Hello,
I want to share with you the toppics I chose for my essays and hear your opinions about them:(I’m from Algeria and I’m applying for some colleges in the USA).
1-In one of my essays I want to explain why I don’t have many extracurricular activities by stating the diffrences between high schools in Algeria and USA, what do you think about that?
2-All these colleges require students to write an essay where they talk about one of their extracurricular activities; I decide to talk about my contributions as a Wikipedia editor and submit the same essay to diffrent colleges, do you think it is a good idea? or should I talk about diffrent activity to each college?
3-I wrote about list of books I have read in the past twelve months, but I made it more general talking about my passionate to certain gendre and authors; will this give the admission commity a bad image of me because I didn’t stick to the topic? also should I talk about these books bereifly or give more details about them?
4-Some colleges ask me to write why I decided to apply for them so I state acadmic, cultural and financial reasons, will that be sufiecent?
I really appreciate your help and remarks, that can guide me to approve more my essays or have new ideas.
General comment, you can recycle an essay and re-use all or part it it for multiple schools. They don’t care.
On the “why college X”, being as specific as possible about that college (facilities, majors/coursework available, EC activities, etc) is a good idea. It may require spending a lot of time on their websites, since I assume you have not visited. I personally would stay away from financial reasons – they KNOW why international students looking for aid are knocking on their door.
Agree that to give input on the rest, we need to know the prompts.
You should not stress so much about this, there is so specific formula to get in. I know people who got rejected with great essays, perfect testings scores and impressive ECs. That’s said, admission officers review applications ‘holistically’ and your essays topics do matter but not as much as the quality of your writings… Be creative.
Are you applying to an ivy? These app questions look sorta like Princeton’s.
I am from Algeria, too. The institutions I have contacted so far, said they are aware of each applicant’s circumstances. In other words, if there is no EC available to you, you won’t in any way be disadvantaged -unless you are applying to some kind of those cash cows, who only cares about what you have in your bank account, not your academic record and CV-
The books? The details? It DEPENDS on the question they asked. However, it does not hurt to concentrate on a specific book or author; this will eventually allow them to know more about YOU! -I think you’d better contact the admission office of each college, you have nothing to lose-
By the way, are you a prospective undergraduate? The SAT and ACT are not offered in Algeria currently. Did you travel to Tunisia and take them? Or you are just applying to test-optional universities? Took it in the previous years?!
Best of luck.