As part of the admissions process, you will be asked to write an essay on an assigned topic in a 30-minute time period. The topic will not require specialized knowledge of any particular academic discipline, but will give you an opportunity to use a broad range of knowledge and experiences in support of your discussion.
The addition of a timed-writing essay to our admission requirements, along with the personal interview, recognizes the importance of communication in pharmacy and the need for effective writing and speaking. Today's pharmacy education involves more than merely acquiring facts. In scoring the timed essay, we want to assess your ability to develop and express ideas in a logical and organized manner.
The essays will be read and scored by admissions committee members who have reasonable expectations of the quality of writing expected of students entering the College of Pharmacy. Each essay will be read by two different readers and scored on a 6-point scale, with 6 as the highest score and 1 as the lowest. The total writing sample score is the sum of the two readers' scores. Any paper that is given scores by the two readers that are more than two points apart will be read by a third reader to resolve the discrepancy in scores.
Essays written in only 30 minutes on an assigned topic are not expected to be polished compositions. Scorers will judge the quality of an essay by the total impression it creates; they will take into account such aspects of writing as organization, word choice, sentence structure and punctuation, as well as the appropriateness of examples and the logical presentation and development of ideas.
The essay is assigned to give you an opportunity to show how well you can write. You should, therefore, take care to express your thoughts on the topic clearly and effectively. How well you write is much more important than how much you write, but to cover the topic adequately you will probably need to write more than one paragraph.
You will be evaluated for your skills in:
The essay will not include:
Like an athlete, you must be in shape before you can exercise your writing skills and perform them well. Since you will have only 30 minutes to write your essay, you might want to practice writing under a time limit, especially if you are intimated by a blank sheet of paper. There are ways, however, to break your writer¹s block and begin to develop writing fluency.
In order to write, you must have something to say. In this exercise you will be asked to discuss a particular idea, using an example or examples from literature, history, current events, science, or personal experience. You can prepare yourself by reading about current issues that engage you in newspapers, editorials, and magazines such as Time or Newsweek, or by recalling significant events in your life. Writing is easier if you feel strongly about the subject matter.
Writing for admission to the College of Pharmacy requires special consideration since it confines you to a very limited amount of time. Because you do not have the luxury to develop, revise, and refine multiple drafts, it is crucial to use a systematic approach when writing your essay. The following suggestions are meant to serve as guidelines to aid you in developing that approach. Once again, practice is required to improve quality.
Writing your essay should consist of four stages: understanding, organization, writing, and proofreading. Here are guidelines to help you effectively accomplish the goal of each stage.
I. Understanding the essay question:
Read the essay prompt carefully to be sure you understand it, and follow the directions carefully. Do not rush through this stage. Haste could result in misdirected efforts based on an initial misunderstanding of the statement.
The topics presented are serious ones. The comparisons you make and the examples you provide should therefore be serious as well. Remember, though, there are no correct or specific answers to the prompt. We are interested in how well you can express yourself; what you think.
II. Organization:
A random list of ideas is difficult to work with. Construct an outline of your ideas, using key words to indicate each thought. As long as you limit your notes to single words or even abbreviations, this stage should take only a few minutes, and time invested in the outline will make your actual writing go faster. Next, group together related ideas. As you group ideas, eliminate anything that does not seem relevant to the development of the topic. Finally, try to formulate a clear statement of your overall argument or thought, and organize your ideas so that they explain your argument clearly, logically, and completely.
Take time to think and organize. Do not be put off by those test-takers around you who start to write furiously a minute after they receive the topic. In general, thinking and note-taking should take up to half of your time on the essay. The other half of your time should be devoted to the actual writing with five minutes to proofread.
III. Writing: Expand your outline into fully-developed ideas that respond directly to the topic, and keep your writing relevant to your argument. As you elaborate on your ideas, be sure that you are developing and clarifying those thoughts and not digressing from them. To maintain focus, eliminate anything that is NOT relevant to your main idea. It may be tempting to try to demonstrate everything you know about a topic, but keep in mind that your goal is not to showcase your range of information but to demonstrate how well you can communicate in writing.
Once you have clarified your argument and determined the information to be included in it, present your essay in an organized manner. Make sure that you provide good transitions to move the reader from one idea to the next. Make sure, also, that one thought leads smoothly into the next thought. Your entire argument should be unified, clear, and complete. When paragraphs or ideas appear to be disjointed, your argument becomes hard to follow.
While there is no single, best way to write an essay, there are a few general rules you can keep in mind. The best essays will be well organized and fully developed, using clearly appropriate examples to support their ideas. Their arguments will be clear and coherent. They will display consistent facility in the use of language and demonstrate variety in sentence structure and range of vocabulary. Finally, they will be written in a voice that is natural, engaging, and active.
IV. Proofreading After you have completed your essay, reread it. Is there a well-formulated argument? Are your ideas clearly stated? Are they serious? Do you support your ideas with adequate details or examples? Does one idea flow smoothly into the next?
The evaluators expect you to proofread quickly and correct your essay for mechanical errors (grammar, spelling, and word choice) when you have finished writing. They do not give you enough time to recopy your essay and they do not expect you to do so.
Instructions:
Sample topic:
Consider carefully the following statement. Then plan and write your essay as directed.
"Sometimes opportunities come disguised as difficult situations."
In an essay, defend, attack, or modify the statement above. Support your discussion with an example or examples from literature, the arts, history, current events, politics, science and technology, or your own experience or observation.
Your essay must be written on the paper provided. You will find that you have enough space if you write on every line, avoid wide margins, and keep your handwriting to a reasonable size. It is important to remember that what you write will be read by someone who is not familiar with your handwriting. Try to write or print so that what your writing is legible to the reader.