How Important Is The Essay?

How Important Is The Essay? Unable to take this beloved course a second time, I chose my senior classes with more than a touch of melancholy. I was skeptical that even the most appealing humanities class, AP Literature, would be anything but anticlimactic by comparison. I’d become so accustomed to reading the function-focused writings of Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Thoreau, that I found it difficult to see “literature” as anything more than mere stories. I wanted substance that I could actually do something with, and I didn’t expect to find it in AP Lit. Yes, the essay is an important part of your application. But remember it is still a part of your application. In brainstorming about what topic to write about for your Common Application essay, look at what you intend to present in the rest of your application and think about overarching traits that can represent you. Maybe not, but I loved the rules, the structure, and the big questions that surrounded organizing a government. I thought about these things constantlyâ€"while brushing my teeth, doing chores, and driving to school. So I went to see for myself, visiting on September 9th, 2017. The info session was intimate â€" more so than any other I have attended â€" with a relatively select group of students offered full campus access. The college essay is an important vehicle for telling the admissions committee about yourself, but the academic factors are far more important, even if the essay is worthy of a Pulitzer. As you know, each college has average requirements for admission. Admissions teams review your GPA, the difficulty of the courses you took, and your standardized test scores, which is data that can be graphed. This essay doesn’t share many life-defining revelations; we learn, as a brief aside, that the author often cared for her younger siblings, but little beyond that. Yet despite its relative lack of major information, it reveals a lot about who the author is. We learn that the author knows how to turn a phrase, the author is a warm and caring person, the author has a sense of humor, and the author will bring us cookies if we admit her to our imaginary college. All in all, we see a student who is a skilled writer with a warm heart â€" positive traits, to be sure. When my best friend John Smith ‘20 told me about U.Chicago’s diverse campus environment , I was excited, but skeptical â€" diversity can mean different things to different people. I attribute a lot of my successes to how my application as a whole, not just the essays, constructs a story about who I am and what I’ve done. Don’t worry about being someone else’s idea of a “good writer.” If you’re not funny, it’s not the time to be funny. If you’re not a good writer and don’t have a huge vocabulary, don’t use fancy words. Your ideas can be profound and can show deep insight into your character, even if they are told in simple, unadorned phrases. That said, you should absolutely get someone to edit for typos and grammar. Bob Davis ’12, my tour leader, was extraordinarily patient, walking me through U.Chicago’s outstanding array of clubs and societies, including the MSAC Committee. U.Chicago is one of the only schools I am considering that even offers a student-led Diversity Committee, much less one that advises faculty and university management on key outreach issues.Outstanding. Don’t just farm it out â€" learn from those writing lessons and use the essay to become more confident in your own voice. You can fix the writing and your thoughts will still be there. The other thing I caution about is the service trip. If you want to write about how you saved the word, you shouldn’t do it. This information will show them how your scores compare to their average requirements and with other students who are applying to their school or program. Surprisingly, some applicants never care to ask this question, and they write essays that don’t enhance their applications. Putting your ideas into the right words may take time. Don’t procrastinate on this part of your application.