Help with admissions essay!?

Question

How have your past experiences influenced your academic record?

What are you doing presently to ensure your academic success?

What are your academic goals and how will CWU help you accomplish these goals?

These are the questions, could you give me an example of what to say? I am so nervous I will write the wrong thing and then I won't be accepted!

Also, for the first question, I had amnesia in 10th grade-resulting in me getting pass/fail grades instead of letter grades. Do I include that? Also, I overloaded on classes-taking full schedule at the college and high school, this lowered my GPA because I couldn't handle so much classes-I just didn't have enough time. What do I say for that??

Answer 1

1. For question one you could mention your amnesia, but you'll need to go into depth about it. You can also mention how you took too many classes and, most importantly, learned a lesson in time management and explain how you have grown from that experience.

2. Mention the classes you're taking.

3. Explain what you want to do in life and compliment the school until you want to vomit about how their wonderful programs, top-rated in your mind, will give you total success.

Answer 2

The pass-fail part is definitely something worth explaining. Your overloading on courses is not; every experienced college admissions counselor will tell you that you should not try to justify your grades, as you'll look like you're making excuses. If you took an impressive course load, this will show up on your transcript, and admissions committees should take this into account. If your grades weren't as high as you wanted, too bad.

However, maybe you could address your experience with heavy course load in your second question. You could write about how you struggled in tenth grade (without making excuses or references to your grades... just that you had difficulty) and that you've learned how to handle more challenging work because of this, and that to ensure success you plan to continue with your hard work.

You should be able to answer the last question on your own. What do you want to study, and what things interest you? It's often good to mention specific programs offered by the college if you can. If you're not really sure, you could talk about how you're generally interested in furthering your education and, through studying and exploring certain fields at CWU, how you hope to find something you want to study.