Advice from an admitted student

Hope_Full
Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:48:31 +0000

This OP was absolutely correct and those interested in Penn (or other top school) should re-read this post carefully. “Being good at everything” is meaningless is you are careless with your application. This holiday break, six of my younger friends asked me to read thir applications to Ivy League schools. Four of the six had better SAT scores than I had, but they have virtually no chance of getting accepted to their top choices because their essays were so horrific. The reason why those with 2300 plus SAT scores are rejected each year by Penn (and other top schools), while those with lower scores are accepted, is the applicant’s essays. Everyone thinks their essays are good, but very, very few are truly well written. The worst thing an applicant can do is to wait until the last two weeks before the application deadline to begin writing essays. Essays should be started months ahead of time. They should be read by at least six people who are excellent writers. The supplemental essays should be specific to the school (if you submitted the same supplemental essay for more than one school, you lost an opportunity to shine) and all of your essays, read together, should tell an interesting story. This is a difficult task that requires hundreds of hours of writing. For those in the class of 2016 with great scores, please take your essays very seriously. The summer before your senior year is a very good time to start working on what you want to tell the schools in your essays. Once you figure out the story you want to tell, you will be able to mold this story to whatever the prompts are, once they are released. Assuming you’re not a URM, recruited athlete, or legacy, writing good essays is what will determine whether you are accepted or rejected (assuming, of course, that you have pretty good test scores and grades). It breaks my heart seeing my friends with great SAT scores get rejected because they dropped the ball on the essays.

Getting great scores and grades will get you into the “seriously considered” pool of applicants at top schools. However, to get accepted, your application needs to be top-notch. It’s that simple, people.