<p>How did you work on essays this summer when the CA comes out Aug 1. You mean you worked on them in August?</p>
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The CA prompts are unchanged from last year, and CA announced this in advance. So, I just worked on them offline, and when the CA opened on 8/1, I just cut and pasted.</p>
<p>@redbluegoldgreen I also finished all my essays in the summer, and no, not just in August! Our advisor had told us in the spring that some of the colleges that I was applying to rarely changed their supplements, so I wrote those first. In August, when the supplements came out, it turns out that she was right - the supplements for 6/8 colleges hadn’t changed, so I was able to have gotten those out of the way. The ones that did change, I completed in August. It was probably the smartest thing I’ve done - now my essays are out of the way and senior year is a lot less stressful!</p>
<p>wow… I just have my common app essay done and the EC supplement almost done. Now I have the big supplement essay for each of the colleges I’m applying to (so like 5 essays). I’m screwed</p>
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Like skieurope said, the CA had already announced that the prompts were staying the same. Plus, the EC essay is a given, so I finished that one during summer as well. I also worked on supplements for schools that have had the same prompts for years, like Stanford :). I worked on them June-July, and then once the common app opened I just filled out my info and pasted in the essays.</p>
<p>I just saw that Harvard recommends all applicants to have 4 years of foreign languages; I only have 3 years of Spanish and stopped taking it junior year. Will that lower my chance tremendously? 
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<p>Sorry fairyfantasy. I hope not. Maybe you should check with them? </p>
<p>I have a question about rec letters - is it better to have all possible rec letters? like one GC, 3 teachers, 2 others? How many letters do you all plan to send in? </p>
<p>@fairyfantasy I doubt it will really have any effect on your chances unless you are planning on majoring in that language. </p>
<p>@nomatterwhat No I actually heard colleges do not want more than the 2 teacher rec and 1 counselor rec. which is what I am sending. On one of the Ivy League college’s website (I forget which one) it says that most accepted students only send the 2 teacher and 1 counselor rec letters. Love your Calvin and Hobbes pic btw :)</p>
<p>Hi all, sorry if this has been asked already, but what is the approximate (or mandatory) word cap for both the extracurricular writing piece and the “optional” essay? Thanks</p>
<p>Does Harvard consider your first semester senior year grades for admission if you’re applying early? Not doing so hot in two of my classes…</p>
<p>@dopecake EC- probably 150 words is good
Optional Essay - Anything that fits the file size requirement but maybe 500 wordish?</p>
<p>@HobbitTon I don’t think they will get them when they make the decision but they still ask for your grades to make sure you’re doing well</p>
<p>@dopecake I’m pretty sure the common app cuts you off after 150 words for the EC essay, so you absolutely can’t exceed that. I’d recommend keeping your word count around there. It’s okay to have a little bit less, though. I ended up using all 150 words 
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<p>Hey, guys;) how to submit the Harvard fee through the Common app?? Thank you)</p>
<p>@HPClee, thanks. But I think I’ll definitely ask for a letter outside of my school, for an additional one. because of what I did with him, I was busy all summer. (that’s why I didn’t even touch my essays until school started.) </p>
<p>If your EC essay is more than 150 words, they wont’ let you enter it. </p>
<p>I am curious to know how many total hours you have spent on the ten activities shown in your common app.
Each activity’s total hours should be calculated as:
[hours in each week] X [weeks in each year] X [years participation in this activity]
Then summary all ten activities’ hour</p>
<p>I mentioned in the additional information-section on the CommonApp that the hours I listed for each activity are a rough estimate, as they vary quite a bit from week to week. I honestly don’t think they’ll use them for much else than gauging the level of commitment… </p>
<p>Hey guys, I have a question. I’ve volunteered at a local hospital for 100+ hours over the past four years. I also did some soccer-related volunteering for ~60 hours one summer. Soccer is a big part of my app, whereas nothing hospital-related is part of my app. Basically, I cared about the soccer volunteering and I don’t care about the hospital volunteering. </p>
<p>Right now I’m planning on omitting the hospital volunteering from my common app. Although I’m discarding 100+ hours of volunteer work, I think it’ll make my app more focused and less scrambled. What would you guys do?</p>
<p>If I volunteered 100 hours it would definitely be on app!</p>
<p>@Karabekian : Would you have omit another activity if you chose to put the hospital volunteering? If there’s room for it, I’d probably put it. I also volunteer at a hospital, and while it doesn’t perfectly align with the rest of my app, I’m putting on because it’s a big time commitment and something I cared about doing . </p>
<p>@Steinway: The reason I am asking is that I saw one kid’s common app’s activities, and I felt that his hours are pretty high. So I calculated it, and found out that his total hours are more than 6000. If I were AO, I would suspect it. </p>