College Essay examples -3 features and functions

College Essay examples

Introduction

Countries outside Nigeria especially the United States and the United Kingdom use three main medium in admitting students into their schools.

This medium includes previous coursework which contains your GPA, Continuous Assessment Test Scores and Admission/Entrance or College essay. A college essay is what gives you a great opportunity to get admission.

What is a College Essay

A college essay is an essay or other written statement written by a prospective student applying seeking admission in a college, university, or graduate school. The application essay is a common part of the university and college admissions process.

Features of a good college essay

1. A good college essay must avoid ambiguous language. So simple language should be used.
2. It must have meaningful content.
3. It must be descriptive.

The function of a College Essay

The function of a college essay cannot be overemphasized. It serves as a connection between the student and the school.
1. A college essay helps the student to express his or her self. It gives them an opportunity to talk about their personality.

This includes the student’s strengths and weakness. It enlightens the college on the kind of student they will be dealing with; whether they are ambitious, courageous, brave, timid, self-motivated, intelligent, dull, reserved. These qualities contribute to the success and failure of the student in college.

2. It creates an avenue for the prospective student to say what he or she likes about the college. It helps the college know reasons why a prospective student chooses the college over other colleges.

3. It is the medium by which the writing skills of the prospective student is known. The college uses this medium to know if the student possesses the writing skills that will help in college.

Examples of a College Essay

This essay was written by a student seeking admission to Duke University. The admission was granted.

As soon as the patient room door opened, the worst stench I have ever encountered hit me square in the face. Though I had never smelled it before, I knew instinctively what it was: rotten flesh. A small, elderly woman sat in a wheelchair, dressed in a hospital gown and draped in blankets from the neck down with only her gauze-wrapped right leg peering out from under the green material. Dr Q began unwrapping the leg, and there was no way to be prepared for what I saw next: gangrene-rotted tissue and blackened, dead toes.

Never before had I seen anything this gruesome–as even open surgery paled in comparison. These past two years of shadowing doctors in the operating room have been important for me in solidifying my commitment to pursue medicine, but this situation proved that time in the operating room alone did not quite provide a complete, accurate perspective of a surgeon’s occupation.

Doctors in the operating room are calm, cool, and collected, making textbook incisions with machine-like, detached precision. It is a profession founded solely on skill and technique–or so I thought. This grisly experience exposed an entirely different side of this profession I hope to pursue.

Feeling the tug of nausea in my stomach, I forced my gaze from the terrifying wound onto the hopeful face of the ailing woman, seeking to objectively analyze the situation as Dr. Q was struggling to do himself. Slowly and with obvious difficulty, Dr. Q explained that an infection this severe calls for an AKA:

Above the Knee Amputation. In the slow, grave silence that ensued, I reflected on how this desperate patient’s very life rests in the hands of a man who has dedicated his entire life to making such difficult decisions as these. I marveled at the compassion in Dr. Q’s promise that this aggressive approach would save the woman’s life. The patient wiped his watery eyes and smiled a long, sad smile. “I trust you, Doc. I trust you.” She shook Dr. Q’s hand, and the doctor and I left the room.

Back in his office, Dr. Q addressed my obvious state of contemplation: “This is the hardest part about what we do as surgeons,” he said, sincerely. “We hurt to heal, and often times people cannot understand that. However, knowing that I’m saving lives every time I operate makes the stress completely worth it.”
Suddenly, everything fell into place for me.

This completely different perspective broadened my understanding of the surgical field and changed my initial perception of who and what a surgeon was. I not only want to help those who are ill and injured, but also to be entrusted with difficult decisions the occupation entails.

Discovering that surgery is also a moral vocation beyond the generic application of a trained skill set encouraged me. I now understand surgeons to be much more complex practitioners of medicine, and I am certain that this is the field for me.

References
www.shemmassiansconsulting.com. Retrieved 23rd January 2020.