Start Your Essay?
The introduction is a very important part of your graduate school essay, as it draws in the reader right off the bat. The first sentence should hook the reader, and not necessarily serve to describe the focus of the essay. Many students make the mistake of over-explaining what the rest of the essay will be about in the introduction, when really this can be developed gradually throughout the essay. Instead, you should get straight to the point, and not waste space with introductory sentences that will be covered in the body of the essay.
In general, make sure that your most compelling experience is brought to the forefront. You want the reader to know what follows is worth the time.
See below for a list of approaches to your graduate school essay introduction.
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Dive Right In
Some people will start with a compelling experience but will insist on prefacing that experience with a very generic statement such as: “From the first time I looked through a microscope, I knew that science was my calling.” Often, the reason people will open with such a statement is that they feel compelled to restate the question in some way. This is unnecessary and more than likely to bore your reader right out of the gate. You should be able to demonstrate your reasons without relying on such a bland summary sentence.
If, on the other hand, you are tempted to use the first sentence to explain context, you should respect the reader’s intelligence enough to save that context for later, once you have grabbed the reader’s attention. Consider the following example, taken from this essay:
“Perhaps the most important influence that has shaped the person I am today is my upbringing in a traditional family-oriented Persian and Zoroastrian culture. My family has been an important source of support in all of the decisions I have made, and Zoroastrianism’s three basic tenets—good words, good deeds, and good thoughts—have been my guiding principles in life.”
Although the question asks the applicant to describe his influences, he need not restate that line. Moreover, he can delay explaining the context of his upbringing. Review the following restructure, which grabs the reader’s attention more immediately and conveys the necessary context in time:
“Good words, good deeds, and good thoughts—these are the three basic Zoroastrian tenets that have shaped my guiding principles. Indeed, my upbringing in a traditional Persian and Zoroastrian culture and all the family support that entails have come to define me more than any other influence.”
The advice to jump right in also applies to anecdotes. Rather than set the stage for a story with boring exposition, beginning your essay with some interesting action is often an effective way to draw in your reader.
Be Original
Don’t shy away from sharing a unique personal quality or experience. As a graduate school applicant, you need to stand out from the crowd, and this is how you’ll do it. Obviously, anything unique about yourself needs to fit in with the overall context of your essay, but assuming it does, make sure you talk about it right at the beginning.
State a Problem
By stating a problem, you create instant curiosity because the reader will want to see how you address it. This applicant actually opens with a rhetorical question, wasting no time. The remainder of the essay explores the concept of “middleware” and its relevance to the applicant’s career.
This applicant, on the other hand, deals with a more urgent social issue that has affected her personally. The remainder of the essay does not purport to solve the problem, but rather to demonstrate her in-depth understanding of it and the level of her commitment to her cause.
Instead of dealing with external issues, you can also discuss personal difficulties and how you have struggled through them. There are many possibilities here, but what unites them is the element of drama, and you should use that to your advantage in creating a strong lead.
Be Offbeat
This type of approach is risky, but because it has the potential to be so effective, it is worth considering. The same warnings apply here that we enumerated for humor in the Tone section. Try to be subtly and creatively clever rather than outrageous.
This applicant begins with a joke about his prospective institution: “You’d think I would have had my fill of Indiana winters. But, here I am, applying to go back, ready to dig my parka out of storage. It’s not like I’ve been gone long enough to forget the cold, either. In some ways, I feel as if that permacloud is still hanging over me.” The introduction goes on to make some jokes about the applicant’s potential concerns. These musings don’t serve much of a substantive purpose except to establish the writer’s familiarity with the school. On the other hand, they do make the reader more comfortable with the writer’s style as he goes on to make more serious points.
Overcoming writer’s block and starting writing is often the hardest thing. These four pieces of advice we recommended you to follow are pretty evident for us, but not for students. We hope this information will help you to get closer to starting your admission essay. In case you fail to do it and can’t write anything besides a rough draft, you have us. We are the admission essay editing service graduate school applicants must use.
Next: Conclusions
