<p>Hi everyone, I just wanted to know if the essays for the supplemental essays change from year to year. The schools I'm thinking of are: MIT, Penn, Johns Hopkns, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern. So, does anyone know if it's safe to start working on the essays for these schools from last years application, or should I wait until August?</p>
<p>They tend not to change, so it makes a lot of sense to get ahead in working on your essays; it’ll make fall of your senior year much less painful. However, on the off chance that they do change, you should primarily focus your main college essay over the summer (since the prompts will definitely not change year to year, and even if they do you can pick your own so it wouldn’t matter), which you should spend the most time on overall anyways.</p>
<p>Spending your summer doing college applications is unnecessary. I didn’t seriously start mine until school started in August and still had plenty of time to get everything (including RD apps) in well before ED/EA deadlines. (Filling in basic information on the Common App doesn’t count.)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t risk writing supplemental essays over the summer. Depending on the school, they can and do change. And it’s not like you have to write as many of them as it looks like you do–most of the topics result in reusable essays with minor adjustments.</p>
<p>If you start something over the summer, start your Common App essay. As noted above, the topic won’t change because anything you write it on can be listed as a topic of your own choice. Getting this done over the summer would be plenty; don’t feel like you need to work on anything beyond that (or anything at all).</p>
<p>I agree with RedSeven in that you probably want to wait until August to start your supplemental essays, and even then it’s not necessary as long as you’re starting your common app essay. However, I think that as soon as they come out, you should at least start wrapping your head around the prompts and getting a basic idea of what you want to do. Some people find that they have time to get everything done fairly easily in their senior fall, but some people end up with a lot going on, and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed, so get as much done ahead of time so that you don’t end up super stressed as the deadlines approach.</p>