So, almost all schools that I will be applying to require a “Why X school” essay. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really know what to write. There are a lot of things that don’t really matter to me, for example, I liked both the city environments of UPenn and NYU, but I also loved the small college town feel of Ann Arbor for the University of Michigan. I’m kind of stuck on what to write that is unique to certain schools. I have visited a few of the schools on my list, and I practically love all of them, but I don’t really know what to write about. Is it okay to write pretty generically about the schools and copy and paste a lot from each essay and just customize each of them a bit, or should they all be very specific to that school? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!
I applied to both Columbia in NYC and Michigan in AA. One thing I remember is that make sure you write about the school not entirely about the city the school is located. So many people write about the greatness of the city and its vast opportunities offered, but not particularly about the school.
My daughter loves to remark that writing about some one individual experience she may have had at each of the schools she visited put her over the top to the schools to which she applied.
She is really a bare bones, just-the-facts kind of person but feels that individualizing her responses and NOT doing a copy/paste with customization was what helped her to know that while she was not effusive and cheerleader-y about anything, she did show each school that she had made a point to get to know something about the school community/the architecture and its impact on her thoughts/or the classroom environment and her impressions there.