 If you want to write better essays, just get a better keyboard. Hello, my people. My name is Mecha. Welcome to the Score Channel. Today, we're going to give you five tips for how you can improve your essay writing and make your supplementals amazing. It's the end of July, which means that the Common App is going to be opening up all of its supplemental essays for applications going into the month of August. We want to write the essays that college admissions counselors actually remember. Tip number one, diversify your sentence length. I talked about this a little bit on the live stream when I explained how to write your personal statement, but this is something that I see a lot of people do wrong. It's kind of just this lull of the same length over and over. Take a look at your writing and count how many words are in your sentences. The second tip is to show off your big dictionary. Vocabulary says a lot about your academic skills. When you use a broad vocabulary, you're letting them know that you're a well-read individual who can understand a variety of texts. Not only that, but you can choose the right words to make the point that you want to make. So right off the bat, eliminate any vague words, lazy words like place, thing, person. Generic nouns like these can always be replaced with something better. When it comes to how you describe things, try not to use very. For example, instead of saying very fast, you could call something rapid. Or instead of saying very cold, you say freezing. Diversifying your vocabulary also shows that you're putting thought into your work. What I always love to recommend is thesaurus.com. Thesaurus.com gives you a whole bunch of options for synonyms and antonyms for the words you put in. It's a great way for you to find some new words or maybe remember some that you know how to use, but you haven't in a while. Tip number three, do your research. A lot of the supplemental essays that you're going to see are going to ask why this university. Other people have done entire videos on just that kind of essay and how you can write them better. And I'm going to link to some of the description. You should also check out the college essay guys channel. He's really good on this stuff. The important thing is you have to show them how much you care. And you do that by doing research. A good place to start are the mission and vision statements of a university. Then you should also look for value statements. Are there any values that are predominant in this institution? Recently one of our students applied to Georgetown and we made it a point to include Jesuit values because Georgetown is a Jesuit university. And highlighting some of those values in his essays was definitely key to helping us get him admitted. If you really want to impress the admissions officers though, you're going to have to go deeper. You need to look at courses and professors. Just about every university has its full course selection available somewhere on the internet. You may have to dig a little bit to look for it. If you as an undergrad student are able to go onto this website, find the courses that you might take in your first year or even after that and talk about those in your essays. It says a lot about your commitment to the university. It shows that you have a real interest in the program that you're applying to. And frankly, you should have that interest. This shouldn't be an act. If you're going to apply to a university and you really want to get in, can't you take the extra 20 or 30 minutes that it takes to look up a few courses and read a syllabus? Commenting on a notable professor's achievements or the fact that he teaches this class that you'd really like to take can show again your level of interest in the university. Anytime you get the why this university prompt, you need to stop and take your time. You cannot copy paste this from other essays. You have to do each one individually and it's important to do your research. Tip number four, don't info dump. Info dumping is when we take a whole pile of information and dump it on the reader all at once. We feel like we need to set up all the setting and give the reader a bunch of information so that they can truly understand our experience. However, the opposite is actually true. When you info dump, all you're doing is boring the reader. They do not know why they need this information yet and they don't really care. You're going to bore them to death and they're going to put down your paint. Here's a good example of info dumping. I was born on the 1st of June on a Saturday night in a quiet hospital located in a humble valley. My parents, both doctors, began to inspire me to pursue a career in their footsteps. I recall my first encounter with medicine when I was only four years old and I saw my mother watching Grey's Anatomy and critiquing the flaws in each episode. I then played operation every day until I was old enough to ride a bicycle at that point. Yeah, I don't want to keep listening to that either. Instead, what you should do is start where the story starts. Start at a moment that presents some drama or some conflict. Once you present that situation to the reader, they might want to know how you got there and instead of giving all those details at once, try to spread them out throughout the text. Reveal things a little bit slowly. It's a good way to keep the reader engaged and make them want to know what happens next. Speaking of the reader, that's our tip number five. Remember the reader. Top universities routinely get over 50,000 applicants a year. That's a lot of essays. They don't truly have time to read every single one in depth. So before you hit that send button, ask yourself, have you thought about the person on the other side of the computer who's gonna read this essay? One way that you can acknowledge the reader as you're writing is to use some hypothetical or rhetorical questions. You can actually ask the reader and get them involved in what you're writing. Another thing you can do if you're feeling brave is literally break the fourth wall. You could start by saying, I know this isn't the first essay you've read about topic. You're letting the reader know by doing that thing. You're aware that they have a lot to deal with. And remember, they have a job to do. They are deciding whether or not you are going to be a good statistic for the university. They want to find people who might be worthy of a mention on their notable alumni section in the future. With so many applicants, it's your duty to show them that you're worth consideration. And you have to do that through your writing. They're under no obligation to read your whole application. Thousands of applications are unread because of how many bad quality applications they get. Don't be one of those. These are all tips that you can apply in your day to day work as well. You can use these in any kind of writing that you do. If you're still in school, start practicing it now. Use these tips when you're writing anything in English classes. If you need help with some of your college essays, hit up prepwithscore.com and let us know how we can help you. Next week, we're gonna have more advice for high schoolers that are still in high school. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel and stick around. I'll see you next week.