| Sylvia Rimm Q. I'm a good writer and get high grades on my writing assignments, except I lose points on essay exam questions. Now I'm applying to college. I have very good SAT scores and an excellent grade point average, but I heard that colleges put a lot of weight on essay questions. I'm afraid I'll mess up like I do on essay exams because I'm not sure what they're looking for.
A. It's easier for me to answer the first part of your question than the second, but they're related. If you're generally a good writer but lose points on essay questions, it could be because you're not responding to all parts of the question. Your teacher writes a question looking for specific information, and essay questions usually have more than one part. If you do a great job on one part and skip another, you'll lose points for the part you didn't respond to even if the rest of your essay is excellent. The teacher or, for that matter, the professors in college usually have an objective rating scale with points that they give for various parts of your answer. Read the question carefully and respond to all of it; that may help you.
In some ways, writing your essay for a college application is similar, although much broader. Those who rate your essay are trained raters. They're looking for a variety of characteristics to determine if you're one of the best candidates for their school, and they're likely to assign or subtract points to parts of your essay.
I strongly recommend a new book by Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, "Write Your College Essay in Less Than a Day" (Ballantine Books, 2009). Here's an important question the author asks you to think about before you start: "Why should a college take you out of all the thousands of kids applying?" As examples of good answers, the author includes "a good deed you performed, an award you won, a fundraiser you led, a work of art you created, a discovery you made, an experience you survived, a business you started, a local problem you helped solve, volunteering when no one else would, helping a needy person in a special way, enabling a cultural change," and yes, there are many more. She also includes some things that aren't likely to help you, such as, "I'm very popular and a real leader; I'm a good kid; I drink responsibly and don't do drugs; or I'm very liberal and I've heard you prefer liberal students."
The author provides a rating scale of what most colleges want, which is similar to the issue of points on essay exam questions. You have to know what is expected to present yourself well. Let me give you a few of the author's examples:
-- Track Record (20 points). Colleges like candidates to accomplish things; they give lots of points for actual achievements.
-- Suitable Program (15 points).That means you want to find a match between your intended major and a strong program provided by the school. You can usually change your major later if you change your direction.
-- Contribution and Diversity (10 points). Schools want you to add something to their school that enhances the diversity of its student population. That can be in an arts, academics or athletic areas. Geographic and ethnic diversity also count.
You'll have to read the book to get the remaining five typical standards. There are also reasons raters will subtract points. For example, they may take off 20 points for sloppiness, grammar and spelling errors, assuming you didn't care enough to be careful.
You'll write a much better essay after you've read the book. For a free newsletter about choosing a college, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address below.
Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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