Apply For Admission

Apply For Admission It doesn’t matter too much which prompts you choose, so try to choose prompts that you can reuse other essays to answer. In particular, the Common App personal statement essay is something that the UC schools don’t see, so try to reuse it for one of these essays. The main challenge here will be to reduce the word count . This is a great tool for demonstrating interest and learning details about your intended programs that you can’t find on the website. In addition, conversations with faculty at your early schools can give great tidbits that you can use for a “Why Us? Although they are all quite short, that’s 10 questions to answer in a thoughtful, efficient manner. If you’re serious about getting into a school like Stanford, those essays will also have to be quite excellent. Unused essays can easily be used for other essay prompts down the line. Most students are in the middle of AP exams throughout this month, so they usually don’t have time to do much more than this. While Stanford is the exception to the rule â€" many top colleges will just require one or two longer essays â€" it doesn’t diminish the effort needed to effectively apply to these schools. Students applying to a number of top 20 reach schools for regular decision will have the majority of their essay work ahead of them and not a lot of time to ensure they’re writing their best possible essays. UC application deadlines are at the end of November, so they should be your next priority if you haven’t worked on them already. There are eight prompts to choose from, and you pick four. This is a really important decision for your application. Your personal statement essay is the face of your application and one of the only ways to show your personality. Keith Berman is the President of Options for College (), which he founded in Harvard Square right after working in the Harvard Admissions Office. He has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, PBS, Fox Business and Lifetime. Just remember to be original and creative as you share your story. When it comes to deciding whether you should hire someone to write your admissions essay for you, or if you should just write it yourself you need to consider carefully both the pro's and cons. If you decide to go with a writing helping, you will also have to determine how involved you want to be in the writing process. Remember, the admissions essay is your ticket to admission into the academic institution of your choice. No matter what you choose to do you want to be certain that the essay you deliver is the best it can possibly be. Make sure to get feedback from not too many and not too few people. Too much feedback will give you a lot of contradicting opinions while too little feedback could miss some glaring problems if that person isn’t experienced in college essay writing. A good number of people to get feedback from is about three or four different people. These should be people who know you well and have experience with personal writing. As a result, it’s imperative that rising juniors get a head start on their college essay brainstorming, writing, and editing. Every college applicant will have varying essay workloads, depending on their college list. Students with high aspirations for top colleges should be prepared to write A LOT of essays. Schools like Stanford require answers to 6 short answer questions , an extracurricular essay , and 3 short essay questions . For less competitive schools, there might not even be any supplemental essays to write. We hope these essays inspire you as you write your own personal statement. Decide on schools to apply to for early admissions. While the Common App only requires one essay, we do suggest that you draft at least two different essays with different topics so that you have some options later on.