Once you complete the first draft of your Common App personal statement, you should give yourself a big round of applause. It’s no easy task to get it all down on paper, so congratulations on getting to this part of the process! Unfortunately, no one’s first draft is perfect, so I’m here to guide you through the next step and explain how to edit a college essay.
How to Edit a College Essay
There are lots of individualized tips that I could give you to explain how to edit a college essay, but I want to make sure you hit on every one to ensure that your essay is in the best shape possible. To make sure we’re on this journey together, I want you to imagine this process like you’re preparing for a road trip. Remember, this stuff takes time, so feel free (and a little obligated) to take a break as you’re learning how to edit a college essay.
Stage One: Mapping it Out
Before we go anywhere, we need to know where we want to go. Is our map pointing us in the right direction?
Step 1: Read Your Draft
Acting as an objective reader, give your first draft a read. When writing your college essay, one of your main goals is to make your admissions reader root for you. So when you read this, are you rooting for you? Are you convinced of what you’re arguing? Are you staying on topic with the prompt you chose in the first place? If not, you’ll be able to tell where your essay is falling flat through this initial read. Note the places where you find yourself losing attention—those will be places to check back on when you edit your essay on the paragraph and sentence level.
Step 2: Re-Outline the Essay
Here is where we’ll map out our route and detect with certainty any bumps along the way with an outline. Identify and isolate your thesis statement and the intros and conclusions of each paragraph, then list them in the form of a skeletal outline. Does it makes sense to you? Is the essay following chronologically? Thematically? If it is, the essay’s in a good place to move on to stage two. If not, this is the time to see where things went wrong. Use this outline as a skeleton to rewrite the parts that don’t work so that they better connect to the overall story.
Step 3: Re-Evaluate Your Outline
Now that you have your outline (or your map) in front of you—do you like what your thesis says about you? Is it arguing for the traits that you hope to demonstrate to college admissions? Is it representative of who you are? If it’s not, that’s okay! This is the time to catch the big issues. If you don’t like where you’re going, it’s okay to scrap the map and start again.
Stage 2: Prepping the Car
For our car (essay) to get us across the country (into your Common App portal), it has to be in running condition. Do we have enough gas to get there? Has the oil been checked?
Step 4: Asses Your “Hook”
The first thing you want to check is your introductory hook. This is the one sentence of your essay that’s going to do the most heavy lifting. The hook of your essay should draw the reader in, and there are a few very effective ways to do it. I recommend using lots of sensory language and present tense, but a grabbing rhetorical question may work just as well. This is a great part of your essay to workshop with others to make sure it’s reading effectively from someone else’s perspective. For more creative ideas on how to write an attention-grabbing opening, check out our blog post on writing a great essay hook.
Step 5: Examine Your Paragraphs
Your essay should be divided into paragraphs, and while there’s no rule about having exactly three body paragraphs sandwiched between an introduction and conclusion, there should be a purpose to each paragraph. In each section, you should introduce a new event or defend the themes in your introduction. It’s very easy to just list what you want to say per paragraph, but there’s an extra step you need to take to defend your statements in each paragraph. Just saying that you developed a great work ethic during your track season freshman year is much different than explaining how.
Step 6: Check for Authenticity
Once your hook and paragraphs are in good working order, it’s time to do yet another read through and make sure that your essay sounds like you! College admissions readers are expecting to hear from smart, well-rounded, passionate students. Emphasizing that last part, they’re expecting to hear from students. Using vocabulary outside of your usual domain will be awkwardly noticeable to an admissions reader, and it won’t help your application in the slightest. If it feels like you’re reading a thesaurus more than you’re reading yourself, make the appropriate changes.
Stage Three: Packing the Bags
Before we can race off into the sunset, we have to make sure that we have everything in the car for the long journey ahead. Snacks? Luggage? Immaculate grammar?
Step 7: Vary Sentence Structure
As you start to think about how to edit a college essay at the sentence level, the first thing you’ll want to check on is variation in your sentence structure. This is basically to say, you don’t want your sentences to be of the same length throughout. Though correct usage of colons, em dashes, and commas can be impressive in a long, drawn-out sentence, you’ll end up losing your reader’s attention if every sentence looks the same. You need to change it up. Every once in a while, see if you can put in a short sentence to break the monotony and make sure the reader is still with you.
Step 8: Check the Word Count
Your college essay prompt is, more often than not, going to supply you with a very strict word count. This is not a suggestion, and if you go over the word count, it is very possible that your admissions reader will simply stop reading. So much for your beautiful conclusion! This isn’t a comprehensive list, but to slim your essay down, try these tricks:
Being able to do something and doing something usually mean the same thing:
- Long: I was able to bring my grades up.
- Short: I brought my grades up.
Contractions are always your friend, make use of them:
- Long: I would go to the computer lab after school.
- Short: I’d go to the computer lab after school.
Time frames will become contextually evident, you don’t have to spell it out:
- Long: During my high school career… // As a child growing up…
- Short: In high school… // Growing up…
If a clause is using too much word count, turn it into an adjective:
- Long: At the dance at the end of the school year last year…
- Short: At last year’s dance…
Confident writing is good writing, cut ‘I believe’ or ‘I think’ wherever you can:
- Long: I believe participating in clubs will help me build a community.
- Short: Participating in clubs will help me build a community.
If you find yourself in the rare position of being under word count, try to get within 150 words of the maximum amount.
Step 9: Perfect Your Grammar
The last thing to do on the sentence level is to ensure that your grammar is spotless. This is a short checklist of things I’d like you to look out for:
- Subject-verb agreement. As you’re reading, you may find that there are three or four verbs in a sentence, but you only want your reader to focus on one important one. Make sure this appears as early in the sentence as possible so your reader is clued into what’s going on, and create a new sentence for the other verbs if you have to. This may even help vary your sentence structure.
- Colons and semicolons. These are perfectly fair game to use, but it’s imperative that they’re used correctly. As a general rule of thumb: colons are used to introduce something, like a list, a quotation, or a related sentence. A semicolon is used to separate two clauses; it usually takes the place of a conjunction.
- Typos. Most software will not always catch your typos if nothing is misspelled. If you meant to write ‘is’ but wrote ‘it’ instead, Google Docs will not let you know! Make sure you do an honest read-through to ensure these glaring errors are gone.
- Tense issues. When you’re writing in the present tense for one paragraph, it’s difficult to get back into the past tense with complete seamlessness. Make sure your verb tenses agree all the way through each sentence.
Stage 4: Rest Stop
On your way to your destination, you’re going to want to take a few breaks. When you stop, consider making conversations with fellow drivers.
Step 10: Seek Feedback
The last step in the editing process is to get feedback. Though you can definitely do this throughout the editing process, you may feel more comfortable giving your essay to others once you’re proud of the finished product. Getting feedback is a vital part of the editing process and is made to ensure that your essay is reading the way you want to others.
While it’s very important to get a second opinion, be cautious of seeking too many. When there’s an influx of opinions, you may forget the message you wanted to convey in the first place. Do your best to limit your number of readers to about five people. And for more focused feedback and editing suggestions, consider the help of a professional College Essay Coach.
Conclusion
While this advice is specifically for the Common App personal statement, these steps are applicable to all of your college essay. I will say though, supplemental essays are usually meant for you to answer straightforward questions.
Regardless of the type of essay, the key is to be intentional in your writing and editing. Editing is not just about correcting grammar or polishing sentences; it’s about refining your voice and ensuring that your narrative aligns with your goals.
