How to Write the University of Michigan Admissions Essays with EXAMPLES (Common App ADMITTED and Supps) Sarah O'Neill Supreme Editing Coatesville

 Sarah O'Neill Supreme Editing Coatesville PA 

The University of Michigan Excerpt

Admitted students share a drive to pursue academic excellence in a challenging and rewarding academic environment.  What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores?

According to Michigan admissions (via their website):

“The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice.  Your essays should reveal how you have become a leader at your school and in your community. Be sure to explain to what heights you have taken your training in your extracurricular passions. How have you connected your studies and your non-academic passions? Try to reveal how the combination of coursework and related activities has inspired original thinking on your part. 

We also look for students who are curious about new ideas, people, and experiences, those who push boundaries and are not content with status-quo. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores?

In history, the types of students admitted consisted of applicants who assert clearly their life goals, apply relevant experience with specific details (show, don’t tell), and make a clear connection to the college/major of interest at UMichigan (since students have to dual apply to a college of choice). The applicants also suggest how they will contribute to the college community with their skills and experience. Sharing what they learned and how they grew from the relevant experience also reveals a student who will “push boundaries” and grow as a Michigan student, not accepting the status quo. Some Michigan applicants effectively use extended metaphors and strong imagery to paint their stories of learning and success. 

Supplemental Essay Example:

Prompt:Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (Required for all applicants; minimum 100 words/maximum 300 words)

My classmates on our robotics team speak my love language. 

I discovered this in tenth grade when I was immediately drawn to their vitality. There are people who CAD all our ideas into a detailed 3D model, and there are manufacturers who CNC the designs into reality and piece them together with the fabrication team, and there’s me: programming/scouter. We’re like a huge family, supporting each other both in and outside the robotics classroom. Each of us can live-out our roles in the spirit of true teamwork in the FIRST Robotics Competition every year. There I can mingle with an even larger community I adore: the FIRST Robotics community. We laugh and cheer together: for our individual teams and for other teams. As a scouter, it’s also my job to connect us with other teams. During events, when I find a connection with someone I never knew before, I welcome it like they are our own teammates-even if we later appear on the opposite side of the field. 

When participating in our outreach programs, it fulfills part of my purpose to give back. The world is losing potential engineers due to financial burdens. So, I co-founded a project called BoarBot in which we design robots that are inexpensive and easy to build. Teams under budget that are competing for the first time can learn a lot about engineering while building. The simple design is competitive, so novices can use it to compete at the same level as everyone else. When we released our first design into the community, it caught the attention of many rookie teams. One team built our model and competed with us in the same District competition. We became great friends, and that rookie team eventually won the “Rookie All-Star” award in the District competition! 

Common App SAMPLE Admitted to Michigan

Transitioning gently into the nucleus of the rink after a tantalizing set of twizzles, my coach would pull me aside to tell me “words for life”. Once he said that falling is accidental, but staying down never is. I never forgot that. I was a figure skater for 8 years. In fact, if I calculated it: I skated every Saturday plus competitions for nearly a decade, which means I spent more time on the ice than on dry land. Ah, figure skating— with its artful loops, lightning-fast spins, tight leotards, and sparkly rhinestones, there’s nothing like it, and transcending unnecessary gender tropes, I never missed a chance to soar through the icy air. 

While the spins sometimes caused vertigo, causing queasiness in my stomach, ice skating did so much for my development as a person by testing my resilience as I stumbled quite a bit. With each successive fall, however, I peeled myself back up and discovered something new about myself. They are what I like to call “necessary falls.” After one early fall, never quite mastering skating’s elegance as the gods simply did not bless me with the flexibility to raise my legs above my noggin, I made up for it by moving with more force and speed. Instead of dancey movements, I skated with decisive motions that were unlike anyone else’s. 

Then, for a final move during one fateful session on the rink when preparing for Northwest Pacific Regionals, I twisted and my blade drew a curve as I rotated off the ice…one…two, I swung back too far. THUMP! In an instant, I had to reimagine my whole life. That particular fall left me with a fractured tailbone, a concussion, and a fractured purpose. 

A bruised butt was the least of my worries. I had to figure out what to do with myself! Skating was such a huge piece of me and my Saturdays, such a close friend, that even with all the harsh falls, it was like home, but this fall was a showstopper. Falling is accidental, getting back up is not: those words resounded in my ears. How would I get back up this time? In those ten weeks of healing, I had to let go, and instead of wallowing in self-pity, I eventually converted that energy through the feathering of an oar. 

Just like turning an oar blade flat can lessen the wind’s resistance, I turned to Founder’s Crew at school to lessen this residual failure. Crew was a sport I seriously never thought about before, but gliding through the water for the first time felt a lot like gliding on the ice. Otherwise, Crew is quite the opposite of skating. One requires intricate muscle control, while the other is the mechanic repetition of the same motion. My prejudices dissolved when I felt crew’s real appeal: the collective joy when the whole team syncs up flawlessly. Skating was something for me, but this required a collective effort, which I now love. I now row as well as I skated because I put my whole heart into it. Plus, there isn’t the threat of breaking my coccyx! 

I realized something remarkably important to my growth: that it wasn’t the skating itself that meant so much, it was about pushing my limits and transcending as many falls as I could that did. That career-ending fall turned out to be a chance to actually thrust myself into other new spotlights: crew, performing violin with the orchestra, rediscovering just how much music adds to my life, becoming a serious delegate in MUN, and exercising an adventurous spirit when I leapt into a freezing lake at 7 in the morning for charity. I believe that my true bravery is admitting setbacks and re-emerging even if what I do takes different forms. 

 Falling is accidental, but staying down never is. I never forgot that. 

Sarah O'Neill Supreme Editing Coatesville, PA