If I were to send one essay topic to a school, could I write a completely different essay for another school?
Is it whenever you finish the personal essay on the CommonApp, that’s the essay you have to use to EACH school you apply to.
Or.
Can you send an essay for one school, completely edit it or change the prompt and then send that essay to another school??
Thanks
You could probably do that since the application is shown in the preview in a PDF-like format. My guess is that they can’t see if you edit it. It would probably be to your benefit to only have one essay and make it the best that it can be rather than distribute your effort across five prompts.
bump. I need more inputs.
Whichever topic you have selected and whichever essay is typed in is sent in when you press “submit” to a college.
As long as the correct essay and topic is selected at the time of submission, you could send in 8 different essays for 8 different colleges.
CB actively discourages that.
What does “CB” mean? @lookingforward and why would they discourage that?
In years past, they use to limit the amount of edits to your main essay on the college app. At one point I believe there were no or minimal edits allowed to the one and only essay you submitted. A couple years ago they allowed 3-5 edits/corrections to a single essay (but I remember a weird work around it and being able to submit different essays to different schools even when they said you couldn’t).
I was stunned that they took away the correction limits with my D applying this year. Now, you can change it as many times as you want and yes, you can submit a different main essay to each college if you choose too. But who would want to do that? It would make you crazy. You would have to be very careful doing so, that leaves you with a lot of responsibility for proofing. Switching essays around gets risky, especially when you are tired or in a hurry with deadlines looming. However, for students applying to very different majors, this can be super helpful to allow you to emphasize something different depending on where/what you are applying to.
I think the ideal is if you have a single prime essay that serves virtually all schools well with just an occasional exception handled by a little editing within that essay if necessary. Proof proof proof. Good luck!
@CADREAMIN I am applying to completely different majors for different colleges. Thank you for your response. I am using one essay for the majority and another essay for one or two schools.
Thank you so much for your response! It seems like no one was willing to answer this question.
I have had students rolling out every two years for awhile now so have gone through the changes of the common app for the last several years. Like I said, I was stunned the current senior could make as many changes as she wanted - that wasn’t the case just two years ago when older sibling went through it. If it wasn’t for senior applying this year I would have thought there were still limits, so it reminded me to be careful in replying to questions - things change!
Totally get the different major/different essay. Makes sense. She did that as well in one or two cases. Technically the supplements are for the “customization of you” but when applying to very different majors, sometimes it makes sense to adjust/change the main essay. Proof carefully - read it backwards or read it out loud, have someone else read it, those tactics will usually catch things.
My son changed the Personal Essay in the common app for only one school last year. So it was certainly possible then. Of course, doing so assumes that you have two high quality essays from which to choose and neither is better or worse than the other. If you review your essays critically, perhaps one essay is really “better” at showing the real you. Don’t let the desire to get into one specific school make you overthink the main parts of the common app in an effort to try and “game” the system on a school by school basis. The supplemental questions for those schools that request them are where you can flesh yourself out more.