To future college applicants, PLEASE do not fall into the essay trap
Random throwaway account but I need to get my message across somehow.
I’m a senior deciding between two very good schools. I won’t say the names because honestly it’s a pretty distinct combination lol (completely different vibes between both schools). But for context both of these schools are very reputable and have very low acceptance rates for the programs I applied for
I’m grateful that these 2 schools are my options, so trust me I’m not really salty about anything. However, like I said these are 2 very different schools w 2 very different types of applicants. I was kinda surprised I got admitted to both of these schools but not any of my other thousand reach schools.
And yeah, obviously there’s many factors to this. Also I’m lucky to have even had 2 acceptances from my reach list. But why these two in particular? It was weird to me until I realized that there was a commonality. I had rushed the essays for these schools a lot.
My college app process suffered thru lots of procrastination, so a few of the schools I applied to had rushed essays (not cus I didn’t like those schools, I was just doing things in a random order). But most of them took me quite a bit of time. These 2 schools just happened to be exceptions.
I showed these essays to very few people, and I didn’t listen to a lot of the advice given because I just didn’t have the time to.
But honestly, now that I’m looking back at these essay docs on my Google Drive with a fresh set of eyes and an adequate amount of sleep, I realize just how much better these essays were.
Conventional college advice treats supps like a checklist. It makes sense. These supps have long, prompts that somehow sandwich 5 questions into one. I don’t entirely disagree that you should try to answer everything. But this advice is taken to the extreme very often, to the point where influencers, private coaches, and AI models alike will convince you that your answers must follow an exact formula to even be considered. It seems as if each essay must be precisely engineered for maximum clarity to answer the AO’s questions, specially-designed to grill the brains of adolescents across the country.
I had followed this advice for most of the schools on my list. But for these two schools, I just wrote whatever came to mind (I was in panic mode, and I figured it’d be better to submit something than nothing). Now that I look back, these were really the only essays of mine that sounded human.
I nerded out way too much on these essays. I talked more about myself than about the school, even if the prompt asked for why I wanted to go to the school in the first place. But I could look back on these essays and really recognize that I was the one who wrote them.
I don’t write this to encourage people to rush essays without any research, or to ignore any and all advice. I just ask that people be a bit more conservative when listening to external advice on supps. If you follow conventional wisdom, you follow what a lot of other people are doing. Ironically, by trying to stand out even more, you blend in more.
You won’t be accepted into a college because you scrolled their club Insta pages, or stalked a random faculty member. You’ll be accepted for being you, as an individual. So instead of trying to hit every checkbox point, just write from the heart and mind. Even in your “why us” essays, don’t make a case for this college for you—make the case for yourself at this college. It’s ultimately all about you as a person. So don’t be self-important, don’t talk about other stuff, and don’t try to show off.
I’m reminded of the Ship of Theseus. If all the parts of the ship are replaced, is it really still the same ship? At the same time, if all your iterative essay refinements keep replacing parts of your writing, is any of it really yours? So, if you’re applying, don’t go crazy over essays! They are 100% important, but they’re not some kind of quantitative metric that you can optimize for. In fact, you shouldn’t optimize for them