Writing a creative admission essay is one of the ways to ensure that your essay is unique, powerful, and interesting enough to get your application accepted. Here’s what the Spark Notes blog has to say about creativity in essays:
Essays are usually a tool used to gauge something about you, for example, your skill at writing, your ideals and personality, or your ability to repeat some things about Charlemagne before forgetting them forever.
You might assume that if you’re writing about your ideals and personality, there are no right or wrong answers, and that’s probably true. But there are awesome and far-less-awesome answers.Sometimes, despite seeming absolutely insane, an unexpected approach winds up surprising and delighting the people who read these things.
In the first part of this excerpt, you can find some helpful information about the objectives of an essay. When writing your college admission essay, it’s important to keep your eye on your goal, which is to introduce yourself to the admissions committee and let them know why you make a good fit for their school. In the second part of the excerpt, however, Spark Notes gives advice that doesn’t necessarily work when it comes to college application essays. Being creative isn’t about writing something with an unexpected approach, but it’s more about putting thought into how you translate your personality into an excellent essay.
Get your creative juices flowing
If you need some help getting your creative juices flowing, then you should heed this advice from another blog, which states:
Whether you are writing an essay, speech, or developing personal goals, the following three-step process can be applied:
1. Idea Collection: Use various brainstorming techniques to gather your thoughts on a specific topic.
2. Idea Mapping: Create Mind Maps that organize your thoughts structurally.
3. Conversion to Linear Form: When writing or speaking, ideas must be presented one word after another. The challenge is to present the material in a way that the associations and structure of the material are not lost.
Basically, the blog breaks down the creative writing process into three steps, but we all know that it can be a lot harder than 1, 2, 3, to write an exceptional paper. Still, this gives a great foundation from which to work on. When preparing to write your essay, brainstorm on the various topics that you want to talk about. Write down practically any relevant issue that comes to mind. Then try to organize your thoughts into something with a sequence and a structure. This second stage is basically like making an outline. Finally, you have to turn your ideas and your outline into a full-fledged essay.
Being creative in your essay
The best way to show your creativity is to let your personality and your character spill onto the pages of your admission essay. Just be yourself, because everyone has their own creative streak that makes them unique. Here are some good pieces of advice:
The first thing an applicant has to remember is that Admission officers want the essay to be personal and imaginative. The next thing they have to take note of is how to write something personal without making it appear as a lifeless paper. The trick for this is to make the tone of the essay a conversational one. Since one is talking about his life, narrate it in a light humorous tone as though one is talking to another person like a friend. In this way, one will definitely get the focus and the hearts of the admission officers. People should freely express themselves.
In the end, the best topics are those that you can tell with your own personal flair. A topic that you can use as a vessel to get across your ultimate message: that you are a person who is ready, willing, and able to be a student in the school you are applying to.