<p>I have been doing some really interesting biomechanical research and hopefully will be published around december of this year. I was wondering how to approach a common app essay about this because I dont know how to make it into a “story”. Any advice is welcome.</p>
<p>bump bump bump it up</p>
<p>Think about the prompts and how you can relate them to your research. I’m guessing the easiest one would be the prompt on failure, because I’m sure not everything went smoothly. Try isolating your experiences into one small snippet or story. Perhaps you felt content when you were researching. Think about one experience that sums up that feeling and why. Hopefully this helped! The most important thing is just to start writing.</p>
<p>@Arachne thanks for the advice. Yeah, I did have lots of failures 
its all part of it, but nothing really major. If I want to right about a feeling, how would I choose a prompt for that? The event one? And I would also like to include lots of technical data explaining what I did, but I don’t want it to seem like an extension of the EC section. Its one of my top ECs so its included on the EC list on the CA but I didn’t think it would be good to have more about it on the additional information, so I thought I could choose it for my essay. What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>I would recommend avoiding technical stuff in your essay. The purpose of a college essay is to humanize you, to show how you stand out from other applicants. It’s about you, not your research. Speak to how doing this research changed YOU as a person. It doesn’t have to be flashy, even minor things can make good college essays. For example, dance is a huge part of my life and there is so much I could talk about because it’s a broad topic, but for my CA essay for this fall I narrowed it down to a specific failure and discussed it. I think if you think about specifics you will have a great essay topic on your hands.</p>
<p>Do you want to write about your research to show off or because you’re super passionate about it?</p>
<p>^ignore him.
i’m on the same boat as you! funny its biomed research as well. </p>
<p>what I planned to do was do a diff topic for my common app (i have another one I’d rather focus on) and then for supplements that ask for an experience, etc. use research. also don’t get too technical- talk about how the experience shaped YOU, don’t give the readers an engineering crash course. what I would do is submit your research paper as a supplementary material so they can read it if they want to</p>
<p>good idea @roxy Im very focused on bme and perhaps even more on business but will be applying for biomed engineering to schools. Would it also be a bad idea if i talked about business related stuff in my essay like how i started my own business even though it doesnt have to do with science?</p>
<p>Woah I’m applying business or engineering too
That’s what I was referring to about my first essay- I was gonna talk about my business
Remember there’s supplements too where you can get a chance to talk about business or engineering. And it’s not a bad thing, it shows you have more than 1 interest</p>
<p>cool haha. I think my top choice right now is JHU. Do you think getting published for research will help a lot in admission for bme there? And also since i would be applying for the countrys number 1 bme program would it be important to have my common app essay bme related or is it ok still to have whatever.</p>
<p>@Thebeatlestoday, You must be super passionate about everything you do.</p>
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<p>Oh boy, is that loaded.</p>
<p>Passion is a highly oversubscribed word on these forums. OP did research because he took an opportunity that was, at the very least, more interesting than the alternative.</p>
<p>Implying that the time he’s invested into this endeavor is pure vanity because it’s not necessarily his “passion” is, uh, I’ll hold my tongue… less than intellectually rigorous.</p>
<p>For bme, I just hope you don’t plan to rag on about how you want to save the people of the world, create life saving miracles of technology.</p>
<p>Adcoms are not looking for technical details. The point is to reveal about yourself, not your research. Getting published is no guarantee. Is your work on the true level of a professional or late grad student? Is it being published in the level of peer journal they would? is it, in fact, your own work or you were just the junior member, someone mentored you through, or let you add your name? Quality matters.</p>
<p>And, “show, not tell.”</p>
<p>Well if Im not including that stuff in the essay why ask lol. But yeah its undergraduate - super senior type research thats getting published in a peer journal if it does.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think your research is a great topic to write about. It is easy to write about the research and the work, but very difficult to be revealing about yourself in that type of essay. Put that info in your EC section or the short EC essay (if they have it still with the revamped Common App). Write about something else that shows other dimensions of yourself. Colleges do NOT want an essay that just tells them about your EC and how excited you are about it, or any details about it. They want an essay that is about YOU. The reason you can’t make it into a story is because it isn’t a story…</p>
<p>@intparent thank you. that actually makes a whole lot of sense ;)</p>
<p>bumpbumpbump would like to hear some more opinions.</p>