4 Things You Didn’t Know That Can Help You Write Perfect Essays

Everyone knows how to string words together to make a sentence but it takes a certain level of dedication, learning, and commitment to write an essay that will get the attention of your examiner, admission, grant, fellowship, or scholarship committee. 

Look at it this way, you are not the only one that put in your application for the fellowship, accelerated scholarship program, or postgraduate fellowship, but you could stand out with your entry or supplemental essay when you put out a coherent logic or storyline that capture the attention of one or two members of the decision-making committee. 

So, how do you write that catchy essay? Here are tips you never knew but could help you write a perfect essay that will get you that admission, fellowship, funding, or grant you want to apply for. 

Active Reading Skill

No knowledge is wasted, as the popular saying connotes, you could pick up valuable things or improve your dictions from reading books. Reading transcends sticking with one literary genre, you need to have a taste of all, from fiction, non-fiction, science-fiction, fantasy, historical fiction to classical literature. Take it a step further by reading magazines, newspaper articles, blogs, academic journals, and letters, be a voracious reader of anything that has words embedded in it. 

Yes, the best writers are those who read well but what you don’t know is that they become the best after becoming active readers. How does active reading work? Read a book or journal and apply the lessons learned from it to your writing. For instance, the style, structure, grammar, and other writing techniques that you noticed from reading the sample of supplemental essays for USC should be duly applied to your own when you write yours, it makes your writing structure align with the style approved for submission by the school. 

Practicing Writing

As you know, constant practice helps you achieve perfection. You must be willing to put the work in by placing yourself on a strict writing schedule, write short essays, long essays, essays for competitions, and timed essays on varieties of topics and logical reasoning questions. 

Make it a point to practice writing 300, 500, and 1,000 words essays to help you perfect it, in case you need to write on at short notice during an application that requires it. No one can boast of wiping up a 300 words essay within 30 minutes, even professionals, this is because writing is a process and you need constant practice to get better at it. 

Asides from that, perfect your storytelling techniques when you practice writing as this is another way to write a catchy essay. When an essay requires that you share personal experiences, your storyline, the way you weave events around the story or share the narrative in long-form could help you get shortlisted for the fellowship or postgraduate scholarship. 

Working With An Outline

To produce a good essay you need to have an outline of how you intend to write on the given topic. Just like academic journals or articles, writing essays involves noting down your outline and including working ideas and thoughts under each heading, it helps you streamline developing it to full sentences and paragraphs. 

The paragraphs contained in your essay must have well-rounded and coherent thoughts and the best way to achieve it is by outlining the ideas or thoughts that will be in each paragraph. Outlining your essay helps you decide how you intend to start the essay whether in a storytelling format or as a long-form narrative and how you want to conclude the essay. 

Proofreading Yourself

Do not submit an essay without proofreading it, that is how you know if your first draft is as perfect or you need to tweak your outline, rework the sentences. 

Though there are online proofreading applications and thesaurus that can help you make your essays better and more professional the proofreader for your work is yourself, read it out loud, hear yourself voice it out to know if the sentence conveys your original thoughts and ideas, mull it over to know if the paragraphs are sensible and flow into each other smoothly. Check the grammar, spelling, punctuations and make necessary corrections, you can use an online thesaurus or spell checkers for this proofreading exercise. 

You will be able to write perfect or catchy essays when you dedicate your time to practice writing them, that is one of the proven ways to improve your writing skills and get better at essay writing.