I had to write a 6000 word dissertation for a class and was wondering if I should submit it as a supplementary essay or is it too long?
Do you think they have 30 extra minutes to spend reading that?
Don’t submit it
What is your dissertation on? College essays are supposed to be more casual and about you, whereas dissertations are typically formal and written on a specific topic, so I don’t think using a dissertation as an essay is appropriate. If there are pieces of your dissertation you enjoy, consolidate those into a brief essay about yourself and submit that, but submitting all of it is not a good idea.
Moot point. Although you will have spent hours upon hours crafting the perfect application, AO’s will spend 12-15 minutes max reading it. A 6000 word essay will make a huge impression on them, but not in a good way. Your paper could explain one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe, and they still won’t read it. Period. End of story.
Don’t send.
The only time you should submit academic work as a supplement is if it is original research of publishable quality. If you have that, they will indeed read it.
Many high school students self-publish their work on Amazon, Kindle etc and that’s not what Hanna is talking about. If your dissertation has been published in a NATIONAL scientific journal, then send Harvard the abstract of the article. Admissions won’t have time to read more than that. See: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html
steak: a 6,000 word paper is a twelve page assignment. Every kid in an IB diploma program writes more than that. It’s not unique and no college wants to read it as part of an application.
^^ exactly. I liked my Extended Essay, but I would never have included it in an application because quite frankly, it’s not as if writing 14-16 pages is particularly unique.