myUface Blog

Several myUface users have asked if they can write their own essay rather than using the questions on the myUface application.  The answer is yes.  However, I wanted to provide a few cautionary words:

First, although it’s perfectly fine to use your own essay question for the myUface application, if you’re applying independently to a university, always use their question.

Second, if you’re going to use your own question, don’t use just any question.  Give some though to your question as well.  For undergraduate applicants, you want a question that will reveal who you are as a person, and what your aspirations are.  Possibilities include:

• What are you most proud of?
• What’s the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your life?
• What would your friends tell us about you if we asked?

For graduate applications, you want a question that not only tells us about yourself but also tells us about your knowledge of your field of study.  Possibilities include:

• How will your study of _____ impact your career and society?
• What are the biggest challenges facing practitioners of _____ in your country?

Good luck with your essays, and remember, we have a load of essay writing advice on the blog:

http://www.myuface.com/blog/2009/09/09/how-to-write-an-essay-for-university-applications/

Often, international students write essays or personal statements that are too short – two paragraphs or even a few sentences.

Remember, an essay or a personal statement is your opportunity to really describe who you are and why you would be a good student in a US program.  We highly encourage you to look once again at what you’ve written for your university and applications.  Make sure that:

• It tells something about you that is important
• That the grammar and punctuation is correct. We recommend that you write your pieces with Word, WordPerfect or other tool that has a spell-check.
• You do some research into how to write a good essay.  The myUface blog has a lot of advice on this subject, and you can find it here.  The College Board website also has some very good material on the subject.

Over the past week we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of new users visit the site.  I wanted to take a moment and share with you some resources we have that may be of interest to you:

First, we have two myUface guides:

1. The Advantages and Disadvantages of a University Education in the United States
2. Looking for a University in the United States

You can donwload both of these guides (for free of course) here.

Second, you should check out our Series:

1. Should you study in the U.S.? A comprehensive and honest guide to the benefits and disadvantages of a U.S. education (April 2009).
2. Looking for a U.S. University – All of the information you should consider in selecting a U.S. university – including some things you may not have thought about (May 2009).
3. Finding Financial Aid for your U.S. Education – Need help paying for a U.S. education?  Here’s a guide to how to look for and secure financial support.  It’s not easy, but it’s worth a try (June / July 2009)!
4. Preparing For A Visa Interview – A three part series on the misconceptions many students have about student visa interviews (July 2009).
5. Universities in the Fifty States – we look at what it would be like to live as an international student in each of the fifty states.
6. Writing Essays for University Applications – full of advice on how to write, edit and submit an essay with your university application.

The myUface application gives you the opportunity to upload an essay to your application.  We feel this is important because an essay is an unmatched opportunity to demonstrate your uniqueness as a candidate.

There are two sample essay questions we give you:

1. What do you expect to be the most challenging part of studying in the United States? How will you handle this challenge?
2. You are the assistant to the president of your country. The president has asked you to prepare a policy brief on an issue and to give advice how the issue should be solved. Describe the policy issue and your position, being persuasive in your argument of how you would handle the situation.

We selected these questions because they are similar to many questions that are included as part of an application for an individual university.  By answering them – and answering them well – you will demonstrate the kind of candidate you are to interested universities.

Therefore, we strongly recommend that you take the time to write and upload an essay.  At the very least, it will be good practice!

And remember, the myUface blog has a lot of advice about how to write an essay.  Check it out, and don’t forget to send us your questions at blog@myuface.com.

Visit the myUface Help Section for the answers to more of your questions.

In the “Academic Questions” section of the myUface application, question #4 asks, “Please describe your professional or career plans (300 words or less).”  Many students struggle to answer this question.  Here are a few hints about completing this section of the application:

1. You do not have to know 100% what your career will be. Most students aren’t certain what they want to do as a career, and that’s fine.  Tell us what you’re interested in as of now.
2. Your career plans should fit with the field of study in which you’re interested. If you listed “Physics” as the field you’d like to study, and then you write “I’d like to be a poet” under you career plans, it will seem a little odd.  So make sure that the fields of study you’ve chosen link to your career plans.  Or, if they don’t explain why they don’t.
3. Be concise. 300 words isn’t a lot.  This isn’t the place to tell a story.  Use simple language to tell us what you’d like to do.
4. It’s OK to dream. If you hope to be the president of your country one day, tell us!  Don’t be afraid to share your ambitions.  On the other hand, if you have modest goals, that’s fine too.  With this question we want an honest idea of where you see yourself ten or twenty years from now.

GO BACK TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Let’s conclude our series on essay writing by reiterating a main point:

If you remember one thing, remember this: every college application essay is essentially asking you the same thing.   They may ask the question in different ways, but what they really want to know is this:

“Hello International Student, can you please tell us about yourself?”

So when you’re preparing to write your essay, writing your essay, or editing your essay, ask yourself, “Am I telling these people about myself?”

• If you’re worried about what you “should” say, your’e not telling them about yourself.
• If you’re spending hours in a thesaurus or a dictionary, looking for “impressive” words, you’re not telling them about yourself.
• If you’re listening to a “professional” essay writer, you’re not telling them about yourself.

Ask yourself, “What is unique about me?”  And then ask yourself, “How do I answer this essay question in a way that shows them how I’m unique?”

And that will almost certainly lead to a great essay.

Good Luck!

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing (This post)
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

You may have noticed that there are a number of services on the internet that will edit – or even write – your essay for you.  For a hefty fee of course.

So, should you ever pay to have your essay edited?

The good essay editing services can help you improve your essay by helping you check for mistakes and offering suggestions about what words to use.  However, you should not expect an essay editing service to be able to make a fair essay into a great one.  Why not?  Because, as we’ve been saying over the course of this series, a great essay is all about you. No editor is going to know you as well as you know yourself.

When you pay someone to edit your essay, the best case scenario is that they’ll clean up your work a little bit – helpful, certainly, but not vital.  The worst case scenario is that they’ll rewrite your essay completely, with the idea of telling a story that admissions officers “want” to hear.  As we know by now, that’s a mistake.

So, although it’s tempting to hire someone to do the hard work of writing and / or editing your essay, the chance that they’re going to help you say something that’s unique and positive about you is very, very small.

All things considered, there are better ways to spend your money.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? (This post)
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

Here’s my advice for a great way to edit your essays:

1. Pick a friend (or a few friends) who know you very well.
2. Ask them to read your essay.
3. DO NOT ask them what they thought of your essay. This is the question almost everyone asks of their friends in this situation.  “So, guys, what did you think?”  This is a terrible questions because:  a) they are your friends, so even if your essay is terrible they’re going to tell you it’s awesome; and b) what are they?  Writing professors?  Are you sure they’re qualified to judge the quality of your essay?
4. INSTEAD, ask them this far superior question: “When you read this essay, do you recognize me in it?  Can you tell I wrote it?  Why or why not?“
5. LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY TO THEIR ANSWERS.
6. If they can’t recognize you – if the essay describes a person they don’t recognize – then it’s not a good essay.  Period.  It doesn’t matter how perfect the English, how wonderful the storytelling.  If you are not sharing who you genuinely are, if you are not highlighting what makes you unique, you are completely missing the point of the essay.  Your friends can tell you better than anyone if the person they know (you) is in the essay you wrote.
7. If necessary, rewrite the essay until your friends DO recognize your voice in it.

VOILA!  There we have it – The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays (This post)
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

OK, so you’ve written your college application essay.  What now?

Well, writing it isn’t enough.   Now you need to edit it, again and again, until it’s perfect.

A lot of students think editing means they need to improve their essay – as if their initial work wasn’t good enough, and they need to add something to make it better.  This is the wrong way to think about editing your essay.

Instead, think of editing as refining.  Imagine that your essay is a large chunk of rock, with a precious bit of gold inside.  When you edit the essay, you need to peel off all the pieces of useless rock, to reveal the true gold inside.

Here’s what to look for:

• unnecessary words. Chances are at least 33% of the words you’ve written aren’t needed.  When we’re nervous we tend to say or write a lot of ineffective words – words that make sense, but aren’t 100% needed.  For example, “I hope to come back to help to develop my country” should be “I hope to develop my country.”
• “complicated” words – many students, in an attempt to show how smart they are, use very long words when short ones would do.  Remember, saying something clearly and simply is usually going to be your best bet.
• overly long sentences. Keep your sentences short and to the point.  Don’t run on and on in an attempt to seem hyper-intelligent.  Remember, the essay is not a test of intelligence, or even of writing.  It’s a chance to show something unique and positive about yourself.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what is, in my opinion, The Greatest Editing Technique Of All Time.

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay (This post)
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

A big mistake a lot of students make in writing essays for college applications is that they try to think too much about what their readers want to hear.  Now, I can hear you objecting – “Wait a minute,” you’re saying, “We’ve just spent the last four days imagining what admissions officers like to read.  Now you’re telling me not think about what they want to hear?  That doesn’t make sense!”

Here’s the explanation:  you want to know your audience.  But you don’t want to think only about your audience.

The most important thing about your essay is yourself.

You need to write something about yourself, in a language and a style that your audience appreciates.  The message (you) does not and should not change.  The way you deliver that message can change.

When you write something only because you think the readers of an essay will like it, you’re not going to write something genuine.  And, chances are, you’re going to write something that other students are also going to write (because they too are trying to figure out what the readers want to hear).  So you’ll end up with something flat and unoriginal.  Which is not good.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake (This post)
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep