Application Guide

Application Guide No matter what the university asks you to write in your submission, remember that admissions officials are not simply looking for your ability to use big, frilly words. In your essay, remember to be yourself and speak in your voice. Give yourself plenty of time to think through the topics and brainstorm writing points. Some universities will give you specific prompts to answer. Others will ask you to tell your story and how it led you to university. Describing tone, syntax, and diction, a task once painful for me, became simple as I practiced sub-vocalization. I simply slowed down and tried to hear the words in my head. I once condemned poetry as a pretentious and boring, but I realized I was reading poetry completely wrong. You have to slow down to appreciate how the words sounds, how they flow into each other and then slowly drift away. I even began to write poetry, after years of telling myself that I was destined to write prose and prose only for the rest of my life. Jessica is a former admissions professional who now shares her insider knowledge to help students and their families as they move through the college admissions process. When you start reading through past admission essays, one of the first things you will notice is that nearly all of them tell a story. The best ones tell a specific story about an incident or moment in time that provides an insight into who the author is and how they view the world. Like Junie B, I knew what I wanted and I was always ready to ask for it. Start early.Make a list of the number of essays you need to write and their deadlines. There are a lot of ways I could break up my life timeline, from states I lived in to schools I’ve attended, but I could also break it up by my favorite book . In first grade, my mother bought me the first five Junie B. Jones books, and I was hooked. My parents couldn’t figure out why I had suddenly become afraid of the dark until they realized that I was only asking they keep the closet light on so I could stay up all night and read. I loved Junie B’s adventurous spirit and offbeat humor. And most of all, I loved that she was a loud-mouth like me. I’ll admit, I was a strange child, and my parents called me spaced cadet because I spent so much time staring off into the air, unknown stories forming behind my eyes. Luna was weird, probably even a little weirder than me. She thought wrackspurts caused distracted thoughts and read the tabloid magazine of the Harry Potter word,The Quibbler. For the first time I could remember, a book had challenged me. I started reading more actively, highlighting and noting in the corners. When you apply to Babson, you’ll be required to submit two essaysâ€"a Personal Statement and a Writing Supplement. Some of the most frequent questions about the application process we get from students are about the essays. While you are always welcome to contact us with these questions, we provided some tips to get you started. What I found so appealing about her character was how unapologetic she was about her oddities. When the other students at Hogwarts made fun of her and called her names she responded with kindness, because she knew in her heart she was brave and smart, and didn’t seek anyone else’s approval. I drew on her strength often during the rough and awkward moments of middle school. At a recent student retreat, everyone in my class was asked to draw a timeline of our lives. I began to appreciate the nuances of a person’s writing style, how diction, syntax, sentence length, and dialogue could play together like chemicals and making a book simmer, bubble, foam, or explode. And an appreciation for the finer point of writing has widened the genres I readâ€"from fantasy to classics, autobiographies to mysteries, nonfiction to adventure and beyond. I still read voraciously, but now I read deeply as well. In middle school my two favorite book series were Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.