What Is A Personal Statement? Everything You Need To Know About The College Essay

What Is A Personal Statement? Everything You Need To Know About The College Essay Among the top 250, I know my colleagues review essays because some are moved to “check” authenticity or to contact the school source to verify veracity of the context as provided by the student. It is my understanding that if essays are required by an institution, they are actually read. Again, the number of readers for each essay would depend upon individual institutional practices. Many large schools don’t require essays at all because they don’t have the personnel resources to process the huge number of admission essays which would be submitted. Schools which require essays, however, use the essay input to form a more complete picture of the applicant, over and above the numbers, grades, lists, and so on, which are entered onto the application form. The essays may form the most deciding part of the application after the student has met basic application criteria â€" grades, standardized test scores, etc. Again, the number of readers for each essay would depend on individual institutional practices. Any longer, and chances are good that you have more than one main idea. In which case, you need to find the other secondary main ideas and give them their own paragraphs. At Story To College we teach how to find their most honest and authentic stories and shape them into powerful essays that admissions officers will remember. We provide college application essay courses and admissions courses to help all our students achieve their best results. We are excited to host our first application essay courses in Atlanta this summer, starting May 29th. As a result, essays are extremely important at these schools, even for those with stellar academics. You will also have to learn to bulk up the content of each paragraph. I dislike giving rules or formulas to students when it comes to college writing because nearly every rule or formula has both weaknesses and exceptions. But a general guideline for the paragraphs in your college essays is that they should be about 1/3 to 1/2 of a page. Based on my experience, we read every essay at the institutions were I served. Typically, applications received two reads and a third if the decisions were split. The number of reads and the process for reviewing application essays vary from college to college. While College Board and ACT have made these components optional, a small number of colleges continue to require or recommend them. Students typically must finalize testing decisions well before they finalize their lists of where they will apply to college, so a significant majority of students still take the essay exams each year. Duke provides “recommended” guidance and drops strong hints that the essay is still worth submitting in many cases. The list of holdouts, though, continues to decline. Claremont McKenna dropped the requirement as of November 2018, and Wellesley finally stopped asking for ACT Writing . Princeton has replaced the SAT or ACT essay requirement by deciding to require a graded essay from a high school class instead. Teacher and Counselor recommendations also reveal aspects of the student as a person, but the essays are the part of the application in which the student’s “voice” will come through. I am almost certain that one of my clients was accepted at the university she ultimately attended because of the clever formulation of one of her essays. There are many different kinds of schools, however, so it would be impossible to know how each of them handles the essays which are submitted. I do know that some schools have a group of readers, each receiving one set of essays, with each individual essay being read by just one person. In other instances, each essay is distributed to several readers, who will then compare their impressions when the admissions committee meets to decide upon student admissions. In this instance, the essay would be read by several people. Find the course that’s right for you at storytocollege.com/courses, or call us to talk to an expert at . So yes, they are read by all the admissions officers, particularly the ones who oversee your county and region. If you send more than the one supplemental essay suggested, there’s no guarantee they’ll read themâ€"unless they don’t think they have enough to go on. That said, if they don’t think they have enough to go on after 2 essays, you’ve got a bigger problem. She even got a personal note from one of the admissions officers about it. All of the other parts of her application were at a high level, as well, but it was the essay that caught the admissions officer’s eye. The importance of the essay, like so much else in the application process, depends upon the applicant and the school. This can be demonstrated with every campus visit and interview, and through ongoing contact with the admissions office. The SAT Essay and ACT Writing continue to pose a conundrum for students.