<p>Just my opinion…if your child can’t write a “why this college” short essay…then why IS your child applying to this school???</p>
<p>He’s applying because he thinks it would <em>probably</em> be a great fit, based on the quality of the department, location, etc. It’s not that he doesn’t know why he’s applying, he’s just afraid that his answer will be the same as 95% of the applicants to SCS – “it’s a top program”.</p>
<p>I think it can help your son to feel more comfortable with his response if he writes it straight from the heart, without trying to dress it up. If the school just feels right to him, he can say that. If he has heard that the program has a terrific reputation, he can say that (and they will be happy to hear it :-)). If he looks at the course listings and sees many that he would love to take, say that. And so on. This mini-essay doesn’t have to have much structure; he can write it as he would say it.</p>
<p>Thanks all, your suggestions have been helpful.</p>
<p>My D added Duke to her list last year, literally as an afterthought, on Jan 1st, after she had finished submitting all her other applications. She had never researched the college before, and the honest answer to “Why Duke” would have been “because your deadline has not passed yet”. But instead, she spent about an hour or so on their website, found an academic program that seemed like a perfect fit for someone like her, and was somewhat unique to Duke and she wrote her essay around that. It was a pretty convincing essay and sufficiently masked the fact that she was not too enthusiastic about the school. She got in (actually got a likely letter too), so obviously the essay worked.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/270524-101-reasons-attend-cornell.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/270524-101-reasons-attend-cornell.html</a></p>
<p>Here you go. :)</p>
<p>The Cornell supplement doesn’t have a “Why Cornell?” essay.</p>
<p>It has different essays for each college within Cornell, in which you have to justify your fit with that college. </p>
<p>I don’t think a visit to the campus would help much here. Research about the individual college’s opportunities could just as easily (maybe more easily) be conducted online.</p>
<p>I think students can use the “Why X College” essay as a way to further describe themselves. Your son can talk about his interest in gaming/computer science (why those fields? what has he done with them so far?), and then talk about how Cornell/CMU’s CS departments interest him – what classes he might want to take, what ECs he might want to participate in, what programs he would want to participate in. I know it sounds crass, but every college essay should be approached as another way to market yourself.</p>
<p>For CMU, he could watch Randy Pausch’s last lecture. He taught CS, and did some very interesting things with it that come up in that lecture.</p>
<p>thanks, oldfort, that’s a nice way to get some insight into the kinds of things that are harder to find via the website</p>
<p>The “Why This College” essay should fit the same mold that any other essay should fit… it should come from the heart and be honest about why. If your “real” reason is because of vague prestige or because a girl/boyfriend will go there, you are, as one student said, “chained to write a bland essay.”</p>
<p>The essay should say more than things about the school itself - it should give an insight into who the student is. Applicants go crazy over this prompt, but you have to remember the actual reason schools ask this: They need to increase yield - they don’t want to waste too much time, energy, and even financial aid on someone who is sending out dozens of applications and probably won’t end up at that school. This essay is a way of saying to the college, in a sense, “If I am accepted, I will show up.”</p>
<p>But, the main advice here is to make it personal - more about why the STUDENT would be a good fit there than any bland words about how great the school is.</p>
<p>Beyond that, there are some techniques to make an interesting essay, but really, this is only a deal-breaker if it comes across looking like most other blah essays about this topic.</p>
<p>The best personal statement essays show some type of growth/transition/becoming a stronger person, and it’s the same for this topic. I think an especially effective essay for “Why This School” - especially if you have not visited - is one in which the attraction was not instant. The best love affairs GROW. It’s real love, not infatuation, so if one can document the growth of the love for the school, it’s even better. For example, it’s OK to say that originally it was one of many looked at, but as you began to research and investigate and compare, something starting developing that brought the school to the front of the pack - but relate that to personal reasons and why the fit seems to work.</p>
<p>Anyway, you get the idea… and don’t stress too much about this one.</p>
<p>…btw, many moons ago, I used to work in the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the CMU Computer Science Department. It is an unbelievable place - my office was surrounded by offices of people who wrote some of my grad school textbooks - and that position led to an amazing career after that.</p>
<p>He should spend some time on the websites of the computer science departments. Especially at Carnegie Mellon it will be the SCS guys making the decision they don’t care that you love the green tile roofs or the Pittsburgh location. At least at CMU there is tons and tons of info about the sort of research that is going on there. He should pick out some things that sound interesting to him and write about that. At CMU in particular the fact that SCS is not part of the Engineering school means that there is an educational philosophy that is much more targeted at what they think computer scientists need. They wanted to write their own rules for what a computer major needed. Also at CMU computer scientists need to pick a minor - if your son has anything interesting to say on that score he should address it. (If he just think that’s a troublesome requirement - he can ignore it as far as the essay is concerned.)</p>
<p>This may sound like heresy to those whose students are still slaving over these essays but I do wonder whether these are even read by Admissions at the large schools. For instance, DD2 applied to Ohio State (over 18,000 applications last year). How could they possibly read that many essays? Maybe if you’re on the bubble but I’ll bet those with stellar stats and those whose stats are clearly sub-par just get decisioned automatically based on numbers. Of course, maybe this is me wishing since I don’t think she spent too much time on this one and she doesn’t have a decision from them yet!</p>