When applying to college, even the smallest details sometimes can make a big difference. This especially applies to essays. Your application contains various types of information about you, and the essay is the most personal part. Some students have problems with the general understanding of the task and organizing their thoughts, while others get stuck because the cannot format their essay properly. Should it be five paragraphs long? Should the structure be narrative? In this article at Writers-House.com blog, we are going to consider essay formatting with all its ins and outs. We will also address such issues as fonts and headings. You will also learn when you should use the five-paragraph structure, and what to do with college essay templates.
The format of your essay to a certain extent depends on how you’re going to submit it. For example, you may need to paste your essay into an online application form, or you may attach an already formatted document. If you don’t know the answer for sure, check your instructions. If you’re preparing for the Common Application, you will have to paste the essay into an online text box.
There are many schools that allow students to send paper applications. In this case, you get more control over the format of your paper, however, there are some reasons why we recommend that you don’t send paper applications:
No matter how you’re going to submit your essay, use text editing programs to write it. This kind of software allows you to keep an eye on the number of words and to see if you made any mistakes.
Now let’s consider formatting in more detail, depending on the way you’re going to submit it. Some tips will be useful regardless of whether you will use an online form or attach a document.
The most important thing is to make sure all the text is properly transferred.
If you can attach your own document, the format of your essay becomes very important. Thus, make sure you use correct spacing and margins.
There are many students who don’t have any problems with fonts or margins but don’t understand how to build the general structure of the essay. Is there any method that will help you perfectly describe your strengths, being confident and persuasive?
Unfortunately, there is no universal solution that would guarantee the success of your college essay. However, it means that you can experiment and create the structure that will meet your objectives. You can also use a standard five-paragraph structure, however, keep in mind that it may turn out to be not the best solution.
Good college essays are different from each other but they also have something in common. For example, they always have an introduction and a conclusion and various central sections. The introduction and conclusion of your essay are very important sections. The introduction should give your readers a clue to the direction your essay is going in, while the conclusion should make your point clear and summarize the whole essay.
How you structure the body of your college essay is up to you. For example, if your essay is focused on some experience, you may make it narrative. You can also provide a complex analogy at the beginning and illustrate this analogy in each body paragraph. You may be familiar with the traditional requirement to make every paragraph devoted to a particular idea, however, college essays allow you to forget about the five-paragraph structure for a while.
There are many college essay templates available online, and you may think that they may help you create a proper structure for every paragraph of your essay. That truth is that the use of templates can make your essay sound even worse than if you create your own structure that fits your specific purpose. Think of what idea you want to express, what experience you want to share, and then think of what structure would look the best.
You can find many sample essays available online or buy a custom sample essay to get some fresh ideas on how to write your own essay. The most important thing is to provide your own voice and experiences.
When formatting your college essay, you should create a proper overall structure and use proper fonts, margins, headings, etc. We can call these two levels of formatting a macro level and a micro level.
Here are the most important tips on the micro level of the format:
Here are tips for the micro level of your essay’s format:
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