My D’s advisor, a particularly busy member of the physics department, remembered reading her essay two years into her time at her LAC. I would infer from that fact alone that it mattered where she wound up attending. I would also guess it mattered for the other two, but I have no independent knowledge to confirm whether or not I’m right.
I, too, have wondered (skeptically) how any institution can read 40 to 100 thousand essays. But if they say they do, then you have to believe them I suppose.
You would be surprised how many essays are egregiously bad. A friend of mine was a reader for a “highly rejective” university for a few years (she was completing a humanities doctorate and found her job in the admissions office easy cash in addition to being a TA which emphatically was NOT easy cash…)
I trust her judgment on this. Don’t write to Dartmouth that “all my life I’ve wanted to be a Harvard Man” and don’t tell Northwestern that “Your famous coop program is a dream come true” (that’s Northeastern, a completely different university 1,000 miles away). Small foibles- apostrophe in the wrong spot, wrong pronoun-- are forgiven. But no paragraphs (that’s a new thing since smartphones- long, long, unbroken chains of words and text), telling WPI that you are interested in a well rounded liberal arts education, mixing up BC and BU… proceed at your peril!!!
As these poor kids are “advised” to shotgun, I am sure these happen more and more.
Kids that are considered to be in the top bucket at a high school also tend to shotgun, for obvious reasons. Because they don’t want to do binding ED. Outcomes are less correlated at the very top schools.
On the first pass, the essays are read very quickly, so the main thing looked for is whether the essays stand out in a good or bad way. Most selective universities hire temp admissions readers to help during application season, and a lot of times the temps are underpaid higher ed professionals who are balancing a 20 hour per week part-time gig with a demanding full-time job. Because of this, they are not spending a ton of time with the files on the first pass (and they are usually reading during evenings or on lunch breaks when they are already tired from their regular workday). I just saw someone recruiting temp admissions readers for a top 10 university, and what I saw was fairly typical of how other selective universities do it: 20 hours per week, with the expectation of reading 4 files per hour, pay = $18/hr, biweekly Zoom meetings to spend one hour discussing files with the team. Med school admissions are done the same way at this same school. Hiring happens quickly and is not very selective. A few hours of remote training are done with new readers to establish standards before application reading begins. So, essays are read, but how carefully and closely likely depends on how burnt out the temp admissions readers are who receive the file.
And don’t tell Boston University that you have always wanted a Jesuit education!
Lol.
Frankly, I would, and did, advise to stay away from any “all my life I’ve wanted …” topics. They come off (to me anyway) hackneyed, insincere and boring.
I myself would stop reading, unless I were made to persist, if I saw in an essay someone telling me they’ve wanted all their lives to be a Harvard man or to get a Jesuit education. Talk about lacking imagination and originality. Good grief.
We had a Brown adcom at a local event warning the kids to always use spellcheck, Brown is not spelled Yale!
Malapropisms are a frequent mistake in essays, also.
My son attends a T10 school. His essays were definitely critical for his acceptance. When we met his regional AO for an admitted student campus tour, one of her first comments was “Your writing is impeccable.” We know from talking to her that his application was read by multiple reviewers. We learned that 2 of them have referenced either his essay or personal statement (video) in sessions with prospective students. While we did hire someone to work with him on project management for his various applications, and yes she did provide feedback on his essays, they were entirely his own work. His writing was what helped him stand out. His application included the common app essay (in which he wrote about his love of writing), his Why Us essay, another creative essay, and a 5 page optional writing portfolio. Plus a 2 minute optional video statement about his favorite t-shirt. These were the most important elements of his application to this particular university. (Circling back to your original question, the common app essay was perhaps the least important of all the writing he submitted.)
Right but the OP said main essay which I took to mean the common app, not the supplemental ones or optional portfolios or videos. I got criticized when this topic came up a few months back for quoting an ex-Stanford adcom who basically said the essay didn’t get someone in or keep someone out. That was a few years ago, but not sure things have changed that much.
the more weight essays are given, the more you can be sure that kids are getting help with them.
the added stress these essays place on kids is terrible, IMO.
one common app essay should be more than sufficient.
For kids aspiring to highly competitive institutions of higher learning the modest amount of increased stress required to author a few essays may serve as a natural filter. If a kid doesn’t have the capacity, fortitude and time management tools for essays perhaps it better they not apply.
This is a perfect example of how the schools can’t win in terms of public opinion. If they went “essay optional” they would be accused of trying to increase applications amongst those with no chance of entry who are taking a punt just to lower acceptance rates and receive fees.
Completely agree. Stress. pfft. Wait until they get to work and have to navigate real life as an adult, which is right around the corner.
I’d much rather work than go back and have to do the college application thing again…sorry but I just don’t think that process is any kind of useful preparation for real life.
And it’s not just the top schools that have additional essays to write for the application.
I have a job with a lot of responsibility and, at times, stress. A lot of people count on me. If someone paid me even a 1/3 of what I make to write essays about myself and screw around the rest of the day, I’d jump at it.
Most adults I know share my experience of looking back at college (and for the attorneys, law school) and marveling at how much discretionary time we had compared to managing a serious career, raising kids and overseeing all of the other million things about which one has to be concerned to live well. YMMV
Your first post, the one to which I responded, mentioned stress, not usefulness.
“If a kid doesn’t have the capacity, fortitude and time management tools for essays perhaps it better they not apply.”
If you hire a private college counselor, they will project manage the process, as that’s one of the basic things they provide. And if you attend a private high school, you get a lot of help with the application process. Public high schools in what are considered good school districts here in the bay area, also help with essay prep in their 11’th grade English classes. The essay as with other parts of the application tend to favor the wealthy.
“Wait until they get to work and have to navigate real life as an adult, which is right around the corner.”
You can’t compare someone at 17 and 37 say, and think they’re same person wrt handling responsibilities, because they are definitely not, as the brain doesn’t fully develop until 25. If your point is that the top colleges want kids that can do it at 17, sure I see your point, but kids today that went through the college admissions experience want to forget it as joecollege44 points out, not reflect on it fondly and build on it.
There are some colleges that do have a lot of supplemental essays but many of the top ones have only have a few short-answer type essays and are word limited. I see your point on the stress, but writing what is essentially three or four 200-word paragraphs doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
That is a valid statement but doesn’t invalidate the use of essays as one of numerous measures to calibrate and contextualize the ability to thrive and contribute to a college community.
Wealth tends to favor the wealthy in almost all aspects of life. Admissions officers have a variety of tools, information and experience to help distinguish authenticity (and they do).
I live in a relatively prosperous town that has its fair share of tiger parents, immigrants in tech and private college counselors. My son and I get weekly mailers from some of these organizations. Some even come with sample before and after essays. I am not Sherlock Holmes but just looking at these “after” essays and given that parents are spending anywhere between $500 and $10,000 for such activities, I wonder how much “help” these kids are getting? I agree with @billythegoldfish. More weight = more attempts to game the system, especially one that can be doctored so easily.
I find it equally amusing that SAT essays are a thing of the past. There was an opportunity to actually assess a kid’s writing skills. But as we all know, standardized tests clearly favor the rich and are the root cause of all evil.
The essay portion was a failure precisely because it did not evaluate writing skills. The assignment was easy to game as it followed a strict rubric around citation of different types of support devices the author of a passage used: facts, statistics, appeals to emotion, quotations from experts, etc. You could write a poor essay that was factually incorrect, yet still receive a high grade as long as you recognized and cited the author’s various devices. I think colleges recognized this early and stop requiring it. Once that happened, it was a quick death.
I’m of the opinion that AOs get fooled all the time by essays that are incredibly ‘enhanced’ by professionals. So, you bet, money can buy a ‘great’ essay that will bring a tear to the eye of the many 21 year old part-time readers out there.