<p>Does anybody know how much influence essays really have on admission decisions?</p>
<p>It varies from college to college, but a strong essay can bump you into the accepted pool. The UCs with holistic reviews (Berkeley, LA, SD) all take your essay into a fair amount of consideration for the application</p>
<p>I’ve read that UCSD does not really take the essays into consideration; they go by a point system instead.</p>
<p>^I believe they are in the process of switching into a holistic review. The quality of essays wasn’t really important for UCSD before, they mainly scanned it to see if you could get any points for things such as difficult circumstances, loss in the family, etc. I think that starting this year, they are using a little bit of both the holistic review and the points system. I don’t think they have switched into holistic review just yet.</p>