My kid has gotten conflicting advice on writing his essays. An outside counselor (family friend) has said prompts are just a starting point to write about what you want. His school counselor think you need to formally address the prompt by returning to it throughout the essay.
What do you think? Is there a rule of thumb? Does it differ between the UC’s and private Colleges?
If the college wanted the applicant to answer a prompt about whatever was on his/her mind, they would structure the prompt as such. For example, Harvard’s prompt is:
So unless the prompt leaves it up to the applicant, I’d suggest addressing the prompt. Otherwise the AO may think that the applicant either:
• cannot follow instructions
• is reusing an essay from a school that is clearly higher up on the list.
I think the question is what exactly is the prompt and how far away from it are we talking? Are we talking about a creative but easily articulated reframing of the prompt (totally fine) or just blatantly ignoring it (not fine)? I tend to side closer to the outside counselor that the prompt is not as formal as say: the essay prompt in an exam, but that doesn’t mean that you can just blatantly disregard it.
I feel like the prompt needs to be addressed and the question it asks needs to be answered to some extent, but at the end of the day there is no formula or rubric out on the desks of the adcoms reading the essays as there is with a standardized test essay, so I feel that quality of writing trumps precision in attacking a prompt, but the question still needs to be answered/addressed
If I ask a student a question, I expect an answer to that question, and not the one the student would have preferred.
So if I ask for the square root of 49, I don’t want to hear about prime numbers. I want the square root of 49.
I think that an essay that doesn’t answer the prompt implies that either the student is incapable of coming up with a good essay on the actual topic, or is reusing an essay for another prompt-- and that would be a sign that this particular application is less important than the original. Either way, I don’t think it sends a positive message.
Although I don’t know what standards an admission staff would follow, I do know professional scorers are trained to accept direct and indirect essay responses. Only essays which are clearly off-topic or canned are penalized.
Thanks for the responses everyone. It seems like to consensus is that you should try to address the prompt lest you seem like you are recycling essays- Or worse that you can’t understand the prompt!
What my kid is doing is using an interesting story about his extracurricular and then tailoring that anecdote to match the prompt. For example if his story is about being a teen referee for AYSO he could tailor that to be about community, leadership, intellectual exercise, facing a challenge, or just meaningful extra curricular.
Would that make sense?
Yes, this is standard practice (assuming you mean using the story only once per school albeit in different contexts for different schools).