How to Write Great Essays

Be mysterious or intriguing.
Your introduction needs to relate to the rest of
your essay, but there can be a small detail that makes the admissions officers
wonder what you are up to. Are you writing about how your music teacher
has influenced you? You might begin by describing him playing his cello in a
few detailed sentences. Don’t mention that he is your teacher, or that he has
helped shaped your love of music yet. The reader will wonder who the mys-
tery man is, and want to read on to find out.
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Give an anecdote.
A very short slice of life story that doesn’t clue the reader in
to where you are headed can be a great hook. Write about the last seconds of a
basketball game, checking out your last customer of the day, your brilliant but
disorganized teacher’s lecture on Emerson. Admissions officers will have to
keep reading to discover what you are writing about.
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Untimed Essay Writing Strategies
CHAPTER 6 
HOW TO WRITE GREAT ESSAYS
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Ask a question.
“When have you ever heard of a basketball coach reading
poetry to her team?” “Why would I want to give up my poolside summer as a
lifeguard to work in a rundown school without air conditioning?” Take your
subject, and first ask yourself what is unusual or in need of an explanation.
Turn it into a question that does 
not 
have an obvious answer.
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Cite an unusual fact.
Telling your reader something he or she doesn’t know,
and wouldn’t guess, can compel her to read on. If you are writing about a
travel experience, hunt down some statistics that might seem startling. “The
U.S. Department of Transportation reported that during the month I was
traveling, over 255,000 pieces of luggage were lost.” Did your youth group vol-
unteer with migrant farm workers picking oranges? A few minutes of research
can help you begin your essay, “Florida’s Valencia orange forecast for April was
86 million boxes.”
BODY
The body of your essay should be the easiest part to write. Using your outline and notes,
put down your thoughts in clear sentences that flow logically from one to another. Tell your
story seamlessly, using transitions (see the list of transition words in Chapter 7, pages 90–91)
to move from one point to the next. Remember that you are writing a rough draft; don’t
worry over every word. If you find weaknesses with your outline as you write, such as miss-
ing details or a paragraph that would work better in another part of your essay, make adjust-
ments. Keep in mind though, there is plenty of time to refine your essay during the revi-
sion and editing processes.
Provide an obvious connection between your introduction and the body of your essay.
Don’t waste a dynamic start by dumping the reader into a new context that leaves her ask-
ing, “where am I?” Show clearly why you began as you did. For example, if you opened with
a statistic (such as the introduction example about Valencia oranges), the next sentence must
connect the numbers with your own experience. It might be, “My youth group had a hard
enough time packing a dozen boxes of oranges a day. It’s hard to imagine how many hours
of work is represented by 86 million boxes.”
Use concrete examples, details, and evidence to support the points you make in your essay.
Review the section in Chapter 2 entitled “Modifiers Add Precision” for ideas that will help
your writing come alive and be uniquely yours. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should
run to your thesaurus. Admissions directors and college counselors give this piece of advice
often: do not use words specifically to show off your vocabulary, or to try to wow your reader.
There is an important difference between using just the right word to convey meaning, and
using a bigger, longer word when a simpler one will do.
Not convinced to put down your thesaurus? Here are three reasons to stop looking for
and using so-called “big words.”

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1.