How much weight does the SAT/ACT essay carry in the admissions process, especially for T20 colleges? I know that a lot of these colleges don’t use the essay, but for colleges like the UCs who still require the essay, how much can a low essay score affect my application?
Not much. I had very average essay scores (ACT 8, SAT 5,6,6) and was able to get into all the UCs I applied to (including Berkeley and LA) + a Top 10 university. Your carefully crafted application essays and everything else will matter much more than an essay you wrote under a time crunch that the AOs won’t even get to see. However, if you get an unreasonable low score that doesn’t match with the writing level on your application essays at all, then it might raise a flag. Good luck.
For the UC’s, the personal insight essays will carry far more weight than the SAT/ACT essays although there is a reason why the UC’s still require the essay portion of the tests. Do your best, but I would spend more time on the personal insight essays since these essays will give admissions a better insight into you and not as much as your writing abilities.
It’s becoming less and less meaningful, as schools realize that personal essays and admission questions, plus school writing samples, provide much better insights into one’s ability to plan, structure, edit, and finalize a persuasive document than spending 45 minutes on a surprise topic. Outside of CA, few, if any, top schools even ask for it.
I see the CA system dropping it soon, and SAT/ACT in a few years.