BS essays

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
1

<p>Having seen DD complete/submit the last essay yesterday, I can tell you the whole essay-writing experience was quite stressful and something that I would not want to see again... well, at least not until college app.</p>

<p>DD has completed 6 app. that included writing 19 essays or short answers. She has worked on and off for more than two months since November, and finally finished the last one yesterday and many others during the last couple of weeks. The process involved brainstorming, drafting, revising, revising, revising,... and finalizing. She is an outstanding writer but also someone who had to keep working on them until deadline and had to individualize each essay as much as she could. (I have to confess that I'm largely responsible for passing on a perfectionist gene to my D.) Her ceaseless appetite for participating in new EC events did not help the situation.</p>

<p>Having said these, I think BS can collaborate together and come up with a much smaller number of common essay prompts. After all, what they are trying to gauge from student essays would be largely similar from one school to another: writing skills, creativity, maturity/independence, evidence for BS readiness, personality, moral value, etc. IMHO, from a pool of less than 10 essay prompts, most BS should be able to pick a few to be able to understand candidates.</p>

2

<p>I wonder if that isn’t the point. I remember when my older daughter was applying a few years ago, she had most of the schools on her list done and then we turned to Milton’s application, one that had numerous questions unique to the one application. She decided not to do it, a decision I completely supported. Milton had fallen low on her list but was a much better option than her public school. If the application had been easy to do, then she would have submitted it. If schools are trying to boost their applications, then accepting the common ap makes sense. But if they are trying to screen for kids who really want to go to their school, I can imagine that one way they might do so is through an application that is unique to the school.</p>

3

<p>For highly competitive schools like Andover, Exeter, and so on, statistics shows that unique questions have not discouraged applicants, serious or casual.</p>