Do you know the golden opportunity that allows you to achieve high grades without putting too much effort? A college essay can be a hidden goldmine to enhance their academic excellence. However, a college essay without a proper review can lead to rejection at the initial level, as the supervisors will pay close attention to it.
As a student, it’s essential to avoid errors and red flags in your essay to increase your chances of success. One or two red flags in your writing may not impact your grades. Nevertheless, multiple mistakes throughout your essay will annoy the reader, leading to a poor perception of you.
College students, nowadays, heavily rely on AI tools to write and review their college essays. That’s not a practical or recommended approach. According to Forbes, tools like ChatGPT make mistakes when writing and reviewing essays. Therefore, in this article, we will explain some common college essay red flags and how to avoid them, ensuring your success.
A List of Top 5 College Essay Review Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Writing a college essay always remains tedious for most students. They don’t know the nitty-gritty of these essays, such as what to cover in a specific section and what to avoid in the body. These minor red flags destroy the structure of an essay, affecting the overall performance in a subject.
Many students struggle with the review process even after successfully writing their first draft. In an attempt to refine their work, they often turn to AI tools as college essay reviewers, an approach that can unintentionally weaken their arguments or dilute their unique voice. Students can turn to trustworthy essay writing services that offer expert guidance to avoid these pitfalls. These services not only help structure and refine the content but also ensure that the essay remains original and aligned with academic standards.
Here are some common college essay review mistakes and the strategies you can adopt to prevent them. Learn about them and pave the way to your further educational journey.
1. Over-Editing Your Essay
We all want to be perfect, especially when impressing someone with our writing. This is a common practice among students who want to perfect their essays. To achieve this, they spend days and even weeks, in some cases, editing their writings. Sometimes, they hire multiple professionals to review college essays. We know that writing is a very subjective matter, and a writer can write a single sentence in multiple ways.
When you hire several college essay reviewers, they suggest a whole lot of changes. Every writer or reviewer will ask you to change your essay according to their knowledge and skill set. Catering to all these suggestions will lead to issues related to the essay structure. Moreover, you will lose your natural voice in every paragraph, making the supervisor believe that you got external help for this essay.
A student can’t risk it. You will have to make your essay sound natural and persuasive. Don’t try to make it perfect to impress your instructor. These are a few tricks for you to avoid these mistakes during the review process:
- Clarity: Ensure that your essays are clear and convey the message that you want to communicate. According to Grammarly, clarity helps the readers to understand your message effortlessly. Making your essay clear and structured will enable the supervisor to understand the effort you put into it.
- Limit the Number of Reviewers: Keep the number of reviewers as minimum as possible because more reviewers mean more suggestions, leading to a whole lot of edits.
- Keep Your Writing Original: Don’t let editing make your essay sound AI-written or edited. Keep your tone original, and it will impact your grades positively.
2. Relying Heavily on AI Tools
Students usually seek shortcuts in their academic journey, from writing practical assignments to submitting college essays. They start relying heavily on AI tools to generate the first draft of their writing. After that, they will ask another AI tool to edit it, and that’s all. The comprehensive essay is written and eventually submitted. However, when you ask these AI apps or platforms to review your college essay, you leave room for several mistakes.
Please remember that AI is just a technology that can’t understand your emotions. Three Girls Media states that human writers have emotional intelligence, and AI tools can’t replicate it. This emotional intelligence is key to making your essay a success. If there are no emotions in your essay, it’s just a redundant piece of writing. AI platforms will not help you add the factor of storytelling and emotions to your essay.
Therefore, be careful when using AI-based tools like ChatGPT and Grammarly. They can help you in the writing process, but they can’t create an essay entirely. Here are a few tips when curating an essay and seeking help from AI tools.
- Only Get Assistance: Consider AI tools as assistants, not writers. They don’t possess human expertise and emotional intelligence, and relying on them completely can lead to flaws in your essays.
- Proofread Manually: You will need to proofread your essay manually before the final submission. Don’t rely on ChatGPT and other tools because they are not perfect in the review process.
- Be a Critic: You have to be a critic of your essay every time you review. Imagine yourself as an instructor and find out what the errors in your essay are.
3. Ignoring the Essay Prompts
When writing an essay on a specific topic, ignoring the prompts can result in repetitive revisions or rejections. According to the University of Connecticut, essay or writing prompts encourage students to write in unique and thoughtful ways. It specifies the topic for an essay to explain it thoroughly. Most students deviate from the main topic and include unnecessary details that make an essay a piece of ordinary writing.
Let’s say your instructor requires you to write about your extracurricular achievements. However, you start discussing routinely followed habits in that section. Would it make any sense? Will it engage the reader to read it attentively and completely? Answer these questions before ignoring the essay prompts.
These are a few professional tricks to achieve the core purpose of the essay in light of the conveyed prompt:
- Read the Prompts Multiple Times: Understanding the prompt before starting to write an essay isn’t optional; it’s essential. Reading these prompts several times will allow you to answer the specific question being asked.
- Ask Your Reviewer: You can ask your editor to find out if there is any discrepancy between the prompt and the essay. It can make your essay persuasive and engaging.
- Make Points of Prompts: You will extract information from the prompt and note it down in bullet points. It will not distract you from the main question and will help you in the college essay review before submission.
4. Seeking Input from the Wrong People
Seeking help from your family members and friends is great. However, their input in college essay reviews will not go in your favour. They don’t have expertise related to a particular topic and may suggest wrong changes. In addition to seeking help for these writings from friends, some students get guidance from writers or AI tools who have no idea about college essays. In case you rely on them, they will suggest vague and generic changes, and if you implement them, the chances of a refusal of the first draft will increase.
A bad story in your college essay that you will create due to these inputs will lead to decreased impact. It will not persuade your supervisor because the tone of your essay wasn’t personal. Therefore, avoid getting help from people who are not well-known for writing college essays. These tips can help in this regard:
- You can choose reviewers who have previously gone through the process of writing college essays. Furthermore, some professional writers have specific expertise for such writings. You can also get their help and submit a well-structured and error-free essay.
- Don’t ask a person to review your essay who doesn’t know about the requirements. Without proper knowledge, they will not be able to suggest effective changes.
- Always ask your reviewer to edit your content in terms of grammar and sentence structure. Don’t allow them to edit the story or emotions.
5. Over-Borrowing from Samples
Before starting to curate a detailed essay, you will read previously written essays to ensure academic excellence. Reading these papers just to get an idea and guidance is great; however, borrowing their thoughts or arguments can lead to rejection. You need to note that plagiarising or borrowing ideas from other essays is a form of academic dishonesty. If the instructor detects plagiarism, the chances are high that your essay will get rejected.
A student must show personal experiences and commitments in an essay. Copying others’ work will not only make your essay impersonal but will also decrease its efficacy. For example, if you are writing on a health topic, you need to explain the rationale for it. Try to keep your essay as original as possible and make every argument unique.
Here‘s how you can avoid over-borrowing ideas from samples:
- Gather your information and outline your essay before reading samples. It ensures originality in writing because previous essays will not dictate to you.
- Your story is unique and can impress others. Add it to your essay and forget about the issue of genuineness. It makes your further educational journey smooth and hassle-free.
Can I Pay Someone to Review My Essay?
Yes, you can pay someone to review your college essay. There are online platforms that offer these services, from writing to reviewing essays. However, ensure that you are paying someone who has expertise in college essays because other writers and editors don’t know their structure.
On the other hand, a writer who has been writing these essays for years can curate one that will impress your instructor. Paying such a writer will be worth it.
Can ChatGPT Review My College Essay?
Tools like ChatGPT can review and edit a college essay. However, they can’t review or edit an essay like a human writer. They lack emotional intelligence and can’t ensure a perfect story in your essay, which is essential to secure a high grade.
A student can use these tools to check the initial draft of their essays, including grammar and sentence structure. Give them the most specific prompt like this: “Check my essay and find grammatical errors”, or “Is the sentence structure impressive?”. These specific prompts can identify the hidden issues but the final review from a human writer will remain essential.
What Happens If I Plagiarize My College Essay?
It may lead to a detailed revision if you plagiarise your essay. Sometimes, colleges use tools such as Turnitin to detect plagiarism in essays and other forms of writing. They can easily detect plagiarism by showing similarity reports.
Therefore, don’t think that your teacher will not be able to find the previous work. Plagiarising your work can also decrease the impact of your essay, as every writing demands uniqueness to impress the readers. So, avoid plagiarism in your essays and continue your academic journey without a hiccup.
The Final Thoughts
Getting excellent grades in a specific subject is the desire of thousands of students. However, only a few of them can achieve it regularly. The inability to ensure academic excellence year-round includes several factors, such as poorly written college essays.
These essays don’t impress the instructors, and as a result, a student faces repetitive revisions. Professional UK-based essay writing firms have been helping such students curate essays that will pave the way for their educational journey. As a college student, you can contact these firms and share your essay requirements. Submit a persuasive and well-structured essay and achieve academic excellence without breaking the bank.
Author Bio
Alex Morgan is an accomplished essay writer who helps students curate essays in a story form that impresses teachers and supervisors. Adding emotions in every paragraph of an essay, Alex focuses on ensuring success for students. During his leisure time, he loves reading books, research articles, and newspapers to update his academic knowledge.