<p>I mean how much time should I really spend on them? I want a good merit scholarship from the university too by the way.
I know that merit scholarships depend mostly on SAT scores and GPA, and I happened to achieve the minimum SAT score for UT-Arlington for the $6000 scholarship. (1200 CR + M) </p>
<p>Will they also look at my essays for determining whether I deserve this scholarship more than another student for example?</p>
<p>It varies greatly by school but basically, the more prestigious a school or program is, the more essays will matter. I’m not too sure whether it would matter for the merit scholarship though, as essays are subjective and one person can love an essay, while another can absolutely hate that same essay. I think for merit scholarship they basically just look at stuff like SAT, GPA, class rank, etc.</p>
<p>essays = very important… at least that’s what i think. but i’m no expert.</p>
<p>Yes, they are very important. Everything is important. There is nothing that you submit that you can BS.</p>
<p>For essays, it’s tough. For most of them it took me about a week per essay, worked on them for maybe half an hour a day for 5-6 days a week. I went through maybe 5-6 drafts per, but those were the easier ones. The harder ones took me multiple weeks, with up to 20 drafts.</p>
<p>It’s not fun, but you gotta bite the bullet.</p>
<p>For scholarships? I kind of doubt it. For getting accepted, it depends on the size of the school.</p>
<p>It really varies greatly not just among colleges but often among programs within colleges. You should assume for very high rank colleges they are important for everyone. On the other end, there are many colleges (not your high ranks) that don’t even require essays. Then for many colleges, they are far more important for persons whose stats are borderline than those whose stats are well within the usual admit ranges. And then an example of varying importance within a university is UIUC where for engineering they are far more important for borderline candidates than others but for business they are very important for everyone and for someone with low end stats (but still in the middle 50% range) a good essay can make the difference in being admitted or rejected and for someone with a 4.0 unweighted GPA and 36 ACT an unimpressive essay can result in rejection. Usually the essays have no impact on scholarships but even there there can be exceptions.</p>
<p>Well from my experience, they’re very important if your stats are a bit low for the school. I say this because I was accepted to a school where my GPA and SAT was barely in the middle 50th percentile. I spent months on it, and probably went through over 10 drafts. No, i’m not exaggerating. It helped a lot to come back to it again and again over time.</p>
<p>Check the common data set, section C7 for the schools in which you are interested. That section will give you the importance level of each item for admission (scores, grades, class rank, ECs, essay).</p>
<p>I’ll work a lot on my essays since I have a lot of time, deadlines for UT-Arlington and UT-Dallas are AMAZING. </p>
<p>Erin’s Dad THANKS A BUNCH, I found that section and it comes in handy ;)</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important factor in admissions decisions</p>