Hey y'all! I'm working on my UChicago essay and I'm honestly feeling kinda stumped. Can anyone offer advice on how to approach their essay prompt, or examples of successful essays that might help get my creative juices flowing?
Hey there! I understand that UChicago essay prompts can be unconventional and a bit tricky to tackle. Here's a simple outline of how you might approach writing your essay:
1. Choose a prompt: UChicago offers several essay prompts, with a wide range of themes, so pick one that genuinely interests you and sparks your creativity.
2. Start with an anecdote or story: Begin your essay with a unique anecdote or story related to the prompt. This can be a personal experience or a hypothetical situation, as long as it's engaging and relevant.
3. Analyze and explore: Use the anecdote as a point of reference to analyze and explore deeper thoughts or ideas relating to the prompt. This is where you can showcase your intellectual curiosity, personal values, or thought process. Your reflections can be nuanced, but make sure they do clearly say something about your personality, goals, values, etc. - this shouldn't turn into a philosophical treatise.
4. Draw a conclusion: Wrap up your essay by bringing everything together in a thought-provoking or interesting way.
5. Take advantage of CollegeVine's resources: CollegeVine knows the UChicago essay prompts are some of the trickiest out there, so they're here to help! At the beginning of each new application cycle, they publish a blog post breaking down UChicago's new prompts - you can see the one for the 2023-2024 cycle here: https://blog.collegevine.com/how-to-write-the-uchicago-essays-2023-2024. The blog also contains a couple of examples of strong responses to past prompts, as well as analysis of their strengths and suggestions for any potential improvements (https://blog.collegevine.com/uchicago-essay-example).
Finally, CollegeVine offers both a free peer essay review tool and paid reviews by expert college admissions advisors. Either of these resources can offer you a second set of eyes that can more objectively evaluate whether you are both answering the prompt and portraying your own unique personality.
Don't stress too much, and just let your ideas flow. With some brainstorming and revision, you'll assuredly come up with something great. Good luck!
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