I have written my personal statement and it is nearly done and just wrote a GT essay (First draft). I am hoping that the prompts do not change much.
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You can tweak the personal statement to fit the prompts. Some of the schools may have more than one essay.
I would add Cincinnati.
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Remember:
Make sure eveything is done for the 3 Alabama universities, ASAP. Donât forget Honors.
That needs to be secure.
Then, run the NPC, join mailing lists, add or remove colleges from your CommonApp list, write essays (there should be a list of essay readers you can contact through DMs) - likely/targets, anything with a Priority or EA deadline, first.
But if some essays inspire you, donât hesitate to work on those.
I second/third UCincinnati 
The idea is that by the time school starts, youâre 100% done with the AL universities + a handful of others.
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The only thing left is resubmitting my ACT scores.
I am already doing this.
I think UNL has a priority deadline but it says it is EA. It is kind of confusing. Can someone clarify please. Thank you.https://admissions.unl.edu/apply/important-dates-deadlines/
Should supplementals take as long as the personal statement. Like several redrafts and stuff?
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How do you recommend going about this? Just try to align my values with their values or is there a specific way?
Yes, absolutely.
Shouldnât the personal statement be unique from the supplemental prompts?
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I donât know what the prompts are and I have not read your essay.
You should be able to read the prompt and adjust your essay so that the question is answered, the topic is discussed etc. It is not uncommon for the essays to be general enough so that your essay draft can be âtweakedâ to fit the prompt. Note: you may have more than one essay at some schools, and the essay may be more specific.
It is important to be authentic. Do not align your values with their values (not exactly sure what that means).
It is important to research the schools and try to understand if they are a good fit.
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You have a bunch of strangers online telling you what schools to look at. Your job is to look at them. Do your research. Decide if you feel each school would be a good fit for you. If you decide that a school doesnât feel right, it is okay to not apply. If you do apply, make sure you convey why the school/department would be a good fit for you and why you would be a good fit for them.
Look at both the collegeâs, as well as the school of engineeringâs, website, You Tube channel, social media, etc., Most colleges will tell you what they are looking for. I am most familiar with USC so I will use it as an example. USCâs website has a blog about how to answer their supplemental questions. They have an Admissions You Tube video. They have a Virtual Info Session. They recorded an Admissions AMA video. All of these resources will tell you what they are looking for and will give insight how to answer their questions. There is much more if you look for it.
I read scholarship applications for a large university. It is very obvious when someone re-uses or tweaks another essay. My suggestion is to make a list of what you want to convey in your applications (strengths, interests, challenges, what you learned from experiences, what you want in college/life, etc). Evaluate each application, look at their supplemental questions and essays, and figure out how can tell that school everything that you want to say, in the space that you are given. Make sure that your essays are specific to that school and that you answer the question(s) they ask. You get out what you put in.
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Just quoting this question you posted as an example of how complicated the application process becomes. If you have 22 schools, you need a very detailed spread sheet and you need to keep detailed notes on what you have provided and when, if you got confirmation that it was received, if you are still waiting on something like a test score or and AP score, if your hs needs to send something and did the college receive it.
It isnât always your fault that the school doesnât receive something, but you still are responsible. My daughterâs hs sent her final âgraduationâ transcript but come Nov of her Freshman year in college the college said they never received it. Called the hs and they sent again. Nope, no record of college receiving it of it and it was time to register for the spring semester but they wouldnât let her without that transcript. Called hs again AND had a friend pick up a copy (I no longer lived in the area) and friend got it down to daughter but not in time for registration which happened on a Friday night. Nothing she could do until Monday morning, by which time the entire school had registered so the classes she wanted were full. Turned out the school had assigned my daughter two student numbers so there was only a 50% chance of documents getting to the right folder. They HAD received all the hs transcripts, just hadnât put them in the right folder.
As someone suggested above, open an email account just for college. Go thru it often. Go thru your spam. Colleges are always asking for more stuff, either for admissions or for financial aid (and those two departments donât speak to each other so make sure you are sending stuff to the correct department). ACT scores arenât always matched correctly. There is just a lot of paperwork and a lot of people handling documents, so mistakes are made. My daughter doesnât have a particularly common name and there werenât two students in the school with our last name, but they still couldnât figure out that the same student had two files.
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Why UNL ? The only thing based on your âprestigeâ focus is Raikes. But itâs not engineering. Itâs CS.
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Pretty straight forward. By Nov 1. You find out soonest.
But then the second app by Nov 15 - Honors, Raikes.
UNL was mentioned when you were CS. Knowing your thought process it makes zero sense for engineering.
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It has been awhile since my kids applied to college, but isnât there a main common app essay for all/most schools? That essay can be âtweakedâ when necessary to include information unique to the school, prompt, etc. By âtweakedâ I do not mean changing a word or two. I mean taking the time that is necessary to edit the essay.
Schools that have extra essays are different. The OP could be writing several unique essays just for one school.
Scholarship essays are important and time needs to be spent on each and every one.
The essays are very time consuming. As I mentioned, it took one of my kids 10 weeks (an entire summer) working on them for many hours each day.
Generally the common app personal statement should not be school specific. It is NOT the essay that one uses to demonstrate knowledge of a school. The personal statement should tell the reader about the studentâŠwho they are, their values, whatâs important to them, often told in a story.
OP can learn about the personal statement via many resources, I recommend the college essay guyâs site, which has many excellent free resources. Hereâs one place for OP to start. How to Write a Personal Statement (Tips + Essay Examples)
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Thank you for correcting this. I do know that the main essay is not school specific (generally speaking).
Yes, the common app essay is the main essay/personal statement. This is where you write about you. The OP asked earlier if he should change his values to meet the schools values. The answer is no. Be authentic. Be you.
Sometimes schools have extra essays. Sometimes the extra essays (or one of) will seem very similar. Do not reuse the exact same essay. That is what I meant when I said an essay can be âtweaked.â I was misunderstood - as the word âtweakâ implies only making a minor word change. That is not what I meant. I was speaking very informally and as a result I did not make myself clear.
OP the essays are going to be very time consuming. Plan accordingly.
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Case western. Miami Ohio. The SUNYs. Dayton (gives nice aid). Lots more to addâŠyou can get the trophy for most apps at school.
Yes Iâm being facetious. You donât need 30 or 40. You should apply to schools where you can see yourself and there is a possibility of affordability. If there isnât a chance of affordability (Wisc) whack it. If you must have another, go Miami or SUNY. At least thereâs a chance. But if you donât see them a better option than Auburn, then no need to add the expense.
At the beginning that was simply Auburn and thatâs ok. You can do the threein state but you have solid OOS too if you only want to do Auburn.
I hope when school starts at the colleges you visit as many as you can. Even your three in state are very different.
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OP â What the posters above are referring to is that the Common App lets you change your Common App essay in between submitting it to each school. That would theoretically let you âtweakâ the common app essay for different schools/clusters of schools. But that doesnât mean adding the school name or school specifics in â it would be, say, if you wanted to write about your love of fishing and how it helped you grow in some way for five schools, and maybe write about why you developed your business and how it helped you learn things about yourself for a different set of schools. It is not meant to be school specific.
That said, I donât think many students do this and I personally donât recommend it. The common app essay is meant to showcase something important to you and how you learned and grew from it â one essay topic should be fine for that. And keeping track of different common app essays for different schools would be a pain, because I think that you literally delete the first essay from the common app and then upload the second one and then submit it to the schools that you want to have the second one, etc.
The place to individualize your thoughts about the schools are in the supplemental essays and the short-answer questions that many (but of course not all) schools ask. Thatâs where you will talk about the specific programs, faculty, opportunities that school X offers. Thatâs usually the âwhy usâ essay (although of course itâs not always called âwhy usâ). Other supplementals will ask you to write about a famous person you would like to have dinner with and why, or what your future roommate should know about you, etc. Some essays will have overlapping themes and you can re-use existing essays. Some wonât. All of them should be taken seriously and reviewed and edited with care.
Good luck!
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The common app essay should be unchanged, short of finding an error or having an a-ha moment to make better.
Itâs the school supplemental apps that often need changing although my daughter had one she used 6 or 7 times.
It was about personality and I just remember talking about Popeyes and chick fil an and her change was about the nearest Popeyes to campus. Another she did and used for a few was about thrifting and sheâd change the name of the local store.
Maybe that gets seen as lame but she thought it worked.
Those are the easy supplemental victories.
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@An_D read through this post.
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I know Purdue is on your list. I would pay particular attention to that app. Theyâre highly ranked, very affordable and my son got nice merit there as an out of state applicants. I think the only supplemental was the âWhy Purdue?â essay. I wouldnât add any more schools to your list, I would start making serious cuts. You have your three in state safeties you should have early answers from with top merit. Beyond that Iâd shoot your shot on some high match and reach schools youâd really be thrilled to attend and cut everything else.
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