<p>I think this is an unfortunate phenomenon. If the essay questions seem daunting, why not get some assistance with brainstorming and writing them? It’s always easier to think and write when you have a coach behind you. And if you start the process far enough ahead of time you won’t be freaking out because of time deadlines!</p>
<p>Wake Forest’s app was a nightmare. I didn’t want to do it at all – hell, there’s no way I’d want to attend even if I got accepted – but my parents forced me to apply. In the end, I finished all 7 essays in less than 30 minutes and BSed everything else.</p>
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<p>No, I woke up in the arms of Juliet, as usual. I just think that both Wake and Elon have gotten a little too full of themselves, as if they have some inherent right to demand this level of obsequious attention from kids who – in many cases – are far superior in quality to these schools themselves. As you can tell from the posts, Wake in particular is creating its own kind of blowback, not least in the form of the snickering I myself represent.</p>
<p>Well, the question is whether Wake is losing applicants it would like to have, or if it is doing a bit of pre-screening that eliminates applicants who probably wouldn’t have been admitted, or wouldn’t have matriculated if they were admitted. Having more applicants is only a real benefit if it gets you more of the students you want.</p>
<p>BrendaB–My D got assistance with brainstorming. She finished the WFU application by October 15 (her second application submitted), and she didn’t freak out. But she was at school from 8 - 6 every day (school day plus sport) and was taking AP Stat, AP Computer Science, AP Chemistry, Calculus III (the post-AP Calculus class at her school), AP English Lit, and Bible her senior year. She was the president of 3 clubs, played in her school’s chamber orchestra, was active in her church and sometimes had cross-country meets on weekends. She also had 7 other college applications plus a bunch of scholarship applications to complete, including National Merit, Morehead-Cain, UVa’s Jefferson Scholarship, Davidson’s Belk Scholarship and Coca-Cola. She was interested in WFU, talked to the rep at college fairs and visited twice.</p>
<p>She was accepted to WFU but not offered any merit aid, even with all the above plus NMF, 35 ACT and 4.0 UW GPA. WFU announced during her senior year that it was raising costs (to $54,000) in order to offer more need-based aid, for which we don’t qualify.</p>
<p>I just don’t think the process is worth it for my son, whose sport is even more time-consuming. There are so many other good colleges that did offer my D merit aid, and that will be likely to offer it to my son, that we will concentrate on those.</p>
<p>I think it is possible for colleges and people who haven’t gone through the process or who are in different circumstances to fail to completely understand the burden a long application with unique (i.e., non-reusable) essays can place on a busy high school senior.</p>
<p>I got deferred from UGA EA when I was a senior in HS (in-state), and for regular decision you had to write an essay (no essay for EA). I had already gotten into some other schools, said screw that and didn’t finish my application.</p>
<p>re: the Wake essays, a had a friend who was churning out the essays in 2 hours before the app was due. One of the prompts (not sure if Wake still uses it) was “What outrages you?” She wrote “Not much.” </p>
<p>She was accepted (attends Washington and Lee now.)</p>
<p>I didn’t necessarily “dump” NYU off of my list, but I decided not to apply to Tisch for the Cinema Studies program because the time gap was too short for me pull all the requirements together (largely due to my laziness).</p>
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<p>Yes, Wake still uses it. Really, what “outrages” a 17 year old teen. C’mon! I love the answer your friend gave. I can just imagine all these amped-up teens storming around Wake being “outraged” over something or other. I can certainly imagine being upset or peeved about something, but “outraged”? Seriously. No wonder Wake throws up its hands at the futility of this question and asks applicants to suggest their own question!!</p>
<p>Not for a college admission but for an honors program admission. Son did the U of South Carolina Honors Ap, and they accepted him, but it had 7 essays. SEVEN! I think they do this so fewer people will apply. ;)</p>
<p>I can say I applied to Wake and loved it, but I know a ton of people that wouldn’t complete the application because of the ten plus questions/essays that they ask. I think it was worth it, but others didn’t see it that way.</p>
<p>yup…dropped yale, claremont mckenna, and princeton LOL but i applied to 6 others.</p>
<p>heck yeah
uchicago’s essays bustin my balls so bad i just dropped it
not worth the trouble… yea</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to University of Chicago as originally intended because of the essays XD</p>
<p>But on the other hand, I did muster through the 7 essays MidwestMom mentioned for South Carolina</p>
<p>I totally dropped Wake Forest after looking at their app. It’s a great school, and the campus was <em>gorgeous</em>, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle. I’ve been admitted to W&M now, I found their single open-ended optional essay much better. My friends and I all took a shot at the Wake Forest app, and came to the conclusion that they have to be trying to scare off some applicants with that absolute mess.</p>
<p>I did, but it wasn’t really for the reason the question seems to ask about.</p>
<p>I ended up dropping Haverford because of their 1-2 page essay about the Honor Code. When I visited, I was impressed by the intense focus on the Honor Code, but I also wasn’t so excited about it. When I saw the essay and realized just how huge a part of the school the Honor Code was, I decided that it really wasn’t a school for me.</p>
<p>One of my friends visited Haverford too, and later, when we were talking about it, she told me how much she liked the Honor Code and how she was applying.</p>
<p>So I think I made the right choice.</p>
<p>I also dropped Santa Clara because even though the questions weren’t horribly painful looking, I had banked on it being a safety school (or at least a low match), and I didn’t find it to be worth the trouble when I had so many other apps to focus on.</p>
<p>I actually really liked all of Wake’s questions. I appreciated that they were short but varied and gave me the chance to show a lot of sides of me. I honestly liked 7 short answers more than 1 or 2 long daunting open-ended essays. Wake’s questions actually made me want to apply there more…I guess that’s just me.</p>
<p>Haha that’s so funny that you all mention Wake. I, too skipped out on Wake Forest because of the amount of short answers. It’s a shame because it was honestly the nicest campus I’ve been on. Oh well :/</p>
<p>Oh yes . . Brown!</p>
<p>That supplement is crazy. The moment I looked at it I refused to apply. On the other hand, it showed me that if I didn’t agree with their admissions strategy so much, I probably wouldn’t like the school. My dad’s still mad about that though.</p>
<p>Still, I did do some of the other apps mentioned on this thread: Columbia, Yale, NYU, UPenn. It wasn’t laziness. I just hated that supplement.</p>
<p>The MIT applicant book thingy also says “We hope you have learned about yourself through this process”. What a load of BS. I have 489 things I’d rather be doing.</p>
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<p>Same here. As Jay-Z would put it, that s–t cray.</p>
<p>I chose not to apply to most of the Ivies because of their “Why Us” essays as well. I hadn’t visited any schools on the East Coast (and don’t really want to freeze for 4 years), so I would have been hard-pressed to write “Why Penn” or “Why Columbia.” I did write “Why Yale,” though, and I think it turned out surprisingly well.</p>
<p>I’m sort of surprised at the hate that the CMC analytical essay has been getting. For me, that was probably the easiest and most fun essay I had to write. I didn’t have to think about myself or tell any sort of story that revealed my inner personality. I just had to structure an argument and write my own editorial/column piece on a leader. I wish all the other essays I had to write were that simple. :P</p>
<p>I was an essay writing machine. I applied to pretty much all the schools people avoided. UChicago, Rice, Notre Dame (along with 13 others, most of which had several essays too). I never sent an essay that was not perfect. I really feel that my writing qualities allow me to express myself the best so I took full advantage of the writing portion since my stats were not up to par.</p>