Send your essay in a folder so the papers stay crisp.

Remember when I said that using high-grade paper was one of the best dollar-for-dollar ways of making your essay stand out? Well, this tip is in the same category as that one, but this one may be even better.

Let’s examine what happens to your essay after you drop it in the mail (or even if you send via UPS, FedEx, etc.). Surely you’ve already heeded my earlier advice about putting your application in a large envelope that prevents you from having to fold it. But even then, it still has quite an ordeal to endure before it gets into our hands.

It’s going on a brutal trip across the country that begins when it’s picked up and tossed into a document bin on a truck. Then, it gets taken back to an office, where it’s dumped somewhere else into another box and eventually loaded onto a plane or semi truck (depending on how you sent it). With the higher-end delivery services, it’s then going to a sorting facility where it’s going to be tossed around with millions of other packages on conveyor belts and tons of other sorting machinery. Then it reaches its destination city, where it’s tossed onto a truck again, and then, if you’re lucky, maybe the delivery guy won’t fold the thing in half and shove it in our mail slot.

Keeping pieces of paper in good shape from point A to point B isn’t easy, is it?

But you have a weapon at your disposal — a high-quality folder. They’re sold at Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, even Wal-Mart and the like. Get a good-quality, glossy folder (I like glossy ones myself, just because they look even sharper than the cheap-o folders, and they might run you a whopping 50 cents more) and put your essay/application inside it.

Even one of the flimsy, 6-for-a-dollar folders will keep a few sheets of paper safe from creases, tears, and rips, but you’ve come this far already, so don’t go cheap-o on me now. Go the whole nine yards and buy a thick, glossy folder. Trust me.

Here’s a secret for you: Essays that arrive in folders tend to stay in their folders as they’re passed around from judge to judge. Don’t ask me why; it’s just one of those tendencies about human beings that seems to be innate. I do it myself. Something inside me says that when I pull a nice essay out of a nice glossy folder, then I ought to put it back in that folder when I’m done with it. So not only will it stay protected from the delivery folks, it’s very likely to stay pristine as it gets handed around between judges.

And like I said earlier about the high-quality paper, an essay in a folder stands out from the thousands of others that aren’t. That’s probably the single best thing about this trick: almost no one does it. That’s why you should — it gives you a great little edge and is a great tactic for Beating the Stack.