<p>If a college requires a supplemental and lets say you write a great supplemet for them, but your commonapp essay is just mediocre, or vice versa. Takeout other variables such as GPA, SAT, for the sake of this situation you are in the range. So say we have a great supplemental essay and a mediocre/subpar commonapp essay or vice versa, how would a college view this, would they care about they're essay being better or the commonapp one?</p>
<p>I doubt that the colleges really put more value in one essay prompt than another. A good writer should be able to respond to any prompt no matter how horrendous, generic, or unique it is. If you wrote really well in one of the essays but were mediocre in the other, you’d have an advantage over someone with two mediocre essays, but you personally would probably be viewed as an inconsistent writer and that would be a bad thing not a good one. They wouldn’t, for example, just look at your good one and say, “Oh, well this is good so the other must have been a blip. We’ll just assume he’s an amazing writer.”</p>
<p>I always figured the main purpose of supplemental essays were to get you to write about things that the college was interested in knowing, not because the CommonApp prompt “wasn’t good enough”.</p>
<p>Why would you submit a mediocre essay under any circumstances. Also, when you read these boards you will see that nearly everyone thinks they have great essays. Few do.</p>