<p>Rhea, this is my fourth cycle on CC of watching applications, deferrals, denials, etc. </p>
<p>If you go back through the archives, look at What Are My Chances (ugh!) or individual schools for queries and then look at actual results, you will see that as an overall pattern, students are waaaaay too optimistic about their peers’ chances. </p>
<p>H20, the best essay is the one that conveys you as a real, breathing person, who you really are. So many essays, understandably, fall into a formal facade designed to impress an admissions committee. It’s almost Zen: impress the admissions committee without trying to impress them. I do recommend Harry Bauld’s book about college application essays…it at least makes you aware of a number of the common traps in selection of topic. A lot of the other books out there are rubbish.</p>
<p>At many colleges they won’t see anything but your top scores: some clerk is inputting them into an easy-to-read form for fast review by admissions officers. They’ll notice the improvement only if for some reason they start digging into the file. If you read some of the anecdotal reporting in places like THE GATEKEEPERS, corroborated by other testimony, the average admissions file gets about 15-30 minutes of attention. A lot of <em>that</em> is spent in close reading of the essay, the recs, the narrative parts of an application. They’re reducing you to a number, a Yes/No/Maybe, as quickly as possible, with notes to bring up when your file is discussed in committee, assuming it’s neither an Auto Admit or Auto Deny.</p>
<p>The one good thing in <em>this</em> particular case is that, imo, Wellesley has one of the most humane, thoughtful admissions groups around. (Stanford is another.) They realize it’s stress, they do their damnedest to treat you as a human being, and their Early Evaluation process is something I wish more colleges would emulate…it’s fair to the student, if brutal when you get an Unlikely or even a Possible (about a 1/3 chance, if I recall correctly).</p>
<p>Last of all…good luck.</p>