<p>Would a boarding school such as Deerfield frown upon re-using essays from last year?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do it; presumably both your thinking and your writing skill will have developed over the year. I think they’d want to see how.</p>
<p>If you do re-use an essay for another school’s application which has a similar essay question (e.g., Why I want to go to Posh Academy…), MAKE SURE to change the school’s name in the essay… ;-)</p>
<p>I don’t think you should re-use essays from the school they were originally intended for. For example, don’t re-ues your Deerfield essay from last year. But, if your Deerfield essay from last year will work for Kent’s essay, then go ahead and use it.</p>
<p>If you were my child, I’d suggest you not follow that path.</p>
<p>Creative reinterpretation is fine. They’re your words, after all. BUT, one would expect some development and change in perspective over the course of 9 months to a year…so you may want to start with what you had, but that’s the glory of word processors, you can cut and paste and add and delete and recast it to resemble most closely where you are now. Writing instructors at all of these schools will tell you that good writing is a craft that requires <em>practice</em>; don’t just cut and paste an old essay…think of it as an opportunity to update where you’re at now in a long series of snapshots that will continue throughout your education. (Yep, spoken like a parent AND a teacher)</p>
<p>Just to clarify . . . this would be the same essay that didn’t get you in last year?</p>
<p>Think about it.</p>