The secret to writing powerful essays
Disclaimer: this post was originally written in 2017, a year after the author’s HSC. Since then, the author has further developed her essay writing skills. Her last advice, on top of the below, is to check out the book Step-by-Step GP Essays: its content reaches much further than GP and will help with writing essays for university applications too.
I never thought of myself as exceptionally gifted at the art of writing. My academic grades for sure did not reflect it. I sometimes still wonder who the idiot who corrected my General Paper essay was. One thing I can say though, is that I worked hard to improve my writing skills, both for academic purposes and university applications.
I cannot stress this enough: make the most of the resources your teachers offer you. Whether it be school or tuition teachers, those mentors tend to have access to learning materials you would not typically come across on your own. Case in point, my school GP teacher sent me a Cambridge report on length of essays and my tuition one, Example of Candidates’ Response to 2012 GP papers. Your teachers input can often amount to a lot as well. Even if you disagree with their teaching or correction techniques, it almost always helps to know how your essay appears to someone else. In this way, you may be able to identify unclear points and recognize your essays’ strengths.
You should however aim at investigating other learning options too. University websites have been a great help to me, in tailoring my essays to admission committees’ expectations. Off the top of my head, you can use the following resources: University of Reading’s guide to personal statements, an MIT blogger’s guide to essay writing and NYU’s personal statement recommendations (for “Why this uni and why this degree” questions). One important thing to remember is that university essays tend to revolve around you. For you to be able to write convincingly about yourself, you need a fair amount of introspection. You need to be able to assess your strengths and weaknesses and give an objective statement. If you haven’t noticed already, university essays and GP assignments have many similarities.
The best way to improve remains to practice. You should not focus solely on practicing your writing though; brainstorming and presentation are also important aspects to consider. You may present one idea in several different ways, but one may have more impact on the reader than another. Your duty? To recognize the different styles of writing and sharpening your skills so as to most effectively convey your inner voice. I, for one, wrote at least 1 essay per week in my final school year (GP and French). By the end of second term, I would be consistently writing 2 essays and started on my university essays in parallel.
What really tied everything together for me was US application essays. I remember sitting alone in a classroom, writing about “What is square one and can we go back to it?”. When you are stuck with such broad questions, you start digging deep for inspiration. Provided you do not copy off someone else’s work or idea, you will find yourself investigating your passions and screening through your ideas. Many of them might seem uninteresting at first but the more you work at it, the easier ideas will come and the clearer they will be. It is important to understand the long-term fruits of hard work as you will most probably not see immediate improvements.
To conclude, I would like to share a few words of encouragement to all those of you who have read this article with the aim of getting better at essay writing. As students, you ought to take chances with style and presentation of ideas. Do not be scared of failure as it gives valuable lessons as to the “don’t”s of essay writing. With ample experience, writing essays for exams and university applications becomes easy.
University Seeker 