Once you land on something you like, ask family, friends, teachers, or counselors their opinion on it. Crowdsourcing reactions to your conclusion can help you get a sense of how an admissions officer might react. You’ll be empowered to adjust your conclusion to evoke the exact response you want admissions officers to have. In many supplements, you are asked to make an argument for why something is important, why something matters or, in the case of , how you will take advantage of being at a given school. At the end of these supplements, it is really imperative that you bring your points together, but you shouldn’t be summarizing them. The last few sentences aren’t the place to reiterate your arguments verbatim. That would be a waste of space. Synthesize instead. Take your points and braid them into a sentence or two that brings them all together. The “Image of the Future” strategy involves concluding your essay with an image of how the lesson you learned, the growth you experienced, or the fear you conquered will help you later on.
When writing a CTA for your college essay conclusion, make sure it's:
Read the prompt and essay instructions thoroughly to learn how to start off a college essay. Some colleges provide guidance about formatting. If not, the best course of action is to stick with a college standard like the MLA format.
When using a personal story to end your college essay:
This conclusion has a few nice elements to it: It functions to bookend the essay (see above); it provides a wider frame/context for the specific details and experiences shared in the body paragraphs; and as mentioned above, it sets the author up for any “Why us?” essay he’ll write.
Q: How do I transition between examples so my essay “flows” well?
What it is: A conclusion that sets up nicely for a (separate) “Why us?” essay. In some cases, the personal statement is even planned around a specific program that will be discussed in a “Why us?” essay. This can work especially well if, while researching colleges, you found The Perfect Program for you—like one that basically checks all your boxes.
Looking for more college admissions essay examples about yourself? .
Good topics when writing college essays include personal achievements, meaningful lessons, life-changing challenges, and situations that fostered personal growth. It's best to avoid anything too intimate or controversial. You want to open up, but it's not a good idea to go overboard or alienate members of the admissions panel.
Your college application essay should reveal have they shaped you.
Imagine that each different part of you is a bead and that a select few will show up in your essay. They’re not the kind of beads you’d find on a store-bought bracelet; they’re more like the hand-painted beads on a bracelet your little brother made for you.
These application essays show many sides of a person.
Note how the first line of her “Why us?” essay not only references the end of her personal statement, but also expands on other interests—all of which she’ll explore in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) concentration at Michigan.