<p>For stanford, they had an essay that said "Write a note to your future roommate about a personal experience that reveals something about you." Being a procrastinator, I only had about 4-5 sentences. It was a short answer question so I assume a paragraph should be fine.</p>
<p>My other essays/short answers were really good though. And the basic content of the roommate short answer response was pretty good. Will this significantly hurt me if the rest of my application is good?</p>
<p>Essays usually don't make or break the applicant. Around like 90% of essays don't really affect the applicant's chances, back in some book I read on writing college essays. If it was a good 4-5 sentences, I wouldn't worry. But if it was really just a really crappy 4-5 sentences, it might be risky.</p>
<p>well i guess if the content of dat particular short response was good, and everything else is good, and assuming your GPA, SAT/ACT scores and ECs are good than all you can do is wait and see what happens.</p>
<p>I don't know what college book you read, but college essays are very important for the top colleges, as it's often the sole differentiating factor in the thousands of overachieving applicants they get. </p>
<p>That being said, the short answer is not nearly as important the long essay. If you aced that I wouldn't worry too much.</p>
<p>Yeah, my long essay is really good. My two short essays were also pretty good. It's just the last short answer looks like I just rushed it. It seemed like a really crappy prompt.</p>