Posts by blueberrydish

blueberrydish

Jan 19, 2022

Essays / How do you think you can contribute to this school? (answering this question) [7]

Think of some good contributions you have made in your life - whether personal or in school - that you can use as examples of the skills you have listed. It is always better to have an example to back up your claim. For example, if you want to say that you are very determined ("When I set myself to a task, I will complete it no matter what challenges I face"), you should have an example of a past experience where you had to complete a task that was challenging in some way, and how you overcame the challenge to complete the task. I would be very hesitant to list any skills or attributes without an example or experience that shows this skill or attribute. In fact, it may be best to work backwards from your previous positive contributions in order to come up with your positive skills & attributes. By this I mean, if you once helped to organise a charity bake-sale under intense time pressure, you can reasonably infer from this experience that you are a charitable person with good organisation skills and that you work well under pressure.

blueberrydish

Jan 19, 2022

Essays / Help Writing Creative Essays Under Pressure [3]

Writing Creative Essays Under Pressure

Hello Essay People,

I am due to take an exam in March which has a verbal reasoning, written task, and a scientific reasoning section (medical school entry exam). In search of guidance for the written task, I have read lots of the usual essay writing tips on this forum, but the tips generally relate to essays written over a longer period of time, and not in an exam.

For the written task (essay) in this exam, you are given two sets of 5x prompts (usually quotes but could just be statements); the first set of prompts relates to a random sociocultural theme (war, capitalism, inequality, activism etc), and the other relates to a random personal theme (love, jealousy, ambition, remorse etc). Your task is to develop a 'piece of writing' in response to one or more prompts, in the space of 65 minutes (60 mins writing time, 5 mins planning time). This means you must 1) generate 2x separate ideas or theses and 2) express those ideas in the form 2x cohesive, well-structured essays. The examiners are marking you based on the quality of your response to the theme and how effectively you express and present yourself in doing so.

In the past, many test-takers have stuck to a 'safe' generic formula: Intro (state thesis), 1st paragraph (argument for), 2nd paragraph (argument for), 3rd paragraph (argument against), and a Conclusion (synthesis). However these types of essays can look bland and formulaic and generally don't score well. The essay can be discursive, argumentative, or even a creative, narrative piece. There are no rules. In my experience, the more creative pieces do better, and if you have a really interesting idea, you don't even have to finish the piece to score well. Essays submitted are said to be around 350 to 500 words each.

I have taken this exam a couple of times in the past, and I am giving it my all this time. However it's really hard to prepare for this part of the exam outside of reading widely, and hoping you're struck by inspiration based on the prompts you get on the day (which I have experienced in the past). This does not instil confidence, as this leaves you open to getting 'page-fright' on the day because you receive essay prompts on a topic you don't know much about (which I have also experienced). I really want to lean into the creative side of things, but am afraid I won't be able to think creatively on command.

I believe I can produce good writing when I can draft and reflect and edit over time, but I'm not sure how I can consistently produce anything of substance in so little time, and on a random topic.

So, my question to the essay experts out there is, do you know of a good way to prepare for this type of assessment? Is there certain formula, literary device or format that could be applied to many or almost any given prompt or topic? Do you know of any writing exercises that help with generating and/or expressing ideas in a creative/novel way?