<p>The title says it all.</p>
<p>humm... good question! i'm still in the process of filling mine out...</p>
<p>I'd say pen but try to make it the erasable kind. It's more professional and easier to read. If you make a mistake or anything (and you aren't using erasable) just make two lines through the word and correction at top. Don't make your essay look like a painting by a mdoern artist who sprays paint on a canvas, though. Hah. Choate's was online and for Andover's, I wrote it in pen.</p>
<p>Make photocopies and work on those. Once it's finalized, go with pen. Olivia has a good suggestion with erasable pens, but only if you're right-handed. Lefties will smudge that kind of ink!</p>
<p>Yeah, or do what I did - wrote and experimented on computer, printed it out, and copied from it.</p>
<p>If the form you use is in black and white, I suggest writing in pencil on photocopies (erasing completely where necessary) and then photocopying it completed just before you sign it in real ink.</p>
<p>The answer is whatever makes you sane and best able to communicate your thoughts.</p>
<p>If, by express instruction, a response must be handwritten, then use whatever writing instrument you want. If they thought enough to instruct you to provide a handwritten response, they didn't space out and forget to tell you that they prefer ink over lead. It means THEY DON'T CARE.</p>
<p>If they don't even go so far as to require a response to be provided by hand, then THEY CARE EVEN LESS.</p>
<p>The Admission Committee is not putting you through little undisclosed tests and challenges to winnow down the candidate pool. Deep down inside, however, I honor that niggling thought that keeps all of us asking, "Okay, but what if there is ONE Admission Committee that is that sadistic and what if this was the ONE undisclosed test or bias that they have?" So if you think you'd sleep better from January 15 through March 10 by sending a response in by pen over pencil, you should choose pen.</p>
<p>But if you're going to be just as sane either way, then go with YOUR preference and put your best foot forward in the application...as opposed to shifting to a writing implement you're less comfortable with.</p>
<p>Bottom line: The school doesn't care if they haven't said that they care, so if you still want to believe that there is a preferred path to choose, your choice is to decide whether (a) you'd rather feel put upon by imagining a requirement and complying with it as you write out your application, or (b) you'd rather feel vulnerable and certain you've screwed yourself over from the outset for each of 60 nights...and maybe longer if you don't get accepted and want to really obsess over this and imagine a roomful of admission counselors laughing maniacally, like mad scientists, at your form because you chose the wrong writing implement, "Muaaahaaaa! The easiest $50 this school has ever made! Save it for the bonfire!"</p>
<p>For most of the schools I applied to (all except one) they let you type the application and send it in online. To me this was much easier. You could make everything perfect and just the way you wanted it. And if you messed up it was no big deal because you could just hit the backspace key. However if your heart is set on writing it I would use pen.</p>
<p>Unless they tell you otherwise, I would go for black ink, mostly because Loomis asks for it and I am pretty sure that standards will be similar in the others.</p>
<p>But truly, use what you write best with unless the school gives specifics</p>