Where to get free College Admission Essay Samples?

Applying for college is one of the most difficult and strenuous tasks that you'll likely undergo in your young life. It's your first real taste of the competitive nature of the real world, and with college admissions boards getting chooser and choosier, it's harder than ever to find your way into the college of your dreams. This year, as many as 95% of students were turned away by UCLA, Stanford, Yale and other prestigious schools. Add to that the fact that there are a lot of mitigating factors which can impact your school experience negatively - such as cost - and it's no surprise that many are looking to the internet to get free admissions essay examples.

But how does that process work, what is an admissions essay, and where can you get them?

The Process

To begin with, it's important to note that all colleges, like all work places, are slightly different, and they're all going to ask for different things in a college admissions essay. If you want to get the most bang for your buck - either when attending the school or when looking for free samples to help you get started - it's highly important to take a look at what the college has already done and what they specialize in.

Is the school you're applying to like Yale or Harvard, an Ivy League school with centuries of history to them?

Are you applying to a liberal arts school such as Cal Arts in Los Angeles or Emerson College in Boston, where writing, acting, and other fine arts are of the utmost importance?

Is it Davis or UCSD - ie, schools with great science programs - you're after?

Do your research before you download your free samples, and you're sure to get more out of them.

Where to Download

There are a variety of different sites online that offer free examples of successful college admissions essays. In some cases, you can scour the Internet and find them connected to a Yahoo! Article or other news story; this is especially true of the school is noted for particularly outrageous or news-worthy policies, or if its college essay is just that quirky (Yahoo! loves quirkiness for its human interest stories.)

Finally, there are entire sites devoted to this endeavor. Type in "free college essay samples" into your Google toolbar, and you're bound to get back a world of different results. Just be sure to visit review sites to see which samples and examples have been successful and aced the admissions test and which have flunked and are thus not worth your time.