How To End An Essay Gracefully : r/ApplyingToCollege - Reddit
With a trite aphorism or sweeping generality. Examples include phrases such as "striving to achieve our full potential," "making the world a better place," etc. These are commonplace and lame, but worse, they say nothing about the student. Instead, they make the AO instantly aware that the author is trying to make an impression with such a statement and it causes skepticism about the sincerity of everything they just read. As an example, imagine you attended a workshop about something you were interested in, but at the end the presenter went into a non-sequitur sales pitch for his tangentially related product. This would instantly cast doubt on his credibility because it doesn't fit with what you thought the point of the workshop was (to inform vs to persuade, influence, or sell). Or, imagine you go to a car dealership to buy a car fully expecting a forceful sales pitch. If half way through the salesman starts talking about all of his personal philanthropic activities and how he runs the dealership as a way to give back to the community you would instantly question his motives. Clearly he's actually there to sell cars and earn profits, so you would realize that he's actually attempting to manipulate you. AOs will feel a little of this if you try to end your essay with a canned, too-wholesome conclusion.
Obviously you want to give the sense that the essay actually ended intentionally rather than being stifled by the word count. You also want to leave a final good impression. If you crafted a truly outstanding essay, the AO will get a little bit lost in it. They will momentarily forget that they're sitting in a windowless room evaluating a depressingly deep stack of application essays and just enjoy hearing what you have to share about yourself and getting to know you. You need to close gracefully, sincerely, and purposefully so they continue to feel positively about you and reward you with a top score.
5. Offer a future vision: Provide a glimpse into how the topic might evolve in the future or what its potential impact could be. This can pique the reader's curiosity and encourage them to think about the larger implications of your essay.
How To Write an Essay Conclusion (With Examples) - Indeed
Explain how these parts are connected. For example, in the animal-shelter essay, you might point out that adopting a shelter dog helps more animals because your adoption fee supports the shelter, which makes your choice more socially responsible.
6. Create a sense of closure: Use a concluding sentence that brings the essay to an end in a satisfying way, such as by answering a question you posed earlier, resolving a conflict, or harkening back to an anecdote from your introduction.
Explain why this topic is timely or important. For example, the animal-shelter essay might end with a statistic about the number of pets in shelters waiting for adoption.
7. Be concise and focused: Avoid introducing new information or going off on tangents, as those things will only distract your reader from what you've discussed in the rest of the essay. Stick to summarizing and reinforcing the main points of your essay, and keep your conclusion relatively short and to the point - you should have said most of what you want to say in the body of the essay, so you don't want the ending to go on and on. If there's a point you realize you haven't expanded on but is relevant to your argument, try to figure out how to incorporate it earlier on, rather than cramming it in at the conclusion.
End Your Essay (PART 2): How to Write a Conclusion Paragraph
I'm fond of the "call back" commonly used by comedians. You reference something from earlier in your essay to say one more thing about yourself. Sometimes this is something that you used to start the essay off. Other times it's something that was a major theme of the essay or a big part of the story you told. It gives natural closure, reminds the reader of the points you made earlier, and serves as a symbol or memento that the AO can carry with them to make your application stand out in their memory (like the totems in the movie Inception).
How NOT to End a College Essay (and What You Can Do Instead)
Another option is to depart from the story and inject something more about you. Examples of this in literature include the socialist meeting Jurgis stumbles upon at the end of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and John Galt's speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged. John Steinbeck's interchapters are another less direct and more metaphorical way of doing this. You obviously don't have the space to elaborate here, so one or two sentences is probably enough. You will want to work in a smooth transition though. One example of a good way to do this is to end with a quote about you spoken by one of the characters in your story.
How to End a College Essay: 10 Tactics & Strategies
A good conclusion should do more than simply end the discussion. The reader should not feel that the paper ends suddenly, without warning. The closing paragraph ought to quickly summarize the paper, while also providing a thought, claim, suggestion, or speculation pertaining to the points made in the paper. It should not be a duplicate of the introduction, but rather a reassessment of the thesis stated in the introductory paragraph. In this way, it gives the reader, and the writer, a chance to see if the thesis was properly stated and supported throughout the paper.
How To Write A Conclusion For An Essay - Express Proofreading
One further possibility is to mirror how great motivational speakers and clergy make use of stories in their speaking. Often they use a similar approach to what I advocate for essays - start a story somewhat in the middle with a cold open and elaborate and fill in details as they go. Then when they reach the end of the story they relate it to their main point or one of the main themes they want to drive home. You can do the same thing, just make the main point something about you and make sure it relates to the story you're telling.