Essays That Worked

Essays That Worked Claremont McKenna dropped the requirement as of November 2018, and Wellesley finally stopped asking for ACT Writing . Princeton has replaced the SAT or ACT essay requirement by deciding to require a graded essay from a high school class instead. When it comes to the college essay, admissions committees have seen it all. The worst thing you can do is make up a story for your college essay. You are good enough the way you are, and there is definitely a topic out there that you can write about without having to lie. It was supposed to fly…but alas the balloons didn’t work. And yet another student staged a sit-in in an admissions office lobby, refusing to leave until she was able to speak to a few admissions people. Needless to say, this tactic proved as ineffective as the pies and the blow-up person attached to balloons. University students, like these students doing research at a university library, are often assigned essays as a way to get them to analyze what they have read. You don’t have to pull out all the stops to impress the reader, you just have to be authentic and creative. There should be no mention of how miraculous your life is and how profound you can be. So give your essays the time and attention they deserve, but also, have reasonable expectations about how much even the best essay can accomplish. If I’m understanding correctly, the only students who need to be taking the writing/essay exams are those applying to the first 9 schools on your list that are “required” or “recommended”? We are in CA so it used to be needed for the UC’s but as you noted even that has changed. So now post-Covid, do you still advise most of your students to take the writing exams, or feel that there is “more upside than downside” to taking them? My 11th grader previously did the SAT w/essay and scored 760 R&W, 650 M, and 4/4/5 on the essay. Some campuses have a pool of reviewers, while others are more specific. For a small college, there is a chance that you essay will only be read by a couple of individuals, but for a larger school it can make its way through several hands before being put down. While essays don’t weigh as much as grades or course selection, if you are applying test-optional or to a smaller school, more attention will be given to this section of the application. when admissions season started, it is not easy to read hundreds of essay during a short period of time. in the mean time, between 5-10 min is actually reasonable for a good read. there are different stages for the admissions process. normally essay does not read more than one person unless the vote must proceed and admission counselors decided to work hard for the students they like the most. You can be certain that you did not spend all that time crafting the perfect essay in vain. The reader should never think about fact checking what you’ve written. Your essay should be genuine and based on fact, not fiction. The SAT Essay and ACT Writing continue to pose a conundrum for students. While College Board and ACT have made these components optional, a small number of colleges continue to require or recommend them. Students typically must finalize testing decisions well before they finalize their lists of where they will apply to college, so a significant majority of students still take the essay exams each year. Duke provides “recommended” guidance and drops strong hints that the essay is still worth submitting in many cases. The list of holdouts, though, continues to decline. Aside from mistakes on the essays, college admissions counselors discuss in “The Daily Beast” how one student sent pies, claiming she wasn’t a good athlete but she was a good baker. The admissions counselors thought the pies were quite tasty but this did not lead to an acceptance. Another student sent a life-size blowup of herself attached to balloons. You don’t even need to tell a slightly exaggerated story. But, if you feel like you don’t have anything to say, start here. Imagine an admissions counselor reading that in your college essay. While it seems like an interesting story, the excerpt above is a complete lie. How much weight a college puts on that portion of the application may differ. Just how many readers digest your words can vary as well. Still, don’t waste the opportunity to put another dimension on your application file. The role of the essay varies greatly from school to school.