This is the third and final part in our series on making a game plan to apply to multiple undergraduate programs abroad. Please take a look at Part I and Part II to begin assembling important dates and links as a foundation to your game plan. In Part III, we’re talking about why it’s important to collect all of your essay questions in one place.
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So you already know that you need to have your dates, details, and links centralized in your “My Game Plan” document. You already know that you should have both a print and an electronic version so that you can have your plan with you everywhere you go, in case you need to refer to it. But before you head down to the print shop, there’s one last, massively important section that you have to include in your game plan document. That section is essays.
Essay Questions
Essay questions are the most cumbersome part of any college application, regardless of whether you are a native English speaker or not. At Transcend Admissions Consultants, we advise our clients to create one master document with the essay questions from every school they are applying to and, later, to create individual documents for each school. This way, you can read all of the essay questions you need to answer in one place, which allows you to see which essays you might be able to modify to suit other schools without having to write an essay from scratch, which will save you a considerable amount of time. While some schools publish their supplemental essays directly on the program website, often you will need to look at the application requirements listed on the Common App to find them.
Here’s an important, time-saving question: Do two of the schools you’re applying for ask a very similar question, or have an open-ended question? If you invest a lot of time into writing one extremely good essay that conveys your strengths and passions, you can modify it slightly to suit the values of those two schools. Where you might write “…for all of these reasons, School A is the perfect fit for my interests, and personal motivations to attend university in America,” you can change “School A” to “School B” while keeping the majority of the essay unchanged.
Collect all of your essay questions in the last section of your game plan and you will save yourself immense amounts of time and effort down the line, when your time will be put to better use writing essays and clicking “submit” on your finished applications.
Conclusion: What does your “My Game Plan” Document look like?
No two game plan documents need to be identical, but all should include:
– Dates
– Details & Links
– Essay Questions
The game plan will take some extra time in the beginning as you are refining your structure and learning how to research efficiently, but it is necessary for you to stay on top of all of the information you need to apply to your target schools. Have some fun with it! Customize and personalize the game plan with pictures and quotes that inspire you. Add the logos and colors of each school so that you feel connected to the schools and their values when you write your application and essays. You should have your “My Game Plan” document available on your computer, smart phone, tablet, and in print so you can carry it around with you in your backpack to keep it handy for discussions or to jot down notes if an idea pops in your head out of the blue.
If you have questions about how to tailor your game plan document, or how to approach application season for your target schools this year, feel free to set up a free 20-minute consultation.