How are people already doing supplements?

Please forgive a very ignorant question! I see many people saying that their kids are working on the supplements for various colleges. I thought the common app didn’t open until Aug 1. How is everyone already doing all these extra essays? Are people just assuming they will be the same from year to year?

Thanks!

Some schools have released their supplemental essay prompts.

Our kids works on essays and supplemental essays during the summers too. They just created word documents with ideas and wrote. Some morphed onto real essays and some just got deleted.

And yes, they used the questions from the previous year. They don’t change that much from year to year…and if they do…the ideas written down can be changed as well.

And others don’t change from year to year.

Some stay the same year after year. Some schools have already said what they will be this summer, like Tufts. One essay type that never changes is the " Why this school" kind of essay.

The “why this school” supplement was necessary for a large fraction of the 20 or so schools my two kids applied to. You can at least start writing down ideas for that question. I think U Chicago was the only school that one of them applied to that was completely new year-to-year.

UChicago does change each year and they’re offbeat enough to prevent guessing what they’ll be, but they also have historically offered the option for applicants to reply to any prior year prompt of their choosing. So if a kid wants to get started super early s/he could write an essay using any of the prior year prompts.

Some schools list their questions on the admissions section of their web site

Thanks everyone. I did find that one of D’s schools has supplemental essays posted.

Chicago releases them early, too. I think the prompts changed at one of D2’s 8 schools from the previous year.

My kids did essays in December and still did fine with admissions. For some am early start is helpful but honestly, no pressure.

My daughter did the college specific essays after the common app opened. The only thing she had in advance (besides the main essay), were outlines for the “why us” essays. She took extensive notes after each college visit with those prompts in mind.

Not all schools have a Why X College supplement. S19 has 11 esssys to write and only five of them are that type. He emailed the AOs for all of his schools back in June and asked if the supplements were decided for next year. They’ve been getting back to him as the supplements have been confirmed. I believe he’s heard from 12/13 schools.