<p>I don't think anyone said that you shouldn't have a private counselor, Chimi. What I was saying is that it's not true that it's impossible to get in using a recycled essay, and it's not true that they reject common app essays, and it's not true that your essay has to be gimmicky or unique in form in order to get in.</p>
<p>i see...and I disagree...the beauty of Chicago is they love debate and disagreement breeds wonderful discourse.</p>
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What I was saying is that it's not true that it's impossible to get in using a recycled essay, and it's not true that they reject common app essays, and it's not true that your essay has to be gimmicky or unique in form in order to get in.
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i see...and I disagree...the beauty of Chicago is they love debate and disagreement breeds wonderful discourse.
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Well, all you need is one counter example in order to prove a statement false. I used some variation of my essay for all of my schools, including a common application school, and it was not gimmicky or unique in it's form. I was accepted. </p>
<p>Your essay has to be insightful, well written, interesting, creative, and original, but these things should be true for all application essays (and really all writing in general). There is no special secret to a Chicago essay.</p>
<p>Yeah venkater, you have no idea what you're talking about. Colleges actually RECOMMEND that applicants recycle their essays as long as they are creative, insightful, well-written, and original. It took me 2 months to come up with a great Personal Statement for the CommonApp, and if there's a prompt that's similar on the Chicago application, you can be sure that I'm going to go ahead and use that. Besides Chicago has over a 40% acceptance rate, so you're making it sounds like a much harder school to get into than it actually is.</p>
<p>Um, I think I said that you can get away with recycling a common app essay for Chicago. I would not recomend it for Chicago or any other reaches, but for other schools which don't put as much emphasis on their essays. When I said "For UChicago you just need to have more than a "common app" essay. " I meant that you need to put in a little extra than the blandish sort of essay that comes from writing directly to one of the common app questions. For Chicago, I actually think it is easiest to write a new essay because if you recycle an essay, you have to come up with the topic yourself. It may get a little hard to come up with a witty question, and I would assume if you copy and paste a common app question it will not look as good as an original question or a Chicago question. Also, the 40% admit rate is highy inflated due to self selection, so you are not really guaranteed to get in if you have the stats. Chicago just looks at your GPA and SAT to make sure you are smart, and will use essays and other things to either admit you or reject you.</p>
<p>evil<em>asian</em>dictator, if your essay is good, it probably doesnt matter what you wrote it on or what question you answered. It probably does not fit into the Chicago essay choices because they are a bit different (hence uncommon application).</p>
<p>Also, some of us wanted to have fun with the Chicago essays because they are a little more liberal than other colleges when it comes to essays. You can write about anything that interests you. For some colleges writing an off the wall essay may just be recieved as strange. Not Chicago. Those essays are welcome with open arms. For all my other colleges I wrote about my goals and interests. For chicago, I recalled a very unique event that I would never have written about for other colleges or their essay questions.</p>
<p>Venkater gets it!</p>