{"id":11996,"date":"2018-12-25T18:51:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T13:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/?post_type=post&p=11996"},"modified":"2024-05-22T14:39:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T09:09:53","slug":"essay-on-failure-how-to-tackle-this-tricky-question-in-college-admission-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/essay-on-failure-how-to-tackle-this-tricky-question-in-college-admission-form","title":{"rendered":"How to tackle tricky questions in your college admissions form"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"Essay
\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Let\u2019s not kid ourselves. Nobody is born a superstar. Despite the fact that destiny plays a big role in life, failure is inevitable in everyone\u2019s life at least once. You may have a small setback such as losing your rank in the third consecutive year of high performance. Or you may have a much greater disaster with your family income being wiped out due to financial mismanagement. The greater the scale of the disaster, the rougher the ride.<\/p>\n

When college applications<\/a> ask for an essay on your failure, you may feel uncomfortable sharing that extremely private, embarrassing and difficult moment of your life. But if tackled right, this essay on managing failures could be your golden ticket to your dream school.<\/p>\n

1. What the College Wants to Know<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do colleges ask you to respond to an essay on failure? What do they want to understand about you?<\/p>\n

Failure is integral to any process of learning and growing. A child learns to walk only after numerous failed attempts. We all have to learn to accept failure, learn from mistakes and use the lessons to make informed decisions. College admissions officers want to see whether you have the \u2018drive\u2019 to learn from past mistakes. They want to understand whether you have the maturity to accept failures as stepping stones, or whether you brush your failures under the carpet, and pretend that life can go on.<\/p>\n

As a professional, you are bound to face numerous, complex situations in your work life. If you did not have the ability to pick yourself up after a setback, you\u2019d probably never grow. You shy away from taking risks, and always sit on the fence when it comes to making business decisions. As a business leader, you cannot afford to make failure your Achilles heel. College admissions department recognize the power of learning from failure.<\/p>\n

2. How to Position Your Failure<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2018-2019 Common Application essay prompt brings up the second question as:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s break this up in 5 parts:
\n1. Lessons from obstacles we encounter.
\n2. Fundamental to later success.
\n3. Faced a challenge, setback, or failure.
\n4. How did it affect you?
\n5. What did you learn from the experience?<\/p>\n

To answer this question, focus on the \u201clessons learnt\u201d, how it translated to \u201clater success\u201d, and \u201cwhat did you learn.\u201d These are key elements of the answer. Merely describing your low point will not curry favor with the admissions team. They don\u2019t want to hear a sob-story of a pessimistic candidate. They want to know how you bounced back.<\/p>\n

3. How to Talk About Overcoming Failures<\/strong>
\nThere is no need to mask your failure behind flowery words. Admissions officers can see right through them. Keep the language straightforward, honest, and matter-of-fact. Don\u2019t be melodramatic. Also, don\u2019t drag your failure story unnecessarily. As a thumb rule, your story of challenges should not compose more than 10% of your entire essay. The other 90% should be dedicated on positive aspects such as lessons learned, successes gained in future, and how it changed you.<\/p>\n

Top 5 Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts in Writing About Failure:<\/strong><\/p>\n

When writing your essay about failure, keep the following things in mind:<\/p>\n

1. Don\u2019t trivialize the essay topic by showcasing a non-issue as failure. For example, don\u2019t write a long story on how you missed a train during a vacation in Paris with your family. Or don\u2019t write about not being selected to a debate competition. Or that your parents sent you to Alaska without snow boots. Don\u2019t pretend to have had a setback when there was none.<\/p>\n

2. Do not criticize others in your failure essay. Don\u2019t whine, complain or throw others in a bad light. You don\u2019t want to present yourself as the nasty Grinch. Steer clear from pessimistic lines, blame game or self-praise.<\/p>\n

3. Make sure to highlight how you bounced back. Colleges want to see the winning attitude, the positive outlook, and the ability to pick up lessons with every failure. Express any successful outcomes with numerical perspective. If you can quantify the success, it can help to leverage your success-from-failure story.<\/p>\n

A well-written essay is half the job done. Essays should be consistent with the rest of the application; make sure to tie all loose ends so that you can present a solid college application.<\/p>\n

Sloppy writing in your essay is bound to leave the wrong impression on the reader. Use our FREE Essay Editor Tool<\/a> to ensure you submit an error free essay.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Let\u2019s not kid ourselves. Nobody is born a superstar. Despite the fact that destiny plays a big role in life, failure is inevitable in everyone\u2019s life at least once. You may have a small setback such as losing your rank in the third consecutive year of high performance. Or you may have a much greater…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,35],"tags":[484,486],"class_list":["post-11996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-study-abroad","category-college-applications","tag-top-university-application","tag-college-application-essay-tips"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11996"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20874,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11996\/revisions\/20874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reachivy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}