One of the most, if not the most, stressful moments during the Fall of your senior year is when you sit down to write your college application essay. It can become quite overwhelming as people may have constantly told you how important it is. After all, they know you’ve worked hard for four years to get into college, and would hate for an essay to hinder that opportunity. Fortunately, the Center for College Planning (CCP) is aware of the stress involved with writing an essay – check out our website for helpful tips!  Or – register for our Write Stuff library workshop on Veteran’s Day (November 11) from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

In addition to these tools, Joe College has also found some websites with successful college essays for you to read through. It can be helpful to not only look at tips for writing, but also to hear what successful essays sound like. Check out what admissions counselors have to say about essays at these websites:

Connecticut College's List of Successful Essays

Tufts University's List of Successful Essays

UVA's Director of International Recruitment's Tips for Writing the Essay

Also, the Collegeboard gives two examples, one good and one bad, and also provides helpful insight every few sentences as to what the student is doing right or needs to improve on. Those samples can be found here:

Good example
Bad example

Showing, not telling,

Rich