Cause-and-Effect Structure

Often times you will be asked for a life-changing experience or about someone or something that has had a great influence on you. This structure shows that you understand and appreciate the effect that other entities have had on your development and maturity. For these essays, you will want to use the body paragraphs to first describe the influence and then move onto how that has had an effect on you. You can either divide the essay into a "cause section" and an "effect section" or you can mesh the two together by taking each small description one by one and explaining the effect it has had on you. If you decide to use this structure, be sure that you don't write yourself out of the equation; make the point that you were the catalyst between the cause and the effect. That way, you demonstrate that you know how to take action and create change.