hey! okay so I wrote an essay for Dartmouth on the origin of my name, a prompt Dartmouth is known for, and I’m considering submitting it to Yale as well as I dont think I can come up with something better(very pressured at the moment). Yale asks one to reflect on anything, and I’m an international so the name essay portrays a lot of diversity. My question, however, is not whether admission officers would recognize the recycled prompt- I’m sure they will , its whether they’d mind that it is. Please& thank you!
One element of an Admissions Officer’s job is to know what essay questions peer schools are asking. As such, you should not – REPEAT NOT – recycle an essay for another college, unless you want an AO to exclaim “Oh, look, @nineninenine sent us Dartmouth’s essay, I guess they didn’t care enough about our school to write something original!” That kind of comment is not going to earn you bonus points in the admission process.
@gibby I did write another essay that showed the same diversity, just not with the same name origin packaging, thanks for helping out!
I for sure recycled essays when I applied and now I’m a junior at Yale, so it obviously wasn’t fatal to my application. Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If you have to reuse it, do it. It seems like a good candidate for the tell-us-something-we-don’t-know-about-you prompt which I found tricky to say the least.