<p>Hey everybody, I have a question here regarding the format of the supplemental essays for the Common App. Does anybody know if the essays should be formatted like an actual essay? Meaning indents, spacing and such? I know for some college submissions they ask for a .pdf upload, which I believe should be formatted like you would an actual school paper, but others only have a textbox on the Common App webpage. Are they just expecting me to throw words in there with no regards for spacing? Or should I still do my best to format it in the textbox?</p>
<p>For Cornell, I split mine up into three paragraphs in the Common App textbox. Didn’t really worry about spacing or indenting. They don’t particularly care about whether or not you can format an essay correctly (or so I’ve been told). They just care about the content of your writing and your answers to their questions. </p>
<p>I would assume, if you’re going to be submitting a pdf or Word document, you should have it formatted properly. It obviously wont hurt you any. But for the textboxes, don’t worry about it as long as it isn’t just one huge block of text.</p>
<p>@shockastrika83 said it better than I could. I applied to Cornell last year (accepted, not attending) and they understood perfectly that the Common App text box doesn’t leave students the option of indentation, etc. Break your essay into paragraphs by starting a new line.</p>