Step 10: 

Final Polish

Woo-hoo!

Expected Time: 30 Minutes

You are almost done! Now its time to proofread. Kris will review once more for things like clarity, spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation, then you can make the final edits. Once you’ve done this, your essay is ready to submit to colleges! Congrats, nice work!

I encourage you to reflect on whether you want to share your essay with others and if so, who? Resist the temptation to share your essay with multiple reviewers. Each person has their own thoughts on how an essay should be enhanced, which will conflict with this essay process, leaving you feeling confused and frustrated. Trust yourself. You worked hard on this and you are more than capable of writing a fantastic college essay. Remember, college admission folks what to know the answer to one burning question “who is this person?” and YOU are truly the one and only person that can answer that question.

If you choose to share your essay with a parent, teacher, or friend, be certain to include the prompt and your theme. Handing over an essay and saying, “Is this good?” is vague and isn’t going to leave you with helpful insights. A good way to frame this is to say something along the lines of: “Here’s my finished essay, with the prompt, and my theme. I worked hard on it with Kris and made many revisions and improvements along the way. I am sharing it with you because I am proud of it.”

When you can graciously accept any feedback that helps you convey your theme, and respectfully decline anything that does not help, then you are truly ready to share your essay with others!