I agree. Or you can do what my son did and come up with a funny formula for the “Why X” college - it was fun to write and easy to organize. It it included both serious and silly answers to the question.
For the older son nothing was worse than something like Stanford’s write a letter to your roommate question. For younger son - he loved the optional essays at schools that had whacky ones because they allowed him to show things about himself that was harder to do in a personal essay.
I do not think that there is a universally correct method or formula or process for writing college application essays. There are, however, necessary components that should be in all essays.
The writing process is highly individualized. For example, I tend to spend a substantial amount of time thinking about the project before writing & editing my work. Others need to write first in an effort to develop their final theme and method of delivery.
In short, writing is an highly individualized effort.
As an aside, peer editing tends to do more harm than good (although useful in getting students to create a written work), and use of more than one editor usually results in a lost voice.
Many factors are involved in when the student should start writing essays, the chief one being the ability of the student to write, his resistance to writing, his acquaintance with writing in general, but especially with **the personal narrative/b.
Does he take weeks to knock out a first draft of anything?
What kind of feedback has he received on his writing to date? Has it been directive and prescriptive, so that he can recognize his own better writing from bad writing?
What kind of a course load does he have in senior year? Is it the heaviest he has had to date?
As to writing the essays during English class, it depends on the quality of the school/teacher(s). Some English teachers, even those who are not as familiar with college admissions as those of us who work in the business are, are attuned to what would probably be appropriate and inappropriate (or, strong vs. weak) topics about which to write. But I’ve seen other English teachers ignore the theme/content and concern themselves only with the structure, style, coherence, and mechanics, while the topic itself is inadequate.
Many English teachers resort to student peer editing – which, depending on the quality of the peers – can be an excellent first step, but of course that’s a big If.