<p>In previous years all that has been posted by users in decision in threads has been their statistics, EC's, and then their subjective evaluation of the quality of their essays (good, amazing, original, etc.). However, since the main use of decision threads is to help prospective applicants in future years gauge their chances of admission to a particular university and see how amazing some of the people they are competing against will most likely be (as well, some accepted students just want to publicly express that they got accepted), I personally think that it will be helpful to those prospective applicants if we had two decision threads, one such as those that have been made in the past and one containing nothing more than one's admissions decision, one's essays, and where one got admitted/waitlisted/rejected with those particular essay (or, if one did not do the optional essay, then with that particular essay). Granted, the information obtained from these threads will still be imperfect for prospective applicants, but perhaps it could inspire them to write an essay that will get them accepted (or, they could be morons and just copy the accepted students' essays) or, at the very least, give them a better, though still rather general, idea of what is truly expected from the essays. However, fellow Harvard applicants, are you guys up for making a thread for essays come decision time?</p>
<p>The UChicago subforum has had a “Post your essays!” thread for more than one admissions cycle, but I guess people might be more okay with posting essays there because they know the prompts change every year.</p>
<p>I have a feeling that such a thread would lend itself to massive abuse from unscrupulous applicants and people looking to make a quick buck.</p>
<p>I agree. I think there are plenty of people who’d eagerly steal the essays and sell them or use them as they apply to colleges.</p>
<p>That being said, it might be interesting for admits to see the essays of other fellow admits. There’s a Facebook group for Stanford admits where a bunch of them posted their Roommate essays. However, a thread open to everyone is definitely a bad idea.</p>
<p>Essays on the web like that would not be good idea. I honestly never really understood the point of the decisions thread that lists the objective Stats/ ECs/ GPA etc of students. It can be slightly useful but I don’t understand how “prospective applicants in future years gauge their chances of admission to a particular university”. Just like how chance threads are pointless and demonstrate nilch. </p>
<p>How does the decisions thread help students? It pretty much told me that admission to the top tier schools are even more a crapshoot than I expected. IT told me nothing about my chance of getting in. The decision really comes down to the essays/ recs ALONG with the stats etc… </p>
<p>Looking at the decisions of past students, two people may be almost identical in every way but one person got in and the other denied. It just shows no one can predict a person’s chance of getting in.</p>