Pizzagirl’s #31 post is right on the money. Schools don’t need you to tell them how wonderful they would be for your kid because they already know that. Your student needs to tell them what he/she would bring to the campus. It’s not what they can do for you, but what you can do for them.
When D1 was applying to schools, Tufts had many additional essays. She was applying ED to a top school and everyone thought she was a shoo-in. When she was deferred she wrote 30+ essays over the winter break through a lot of tears. With D2, her private counselor had her finish all of her essays/applications BEFORE her ED result came in. Of course, she was admitted to her ED school. I saved over $1000 application fees.
@californiaaa didn’t specify that she’d be applying to elite schools, just schools that use the common application. I know my nephew did not spend 8-40 hours on his applications to top schools and he was accepted to all but Stanford.
Can it be done? Yes. Do most on CC suggest more time is needed? Yes.
I don’t think it will matter what the group response is - OP will do it her way no matter what the consensus is and will apply to 20 schools with the same 1 hour essay.
You can’t win by citing specific professors in your “why college X” essay.
You don’t know if he/she will be on Sabbatical the year you get there. You don’t know if he/she is being tapped for the “will be vacant next year” provost’s position and won’t be teaching for a while. And you don’t know if he/she is part of a department which is being deemphasized and merged with another, bigger department and has been vocally unhappy about it- and therefore is “persona non grata” with the administration.
You don’t know any of these things.
I read a “Why Brown” essay many years ago as a favor to a kid which cited a professor of Egyptology as the reason… I had to explain that although he was indeed an eminent member of the faculty with a world wide reputation, the number of undergrads he had taught in the last decade was precisely zero. His research was funded by an outside organization and he did not teach (and a glance at Brown’s offerings in antiquity- which were substantial once you looked at Religious Studies, Classics, Art History, etc. would have clearly showed that he did not teach). I had been a Classics major- believe me, if he had taught a class I’d have taken it…
So write about anything but one particular faculty member. That can only lead to grief or howls of laughter by the adcom’s who will realize that your kid didn’t actually read the course catalogue, or doesn’t understand how a university operates.
To the OP’s question of how long does it take? That’s the question. I’ve read essays that were horrifyingly bad which the kid labored for weeks to perfect, and I’ve read essays that knocked it out of the park after one draft and a revision.
D2 was a much better writer than D1. D2 was able to re-use many of her essays for different topics, so it probably took her a lot less time than D1 to apply to 10+ colleges.
^ I’d nuance that. If you’re really interested in a subject and have contacted the professor in charge, and you’ve been in email contact (many professors are nice people who are passionate about their subject, and will be happy to exchange a couple emails about it with a reasonably well informed student) you can mention it in your 'why college x’essay, especially if the professor told you what freshman seminar he or she is slated to teach in the fall and it’d be right up your alley. That shows genuine involvement with intellectual matters and with the University.
This is assuming that you are applying to schools where the applicant has taken the time to match their strengths and interests to the college. I believe the OP may have said in past threads that their kid will be applying to all Ivies and top universities. I personally think this exercise is much harder if prestige is your top reason for applying to a school. Then you are trying to wedge your reasons for attending into a school that may or may not actually be a fit for you.
We didn’t use Project. But I had a spreadsheet with each school’s due date for application/scholarship applications, target dates for kids to complete drafts, FA dates, etc. It really was a workplan.
I think the only time my kids did that was when they had actually met with a prof on campus (which the older one did a couple of times just to learn more about the major and department she was interested in – summer on campuses is pretty slow, she didn’t have any trouble lining the meetings up. Then she might use something she learned from the prof in her essay, and say that was how she had learned it. I think maybe once or twice one of them listed something from the course catalog that they found intriguing. But it was a small part of their essay, not the bulk of.
Schools want to know whether you truly understand them and what they offer, and how you are a match for that. My kids didn’t launch into “how they would make the campus better”, though, unless the college asked that in the prompt (and some do).
The principle is still show, not tell. You can show your match in a Why Us (or essay) via how you show your thinking. (It can be a casual answer, as long as it’s on target.) As TomSr hinted, there’s a real reason top performers get rejected.
A generic/one size Why Us is often the kiss of death. That doesn’t mean naming a prof, course or program. Those are 5 minute details, require no thinking.
Agree with PG’s post. But again, it has to be shown. You can’t just write, eg, about creating leaders, how you want to be one. You also need the goods behind it or it sounds fake. Likewise, personalized education will be more effective if your record shows some willingness to explore outside what’s put in front of you.
OP would benefit from researching colleges, scrapping all the assumptions.
My kids’ apps didn’t take as long as some of you are noting. But they were asking themselves these questions all along. With our help, sure.
My kids used very few “generalized” comments about leadership, etc. They were specific – I want to do research at THAT science facility because I am interested in THIS topic, I am interested in THIS club team, I like this SPECIFIC unique major combination, THIS part of the mission statement for the college speaks to me and matches with THIS in my background. Or I attended THIS class and was impressed with THIS facet of it. The college is not only looking for “fit”, they also are trying to figure out if you genuinely want to attend (yield protection) – a student who can’t be bothered to write a solid Why X essay isn’t as likely to say yes to acceptance.
Another parent endorsing @Pizzagirl in #31 as the appropriate approach to the “why x” essay. It is about demonstrating why the applicant is a good fit and would contribute to campus life, and that requires having spent time parsing through the school’s self-presentation, through its website and, if geographically feasible, tours and interviews.
A cut and paste might work for mid- range publics which admit largely on stats, but will not work at privates or at publics which are more competitive for admission ( no claim to understand how that plays out in CA publics though).
Honestly, this is not really true. My kids both applied mostly to medium sized research universities and they were good matches for all sorts of fields and a variety of types of kids.
My older son basically put together a “I’m a computer nerd - take me or leave me” application and sent off something very similar to all the colleges he applied to. He had stellar grades and recommendations and test scores. He got into Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and two smaller tech colleges. Might he have gotten into more if he had spent more time crafting each application? Maybe, but he had good choices and he despised writing personal essays. His common application essay was pretty good for an engineer it was obvious he was made to be a computer guy. He had enough on his application to show he played well with others.
Younger son did in fact spend a lot of time on the supplements to the application, but not the “why __ college” essays. He wrote a tongue in cheek essay for U of Chicago that started off listing all the reasons he thought his parents were crazy to suggest it to him and then listed what he liked about it after a little research. He did versions of that essay for several other colleges as well. It was fun to writeand didn’t take that much research. For his “Why Tufts” essay he only was allowed 50 words. He figured everyone and his brother would be writing about international relations and doing god in the world, so he wrote about how much he liked the chalk messages scrawled on the sidewalks.
To the OP’s question. Yes you will spend a lot more time on that first application than the subsequent ones, but it really depends on those supplements as to how much more time it will take. In our experience anything from 1 to 10 more hours.
One hour per incremental Common App application is reasonable if the incremental college does not have a Common App supplement. Most non-selective colleges do not have a supplement.
For selective colleges, you will always have a supplement and that supplement will require the writing of 2-5 unique additional essays.
As the deadline approaches, it is quite common for schools to get scratched from the application list due to the supplements. “If I don’t apply to X University, then I don’t have to write three more stupid essays. I don’t even like X University…”
Think about this in “chunks” of time. Now they could research which schools. As they choose them, note what attracted them and what each school is looking for (check their blogs).
When you do common app, the base app is a few hours to do, check, etc.
He then went into each school and answered the easy questions, short answer etc as he had time here and there.
The common app essay took my son about 20 hours early over a month or so.
The specific essays were about 15 hours each over the course of 2 months. Then he submitted all earlies.
After the early results, he deleted schools he no longer wanted and began finishing the essays and questions for the rest.
Do it over a long period of time and it works out ok.
I didn’t do much additional research on my schools for the “Why ____” essays. The reasons were that:
I find it really hard to be sincere about loving a professor or a class or a program I’ve had limited interaction with
I wasn’t really sure what I wanted in a school, and I hadn’t visited anywhere
My list preferences before and after my acceptances were almost exact opposites.
I wrote my Tulane essay on a summer class I had taken on Hurricane Katrina and the racial/class-based components of the incident and its aftermath, and how I planned on getting involved with community service efforts in the city.
My Georgetown essay was on my appreciation for Olivia Pope and Alicia Florrick (fictional Georgetown grads).
But I had a spreadsheet with each school’s due date for application/scholarship applications, target dates for kids to complete drafts, FA dates, etc. It really was a workplan.