How to Edit a College Admission Essay (8-Step Guide)

• Oct 21, 2024
• 5 min read

• Tags: Academic Editing, Editing, Essay

Crafting a powerful college admissions essay is only half the battle. To make your essay impactful, you must edit it carefully. This article will guide you through college essay editing in 8 simple steps.

These steps cover grammar and punctuation along with writing style and formatting. Furthermore, this 8-step guide contains many useful editing tools and a handy college essay checklist to streamline the editing process. So, let’s begin! 

Here’s how to edit an admission essay: 

1. Verify the essay’s alignment with the chosen prompt
2. Refine the introduction and conclusion
3. Strengthen arguments and supporting evidence
4. Enhance clarity and refine writing style
5. Check grammar and punctuation
6. Format your essay 
7. Proofread your essay
8. Get feedback from experts 

Now let’s explore each of these steps in detail! 

1. Verify the essay’s alignment with the chosen prompt

To ensure that the essay aligns with the chosen prompt, read all paragraphs carefully. Some strategies you can use at this stage are: 

• • • Check if the essay includes relevant examples or evidence that supports the prompt’s requirements. 
    • Summarize the main point of each paragraph and evaluate its relevance to the prompt.
    • Read the essay backward and identify any topics unrelated to the prompt. Remove any stories, anecdotes, and phrases that don’t directly answer the prompt. 

2. Refine the introduction and conclusion 

Editing the introduction is a crucial step to create a strong first impression on readers. To refine the introduction, here are some suggestions: 

• • • • Analyze if the introduction has a strong opening: Use an anecdote, a thought-provoking question, or a strong statement that captures attention. 
      • Avoid lengthy introductions: A good introduction is concise. You can use word counters provided by QuillBot and Semrush and character counters provided by Capitalize My Title and Content Harmony. After this, you can reduce the word count by using tools like ChatGPT.
      • Use introduction generators: You can also use introduction generators provided by Junia.ai, Scalenut, Hix.ai, etc., to enhance your introduction. 
      • Analyze the tone: A humorous anecdote might not be appropriate for a serious essay about overcoming adversity. Consider the overall impression you want to create (confident, thoughtful, or other). Make changes to the tone as per your chosen prompt. 

The conclusion is equally important as the introduction. Check if the conclusion answers the question: Why should the reader care about your story or your point? What is the lasting significance?

Some suggestions to edit the conclusion are: 

• • • • • Eliminate additional information: Remove any new information from the conclusion. 
        • Summarize information: Without repeating the information already conveyed, summarize the significance of the prompt. You can use AI text summarizers provided by QuillBot, Writesonic, and Hypotenuse AI to do so.
        • Remove clichés or overly general statements: Replace vague phrases that are often used and add your own point of view instead. For example, remove statements like “This experience changed my life” as they are less impactful. Instead, mention how it changed you.
        • Eliminate words that don’t reflect confidence: Remove words like “may”, “might” that don’t reflect confidence from the conclusion. Note: While confidence is important, be careful not to overstate claims or ignore uncertainties relevant to the topic or field of study.
        • Use conclusion generators: Use conclusion generators provided by Ahrefs, EditPad, and PapersOwl to enhance the conclusion. 

Now let’s see the next step for editing college essays! 

3. Strengthen arguments and supporting evidence

To ensure that your essay creates an impact, ensure that it has at least 3 strong arguments/evidence to support the chosen prompt. Some effective strategies to edit and strengthen your arguments are: 

• • • • Show, don’t tell: Remove any statements where you’re just stating something without describing the details (What? Why? How?)  For example, Instead of just stating you’re a leader, describe a time you demonstrated leadership skills. You can research the concept of show, don’t tell in detail to apply it in your essay. 
      • Connect evidence back to the prompt: Edit all instances where you’ve not explained why each example makes you a suitable candidate for the college.

4. Enhance clarity and refine writing style

Accuracy and polished writing are essential to create a well-written, engaging essay. Some college admission essay tips to ensure this are: 

• • • • • Edit sentence structures: Rephrase sentence structures that sound repetitive. For example, if two consecutive sentences begin with the same phrase, or both are too long, make edits. Vary sentence structure and mix short, impactful sentences with longer, more complex ones.
        • Use transitions: Edit sentences where there is no smooth transition between ideas and a topic starts or ends abruptly. To show a connection or flow between topics and ideas, use words like “however,” “therefore,” “furthermore”, “also”, and “moreover”. 
        • Edit excessive usage of passive voice: Change the sentence from passive voice voice to active voice wherever relevant and impactful. For example, “I led the team” (Active voice)  vs. “The team was led by me” (Passive voice).
        • Replace vague and weak words: For example, replace words like “make”, worked”, “made”, and “took” with better alternatives like “create”, “develop”, “acquired”, “obtained”, etc. 

Bonus tip! You can also use editing software like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to enhance your essay’s clarity and writing style. 

5. Check grammar, spelling, and punctuation 

This involves avoiding common grammar errors like using incomplete sentence fragments (e.g.: Because I did this.). With this, check the following points for admission essay editing: 

• • • • • Tenses: Make edits if the tenses used are not consistent. For example, if the past tense is used instead of the present tense. 
        • Subject-verb agreement: Verify that the subject and verb in each sentence match in number. Ensure both elements are either singular or plural for agreement. If there is a mismatch, make the necessary changes to maintain consistency. You can also use grammar checkers provided by QuillBot, Scribbr, and ZeroGPT to do this. 
        • Eliminate spelling and punctuation errors: You can use spell checkers provided by Grammarly, QuillBot, and Ginger. Alternatively, you can also use online dictionaries like Merriam-Webster to check the spelling. You can also use punctuation checkers provided by Hix.AI, ProWritingAid, and QuillBot to correct punctuation errors

After understanding these college essay revision tips, let’s explore the next step! 

6. Perform formatting 

It’s essential to follow the specified formatting guidelines for font type, size, and spacing. You can further enhance your college admission essay by checking the following points: 

• • • • Check if the paragraphs’ lines are indented as per requirements. 
      • Determine if the title is rightly placed in the title case with the proper capitalization required. 
      • Analyze if the headers, footers, and page numbers are correct. On each page of your essay, include a header with your full name and the page number. 

The next step answers the common question “How to proofread my college essay?” 

7. Conduct thorough proofreading 

Read your college admission essay multiple times and focus on a single aspect at a time. For example, in the first reading, focus on grammar; in the next, pay attention to spelling, and so on. 

With this, remove any awkward phrases, improper words, run-on sentences, spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Since proofreading college essays requires attention to detail, you can also consider hiring professional proofreading services. 

8. Get feedback from experts 

Share your essay with a trusted teacher, mentor, or guidance counselor. This can enable you to receive constructive criticism to enhance your essay. Two other options you have at this stage are: 

• • • • Attend a college essay writing workshop or seminar led by experienced admissions professionals. This will help you to access well-written admission essay examples. 
      • Hire professional college admission essay editing services to receive an in-depth evaluation of your essay. To evaluate their credibility, ask for samples of admission essays they’ve edited. 

In the next section, we’ve given a simple college essay checklist to assist you! 

College essay checklist 

Here’s a college essay checklist for your reference. This basic checklist covers all essential elements to polish your essay. This extra step can make a big difference in your essay’s final presentation and quality.

College essay checklist

Now, you can begin editing your college admission essay. If you find editing challenging, consider hiring PaperTrue’s professional editing services. Established in 2014, PaperTrue has edited and proofread college admission essays for thousands of students. 

You can bookmark this article for future reference to college admission essay tips! 

What are your thoughts on this comprehensive college essay editing guide? Leave a comment below to share your feedback! We’d love to hear which admissions essay tips you found most valuable. 

Here are some other useful resources for you: 

• • Top AI Essay Writers in 2024: 10 Must-Haves
  • 100 Best College Essay Topics & How to Pick the Perfect One!
  • Top 10 Essay Checkers in 2024 (Free & Paid)
  • Top 10 Essay Writing Tools in 2024 | Plan, Write, Get Feedback
  • How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay (Examples Included!)

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Priya

Priya has a talent for academic research and enjoys simplifying complex topics. When she's not helping students improve their writing, she can be seen reading poetry, playing the harmonium, or learning classical dance.