Read your essay aloud and cut the fluff

Read your essay aloud and cut the fluff

One sitting, thirty minutes, after your second draft is complete. This is the cheapest revision pass there is and the one most students skip.

How to do it

1. Print it or put it on a different screen. Changing the surface resets your eye.
2. Read the whole thing out loud, at talking speed. Not in your head: out loud. Every sentence your mouth stumbles over is a sentence a tired admissions reader will stumble over at 11pm in February.
3. Mark, do not fix. Underline stumbles, cringes and anywhere your attention drifted. Keep reading to the end before you touch anything.
4. Then cut ten percent. If the draft is 700 words, find 70 to remove. They are hiding in the usual places:
   • Throat-clearing openers ("Ever since I was young, I have always...")
   • Adjectives doing work a scene should do ("my incredible, life-changing experience")
   • The moral of the story stated twice, once at the turn and again at the end. Keep the better one.
   • Anything the reader already knows from your activities list.

The voice test

After the cut, read it aloud once more and ask one question: does this sound like you on a good day, talking to someone you trust? If it sounds like a college essay, keep cutting. If a phrase embarrasses you slightly because it is honest, keep it: that is usually the best line in the piece.

What this is not

This is not the feedback round: that is its own task, with one or two readers you choose. Do this pass first so their time goes to the real questions, not to the fluff you could have caught yourself.