On Writing The College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition

On Writing The College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition It can make all the difference in your admission decision. Different colleges have varying review processes. At almost all selective colleges however, every college essay will be read by multiple people. A great essay will leave the reader with a desire to know the author and will encourage an admissions committee to consider how the student might contribute to their campus. The importance of the essay, like so much else in the application process, depends upon the applicant and the school. At some schools the admissions process is more about crunching numbers than anything else and in those cases the essays matter little. In all cases at least one admissions officer will look at your essay. If a school uses an admissions committee the number could jump to three or more. In any case, what YOU can control is how well your essay describes who you are and gives the admissions person a chance to see things in you that will be an asset to the school. If a student is on the fence, not an early admit or deny, essays will probably be read multiple times by multiple people while an applicant is being discussed. If you were to take bets on the percentage of essays read by college admissions personnel, I’d guess that it would be in the high 90’s. An essay is an important part of sharing who you are with a school. With increased competition for admission, the essay has become an important factor in consideration of your admissibility to a school. So if a school requires an essay it is VERY likely to be read. If a school has a writing section in their supplement to the Common Application you can rest assured that ALL of that writing is evaluated by admissions officers. Do your best and assume that it WILL be read and that it WILL have a bearing on your admission chances. There is no way to determine a typical scenario regarding a college’s method for reviewing applications. This application is appropriate for students who have earned college credit through Dual Enrollment or summer school the summer immediately before planning to enroll at UTSA. One general insight is that students who take risks with the content and the structure of their college essays tend to be more successful across the board. One successful student wrote an essay tracking how his credit card was stolen, making each point of the credit card’s journey a separate section on the essay and analyzing what each transaction meant. Another’s essay was a list of her favorite books and focused on where each book was purchased. The essay is a very important part of the college application. The essay truly gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their strengths and to distinguish themselves from the other applicants. Based on the AdmitSee’s data, Dartmouth and Columbia don’t appear to have strong biases toward particular essay topics. This means that essays on many subjects were seen favorably by the admissions departments at those schools. You might wonder how a huge school would manage reading thousands of essays, but you can trust that they hire extra staff, if necessary, to make sure the entire application gets a close look. The number of readers depends on how “borderline” the applicant is, and the number of applicants being processed. So do your best on that part of the application. Even colleges who say their essay is “optional,” you shoulod definitely write one. However, Shyu says that writing about a moment that changed the student’s life showed up frequently in essays of successful applicants to those schools. AdmitSee has a team that analyzes all of these materials, gathering both qualitative and quantitative findings. At places where the admissions office must make distinctions among many qualified applicants it can be a definite factor. Indeed, the essay offers applicants a chance to present themselves in their own voice, an opportunity that one always wants to maximize. Applicants should be sure to respond to the prompt, but in a way that gives the reader a greater understanding of who they are and what they will bring to the community the school is seeking to create. The worst thing an applicant can do is write an essay that does not reveal anything about them.