<if a="" college="" asks="" for="" “why=”" xx="" college"="" type="" of="" essay,="" you="" have="" to="" be="" at="" the="" top="" your="" game,="" very="" specific="" answers="" and="" insight="" into="" that="">
Why not just say “i really like the research of Prof X and i am looking forward to his/her lectures”. The name of Prof. X will change from application to application.
I think you are underestimating the effort and work required. I helped manage the process for my son’s applications (as he was doing IB exams at the time). He only applied for 4 US and 3 Canadian and it was still a huge endeavour.
Your conviction that adding a college shouldn’t take that long is funny… haha just wait… My dad had the same philosophy and I applied for way more schools than I should have. I don’t regret it becuase I’m going to attend a school I wouldn’t have applied if I hadn’t started applying to random schools at his request and willingness to pay the fees. However, I didn’t compromise quality for quantity and spent closer to 10 hours on each. It’s hard to even put a number to it becuase a lot of research/thought goes into every essay.
Once the visits and research were done and the list was defined, my D2 took a few weeks to refine her common app essay – working on revisions mostly on weekends to something she had started in spring of junior year. Then it took 1-2 weekends per supplemental application. Most of her schools had at least one supplemental essay, and some had two. She spent longer on UChicago and Harvey Mudd, which had essays that were more complex. She got in everyplace she applied, but her apps were painstakingly crafted and proofread.
One other time consuming component is the financial aid paperwork. Every school has different deadlines, and there are variations on what paperwork they want and how they want it sent. We had a small business and a non-custodial parent – wrangling that was a ton of work for 8 schools. I can’t imagine doing it for 20.
Regarding “Why X?”, I think colleges see through just mentioning a prof. My kids researched facilities, ECs, specific major combinations, etc. if they had met a prof on campus, they might bring it up. They also tied aspects of their backgrounds and personalities to aspects of the school. Again… those specific and carefully crafted essays really paid off. They could not have substitutes one for another with a few word changes – they genuinely had varied reasons for applying, and it showed.
Looking back on it, i think the first app took a good 30 - 40 hours of work. This included research, essay writing, agonizing over phrasings in the extracurricular section, etc. The subsequent apps took around 5 hours each with most of the time spent doing research and “refocusing” old essays.
First, that professor could quit tomorrow. Second, it doesn’t indicate much about why the student believes him/herself and the college to be a good match. And if there will be an interview, the student also needs to be able to address this topic there, and a one-sentence answer that doesn’t even say why the student is interested in the work of professor X won’t cut it.
The “why college X” essay isn’t about praising the school; it’s about proving that you’re a perfect match (because of your backgrounds/achievements and what you intend to study/do in college, in relation to what they offer.) Each essay has to be tailored and requires a lot of research.
However, around december, you’ll have a good idea of how you can match your strengths with the colleges you’re interested in, and you’ll know where to find college-specific examples, so it’ll go faster, but expect to devote as much time to applications as you would for a full-time, writing-intensive class.
UC applications require two essays and those are of primary importance once the GPA establishes you’re in range. However with those two essays you can apply to 8 universities (with the 9th being Merced left for statewide/local context admission). Then you have each private university.
My daughter only applied to seven schools, none were elite schools that often required multiple essays. Her schools usually asked the Why X and maybe one other question (as well as the Common App essay). So, she had minimal work compared to schools like Chicago. It took about an hour for the Why X question alone after she researched the school’s website to find tidbits she could use. Sometimes she had questions about the application, so she emailed the Admissions office. This often led to an email or phone chat.
Every college we visited mentioned the Why X question. One college (one with an acceptance rate in the teens or maybe lower) explicitly stated that if the response can be crafted with search-and-replace for multiple schools, or worse, the applicant forgot to change the name of the school, they will reject the applicant. No one wants a lazy applicant, no matter the scores or GPA.
If your child is aiming high, I’d have her budget way more time. The worst thing that can happen is she works faster than anticipated and is done earlier. That’s better than underestimating the time (an hour per app) and running out of time.
The difficulty of the app varies by school. The ones most people are describing are for the more selective schools.
You asked about state schools. My D applied to 3 and they each had their own app which is a pain as she had to type in all the same information several times. Alabama’s app was so simple that my D was wondering where the rest of it was. There was no essay, nothing about ECs, basically just fill in basic information, pay your fee, and send your test scores and transcripts. Pitt’s app was longer but also had no essays, just three short answer questions which they send to you after you submit the app.
Some schools on the common app have no supplemental essays. Two that D applied to were Fordham and Loyola New Orleans. I think Northeastern also had no supplemental essay. I’m sure there are many more out there but these are not the highly selective schools.
@skieurope , font of all knowledge, surely you jest!
One hour of research for a single college will barely give you a chance to look at the course catalog. In addition to visiting, I would say my kid probably spent at least 2-5 hours researching each college she applied to (12), and many more hours on colleges she DID not apply to, because research is one of the best ways to know if you want to apply to a college. Once she was accpeted to places, the schools she was most interested in were investigated further to suss out the student perspective.
She then spent literally about 20 hours on her common app essay (could just be her though), and spent the same time again on all the supplemental essays for her apps.
Of course, this can vary wildly for each student. You could just apply to colleges that don’t ask for supplemental materials and hit the button 20 times and be done. Some kids barely do any research at all.
I am interested in the lack of concern regarding spending thousands of dollars on apps. The Common App is not like buying lottery tickets, though some people treat it as such. Somewhere here on CC is a thread about how many colleges kids applied to. These kids were bragging about how much money they were spending applying to colleges, and frankly, it was quite distasteful. Firstly, I am amazed at any parent who just hands over a credit card and says “have at it, what’s 2k for a lottery ticket.” Secondly, many of the kids doing this seem to be throwing out apps in the hopes that they will get lucky at a tippy top school. Thing is, those schools can usually tell when kids are doing that. They can spot the regurgitiated “why this college?” essay. You should apply to colleges becasue you actually want to go to them, and that means you need to do some investigating. If you are thorough, you can come up with a suitable range of colleges to apply to and not need to submit twenty applications. I personally think 8-10 is a reasonable number.
Also, as someone else pointed out, there will be situations. You will have to open portals and check up on every single application, because a school still needs something, you have to fill out something, you will realize you made a mistake, and so on. We thought we were very throrough, and my D ended up having to rush to her counselor when a college said soemthing was missing, even though it had been sent. In another case, Google docs had a glitch in formatting, but she didn’t discover it until 8 weeks after she had applied. Luckily, she had filed well before the deadline, but she had to resubmit the essay along with an explanation. The more applications, the more chance you have of messing up because it is really hard to keep up to date with what is going on with all of them.
Anyone who wants to put together the best application possible is going to research the schools and an extra hour is a joke.
Californiaa, I’m going to give you some real advice on why the strategy of just saying “I really like the research of Prof X” and changing X’s name for each campus is not the right one. But I hope that you take it with a truly open mind and read to the end and really think about it before trying to refute it, so here goes.
The point of the “Why college X” essay is NOT to point out all the good, delightful things they have on their campus – their bucolic setting in the woods, their bustling bright-lights-big city campus, their strong programs in (xyz), their world-renowned and prize-winning professors, their exciting opportunities for internships and study abroad. THEY KNOW they have these things already; don’t waste time reminding them.
It’s like going up to the hot girl / guy you want to date and saying you want to date them and when they ask why they should pick you, tell them it’s because they have really pretty blue eyes or great abs or whatever. They’ve heard it before. Telling them about why you are attracted to them is not a compelling answer to the question as to why they should choose YOU out of all their suitors.
The point of the “Why college X” essay is to showcase the things about you and the approach that you take / will take to college life that will cause you to be an asset to their campus, that will cause them to say, “Gosh, I’d really love to meet this kid, to bring this kid here because he/she will bring something to the table whether he’s sitting in class, hanging at the dorm, working on extracurriculars, etc…”
So how do you do it? In order to do that, you have to show that you understand what the VALUES are of each school, and tailor your response accordingly.
I’m going to redirect you to a thread I wrote when we were going through the process. Read posts 1, 20 and 22 for examples of how I wrote capsule statements about what I perceived as the values of each of the dozen or so colleges we visited for my twins. We got these by listening to the words each college used to describe their academic experience, by looking around during tours, talking to current students, etc. All of these schools were very good academically, had good professors, etc; that wasn’t what distinguished them.
I’ll pick on 3 examples here from 3 top schools (and no, these are not “no-name” schools, even though you aren’t familiar with them):
WELLESLEY: Academic excellence for its own sake; creating tomorrow’s leaders.
MT HOLYOKE: Personalized education.
SMITH: Exploration / pushing the envelope in non-traditional, daring ways.
So, if these were 3 girls / guys you wanted to date, and you knew that’s what each one of them valued, how would you go about talking about yourself to entice them to pick you? You’d emphasize different parts of who you are if you’re trying to “court” Wellesley than you would to court Smith.
Let me be clear: I do NOT mean lying or making stuff up. I’m talking about how you put the story together about why you’d be an asset to the campus.
This is why these essays take a while. My kids applied to ~ 8 schools apiece and they were on a schedule during the fall of senior year where they allowed maybe a week or two to write each essay. It was intense because it required real thought about why each school and how best to present themselves as a potential asset to each school.
But yes, this is precisely why “I like the work of professor X” is not the right approach at all.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I fear that your response to this will be dismissive.
@Lindagaf Of course. I just couldn’t come up with an example of what would only take an hour. 
I guess in one hour of research one can determine that the college is not the right fit. The point being, each additional college will require more than one hour.
@californiaaa I noted in another thread that my son’s EARLY list has roughly 20 schools. Only 8 take the Common App. Right now the running total is SEVEN different applications. We found that many states have their own app and are not part of Common App - big bummer. He will definitely be paring down his list before he gets started.
My kids had a few schools that were literally ‘common app only’ schools. No additional essays. They took roughly an hour to answer, check and double check the school specific questions and pay their money.
Most of our schools had extra essays. In the beginning my kids thought a day was enough to research and write the essays for a school. They quickly figured out that often a 10-12 hour weekend day may not be enough for just the research depending on the school. We found that essays often bridged multiple days because what makes sense to you on day one often needed clarification or extra details on day 2 or 3. Of course, that may just be my kids.
We also found that schools that don’t take the common app often have long tedious applications. There may not be additional essays involved, but finding what you’re looking for from drop down menus when you have to enter every class you took in high school, find the best match, then type in the actual course name and grade (and sometimes teacher’s report card comments!) was time intensive and exhausting.
So, even if you’re playing secretary for your student (I played it for one and not the other), there is still a plenty of work for both of you.
I wish I had thought ahead the first time regarding time management. Luckily for me, my oldest was a king in the time management department, and we still had some stressful situations coming down to the wire. Sometimes things just don’t come together in a way that makes them happy and they write and rewrite, and rewrite until they feel good about it.
Best of luck to you!
My son applied to only 6 schools (no tippy tops or such). Two of them had their own apps. I am not sure how long it took per app as we did not keep time but the feeling is that it took FOREVER. I remember one of the schools had a very basic app, no essay and no recs. I thought it would take him an hour tops. It took him days. There was a space to put ECs and a space to write a quick something about yourself (optional and like a paragraph). However, this school was one of his favorites and he wrote and rewrote his EC list like 20 times, let alone the paragraph. He knew that the school most probably would only look at stats but still he wanted the app to reflect that he did his best. An unexpected behavior was that he would finish an app but not submit it as he wanted to “thinking it over” and therefore “drag it” a little longer. Very unusual for my son to do. I guess it is an emotional process of sorts! Research was mostly done Junior year and he knew each one of those 6 schools very well so I do not count those hours. The other thing is that he was super busy in the fall. Lots of APs and school projects, plus a time sink EC with fall season plus senior year activities. In retrospect it might not be that many hours per app but combined with everything else maybe it felt that took more.
@californiaaa do not make the mistake of waiting unitl the nice, relaxing Christmas break to finish up applications. On NYE, my kid was just finishing a couple of applications. Mind you, this was not the original plan. The original plan was to be all done by Thanksgiving. Haha! A CC poster has coined a new “hidden” high school class. It’s called College Essay Writing Intensive. Instead of having a whole school year to do it, you only have about a month, because the kid starts freaking out when they realize JUST how long the apps take, and they have to get cracking with those essays. Trust us, we have been there. I actually think you have asked a very good question, it should be required reading for newbie parents. In fact, I will tag a few of them here, because they will benefit from this thread. @citymama9 @mamaedefamilia and @HiToWaMom , have a look.
@Lindagaf - thanks for the recommendation - I was just reading this thread when your comment popped up!
My daughter and I were actually discussing this very issue yesterday. Now that classes are over and SAT subject tests will be done tomorrow, she is working on a schedule for the summer to do the more detailed internet research that will define her short list and inform her “why this college?” essays. She’ll have to do this work for the places where she is interviewing this summer as well. Common app essay drafting will begin when the prompts are released on August 1.
The end goal is 8-10 well researched, applications with only one or two reaches.
She did mention at her school that they set aside one class period for seniors to apply to an in-state option. It’s very simple, just basic stats, no essays, not a common app school. The entire senior class applies on the same day! However, if you’re eligible for a merit scholarship, there are supplements that are required after you’re admitted.
ETA: Oddly enough, in two cases, she actually IS interested in the research of professors at some of her top choices because she read their work to complete a school assignment. But that’s unlikely to be a focus of a “why this school” essay, and might not even be mentioned.
Hi @mamaedefamilia The Common App essay prompts for 2016-2017 are available now. They are the same as 2015-2016.
Thanks for all the useful information people are providing.
Note that the Univ. of California system has changed its prompts for this coming year. The previous prompts had been pretty much the same for many years, I think. Applicants now need to write 4 of 8 essay topics. See http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/personal-questions/freshman/index.html