It’s National Sleep Week! You’re probably too busy to observe the annual NSW Snooze Fest, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do your part to help others enjoy a deep siesta! The following tips will ensure that when the adcoms pick up your application essay, they’ll be transported to Lala-land in no time. Trust us – this is tried and true advice.
- Start your essay with the dry facts. To put the adcoms to sleep, you should NEVER start your essays with a compelling story. That would only draw them into your essay and get them excited to read more, completely defeating your goal of putting them to sleep. Instead, begin by offering them some very serious data about who you are. “My name is X” or “I come from X” or “I want to go to Top School X because” are all excellent essay openers, virtually guaranteed to nurture disinterest and dozing.
- Include all of the details of your resume in your essay. Most schools require you to submit a resume along with your application. If yours does, then you’re in luck because you now have another great opportunity to put your readers to sleep: Repeat the info from your resume in your essay, the closer to the original wording, the better. Your readers will definitely want to throw your essay aside and put their heads down on their desks to rest if you go this route.
- Use the same stories in each of your essays. Instead of choosing difference experiences to highlight in each of your application essays, choose one amazing experience and then go to town with it, talking it up over and over again for each essay question. The tedium of this technique is as somniferous as it gets.
- Don’t let the adcoms see your personality. You are an absolutely hysterically funny individual. Not only that, but you’re an excellent writer who knows how to make your voice heard through your writing. BE CAREFUL. Infusing too much personality into your essays may encourage the adcoms to skip their nap, and that would be terrible. Toss your warm and witty personality out the window and write your essays in the most drab, monotonous, flavorless tone you can muster.
What – you think it’s easy to write a boring, uninteresting, sleep-inducing essay? You’ve got lots of writing and rewriting to do, so get to work!