Thank Your Third Grade Teacher: She Was Right About the Thesaurus

Every word counts, when there’s a word count.  A common complaint amongst college essay writers is the the wish for more words.  The tedium of examining, re-examining, thinking through each word chosen when writing a college essay can be a test of patience, as much as a test of intellect.  The Thesaurus, dictionary and books of quotations, can be handy tools to “un-stick” a writer – and find the exact right word.  In addition, asking a third party read a college essay can help dialogue, and talk out what precisely the writer is meaning, to determine the most specific wording possible.  The less a college admissions officer needs to guess or re-read a sentence multiple times to understand the meaning, the more helpful the essay may be to keeping the college applicant competitive for an acceptance letter – especially when admissions officers are faced with tens of thousands of applications to consider.