‘Twas the night before deadlines, and all through the world,
Our consultants sat cramming, coffee brewing, brows furled;
Though the essays were written with effort and care,
There were still a few things that were cause for despair!
The clichés! Oh, forsake! Terrible, were they –
That all our consultants could think was “oy vey!”
The bloopers! The follies! The overused phrases –
Oh what would the adcom say? Imagine the look on their faces!
So we cleaned and we scrubbed and we checked all the words;
We made sure that nothing sounded clichéd or absurd.
Then swift as a mouse looking for plum pie crumbs,
We sent those essays back with the click of our thumbs.
What joy was beholden to the writers indeed,
To find original essays – a new creed!
Then with boundless cheer and some joy and some tears;
The writers sent out their essays! Phew – they were in the clear!
Moral of the story: phrases and idioms come and go in waves. While it’s okay to use some popular phrasing, you want to make sure that your essay is original and not chock full of clichés. The first time someone used “take it to the next level” in their essay, the reader probably stopped and thought – wow, that’s a great way to put it. They probably thought the same thing the second and third and even tenth time they heard it. But the hundredth time? The thousandth? It’s just not as impressive. In fact, after original phrases get used to death, they become boring, even silly, and lose their meaning.
In any case, earlier this month we polled Accepted’s consultants and asked “What are the most abused and misused clichés among applicants?” When we dug out from under the flood of responses, these were the ultimate winners/losers.
Once smart, the following clichés/words/phrases are best to be avoided:
• Take it to the next level
• Lend a helping hand
• Been there for me
• Want to give back
• Outside my comfort zone
• Making a difference
• Disruptive-anything
• Global-anything
• Diverse-anything
• Onboarding
• Thinking outside the box
• Synergy
• Touch base
• Circle back
When writing your essays, try to move outside your comfort zone and take your writing to the next level. You want to really make a difference and get onboard with this global thinking and diverse wordification.
Yeah, I thought that would help make my point. ☺
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The post What Applicants Should Not Do in 2016: A Poem appeared first on Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog.
from Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog
http://blog.accepted.com/2015/12/28/what-applicants-should-not-do-in-2016-a-poem/
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