<p>I'm writing my main essay for Rice right now, and I was hoping to use the one I wrote for Stanford. I was thinking that I would mold the conclusion and a line or two of the introduction to make it fit the Rice prompt, since the main body works equally well for both. However, since I alluded to the photograph that's pretty characteristic of Stanford's prompt, would Rice adcoms be suspicious if I kept it in? They already know that I'm applying to Stanford (my interviewer asked me straight-out where else I was applying to), and I figure they would know Stanford's essay prompts well enough anyways.</p>
<p>Also, would it be a bad idea to use that photograph part because Rice would see it as me not putting forth enough of an effort to write a unique essay for their school? I know the logical idea would be to delete that photograph reference, but it's too integral a part of my essay to delete without revising about 1/4 of my essay.</p>
<p>Recycling essays is very common - just about nobody writes unique essays for every single app - but I'd be cautious about using essays that appear to answer prompts that belong to another school. E.g., if well-known school A asks for an essay about the person you admire most, sending that essay to school B might be a bit offputting if they were well aware of School A's prompt.</p>
<p>I'd recommend you revise the essay as needed to have it appear directly responsive to Rice's prompt. Who knows, you might end up with an even better essay after you revise it.</p>
<p>I was planning on using my Common App essay for UConn, which doesn't use the common app. UConn has a question "Ask and answer the one question you wish we would have asked" and I just formed a question based on my common app essay. Is this bad?</p>
<p>I trimed my 860 words stanford essay down to 600 for UCs, now I want to trim it down to 500 words for common app. it's getting really impossible to do.
anyone else triming as much as I do?</p>
<p>Yup, reused my Stanford essays for UC.. had a hard time expanding the 1600 chars to 600 words and a very hard time cutting down 1600 chars to 200 words. ):</p>
<p>If your essay is 600 words, it will work in the common app. Just print/preview before you push "submit" to see if it fits in the page and it's spaced correctly.</p>