<p>If I use the same personal essays in all my Common Apps - will the adcoms see that and think I'm lazy? Or does everyone do that? </p>
<p>...is this an incredibly irrational question? I don't know why but I somehow feel like they're all in on this together.</p>
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lol no</p>
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I think most people personalize it, you can do that by creating different versions of your common app. you dont need to write totally different essays, just tweak them a bit for each school.</p>
<p>Nowadays, it’s very unlikely that your essay will be looked upon favorably if you use it for every school. Adcoms aren’t stupid; they know if applicants are truly interested in their school. Plus, this is Yale… I think it’s worth the extra effort.</p>
<p>^^Depends on the essay. If it’s an essay designed to give colleges a snapshot of who the applicant is, it can be used for several schools. If it’s some form of the “Why College XYZ” essay, then it must be specific to the school.</p>
<p>And no, Ivies do not share their applicants’ essays.</p>
<p>they do not share applications or names of of applications … they CAN NOT share them … there was a law suit about 25 years ago and since then schools can not share info about applicants … the sharing of info was considered restraint of trade and limiting the options of applicants.</p>
<p>No, I don’t believe they share information.</p>
<p>But if they did, then that would explain quite a few things. :)</p>
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<p>Well, FuzzieLogic, what the dickens do you think?</p>
<p>Extraordinarily unlikely. </p>
<p>Unless my theories of an underground secret conspiracy of top business, political, and religious leaders is true.</p>
<p>Can’t you only submit one common app essay if you do it online, and them only the supplements can vary by school?</p>
<p>No. You can create different versions of your common application and change the essays around if you want to.</p>
<p>3tog0: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the antitrust lawsuit you mention dealt only with sharing information about financial aid awards. Previously, officials of all eight Ivies had met annually to discuss financial aid offers to students, partly to avoid bidding wars for applicants with multiple offers of admission. As a result of the suit, the schools agreed to stop sharing (and matching) the amount of each other’s aid offers to individual students. I don’t think the suit broadly precluded schools from sharing all information about applicants. For instance, they do share lists of students admitted ED.</p>
<p>Regardless, I can’t think why colleges would see any benefit to sharing essays.</p>
<p>^ I’m pretty sure it was about both acceptences and financial aid … no info about applicants is to be shared.</p>
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This is sharing info about students accepted to their school; not about students under consideration for acceptence … and it is travelling from the ED school to the other IVYies. I would assume info about ED applications is not allowed the other direction. So Cornell can inform other schools 3togo was accepted ED (I am no longer an applicant) … however I believe Cornell can not put out a request and ask other school’s if their applicant 3togo has applied ED to these other schools.</p>
<p>Your distinction about lists of students admitted ED vs. applications in play is well-taken.</p>
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<p>It really depends on what essay you’re talking about. The basic CommonApp essay doesn’t have anything to do with the specific school, it’s just about showing schools who you are. So it’s fine to use that for all your schools. You probably shouldn’t recycle the “Why I want to go to XYZ University” essays, because you want to be very specific, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. I used the same essays for Penn and Northwestern, with only the names of the cities, the programs I wanted to be in and the extracurricular clubs I liked, changed. I got into both. Yale was my top choice, though, so my essay for them (really a short-answer) was very specific.</p>
<p>Why would you personalize your personal statement? I used the same personal statement (with no variation) to apply to 5 Ivies, and I was accepted to 4 of them.</p>
<p>Your personal essay doesn’t have to mention any colleges - in fact, it shouldn’t. If your personal statement is about Yale, you’re doing something wrong.</p>
<p>I applied to seven schools, and I only had to write about five long essays. Reusing or tweaking essays is perfectly acceptable. Your common app extended essay can (and should) be the same for every school. For some schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) the topics of the supplemental essays are either up to you, or so vague that you can modify existing essays to work. Other schools (Brown, Stanford, UChicago) have more original prompts that will require unique essays. In the end, the extent to which you can get away with reusing essays depends on what schools you apply to.</p>
<p>Alright, thanks for the feedback. Sorry for not being clear, I was talking about the general common app essay - obviously it makes no sense to recycle a “Why XYZ” essay for all universities. =P</p>
<p>And ksarmand, is it irrational that I found your last line noticeably ruder than everyone else’s?</p>
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<p>Actually, “Why XYZ?” essays are fairly easy to recycle… I basically played mad libs with all of mine (bad example: “I have no trouble imagining myself as a student at [college]. When I visited campus, I could see myself at [place where students hang out] doing [what students do there].”)</p>
<p>Haha, maybe I’m under the (naive?) impression that it is a good thing if you try to show genuine interest in what each school has to offer?</p>
<p>Well, you’re usually looking for similar things in each school. If you’re looking for a great political science department, for example, you’re going to mention that in each of your “why [college]?” essays. There’s a difference between showing genuine interest and doing unnecessary work.</p>