<p>Which carries more weight in the admissions process: essays or ec's? Why?</p>
<p>Both are pretty big. I’d consider them to be equal in terms of importance.</p>
<p>In the sea of EC laundry lists, my guess is that an attention-getting essay leaves a longer impression than the 16 yr old ingenue who got the lead at a summer Shakespeare festival or the kid who won the regional robotics competition. </p>
<p>Remember, most Y applicants will have good to great ECs. Most applicants WON’T have great essays.</p>
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<p>Interesting. But honestly, what you’ve done over four years, demonstrating ability, devoting, diversity and commitment in the process isn’t going to be displaced by something that you wrote in a couple of days/weeks/months. This is made only more true by the fact that more and more kids are turning to unethical means (paid essay writing services, plagiarism, etc.) to get their essays written. </p>
<p>Which is why I fully believe ECs are far more important than essays, especially if they’re quirky, unconventional and if you’ve pursued them to a level not generally seen with other college applicants. </p>
<p>Though of course:</p>
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<p>I’m hoping this will work in my favor.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m a skeptic about the value of an essay. I’m sure a badly written essay can hurt you, but if I were an adcom, I wouldn’t be all that impressed by a well-written essay, because I wouldn’t be able to tell how much help you received. I think ECs that show significant individual accomplishment (especially outside the school) are useful.</p>
<p>id say ec’s- judging from what ive seen of friends and classmates, a bad essay won’t hurt an already stellar applicant with great ec’s. it doesnt work really the other way around. imo, what a great essay does is separate two great applicants, but doesnt necessarily give a much lesser applicant a leg up over a much more qualified one…</p>
<p>ECs matter more, simply because a truly stand-out EC (ie being in the Olympics) tops a truly stand-out essay every time. But unless your ECs are truly spectacular, you still need very good essays to be admitted. Likewise, very good essays will not be enough if your ECs are short.</p>
<p>^ that’s pretty much because it’s that much harder to get into the olympics than to dish out 50 bucks for a professional writer (which some people regrettably do)</p>
<p>Srrinath-I totally agree with you on the relative importance of ECs versus the essays. One could write a good essay (or a bad one) in a few hours. A standout record of ECs often takes years to accomplish.</p>
<p>in any case, i find this entire thread particularly ridiculous. yes, i believe ECs carry more weight than essays but i also believe that an applicant to yale cannot afford mediocrity in essays or ECs. unless you have one helluva hook, what reason does yale have to choose you over the thousands of other kids who write great essays and have excellent ECs, not forgetting the awesome grades and scores to boot.</p>
<p>I think that essays do, however, go a long way in the admissions process at a school like Yale. So far, whenever I’ve read someone’s essay on CC, I could always accurately predict whether they’d get into Yale, or some other top school. Call it correlation, but the fact stands. Except with absolutely outstanding ECs (for example, winning a gold medal in the Olympics), I’d say the essay is often the deal-breaker. </p>
<p>I do agree, though, that an essay with crappy stats won’t get anyone anywhere. A “good” candidate, however, can become “excellent” because of a great essay.</p>
<p>And I firmly believe that it would take an extreme amount of talent on the part of an adult to successfully trick an admissions officer with an essay. Especially at Yale. Each admissions officer, having weeded through at least 3000 essays every year, is doubtless qualified to judge whether an essay is legit or not.</p>
<p>Finally, what srrinath says is true. At Yale, you can’t really have one but not the other, because they simply expect both.</p>
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<p>I guess that’s what separates a 4.0/2400/great essay from a 4.0/2400/not so great essay but beyond that, I don’t think essays will do much. In any case rockermcr, if you’re willing to, I could send you my essay to take a look. Do try to predict if I’ll get into Yale.</p>
<p>No, I really think essays have a greater bearing than that. How else do mediocre applicants (at least in terms of stats) get in every year? No matter how much you read about “showing” as opposed to “telling,” it’s really just something you can’t learn. A truly talented applicant will be able to so greatly encompass who he or she is in a mere 500 words that stats would become irrelevant. I really, truly believe that. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t at a level or literary adeptness to rely solely on that, but I really do think that a good essay goes a long way. I’m absolutely certain that my essays will be the deal-breaker for me in the fall.</p>
<p>I’ve read a lot and so I’m a very, very harsh critic of anyone’s writing, especially my own. That said, if you want to send me your essay, go ahead!</p>
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This, of course, is what adcoms want you to believe, but I don’t think it’s true at all. I think it’s quite easy for an adult to heavily edit a student’s essay and still preserve the student’s “voice.” I really don’t think you can tell how much it’s been edited. Perhaps some of them look at the essay on the SAT–if they did that, then they might be able to make some judgements.</p>
<p>Yes, but an admissions officer is equipped with tons of resources to ensure that an application is legit. First, each teacher evaluation has a section in which teachers evaluate the student’s quality of writing. An applicant to HYP will likely know that it’s smartest to choose teachers from different fields to write the recommendations, and one of the teachers is bound to be from a class in which there was at least a moderate amount of writing. If the student’s writing was poorly rated, an absolutely excellent essay would raise a red flag. Similarly, a look at the student’s transcript and an obversation of his/her performance in language/literature classes in high school should also give a clue as to what to expect in the essay. You also brought up the SAT, which is also another way of verifying the validity of the essay. Regardless of whether or not admissions officers ever take a look at the actual essays, the writing score itself should be sufficient information. The SAT, especially the writing section, is a pretty ridiculous test, but when it comes down to it, a student who knows grammatical conventions well enough to write a great essay will get a good writing score.</p>
<p>All of this aside, I already said that an essay can make a “good” applicant become “excellent”. Applicants who are already well-qualified, with tons of great ECs, and good grades and test scores, likely won’t need to get other people to write their essays. This is something I could see happening in cases where the applicant himself doubts the quality of his application, in which case admissions officers could easily look at all the things I listed above.</p>
<p>I may be something of an idealist when it comes to this, but I genuinely think the essay is important and I appreciate that it’s included in the application.</p>
<p>I think essays are really important, but mostly it depends on the essays and the value of the ECs on the application. ECs are often mostly indicative of the opportunities that have been available to the student. If you go to a big school of high flyers in a big city with a lot of clubs and teams and the kind of teachers who drive you to do as much as possible then you’re going to have a lot more opportunities than someone who goes to a smaller school.</p>
<p>Same goes for the income of the applicant’s family. A lot of ECs outside of school depend on how much someone’s parents can afford to pay. In that case, I think the essay outweighs the ECs.</p>
<p>While a list of activities that you do is great and shows your interests, your essays are there to put those ECs into context and show how they’ve developed you as a person.</p>