<p>What is the purpose of the college essays? </p>
<p>My dad thinks they are to let the college know why they should accept you, and so you should talk about your achievements and what you can bring to the school in them, but I thought that you were supposed to describe who you are, so I wrote about how I've done karate for 8 or 9 years and even failed my brown belt test (the first big milestone in learning karate), was devastated, but came back and worked hard for another few months and then earned it finally, etc etc. As you can see, I have no great achievement in karate (I do have a black belt though, but no big national awards or anything), and probably won't "bring" karate to the college by being so awesome at it as to make some team or anything, but it is a part of who I am and is the only thing that has been consistent about my life for 9 years.</p>
<p>dad is partly correct, and so are you. many colleges want to know what you can bring to the community as a person (after all, you are asking to be part of them for 4 years). but most colleges will also want to know you deeper as an individual.
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The more we get to know the applicant, the more likely we will accept him or her.
<p>Should I talk about achievements though? The debate was mostly about whether or not to write about karate or science/math awards that I've won, and why I love math and science, but I want to do that in my long essay and I don't want to have both sounding so similiar.</p>