College Essay Writing Tips

College Essay Writing Tips If you really feel that you will do poorly or that the anxiety might negatively impact the rest of your test, you should be OK without it. My son took the ACT without writing as a junior and received a 34 composite . That said, I don’t like to stand in the way of students motivated to retest. If he has the time and the desire, he could take the ACT again on Feb 8. Have you had a practice essay scored to know where you stand? Also, don’t expect an essay score to stand out in the same way that your ERW and M scores might. He shouldn’t count on his Writing score making a difference. I don’t know of any superscoring school that will not superscore across ACT and ACT with Writing. The did say that a single test with an essay is fine. That’s a difficult question to answer because of all of the potential factors. He retook it as a senior with writing and also received a 34 composite , but only received an 8 on the writing portion. The only other difference between the 2 scores is that he got a 36 Reading/35 Science on the first ACT, and 35 Reading/36 Science on the second. For competitive schools that don’t require the writing portion, would you recommend that he submit his first score without the writing, or the second? This is only slightly behind the 30% for extracurriculars. Essays are actually ahead of the 20% for grades and coursework, 15% for test scores, and 10% for recommendations and interviews. Your essays are necessarily a reflection of your mind, and the admissions officers want to know that you have the “soft skills” to excel in their program. You can’t make it in college if you can’t write. Some colleges feel that removing “recommended” would mean that they are diminishing the importance of writing as a skill. That’s not the same thing as saying that it is important to them in the admission process. At any point in time during your college education, you’ll probably have one or more papers to write for your classes. Colleges would be irresponsible to offer you a place in their program if you do not have the basic skills needed to succeed. We contacted Miami, and they are still maintaining that it is required for placement. Given their testing page, I find it hard to believe that they are rejecting students for not having an essay score. We will be leaving it up, however, until we get clearer guidance from the school. I’m thinking the first is probably a better choice for him (especially for liberal arts colleges/universities), but wanted to get your thoughts. 8 falls within the 25th-75th range of enrolled students at even Berkeley and UCLA. More important, the UCs are likely to drop the essay requirement this year.