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In defense of (3-5) paragraphs for application essays


shawthorne44
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Once again, it is scholarship essay reading time for me.  There is a hint that I wanted to pass onto the hive.   When reading the essays, the few that are 5 paragraphs have a huge advantage.   It might be that the kids that write in 5 paragraphs, also do other things better.   But, I think that there is something inherently familiar and positive in the 5 paragraphs.  Essay judging is inherently subjective.   Since the max. length is fairly small, ~ 600 words, three paragraphs would be fine too.  But, you would not believe the number of essays that are one giant paragraph.   

Also, there are several where the paragraphs breaks probably got lost in formatting translation, but I think I can tell where they should have been.   When your kids submit essays where they copy/paste the text into an online field, have them paste it into Notepad first and see how it looks.   Check that the paragraphs are still there.  Just doing this would put your kid in the top 5%.   
 

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On 1/17/2019 at 12:52 PM, shawthorne44 said:

Once again, it is scholarship essay reading time for me.  There is a hint that I wanted to pass onto the hive.   When reading the essays, the few that are 5 paragraphs have a huge advantage.   It might be that the kids that write in 5 paragraphs, also do other things better.   But, I think that there is something inherently familiar and positive in the 5 paragraphs.  Essay judging is inherently subjective.   Since the max. length is fairly small, ~ 600 words, three paragraphs would be fine too.  But, you would not believe the number of essays that are one giant paragraph.   

Also, there are several where the paragraphs breaks probably got lost in formatting translation, but I think I can tell where they should have been.   When your kids submit essays where they copy/paste the text into an online field, have them paste it into Notepad first and see how it looks.   Check that the paragraphs are still there.  Just doing this would put your kid in the top 5%.   
 

 

Thanks.  I just passed this info on to my two high schoolers.

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