Application Essay for Major

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It is my major application essay. The Informatics major here at the University of Washington is very competitive (25 % AR). I have a rough draft and want to make it impactful and well structured. I also want to shorten it since the character limit is 3000 including spaces and I have 3500.

The instructions are as follows.In addition to providing information about prerequisite grades and academic history, applicants must submit a statement of less than 3,000 characters (including white space). The Informatics admissions committee will review your statement to learn more about why you want to learn what we teach in Informatics. The committee is specifically interested in four aspects of your life:

What grades on your transcript do you think best represent your ability to succeed in Informatics? This might be your performance in Informatics classes, your performance in classes you view as related to Informatics, or independent learning you believe is relevant to Informatics.
What experiences do you have designing information technology, building information technology, or working with data? Describe the most significant project you believe is relevant to Informatics.
What is a time when you have demonstrated hard work, persistence or focus toward a goal? Did you achieve the goal? This does not have to be related to Informatics.
What goals do you have post-graduation, and how can an Informatics degree support them? You might share specific problems you want to solve, or careers you want to pursue. It’s OK if you’re not sure yet or you have many ideas.
Address all four of these topics, but do so in whatever form best fits your answers. For example, you might address each question separately, or you might tell a story that implicitly addresses all of the questions. Your writing should be clear, concise and captivating.

However, you present the answers, focus on telling your story, not platitudes and generalities about data, information or technology. If you only tell us what you think we want to hear, we won’t learn anything about you. The admissions committee is not looking for just one type of student; we need diversity of all kinds to promote critical learning about people, information and technology, so we need to know what makes you different.

Your audience will be diverse, including faculty, academic advisors, and current Informatics students. Therefore, to prepare your response, we recommend you first think about what you want to communicate and who your audience is, and then devise a way to convey that information that best communicates your narrative. Test and refine it until it communicates what you intend.

Formatting Requirements

You may include anything you want in your 3,000 characters, as long as it satisfies the following requirements:

No links are allowed unless they are for reference (e.g., a link to a company website). The content must be entirely contained within the text. Reviewers will not follow any of the links in your statement.
Applicants will copy/paste their submission into a text box in the application. (Applicants should not prepare a PDF.)
Submissions should only be composed of text. (Graphics, pictures, etc. will not be accepted.)

This is the major website for reference – https://ischool.uw.edu/programs/informatics/what-is-informatics

Key tips and points from experienced people:

– It should leave an impact in the first very few sentences.
– It should include that you bring diversity
– It should talk to the point and show what you bring to the major and what major can offer to you.
– It should answer all 4 questions
– It should not be too much or too less technical