<p>To anyone who has received/completed the Part II of the application:</p>
<p>What does it ask for? I'm sending in my Part I application in the next couple of days, but I want to be prepared for Part II. I know that the Sarah Lawrence application asks for a "research" paper - does the Smith application ask for that, too?</p>
<p>Thanks!!</p>
<p>No research paper. Part II does ask for an essay or two.</p>
<p>What essay? I had to write a line or two why I wanted to go to Smith and the rest were just check, check..</p>
<p>Be aware that Smith offers the Parent(s) to submit an optional rec/letter. I thought about mine for weeks before I wrote it. It duplicated nothing in D's application and wasn't a "brag" letter.</p>
<p>Do you suggest that my parents submit one of those? Will it help any?</p>
<p>The Smith Parent's rec is optional. I was more, umm, warning you in case you wanted to hide the possibilty from your parents; some kids would die if their parents wrote about them.</p>
<p>I think that mine was good enough that on the basis of a suggetion from a former admissions officer (Sally Rubenstone, here of College Confidential) I appended it as a supplemental rec to D's other applications. For the record, my D missed on H, Y, and S and got into her other non-HYPSM four, so it's hard to measure effectiveness. If you do have a Parent do a rec, I think it helps if he/she can think strategically about what they're trying to accomplish with the rec that isn't accomplished with other parts of the App. Mine drew upon 3-4 anecdotes that, woven together, painted a picture of intellectual outlook and quirks that wouldn't come up in something that D (or any student) would write about herself and most likely not surface in teacher recs...things like reading Blake to her dolls when she was 8, tears as she watched "Timon of Athens" at the Shakespeare festival when she was 10, etc. Stuff that left her faintly embarrassed but she conceded was valid and gave a good picture of who <em>she</em> is as an individual...something that I think womens' colleges, in particular, are interested in.</p>
<p>"The Smith Parent's rec is optional. I was more, umm, warning you in case you wanted to hide the possibilty from your parents" - or in case you have reluctant parents who need a lot of coaching. Sadly, my daughter's went in w/out the parent rec but admissions didn't hold it against her.</p>