<p>How many college essays will I have to write in total? </p>
<p>Also, if a school accepts the Common Application, do I have to select an essay question from one of the topics on the list, or do I have to refer to the school's website for information on the essay topic? </p>
<p>Basically, will I be able to re-use the same essays verbatim for multiple schools? I know I can't do this for all of them, I was thinking about doing this for 3-4 of them. Is this alright or will it look bad?</p>
<p>“College Essays: Are they hard?”</p>
<p>Fix’d.</p>
<p>“Fixed”</p>
<p>Fixed.</p>
<p>Go to the common app and select from the topics they have OR choose a topic of your choice. Each school has it’s own supplements but some schools just have “Why ____ University?” supplements so yeah if two or more of your schools want to know why you’re interested in them then you can just change the name of the school and reuse the essay but it might not be genuine if you rave about some school’s amazing squash team and they don’t have one because you copied it from another school’s essay so be careful.</p>
<p>If a school uses the common app, they receive the same essay as every other school using the Common App. So there’s 1. Then, some, but not all, schools that use the Common App have a supplement. Some, but not all, of these supplements have an additional essay. So you may have to write some essays for individual schools. Occasionally, a school will have multiple additional essays (I believe the University of Chicago has a few), some will have their own applications, and those may have one essay (say, a state university not on the Common App), or up to, say, six (Deep Springs, haha). So it depends on the college, what they do, and how many colleges you apply to. But you should get a rough idea from this.</p>
<p>All schools that accept the Common App will receive the common app essay that you write in the exact same form (unless you elect to create alternate versions of your app for different schools). </p>
<p>Schools that require supplementary essays as part of a supplement will most likely require a unique one (assuming they supply a unique prompt). </p>
<p>So the number of essays you’ll have to write depends on the schools you are applying to. The minimum is one (the common app essay).</p>
<p>Be sure to check the application requirements of all schools you apply to. You don’t want to be one of those people who forgets to complete a form or something.</p>
<p>Most schools will require at least one essay. Some schools also suggest or require additional essays and short answer questions. MIT had some ridiculous number over five. </p>
<p>For schools using the Common App, you will reuse the same essays, using the prompts on the Common App. Some schools might also require one or two additional essays or short answers.</p>
<p>If the prompt fits perfectly, reuse your essay. If you only need to trim and add a few things to make your essay fit, do it. Don’t forget to change any references to the school’s name, or anything relating to any university for that matter.</p>