First time poster long time reader here!
I’m writing this more out of anxiety than anything else, but basically I’m really starting to think that my essays were awful.
Having just now read a few essay “don’ts” on CC, I realised that I violated most rules. Most notably, I think my essays are horrifically cliched and generic, and essentially just a bore for the admissions officers. That being said, I did just get accepted to WashU, so they couldn’t have been THAT bad, but WashU isn’t my top choice.
My questions are, is a BORING (conservative) essay necessitarily a BAD essay, and if so, how would an admissions officer look at it?
Regards,
BtK
I think a boring essay would only hurt you if you’re applying to a very selective, competitive university where admissions people have the luxury of rejecting an applicant based on their essay. I read somewhere that most applicants actually write bad or boring, generic essay which makes sense because they all don’t know/care about exactly what admission officers want and applying to HYPS etc. And a lot of the times (THIS I’ve heard from multiple people), if an essay starts off boring then an adcom will just skim through it. They don’t have the time and patience to read all of them carefully. That’s not to say that an adcom will just discard a strong applicant based on an essay.
Anyway, what I meant to say was, it comes down to what the rest of your application is about and where you applied. Which other schools did you apply to?