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First, what is the personal statement? This is your main essay. Your application centerpiece. The essay is a chance for the student to share who they are now and what they will bring to our campus communities. Basically, college admissions officers are looking for three things in your essay:.
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You will find that your history professors care a great deal about your writing. They may cover your papers with red ink. Writing is hard work, but it requires neither native genius nor initiation into occult knowledge.
We historians demand the same qualities stressed in any stylebook— good grammar and syntax. It uses the active voice; it has a thesis; it explains the significance of the topic; and it tells the reader who, what, when, where, why, and how. We hope that this booklet will help you to avoid the most common problems of style and substance that students encounter in writing history papers.
Get a good general stylebook and keep it by your side as you write. Drawn from a survey of the History Department You engage in cheap, anachronistic moralizing.
You are sloppy with the chronology. You quote excessively or improperly. You are vague or have empty, unsupported generalizations. You write too much in the passive voice.
You use inappropriate sources. You use evidence uncritically. You are wordy. You have no clear thesis and little analysis. Avoid pretentious, vapid beginnings. Get to the point. For example, you might go on to argue that greater British sensitivity to Indian customs was hypocritical.
Whether you are writing an exam essay or a senior thesis, you need to have a thesis. A good thesis answers an important research question about how or why something happened. Develop your thesis logically from paragraph to paragraph. Your reader should always know where your argument has come from, where it is now, and where it is going.
Students are often puzzled when their professors mark them down for summarizing or merely narrating rather than analyzing. What does it mean to analyze?
In the narrow sense, to analyze means to break down into parts and to study the interrelationships of those parts. If you analyze water, you break it down into hydrogen and oxygen. In a broader sense, historical analysis explains the origins and significance of events. Historical analysis digs beneath the surface to see relationships or distinctions that are not immediately obvious.
Historical analysis is critical; it evaluates sources, assigns significance to causes, and weighs competing explanations. Many students think that they have to give a long summary to show the professor that they know the facts before they get to their analysis. Try instead to begin your analysis as soon as possible, sometimes without any summary at all.
You can't do an analysis unless you know the facts, but you can summarize the facts without being able to do an analysis. Like good detectives, historians are critical of their sources and cross-check them for reliability. Likewise, you wouldn't think much of a historian who relied solely on the French to explain the origins of World War I. Only a professional liar would deny this Neither the people, the government, nor the Kaiser wanted war As always, the best approach is to ask: Who wrote the source?
Under what circumstances? For whom? The first statement comes from a book by the French politician Georges Clemenceau, which he wrote in at the very end of his life. He was obviously not a disinterested observer. The second statement comes from a manifesto published by ninety-three prominent German intellectuals in the fall of They were defending Germany against charges of aggression and brutality.
They too were obviously not disinterested observers. Now, rarely do you encounter such extreme bias and passionate disagreement, but the principle of criticizing and cross-checking sources always applies. In general, the more sources you can use, and the more varied they are, the more likely you are to make a sound historical judgment, especially when passions and self-interests are engaged.
Competent historians may offer different interpretations of the same evidence or choose to stress different evidence. You can, however, learn to discriminate among conflicting interpretations, not all of which are created equal. See also: Analyzing a Historical Document. Vague statements and empty generalizations suggest that you haven't put in the time to learn the material.
The Revolution is important because it shows that people need freedom. Landless peasants? Urban journeymen? Wealthy lawyers? Which government?
Who exactly needed freedom, and what did they mean by freedom? Be careful when you use grand abstractions like people, society, freedom, and government, especially when you further distance yourself from the concrete by using these words as the apparent antecedents for the pronouns they and it.
Always pay attention to cause and effect. Abstractions do not cause or need anything; particular people or particular groups of people cause or need things. Anchor your thesis in a clear chronological framework and don't jump around confusingly. Take care to avoid both anachronisms and vagueness about dates. The scandal did not become public until after the election.
Which revolution? When in the twentieth century? Remember that chronology is the backbone of history. What would you think of a biographer who wrote that you graduated from Hamilton in the s? Your professor may allow parenthetical citations in a short paper with one or two sources, but you should use footnotes for any research paper in history. Parenthetical citations are unaesthetic; they scar the text and break the flow of reading. Worse still, they are simply inadequate to capture the richness of historical sources.
Historians take justifiable pride in the immense variety of their sources. Parenthetical citations such as Jones may be fine for most of the social sciences and humanities, where the source base is usually limited to recent books and articles in English. Historians, however, need the flexibility of the full footnote. I, Nr. The abbreviations are already in this footnote; its information cannot be further reduced. For footnotes and bibliography, historians usually use Chicago style.
The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Use as many primary sources as possible in your paper. A primary source is one produced by a participant in or witness of the events you are writing about. A primary source allows the historian to see the past through the eyes of direct participants. Some common primary sources are letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, church records, newspaper articles, and government documents of all kinds.
Not all primary sources are written. Buildings, monuments, clothes, home furnishings, photographs, religious relics, musical recordings, or oral reminiscences can all be primary sources if you use them as historical clues. The interests of historians are so broad that virtually anything can be a primary source.
A secondary source is one written by a later historian who had no part in what he or she is writing about. In the rare cases when the historian was a participant in the events, then the work—or at least part of it—is a primary source. Historians read secondary sources to learn about how scholars have interpreted the past. Just as you must be critical of primary sources, so too you must be critical of secondary sources. You must be especially careful to distinguish between scholarly and non-scholarly secondary sources.
Unlike, say, nuclear physics, history attracts many amateurs. Books and articles about war, great individuals, and everyday material life dominate popular history. Some professional historians disparage popular history and may even discourage their colleagues from trying their hand at it.
You need not share their snobbishness; some popular history is excellent. But—and this is a big but—as a rule, you should avoid popular works in your research, because they are usually not scholarly.
Popular history seeks to inform and entertain a large general audience. In popular history, dramatic storytelling often prevails over analysis, style over substance, simplicity over complexity, and grand generalization over careful qualification. Popular history is usually based largely or exclusively on secondary sources.
On Writing the College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Key to as well as the confidence and skills they need to win over the admissions dean." Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 3rd Revised edition edition (20 June ). Successful College Application Essays: Third Edition Paperback – 3 July by The Harvard 1 New from ₹ No-Contact On Writing the College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps, Second Edition: Crafting a Winning Personal.
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Discuss a book that has particular significance for you.
You will find that your history professors care a great deal about your writing. They may cover your papers with red ink.
Essay Scholarships
Perhaps you are a brilliant writer, or maybe you're just going for the most efficient way to rack up the college scholarship money. Essay scholarships are awarded in numerous fields to students of varied backgrounds. Some essay scholarships have requirements in addition to the essay, such as GPA or financial need, whereas others are judged solely on the merit of the writing submitted. The scholarship application process for essay scholarships is much the same as for other scholarship opportunities —you need to fill out the scholarship application, gather all your materials, double-check that you've met all requirements, and then submit your completed application packet before the deadline. With essay scholarships, especially, you should start this process early and leave yourself plenty of time to formulate an effective strategy and write a brilliant entry.
Follow the Author
The definitive guide to writing an amazing essay and mastering the college applications process. Writing a memorable personal statement can seem like an overwhelming project for a young college applicant, but college essay coach Alan Gelb's organized and encouraging step-by-step instructions take the intimidation out of the process, enabling applicants to craft a meaningful and polished college admissions essay. Gelb teaches students to identify an engaging topic and use creative writing techniques to compose a vivid statement that will reflect their individuality. A consistent top-seller in the college prep category, Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Easy Steps has been revised to include extra information on supplemental and waitlist essays. This much-needed handbook will help applicants win over the admissions dean, while preparing them to write better papers once they've been accepted. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
Picture this before you plop yourself down in front of your computer to compose your college application essay: A winter-lit room is crammed with admissions professionals and harried faculty members who sit around a big table covered with files.
With a new year and decade! If done right, your scholarship essay is a window into your unique world.
Top 10 Tips for College Admissions Essays
In the admissions process, US colleges and universities generally use three criteria for determining which students to accept and which to reject:. Of the three criteria, the college entrance essay provides you with the greatest opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competition and show off the person behind the statistics. This article will help in writing a college essay and help you boost your chances of being accepted by an American university or college. Then a small group of admissions officers will review each application, looking over the scores and coursework and reading the college application essays. The key to convincing the admissions officers is in understanding what they are looking for. They want students who will:. In your college admissions essay, you want to portray yourself as a student who will meet those needs. Before you write your college admissions essay, take a few minutes and jot down some answers to the following questions:. Along with the three questions above, you should contemplate how you want the admissions officers to perceive you. After reading your college admissions essay, what should they think of your personality and activities? Most students want the college admissions board to view them as responsible, dependable, and academically ambitious. These are excellent essay goals, but you should also consider the essay in relation to your classwork. If your classwork already shows that you are studious and determined because you have taken a wide variety of advanced classes , then you may want to highlight another feature of your personality. Along with developing an image of your character, writing the college admissions essay allows you to feature other aspects of your life that are not reflected in your pre-college coursework.
