Today is 7-28-2018 and the Comm. App. is offline for FOUR MORE DAYS. We’ve got a busy summer so every day counts.
I know in the past many colleges posted their Supplemental Essay questions elsewhere so kids could get started. WHERE do we find them?
Thank you for any advice and assistance!
They may be posted on the school website. We have found a couple that way.
Thanks a bunch! We are working on that now, but so far not too much luck. Still, more to go.
Four days is a long time to wait when August is already filled with Test Prep.
Good luck to you and your family!
FYI. while the Common App goes live on 8/1, not all colleges post their supplement essays exactly on 8/1.
@BusyMomofSons Did you find all the supplement essays yet? Are they all available on the Common App yet? What schools are you looking at?
@thessaly1 Hi there. Yes, I think we have found all the Supplemental Essays now. It looks like they are listed on the Common App. , when you click the tab for each individual school. Thank goodness too b/c he is trying to start and finish all of those b/4 his senior year begins in 3 weeks.
This is our second go around for college admissions; my older son went through the application process during summer and fall of 2015. Is it just me, or are colleges going a little lighter on the number of essays required now? I remember my older son had at least 2 Supp. Essays for each school (he applied to 13, so that’s 26!) and some schools, like Notre Dame, had 4! That’s in addition to the Common App’s long Personal Statement essay. It was a long nightmare for him. He ultimately was admitted to William & Mary and he couldn’t be happier, but for our family, it was a long, tense, stress-inducing, worrisome process that lasted 7 months. (UVA was his first choice. Thank God he didn’t end up there – the campus and the culture is so dangerous nowadays).
As long as the actual decision-making process is behind closed doors, millions of kids and parents will be stressed and will endlessly speculate about how it “really works.” I, for one, would love to see colleges video tape an hour of decision making at their conference table (bleep out the applicant’s name/home town) and thus finally SHOW millions of people what they’re doing, rather than TELL us generally what their doing. I just watched a you tube video about Grinnell College who did exactly that. It was wonderful. No secrets there. How transparent and refreshing. Grinnell, you rock!
Anyway, my younger son is applying now. He picked 10 southern schools (he’ll probably add 2 more), and only 7 require Supp. Essays. A few of those are super easy and fun (If you had a food truck, what would you name it?) He didn’t have the GPA his older bro had so he’s not applying to the same schools. That’s fine with us! We have come to the conclusion that Ivy League colleges are in many ways, simply over-rated. Lots of articles about kids graduating from ivys with 100k+ debt and no job. But the ivys don’t care, they got paid all that tuition, and they have giant endowments.
Hmmmm, didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant. Just still shocked by the disconnect between the projected image of the college application process (“we value all our applicants; everyone has a shot at admission b/c we do a holistic review…”) and the reality of the process (high GPA, and to lesser extent SAT/ACT, is the only thing that gets your file into the admissions conference room. If you don’t meet their level, you’re out (unless you have a big hook) In other words, colleges are only considering kids’ extracurriculars, ltrs or rec, and essays IF the kid met their GPA levels. Some colleges are getting better about stating this reality, others are still singing the soothing song of “You should apply! Everyone has a chance! Be sure to attach your check for $70!”
I should have taken a picture of the stack of marketing materials he’s received so far. It’s one foot deep! More applicants means higher rank in US News. It’s all so ridiculous and dishonest.
OK, rant over. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Best of luck, and I mean that completely, to you and your teenager during the application process. Wishing you and your family a happy outcome and a stress-free senior year!
@BusyMomofSons Wow, thank you so much for this! That’s exactly how I’m feeling! We’re first timers and to make things worse we live overseas! I’m struggling with trying to fit my son into the college box of information they provide on their websites - middle range GPA and SAT, neither of which my son is at the top (3.7 - 1200). Also, he has no big hooks or extra curricular. What university wants that?
He’s looking mostly at NE - UDel, UConn, Buffalo, ??? VT is only southern school and he was considering UVA. What is the controversy there? That’s my biggest fear - choosing some horrible school that we had no idea about it’s reality.
This entire experience has definitely been awful and a real punch to his self-confidence. Glad to know we’re not alone in this boat!
I’m going to look for the Grinnell video. I agree, why does the selection process have to be such a big secret. It’s a racket for sure these days!
Best of luck to you and your son as well!
Some essays may only pop up after you declare your major and/or if you are applying for named scholarships. I remember that Rice, in particular, didn’t list all of its supplemental essays on the Common App – they only came up after you specified your area of academic interest.
We found the website College Essay Organizer particularly useful – it provided a tool for looking and organizing ALL of the essays for ALL of the schools, including scholarship applications.
@BusyMomofSons - I wasn’t able to find the Grinnell video on Youtube (I did see something from the Today Show from 2014 when Seth Allen – now Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Pomona – was still at Grinnell), but I did see a roundtable from Amherst that was interesting. Interesting note: when D applied to Grinnell for the class or 2021 (2017 HS grad) there were no supplemental essays, until there were. She got a request for a “Why Grinnell?” essay about one month after submitting her CA.
Here is a heads up on the Rice application - there is an essay that does not show up until you fill in the academics section of the Rice questions on the common app. It is set up this way because there are unique questions that appear if you are applying to architecture. But it could surprise someone if they are just glancing at the essays without filling out the basic data first.
Here is the essay question:
Rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community. The Residential College System is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What personal perspectives would you contribute to life at Rice? (500 word limit)
@thessaly1 UVA seems to be at the geographic center of the alt-right movement. Today marks the one year anniversary of a huge protest, where a young woman lost her life when an alt-right protester drove through a crowd of counter-protesters. As good as the school is (we visited with our then-rising sophomore daughter a few weeks earlier), I would be concerned about the atmosphere in the surrounding community. My discomfort is at a level similar to a rural parent being willing to send a child to an urban school, but nervous about a school in New York City.
@CTSScoutmom @thessaly1 My family and I are actually residents of Charlottesville. Our house is about 1.5 miles from Grounds. Personally, I think you, @CTSScoutmom, were smart not to send your daughter to college here, but not for the conservative/liberal standpoint. For a different reason entirely. If I had a daughter, I’d never allow her to go to UVA.
(Cville is a liberal town, not a conservative one. The alt-right who were here last year were from out of town. License plates from all over the country. Most of the people protesting the alt-right were local residents and walked to the downtown mall).
The real scare here is that the campus of UVA (known as “Grounds”) is no stranger to violent crime. The nation saw the fake rape story (Rolling Stone incident), and a couple of real rape/murder stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Hannah_Graham, https://wtvr.com/2016/03/03/the-disturbing-timeline-of-jesse-matthews-sexual-violence-and-murder/ )
What the nation never sees is the local news coverage of the day-to-day sexual assaults and crime here. A freshman girl from Richmond was attacked during orientation: https://www.aol.com/article/2016/08/22/uva-student-sexually-assaulted-at-knifepoint-during-orientation/21456516/
And there’s this dispicable fellow: https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/courts/then-uva-student-set-to-enter-plea-in-rape-trial/article_ec305204-86e4-11e8-85d7-176c151ceb97.html
There are areas in Cville that are very gritty and right up next to Grounds. UVA is a huge campus and naive kids are walking all over it 24/7. When girls leave local bars, they’re drunk and not paying attention to the townies following them as they leave. There are major train tracks that cut right through the most popular hangout area of UVA (the Corner); I have seen groups of hobos walking those tracks on more than a few occasions. In addition, there is a “bro culture” on Grounds in fraternities and sport teams; lots of tipsy girls find out too late their new friend was buying her shots for nefarious purposes.
Anyway, like I said, I live here. And I see it with my own eyes. Cville/UVA may sound like a small, quaint southern town, but in my opinion the crime matches that of a large, urban campus/city.
Yes, yes, there’s crime everywhere, and drunk college kids everywhere. But in the last 12 months I’ve been to 8 colleges and those schools seem to take ownership of the idea that it’s their responsibility to PREVENT crime on their campuses, not just “deal with it after it happens.” There’s a noticeable, tangible culture on campuses that take security more seriously.
And they have cracked down on the greek system in a way UVA never can. They have greek houses ON campus, not OFF campus. If the houses are on campus, they can police them thoroughly. For instance, at William & Mary, there is a walk-through of each floor of each fraternity by a school official TWICE a day, once in the afternoon and at night. At UVA, all the greek houses are located OFF Grounds and they are party-central.
College is going to cost us about $340,000 for 2 kids (out of our own pocket, no financial aid for us). For that price, I want gold-plated armed guards surrounding the campus protecting all the kids!