And yet on a recent college tour this fall I was told point blank by an AO that the essay was the most important thing that they were looking at this year because COVID affected ECs so much.
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I know. It surprised me as well.
I can shed light anecdotally so take it with a grain of salt.
One of my kids was fortunate enough to gain admission to 5 of the 7 “top 15”schools he applied. He was very deliberate in his application choices and specific in his essays.
We attended 3 schools accepted students events and and spoke extensively with a AOs and an alum member at one school he was wait listed and ultimately accepted at. In each case they referenced his essays in detail and had specific recollection about his background. I had always assumed details and depth mattered but was caught a bit off guard be the AOs sense of knowing the student and having heard the students voice in the application.
It led me to conclude that everything matters and the time spent reviewing applications by admissions goes up dramatically for those accepted. The conventional wisdom is that applications only get 15 minutes of review. I suspect that may be an average but not the case for applications that progress to an admissions offer.
In retrospect I think kids with a competitive application are well served by identifying a relatively small cohort of “safety” and “match” schools and being very detailed and bespoke in preparing their applications for a fairly broad group of “reach” schools that they feel connected to and can convey this connection in their application.
Having several kids I can also say this wouldn’t work for all kids. It presumes the student has the requisite credentials, self awareness, motivation and risk acceptance to go for it if they seek a top 20 and find ones that fit.
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Those posters are wrong.
A better analogy is that each applicant is rolling a pair of dice, and let’s suppose the elite colleges need a sum of 11 or higher to grant admission. Students may incorrectly assume that their dice is numbered 1 to 6, and therefore more applications always help.
In reality, weak students may have dice that only go 1 to 4 (some numbers are repeated) so they will never get admission, no matter how often they apply. On the other hand, extremely strong students might have multiple sixes, so their chance of multiple admissions is quite high.
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Anecdotal info, too, but D attends a selective SLAC that has been known to include handwritten notes in acceptance packages that directly reference something from a student’s essay. Does that mean it is important? Not necessarily but someone is reading it closely enough to comment on it.
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I’m not surprised at this.
I like how many chance mes say my essay is strong or a 9/10, etc.
Truth is - these guys are reading file after file after file - and very few probably really stand out.
They probably see repetitive topics, etc - so over and over and over again.
I can’t imagine essays at most schools are that impactful in most cases. I know one person on a committee who told me if the GPA/ACT are not up to snuff, they’re not even read - even though their materials show - every app is fully read.
No one truly knows - but it is important that everyone puts their best foot forward to be sure!! But imagine the stress that is caused by these essays that - as your example is saying - are likely not overly impactful in the admission decision.
btw - the AOs are likely not English professors 
My sense is for many schools, the essay is not make or break (given that it is decent and reasonably well written). For the most selective schools it may be a way to break a “tie” between two equally deserving candidates. Most essays I’ve read (including supposedly outstanding ones put online by a few schools) are fairly ho-hum - as to be expected from 18 year olds lacking a lot of formative experiences.
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Three aspiring Ivy leaguers with 4.0 GPA, 36 ACTs and great ECs walk into a bar. Bartender says aside from being academically strong tell me about yourself…
At the higher end a significant portion of applicants hit all of the benchmarks. Particularly for the unhooked the only differentiating factor are essays and LOR.
While I haven’t seen it recently elite schools used to boast of only accepting 30% of the thousands of valedictorians that applied to their schools. If not essays how did they distinguish among these similarly academically talented kids.
Duke Class of 2022
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This makes a lot of sense. Thanks. For my daughter, her feelings of “connection” to the schools she’s considering definitely vary. So, we’re generally going with that.
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Based on what I’ve seen, I agree that it is not a lottery for top students. Of course, no guarantees to HYPSM but not far from these schools either (and, yes, there will be unlucky folks who go 0 for XX).
Having been on CC for the last 7+ years, the CC posters who say that tend to be students. Long time users do not think it’s a lottery.
Re essays, there’s a distinction between the personal statement and the supplemental essays. I would say that for the most selective schools, the essays matter a lot, maybe the supplementals even more so than the personal statement. Supplementals need to be tailored to the college.
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Yes, USC stresses the importance of essays
The chance of admission depends on many factors that vary with the particular college, but scattergrams suggest that Vanderbilt has a high admit rate for kids with your ACT score. I’ve seen scattergrams that almost look like a wall of acceptances after crossing a particular score threshold.
Vanderbilt seems to place a greater emphasis on having a high test score than other similar colleges, almost as if they make a special effort to keep their 75th percentile score at 35. I believe being a NMS also helps more with Vanderbilt than most similar colleges, with Vanderbilt sponsoring NMS and offering NMS merit. Some details may have changed more recently with being test optional + COVID, but Vanderbilt still seems to hit above their selectivity in terms of test scores. For example:
Middle 50% ACT
Vanderbilt – 33 to 35 (2019), 33 to 35 (2020)
Harvard-- 33 to 35 (2019), 33 to 35 (2020)
Yale – 33 to 35 (2019), 33 to 35 (2020)
Princeton-- 32 to 35 (2019), 33 to 35 (2020)
Stanford-- 31 to 35 (2019), 32 to 35 (2020)
Emory – 31 to 34 (2019), 31 to 34 (2020)
USC – 30 to 34 (2019), 31 to 34 (202)
There is also some evidence that Chicago may favor kids from HS like yours to a far greeater extent than typical HYPSM… type colleges. This fits with why a “shot gun” strategy can be effective. Different colleges have different admission systems that focus on different criteria to different degrees. They also have different applicant pools that can lead to different decisions. A particular student doesn’t know this level of detail about the admission process. They may not know which highly selective colleges may place more emphasis on their 36 ACT and which highly selective colleges may place less emphasis on scores and more emphasis on other criteria for which they are weaker. They may not know which particular colleges are really interested in getting more kids with their desired field of study, kids with their ECs/awards, kids with their background or demographics, etc. The end result can be different admission decisions at colleges that appear to have a similar overall admit rate or score range. So while researching a good fit is bet, applying to a lot of colleges that are not obviously a best fit can also notably increase chance of getting >0 acceptances.
However, here are also downsides to a “shot gun” strategy including time, effort, and cost on applications; which can lead to reducing application quality. For example, maybe you spend less time researching the college and less time on the application essay, if you have another dozen more to write. It may be easier to just cut and paste the essay, rather that write something truly unique that fits well with the college. Each year a significant number of kids forget to change the name of the college when cut and pasting their application essay. I’ve interviewed kids who say that want to major in a field that isn’t offered at the college. Decisions also tend to be correlated with one another, rather than independently random. For example, if you apply to 10 colleges with an admit rate of 10%, that does not mean your chance of admission to >0 of them is 1 - 90%^10 = 65%. Your chance of admission to >0 of them may instead be ~0%, if you are not especially well qualified.
I think there is a real advantage to the selective schools that ask for many supplemental essays. Five to eight short essays do a great job, IMO, of revealing the many facets of the student.
My kid has now applied to four schools—one REA, two state safeties, and UMichigan EA. The REA had 5+ supplemental essays and the other three had two. Even though the 5+ essays were time consuming and stressful there is no doubt in my mind that my kid was able to convey their personality, interests, and quirkiness in a way that their answers to the two generic prompts just didn’t.
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Here’s the other downside - applying to schools that you have no idea of if they’re a fit for you.
But I suppose if you get in you can take a trip and find that out later.
Or the weaker applicants have four sided dice, while stronger applicants have eight, ten, or twelve sided dice, and the high priority recruited athletes and development applicants have twenty sided dice (all numbered from 1 up).
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Most “outsiders” have no real idea of what good essays and recommendations are in comparison to the rest of the college’s applicant pool. Even at the same college, different admission readers may get more or less favorable impressions of the same essay, despite general guidelines from the college about what the college is looking for.
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Are they’re schools that are known to place more weight on standardized test scores?
One thing about “fit” is that the applicant’s idea of “fit” may not match the college’s idea of “fit”.
For example, an applicant focused on science and pre-med may favor applying to science and pre-med heavy colleges, but those colleges will see many similar applicants, increasing competition even if there is no formal admission by major (an admission reader may get bored reading the 10,000th pre-med application). Meanwhile, that applicant probably would not see a humanities-heavy college as a good “fit”, but that college may see the applicant as a good “fit” to help its goal of diversifying its current student population and expanding its appeal to a greater range of prospective students who may apply in later years.
Similar observations may apply to other “fit” factors such as demographics (region, SES, race, ethnicity, gender) and other non-academic characteristics of the students. Colleges want market themselves to the greatest range of prospective students possible, which means enrolling some students from each potential target market as a way of showing “we have students just like you who are happy here” (without resorting to stuff like photo editing)
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For private for profit universities, don’t let the median or middle 50% statistics fool you.
Many of them heavily favors legacy. An indirect, borderline legal and discriminatory way to identify those applicants who are likely be able to afford the tuition at full price.
Master degree is different as these institution really need smart students to do research.
I studied two years master in an Ivy college, as a part time TA in a computer science class I was shocked almost entire class were legacy students.