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The simple steps that will boost the confidence of native and non-native English speaking students alike and transform their university application essays.
Whether it’s coaxing students to work on their university application essays or sitting down to write their recommendations yourself, chances are you’re familiar with the one thing that can plague us all when we face a blank page: writer’s block.
Writer’s block comes in many shapes and sizes… from your one student who keeps asking you to re-read their latest draft to the few who’ve yet to make a start.
But it’s important to tackle writer’s block head-on.
Not only will your students benefit from having time on their side, but the strength of your students’ application essays (like the UCAS personal statement or the University of California system’s personal insight questions) also play a huge role in determining your school’s overall university acceptance rate.
University application essays also give students a taste of the calibre of writing they’ll be expected to maintain throughout their university education – and by then, they won’t be able to rely on your step-by-step support.
So how can you equip your students with the skills they need to beat the block?
Organised into five easy-to-follow steps, these tips and tricks will help your students develop their written confidence (whether they’re native English speakers or not!), and set them up for success in their university applications and beyond.
One of the most common sources of frustration for students (that leads to writer’s block) is when they pour time and effort into something, yet don’t receive the grade, reply, or response they were hoping for.
Most often, it’s because students have misunderstood the question, or haven’t been selective enough when choosing relevant examples to support their claims.
Paraphrasing the question or prompt will ensure your students slow down and really pay attention to what’s being asked for their university application essay. It might even help them identify other questions that are hiding below the surface.
Think about it; a student could pen an essay worthy of George Orwell… but if they’ve written about the American Civil War and the question was about molecular biology, they’re hardly going to score top marks.
The same holds true for university application essays. Some application portals (for instance Common App) provide prompts. Other platforms (like UCAS), don’t… but students’ personal statements must nonetheless answer the implicit question that underpins all university application essays: “why should you study this programme?”.
Choose a common essay prompt, set a timer, and challenge your students to come up with as many re-wordings as possible. When time’s up, compare them as a class and discuss how different wordings change their understanding of the original question.
Re-worded, “why should you study this programme?” begins to reveal other key questions your students’ essays will have to touch on, such as “why is our programme a good fit for you” or even “how does this programme fit your personal and career goals?”
Once your students are confident they’ve understood the question, it’s time to think about how they’ll answer it.
We’ll cover the components of an essay plan in a moment, but the first step is ensuring your students have factored in enough time for said planning… and understood why it’s so important.
Jumping headfirst into the introduction without a plan is like setting off on a trip without a map.
Your students might still find their way to their final destination, but they’re risking unnecessary detours, delays, and stress along the way… all of which can negatively impact the overall quality of their final application essay.
To help make planning a habit, encourage your students to dedicate 10% of the time they have allotted to complete time-bound written assignments (like coursework or an exam) to planning. That could look like setting aside 3 days to plan for an essay due in a month, or the first 6 minutes of an hour-long exam.
At the root of any decent essay is a good argument. An argument, in this case, simply means a clear main point (in other words, a thesis) that is effectively and compellingly made.
When planning a university application essay, students might find it helpful to think about their argument using the 3 Ss:
Students should have a clear idea of what they plan to talk about before they start thinking about how they’re going to say it.
That’s where a summary of their argument comes in. Just like a trip itinerary, summarising their thesis will ensure your students have thought about the direction their essay needs to take (which they’ll signpost in their introduction), the destination they plan to reach (that’s the essay’s conclusion), and how they plan on getting there (the body).
With this in mind, you might find it helpful to have your students submit a summary of their university application essay before they start working on their drafts.
If certain students seem really stuck, task them with writing mini summaries of their essay in different formats. These can be as varied and random as they like. It could be a social media post, instructions for flat-pack furniture, a play or short story…
Purposefully starting with something a little silly can encourage students to let go of the fear that they won’t write something good enough (another frequent cause of writer’s block)!
If a student is finding it hard to neatly distil their essay ideas into a succinct summary, it’s often a sign that they need to spend more time fine-tuning their argument.
Once students have a summary of their thesis and the talking points they’ll use to support it, they’ve got the building blocks of their argument!
Now it’s time to put it all together by organising it into logical order, to ensure it’s easy to follow for the reader.
The first step is choosing what belongs in the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.
The second step is organising each of these sections into individual paragraphs. The STAR technique is a handy trick students can use when writing about their own achievements in their university application essays. With this technique, students use one paragraph per example to cover the following:
Once your students have cooked up the recipe for their perfect essay, it’s time to think about the last key ingredient: style! Just like adding spices to a favourite dish, a carefully-chosen writing style will help your students’ arguments stand out from the crowd.
Style is made up of two main building blocks: tone, and voice. A good way to choose a style is to think about how the audience will best engage with the essay’s topic and argument.
For university application essays, the audience will be the universities each student is hoping to impress. It’s therefore imperative for the essay’s tone and voice to remain professional and clear.
Naturally, that rules out slang, emojis, abbreviations, and anything else that’d be more at home in a text message than it would a CV. But there’s still plenty of room for creativity.
Each student’s hobbies – particularly those related to the subject they’re hoping to study at university – can be a great starting point. You might want to encourage students to find some articles online written by leaders in the subject or career area they’re interested in pursuing for inspiration.
The trick is for each student to think carefully about what will best serve their unique application essay, and ensure they don’t overdo it: style should never eclipse substance.
For example, a student writing a personal statement for a literature degree might choose to incorporate a few stylistic devices borrowed from their favourite modernist author… but those would seem out of place in an application essay for a chemical engineering programme.
If you’re familiar with Raymond Carver, you’ll know he was credited with revitalising American literature due to his distinctive writing style and concise short stories. But according to legend, this minimalist flair was actually all down to his eagle-eyed editor’s red pen.
What many students don’t foresee – and therefore plan for – is that editing can be one of the most time-consuming parts of the essay writing process. That can spell trouble for your students, especially if they’ve left editing close to the deadline.
To help spark fresh ideas, partner students into pairs and have them give feedback on each other’s drafts. An outside perspective can do wonders when it comes to catching a poorly-explained example or an embarrassing typo.
Learning how to give feedback on each other’s work will also help your students learn what they should look out for when they proofread their own essays.
However, even your hyper-organised students might find it easy to miss mistakes in their university application essays when exams, coursework, and other external pressures are also competing for their attention.
That’s where tools and software come to the rescue. In this day and age, there’s a wealth of resources you and your students can use to streamline the editing process and strengthen their final essays.
Word processing tools and spell check software are an international student’s best friend! Technology is now clever enough to go beyond catching typos and ensure your students’ spelling and punctuation is consistent (which can help weed out any accidental Americanism or Britishisms).
As helpful as these tools are, your students could be missing a trick or two by relying on technology solely to catch grammatical errors in 2023.
Platforms like BridgeU, which you can unlock for your students by creating a free school account, are designed to help your students plan, write, and edit their essays all in one place.
On BridgeU, your students can search for, and save, the countries and courses they’d like to apply to, or fill in their profile to receive data-driven university suggestions.
They can then use BridgeU’s built-in search and editing tools, complete with annotated sample essays, how-to guides, and a wealth of other features designed specifically for international students, to research, plan, and perfect their university applications.
As for you, you’ll get access to your very own Advisor Dashboard, where you can offer feedback and suggest edits to your current students’ applications essays and keep track of their progress, including their application status, references, and recommendation requests.
So if you’re ready to power up your students’ application essays and boost your schools’ university acceptance rate, set your school up for a free BridgeU account today.
Learn how BridgeU can help deliver better outcomes for your students and improved results for your school
Your class might have a number of students wishing, or having, to rethink their application plans in order to still enrol on a university course in 2023.
Luckily, plenty of higher education options exist for students who find themselves in need of changing their application plans – without the need to delay their studies!
Whether your students are first-time applicants, have missed their offers, or have simply changed their mind and want to apply elsewhere, students’ summer application options generally fall into the following three categories:
Not all countries limit the regular application season to spring or winter. Many universities in Europe, for example, keep their regular application cycle running until July, August, or even sometimes September.
In fact, studying in Europe has become an increasingly popular option for international students, largely thanks to English-Taught Degrees, cheaper fees, and advantageous flexible visas :
Though both Ireland and Germany have centralised application portals, universities accepting applications into the summer months habitually expect students to apply directly to the institution itself.
Other countries which also accept international student applications into the summer months include Poland, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Hungary. Though a little off-the-beaten-track, they also offer numerous English-taught degrees across a wide variety of subjects.
However, just because applications are open until a certain date doesn’t mean it’s wise to leave it to hold off on applying. The majority of these application cycles run on a rolling admissions basis, meaning that spots are often offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Other universities, or courses, may have earlier cut-off dates specific to certain subjects (think medicine or architecture). In Germany, for example, this is called “numerus clausus”.
With this in mind, the best post of call is to visit the universities’ website directly. Though this can feel daunting, with the right tools, students can drastically reduce their workload without getting sidetracked, or stressed, along the way.
If your students aren’t interested in Europe, around 300 universities and colleges in the USA are also still accepting applications, with the majority of deadlines falling in June and July.
When countries or universities do set earlier deadlines, it’s not uncommon for them to re-open application routes for a set amount of time over the summer.
The biggest difference is that these will be exclusive to courses which still have open places and didn’t fill their enrolment quota in the first application round.
Although students will still have their pick from plenty of prestigious universities, course options are generally far more limited: students might have to compromise on either the exact programme or institution they’d set their heart on.
Though these second rounds do also run rolling admissions, the tighter application windows and limited availability of courses can make it a much more competitive process.
It’s therefore imperative for students to have everything prepared and be ready to apply the day applications open (or the day they have their results).
Due to the short application window (and quick turnaround on decisions) it’s not uncommon for students to have to sit a telephone, zoom, or in-person interview.
Perhaps the most famous of these second application rounds is Clearing in the UK.
Clearing begins on the 5th of July, where universities (including Russell Group universities) advertise the specific programme which still have open places.
To learn more about Clearing visit our Results Hub or learn more about it through UCAS (Universities & Colleges Admissions Service).
Ireland also offers students a second and third round to take up any remaining university places.
Running from June all the way through August, application dates are often published close to the application deadline, so we recommend keeping an eye on both the CAO’s (Central Applications Office) timetable and individual universities’ websites.
Other universities, in other countries, sometimes have their own deadline extensions, often because they’ve still got space on their programmes.
If students are particularly set on studying elsewhere it never hurts to contact a university directly to enquire.
If students would like more time to prepare their applications, without postponing their higher education by an entire calendar year, January or February intake could be an option for them.
A routine offering for universities in the Southern Hemisphere (hello Australia!), it’s actually a fairly common option in the Northern Hemisphere, too, with university admissions cycles generally taking place in the Autumn.
Though it will depend from one university to the next, popular countries in the Northern Hemisphere which offer another intake around the new year include the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Spain… and that’s just to name a few!
The only thing to note is that, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, January (or sometimes February) intakes are quite small.
Though students won’t necessarily face undue competition, it does mean they’ll likely have less peers to socialise with in class. It also means that the courses and programmes on offer might be more limited.
If a student doesn’t feel ready to commit to any of the three options above, it might be worth talking to them (and their parents) about taking a gap year.
Though often connoted with partying in faraway countries, gap years can actually give your students plenty to write about in their university application essays and CVs.
From work experience to learning a new language, there’s no shortage of gap year activities that can turbocharge a student’s personal and professional development and help them shine come the 2023 university admissions cycle!
Once your students have secured a spot at a university, it’s time to ensure they make the final preparations so that they can actually move abroad come September.
Though many might have to finalise these plans over the summer, some students might decide to reconsider their plans earlier on, which is why it’s important to inform your students (and their parents) about their options as soon as possible!
With this information to hand, you’ll now be ready to support students no matter where they are in their transition to university… as well as answer any questions their parents may have.
That being said, the best way to ensure your students are prepared come what may is to build these last-minute applications into your year-long guidance strategy.
To learn more about how BridgeU works alongside your curriculum to support your school throughout the entire university research process, click on the image below to learn more and speak to a member of our team.
Learn how BridgeU can help deliver better outcomes for your students and improved results for your school
