How Long Should Your College Application Essay Be?

How Long Should Your College Application Essay Be? Each school, professor and student body is different. Colleges must adapt their rules and discipline efforts to reflect the current needs of their students. Eliminating cell phones in college classrooms is an overstretch, but there are ways to balance students’ rights and instructors’ rights. With the right amount of control and flexibility, colleges can create a pleasant learning environment with maximum safety and minimal interruptions. 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. Given their testing page, I find it hard to believe that they are rejecting students for not having an essay score. We will be leaving it up, however, until we get clearer guidance from the school. The did say that a single test with an essay is fine. 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? As you may have read, the essay is becoming less important every year â€" even at Duke. If you feel that you would do well or would like to keep all of your options open, then I would encourage you to spend the extra time to take Writing. Take a look at some of these opening lines from college entrance essays submitted to Stanford University. You don’t want to write an entire essay only to find out you were completely off topic. The number of reviewers reading the essays vary from school to school. I cannot make that claim, but I do believe that most of them are read. In smaller to mid size colleges they are certainly read, at least by two readers, and all Honors College essays are read. Most colleges hire readers during the application season. How many people read each essay varies by institution with two being somewhat standard. Tell the reader something about yourself that might not be included in the rest of the application. A great college essay is one in which the student’s voice and though process comes through clearly. It should be consistent with the rest of the application and showcase an aspect of the student not highlighted in the rest of the application. We contacted Miami, and they are still maintaining that it is required for placement. Either way, it will not hurt your ability to superscore. Son is sophomore who will be taking the September ACT. He is not a great writer, does not like writing, and does not want to take the writing portion. He likely will score in the range and apply to a variety of schools (a couple top [sub-10% acceptance rate] privates and top publics, as well as some less competitive universities and colleges). Do you think lacking the writing score â€" which likely would be average â€" will hurt him? Put another way, would doing the writing help him at schools where it is “optional” assuming his score is not great but not terrible? That said, I don’t like to stand in the way of students motivated to retest. If he has the time and the desire, he could take the ACT again on Feb 8. He shouldn’t count on his Writing score making a difference. I don’t know of any superscoring school that will not superscore across ACT and ACT with Writing. 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. 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. It’s important to draw your reader in from the very first sentence. 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. They are so different that they can’t really be compared. Also, we know that the 25th-75th percentiles scores at the most competitive colleges are 8-10, so your essay score should not be a concern. 8 falls within the 25th-75th range of enrolled students at even Berkeley and UCLA. More important, the UCs are likely to drop the essay requirement this year.