How Important Is The College Essay?

How Important Is The College Essay? Colleges with essay optional policies often do not specify whether submitted essay scores will be used for admission. When the college explicitly states that scores will not be evaluated, we have listed the policy as “Not Considered.” “Optional” should not be interpreted as meaning that the college uses submitted scores. We recommend contacting the school if you have specific questions. Want the strategies we have used to get students into top Ivy League schools in your email box every month? When you write a descriptive essay, you want to involve the reader's senses and emotions. Fortunately, these tips for writing essays can help you along the way and get you on the path to a well-written essay. Caroline’s admissions consulting service has helped students get into Harvard, Stanford, UPenn, and Columbia. Writing about yourself can be a slippery slope, which is why it is best to stick to the truth and leave the lies behind. In the end, the admissions committee is just looking for insight into your mind and character. It’s up to you to show them through your writing just what you can add to their school. Hospitals divide the labor of caring for sick people among the professions, but because the professions are still dominated by certain genders, the division ends up being one of gender more than job title. While this sounds like a lot of steps to write a simple essay, if you follow them you will be able to write more successful, clear and cohesive essays. Huge public schools tend to have more applicants than private schools, as well as limited resources with which to evaluate candidates. State schools tend to screen candidates first using GPA and test scores, before reviewing extracurricular activities and essays. At these schools, essays matter less if you have particularly strong academics. The more selective the school, however, the more important essays are. For instance, essays likely matter more at UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan compared to the University of Nebraska or University of Arizona. This is because more selective schools often have more qualified applicants, so essays are used kind of as a tie-breaker. The essay is always important, but just how much it will influence your overall application varies by the school to which you are applying, as well as your individual profile. For more detail, here are some argumentative essay writing tips. Expository essays compare, explore, and discuss problems. While there's a bit of a storytelling element to them, their purpose is greater than that. It's always to explain some integral concept to the reader. Some parents can act as a sounding board without taking over the project, while others cannot. When writing an essay for a standardized test, outline your essay and get through each paragraph as quickly as possible. When your time is up, a complete essay will score more points than an incomplete essay because the evaluator is expecting a beginning, middle and an end. To write an argumentative essay, it's important to research and back up what you say in the text. If you really feel that you will do poorly or that the anxiety might negatively impact the rest of your test, you should be OK without it. My son took the ACT without writing as a junior and received a 34 composite . He retook it as a senior with writing and also received a 34 composite , but only received an 8 on the writing portion. More than any other element of the application, the essay gives insight into who a student really is. So it should “sound” like the applicant, revealing personality, interests, quirks, personal style, and voice. The only other difference between the 2 scores is that he got a 36 Reading/35 Science on the first ACT, and 35 Reading/36 Science on the second. For competitive schools that don’t require the writing portion, would you recommend that he submit his first score without the writing, or the second? I’m thinking the first is probably a better choice for him (especially for liberal arts colleges/universities), but wanted to get your thoughts. We recognize that the essay is becoming increasingly less relevant in admissions, and we have plans to revisit this list and put the “Optional” schools in better context. That’s a difficult question to answer because of all of the potential factors. Have you had a practice essay scored to know where you stand? Also, don’t expect an essay score to stand out in the same way that your ERW and M scores might. Some colleges feel that removing “recommended” would mean that they are diminishing the importance of writing as a skill. That’s not the same thing as saying that it is important to them in the admission process.