<p>^ Ahhhh, that's EXACTLY how I feel! Perhaps we shall be doomed together to collegelessdom come acceptance time (or more likely, rejection time?) </p>
<p>I reread my commonapp essay and I feel like it says nothing about me at all. It's a perfectly nice, fuzzy, oh-that's-really-cute-now-let's-have-some-tea! sort of essay, but it doesn't show a single aspect of my personality... all my friends are writing about some dramatic life changing event and such... my ap lit teacher said it was good "writing", as in, grammatically, structure and such - but nothing about if it reflected me. </p>
<p>I'm having serious doubts... but meh. We can't do anything anymore, right?</p>
<p>Haha :\ Funny you mention that, now that I just skimmed through the mental illness essay topic thread. Not that I directly ADDRESSED it, I was just kind of vague about my problems and focused more on how I overcame them and blah. :\ Well now that I think of it, I think I spent a lot of time dwelling and oh GOD.</p>
<p>I REALLY wanted to go to Bryn Mawr. Crap. x_x</p>
<p>^ On that topic... Yes, ask your English teacher to read your essay, but more importantly ask your college/guidance counselor to read it. My AP Lit teacher read my long UC essay and said it was really good, but then my college counselor completely tore it apart. My first draft was well written, but it didn't say anything about me, and ultimately that's why the admissions people are reading your essay- to learn more about YOU.</p>
<p>^ Great advice! English teachers tend to like the stylistic, but may forget that the app essay is read in a short time frame. Counselor will definitely help with content. My counselor was awful, but I think getting the perspective of your counselor first (editing) and then your English teacher (proofreading) will give you a good balance of opinion before you submit.</p>
<p>I just reread the Amherst / Middlebury / Princeton supplemental essay that I thought I hated and realized that even though it's definitely worse than my Common App essay, it's actually much better than I thought. It was a nice surprise considering I've been agonizing over it since I mailed the apps. :D</p>
<p>If you think your essay is a little weird and wacky ... don't regret it. You want to stand out. The worst is to stick with a safe and therefore boring formulaic story. In my common app I wrote about my first time drawing a nude model while listening to the Doors, and getting ameobas in Mexico ... Was I nervous about the reactions? Yes. But I certainly stood out. And got in.</p>
<p>I'm regretting my UC essays. I didn't read them over again after I submitted the application, but now the topis c I wrote about just seem really bad. Ahh well, theres less than 2 months before decisions come, so there's no point in worrying.</p>
<p>I'm kind of regretting writing about a touchy political subject. I wrote about Israel and its emotional resosonance to me as a Jew (not as boring as it sounds, I promise) but now I'm kind of regretting it for obvious reasons, I mean, you can't predict the religion/nationality/political views of your admissions person, even if you did google them.</p>
<p>Anyone else regretting writing about touchy/controversial political stuff?</p>
<p>Bazcat: Israel and your Jewish identity. It might be a somewhat common topic to choose (I am guessing, I have no idea), but if you wrote it well, it's a very, very good thing to have written about. It shows you do have an identity. Taking no risks, asserting no identity, is the quickest way to be forgotten....</p>
<p>I think more posters here have written regrets about not revealing themselves at all rather than revealing themselves too much (as you seem to feel you did).</p>
<p>Another thing: as someone who really regrets a lot of Israeli policies in the Middle East, I am not offended that you embrace your identification with the nation or your Jewishness at all. I would hope you would. I don't think the stance you took is that controversial, unless it was punctuated with hypernationalism or some form of political/racial venom towards other groups.</p>
<p>Did anyone read these essays? I found them online right after I submitted my essay, which was a little disheartening. My common app essay was good...all the supplemental ones sucked.</p>
<p>yeah I saw those, but it seemed like other things got them in rather than the essays. for example, that one girl TOTALLY didn't get in partially because she was a legacy, of course not, it was completely her amazing and fabulous essay :-P</p>
<p>I would be regretting my Carleton supplement but their word restrictions were ridiculous so I've just had to assume that they're not expecting our supplement essays to be super deep or anything. And I had to severely cut down my why Barnard and why Swarthmore essays down to the number of letters in words because of character restrictions, but it was probably for the better.</p>
<p>Thank goodness Reed wanted us to mail them our why Reed essays though, because if there had been a word limit that essay would've been really lame. </p>
<p>I am sort of regretting my main common app essay because....well.....long story short I was diagnosed with a sort of mental disorder when I was about 3 and I only found out about it like 1 1/2 yrs ago, and the essay is a reflection about how I was when I was little and then my reaction to finding out about the diagnosis. I'm regretting the essay for a few reasons - #1 it's so long that I sent it through snail mail (with all of the schools' permissions) because I was tired of butchering it and #2 the structure and style are pretty "unique", both of which could either go over really well or screw me over. and even if the essay is successful #3 I hope that diagnosis/disorder isn't what I'm known for because that essay was a lot of artistic license (it was mostly a riff/stream of consciousness on my emotional reactions) and I found out some things about that diagnosis after writing that essay that if I had known them before I would've written something completely different. So basically I hope they know it's an exaggeration, but I also hope they don't get all mad at me for taking artistic license and exaggerating. It's really not a lie, it was just how I felt at the time. Oy. </p>
<p>I have some faith though that everything will be okay.</p>
<p>i recently realized that my common app essay was sooo clich?. i regret not using an earlier piece of my addiction to coffee and instead used a story about this hospital incidence. o wells... can't do anything now.</p>
<p>Haha, yessss!!! Another person who believes in burning away the badness :)
Did I burn a copy of my common app to symbolize being done with the college application process? Yes, yes I did.</p>
<p>But yeah.. not re-reading my essays until this summer.. not even tweaking them for scholarship applications. Call me superstitious but I did enough work in the beginning that changing will either be 1) bad luck or 2) far too stressful until I actually get into my colleges</p>