Do most applicants write a supplement?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Just a quick question - anyone know if most applicants send in a supplemental essay when applying to Harvard? Is it expected for students to take advantage of the opportunity?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Yes. Most students who do get in write a supplement. It would be highly unlikely for a student to be accepted that that they would not take that opportunity to make themselves stand out. Especially for an university that is as competitive as Harvard, where they have thousands of qualified students to choose from</p>

3

<p>Then again, there’s no point in writing an additional essay if it doesn’t tell them anything significant about you that they wouldn’t have learned from the rest of your application. </p>

4

<p>FWIW: <a href=“http://admissionshero.com/en/harvard-optional-essay-to-send-or-not-to-send/”>http://admissionshero.com/en/harvard-optional-essay-to-send-or-not-to-send/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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5

<p>"Optional’ means “mandatory” for top schools. Do it.</p>

6

<p>@gibby, I would find the argument far more persuasive if they showed a differential between students admitted and students denied admission. I suspect that most applicants to Harvard complete the supplemental essay, so the finding that most admitted students submitted it doesn’t mean that it’s much of a differentiating factor.</p>

7

<p>^^ Unfortunately, no one bothers to survey denied applicants, so that information is unknown.</p>

8

<p>Yes, it’s unknown, but is critical for drawing any sort of worthwhile conclusions.</p>

9

<p>My daughter got in without writing the supplemental essay. During a visit to Harvard prior to submitting her application, she asked several students if they had included it and got a mix of yes and no answers, and used this as justification not to write the optional essay. I’m somewhat suspicious about that AdmissionsHero survey…how did they find a random sample of Harvard 2017 students to survey, and how did they manage to get more replies than the number of people they surveyed?</p>

<p>I still think it’s a good idea to include the supplement. At the time, did not agree with her decision not to write it.</p>

10

<p>That’s absolute crap to say that the optional essay is pointless. I’m a songwriter in a band. We play gigs all over the city, and have even done a few in New York. That didn’t come out anywhere else in my application… There was nowhere that fit in. I filled my extra curricular activities with school related stuff. haha. </p>

11

<p>@oxoxhawja3xoxo‌ - those are strong words. Who said it was pointless?</p>

12

<p>@bldrDad Steinway said, “Then again, there’s no point in writing an additional essay if it doesn’t tell them anything significant about you that they wouldn’t have learned from the rest of your application.” </p>

13

<p>@oxoxhawja3xoxo‌ - Read more carefully before you use that sort of language. What Steinway wrote was clearly a conditional statement. You can paraphrase it as “IF it doesn’t tell them anything significant about you that they wouldn’t have learned from the rest of your application, THEN there’s no point in writing an additional essay.”</p>