<p>I constantly see seniors who give their best advice to juniors as: start early on your essays and applications.
I constantly see 'essays' under weaknesses in the RD threads for any top college. </p>
<p>So, my question addresses all the seniors who are done with the whole process.
What is wrong with finishing one's essays(and college applications for that matter) during the summer? Not only can you enjoy senior year, but you can also make your essays flawless. So why is it that the majority of smart applicants don't go ahead and finish their essays well in advance? </p>
<p>I understand that procrastination and summer vacations tend to be the biggest obstacles, but I would expect that people who study enough to break 2200 on the SAT would do anything to ensure that their essays are perfect. </p>
<p>So why didn't all you seniors finish the essays earlier? (I guarantee 70% of the answers will be procrastination/senioritis ;), but hopefully there'll be some interesting answers.)</p>
<p>I’ve already jotted down some pre-writing for my essay… but that was because I had a 3 hour ride back from JHU. :P</p>
<p>I am a HUGE procrastinator but definitely not for this</p>
<p>You won’t be able to use admissions essays as an excuse for procrastinating from doing schoolwork.</p>
<p>It was easy to say in the abstract that I should finish all my applications over the summer. It was hard to say on any particular day “no, I should not hang out with friends or play video games, I should do work that is due in 5-7 months”. I mean, it’s hard enough to do summer homework…</p>
<p>I started my essays in June. I didn’t finish until December.</p>
<p>I started in Sept and finished in December. I got help from this website too(there are good readers, you just have to find them!). And I got in to the college I really wanted to go to. I would begin brainstorming at most and writing your intro in your head. I would only say write your supplements in the summer because they can be really annoying while doing schoolwork, and then do your essay at the beginning of the year.</p>
<p>i wrote my common app essay during the summer and it definately helped because I school specific essays were enough to worry about during the year- i applied to 12! It kinda depends on whenever it comes to you like i wrote mine about a situation that happened to me during the summer so i basically spent one night up all night writing it.</p>
<p>Depending on how many colleges you apply to and their requirements starting early is a good idea. the only thing you might consider is if perhaps, a chance that this summer might have something in store that would be a good essay topic. In that case, you would just pick whether it the incident is good enough to write a whole new essay to replace the existing one.</p>
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But I doubt that most of us actually study. . . .</p>
<p>I wrote my first essay in late August, but it wasn’t the summer, since I’d already been in school for two weeks.
I had a good little layout of essays because of my app due dates. One was due Oct 15th, then Nov 1, then Dec 1 (for a priority deadline, which aren’t “real” but whatever), then Jan 1 and 2, the latter of which was extended to the 15th. I also thought that I would be applying to more colleges than I actually did, so I was pretty freaked out about essays and felt like I had to write earlier than the absolute last minute. You can’t pull together 8 essays in one night.
Then again, I’m not really someone who spends a lot of time on essays. Most of the time, I sit down, I write an essay, and that’s it. I mean, I make sure I didn’t spell “too” as “to” and do stuff like that, but I don’t write drafts or truly revise or anything. So, I didn’t need to write my essays a million months in advance.</p>
10char</p>