Writing College Essays

Writing College Essays In the five paragraph essay, each paragraph had a topic sentence and then a bunch of support —support which often consisted of a hodgepodge of examples sort of thrown at the reader in a kind of barrage. You can make your essay beautiful by giving thought to a few things. Consider whether or not bold type face could make your essay easier to read. Do you think she should retake the ACT just to improve the writing part? Reading your other comments sounded like she may not need to do that but would like to confirm. She does have 4.0 unweighted GPA so far, SAT Math II 790, SAT Bio 770. The 8 score is not that out of the norm, so I wouldn’t give it much weight in the decision. About 2/3 of colleges superscore the ACT, so I would send both scores in those cases (that way he has a 36 Reading / 36 Science). Don’t crowd your essay near the top of the page, but balance it on the page and attend to soothing margins. Separate paragraphs in a consistent way, either by indenting each paragraph or by using block style, keeping all the words to the left margin but spacing extra between paragraphs. If you are applying to the University of California system, I would recommend repeating the essay. Otherwise, you should be able to save yourself the headache. I am not aware of any college that allows the fulfillment of the essay requirement with one test while using the scores from a different exam. While writing your essay, you have to keep your ego in check. Although you want to come off as the best version of you, sometimes you can get carried away with the story and lose yourself in over exaggeration. You want to approach writing your essay as if it were a creative writing piece. Do not repeat the exam because of your Writing score. I then took the ACT again without writing and got a 34. Should I take the entire ACT with writing again, or does the essay from my initial test carry over to my 34 test. Other students may want to use it as a checklist. Once they have written the first draft of a paper, they might compare their paragraphs to the list, noting what is missing and rewriting the paragraphs as appropriate. It’s less important at schools that do not superscore, but I would still be comfortable submitting both scores. I believe the vast, vast majority of the colleges you list as “Optional” similarly don’t even consider a writing score. Art graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he was the top-ranked liberal arts student in his class. Art pioneered the one-on-one approach to test prep in California in 1989 and co-founded Compass Education Group in 2004 in order to bring the best ideas and tutors into students' homes and computers. Although he has attained perfect scores on all flavors of the SAT and ACT, he is routinely beaten in backgammon. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that it’s a creative nonfiction piece. This means you are telling a true story in a creative form. You can bring creativity into your essay through the hook, a conceit, or through your syntax and diction. You will need to take the ACT with Writing if you are considering colleges that require the essay. I’m thinking about taking the ACT to just try it and see if I can score better on it than SAT. Let’s say I take the ACT without writing and scored better on it than SAT and I send both scores to a school that requires the writing part. Will they look at my ACT score and my SAT Essay score or I have to take the ACT with writing in order for the score to be considered. The following table of 360 popular colleges provides a wide range of institutions and policies. In general, we find that less competitive colleges are less likely to require either essay.