Miami Essay Rhetoric First Draft

Eric Oswald

Mr. Brett Strickland

English 111

3 September 2010

Miami Essay Rhetoric First Draft

The deadline for my Miami application was looming over my head. I knew I had to get started writing my essay soon, well before it was actually due. Miami was my first choice college, so I started by writing essays for other universities, and saved this one for last. I had a few given options on the application of what to write about. As I had expected, they were the standard “write about a situation that changed you” or “write about someone who taught you something.” But neither of these was good enough for me. I had to stand out against all the other students who were also applying that year; all 3,000 of them. I decided to go with the option I figured was the least picked, the “other” option. It gave me the freedom to write about anything I wanted to.

But with this new freedom came a problem; what direction am I going to take this essay? I began collecting my thoughts and outlining some main points I wanted to cover. I finally was able to pick a topic. I was going straight to the point, and answer the question they would be looking for. Why am I a perfect fit at Miami? Why should I be accepted over other applicants? Another problem was that I didn’t know who all would be reading this paper. I figured it was a panel of admissions officers, but I didn’t know anything about them. But, I knew they would be very connected to Miami, and have a strong passion to the campus. I used this little fact the best I could.

In my essay, I began with how familiar I was with the campus, and told them some of my memories when I was five or six years old and visited the campus on reunion weekends with my grandma. I was really trying to paint a picture in their minds, and play on their emotions. After reading it again now, I can sense the feeling of desperation I had at the time I wrote it. You could tell by just reading the paper, how much it meant to me.

I also tried to establish why I was good enough to attend Miami. I wrote about what I wanted to do when I got to college. I made sure to sell myself as a worthy engineering student. I tried to assure them that a major in mechanical engineering was a perfect fit for me, by telling them I liked taking a “hands on” approach. I also showed that my first job in a metal fabrication shop allowed me to experience what mechanical engineers would do every day. I wrote about how I thought Miami would be a great place to study engineering.

This is where the timing came into play. Miami had just built the new engineering building a couple years earlier, and I used this to explain how I would try to help the engineering program at Miami grow. Miami isn’t known as an engineering school, so I knew they would probably be looking for more engineers to help expand their SEAS program. I also expressed my interests in hockey, and told stories of how I had played hockey as a kid at the old Goggin arena, which had just been torn down. The engineering building now stands in the footprint of the old Goggin. I used these memories as well as good timing to try and get an emotional response from the reader.

I tried to pack in as much emotion and feeling as I could in just a page and a half. The paper must have had some sort of effect, because I’m here at Miami today. Without even knowing what I was doing entirely, I had written my paper using rhetoric. I tried to capture my voice in the paper, and it all worked to my advantage.