Several people individuals have commented that my writing is very academic and structured, and some have even said that my writing is “too academic.” When I write comfortably, it’s formal. When someone tells me to tone down the sophistication of my writing to a level most people can understand, I try to convey my ideas as if I were in a day-to-day conversation, but somehow my writing still ends up far too academic in nature. Additionally, while no one has told me this about my writing, I’m beginning to suspect that my writing lacks emotion. As I’m writing this thread, it seems perfectly normal and conversational, but I know that I’m probably writing too formally.
Anyway, to get to the point, there’s nothing I can really do to change the way I write. So, will academic writing in the context of a college essay make it less persuasive/compelling to an admissions officer? If so, what can I do to write a better essay? Thank you!
Hm…the fact that you worry that your writing lacks emotion makes me think that it’s probably something you should work on in preparation for your college essay.
Have you thought much about what your topic will be? If you have a draft of something it could be easier for me to help you.
Seems like these are changes you can make at the final editing stage. You can ask someone to help you make your writing more “high school student-like.”
A good way to add more emotion to your writing is to have a good portion of it be in the format of a personal narrative than an expository essay. It might be a good idea to try and think of an experience that you’ve had that you could use to tie into whatever point you’re trying to make in your essay.
You concern, and the comment that your writing is too academic, may be related to structure you are using. In other words, academic may be another way of saying that you using the structure of the five-paragraph essay. This does not work well in the college essay format. As noted by a previous post, what does work is a narrative structure. This is not taught in schools. The narrative structure tells a story. And a story – what happened and your reflections on what happened – will bring out emotions.
My favorite source for free resources on using narrative structure in the college essay context is ■■■■■■■■■■■■■. Scroll through the blog posts.