<p>How important are essays compared to grades, recommendations, interview, activities, etc</p>
<p>Also, how important are the common app essays compared to the school specific essays</p>
<p>Grades, test scores and recommendations are deal makers or breakers, essays and interviews are mostly tiebreakers.</p>
<p>it varies greatly among the schools. elite private schools care much more about essays than enormous publics do, for example. as a general rule, the more selective a school is, the more they care about essays.</p>
<p>It actually depends on the college</p>
<p>ya…what he said</p>