I agree it’s easier said than done. It also depends on the type of school. It’s really the reachy schools that have all the harder essays. They are not long, but require a degree of self awareness and introspection that is difficult for many. At the end of the day, my (very smart) 17 yo son hasn’t given his life that much thought. He is working hard and doing things he enjoys while being a good friend and community member. He hasn’t thought about where he wants to be in 10 years or how he is personally going to change the world. IMO that should not disqualify him, but somehow it seems to.
ETA - ending the summer with a polished common app essay and testing behind you is not a bad place to be.
That’s a great plan. I always smile when I see posts of strong drafts produced in hours / envious actually. For our S (years ago) the process was weeks, even months. He had great results with his efforts.
In May of D24’s junior year, their English teacher started spending some time in class framing up a good “personal statement” essay that formed the basis of her personal statement in the common app. In late July and August she started spending more time on that (and we did get some external help).
In August, we made the list of essays based on what schools had what available and she worked them in order of the schools she liked the most / mixed with some of “essays that were very similar.”
In early September we applied to a few of the schools she was interested in that didn’t require essays for admission (only for later scholarships/honors colleges). Not going to lie, it was great to get a few early “You’re in!” emails / letters to settle the “it will be ok, you will go to college” anxiety.
September and October were not a ton of fun, not going to lie, on top of fall sports, but tried to carve out some Saturday / Sunday afternoon coffee shop time.
It was ultimately worth it, getting all 14 turned in before the November 1 EA date. The downside with that is that at this point, there is very little energy for scholarship / honors applications. In hindsight, we should have just pushed to get those done in November.
I think one challenge is that for many kids, things really change as the fall goes on as they are forced to think more deeply about what matters to them.
My S24 is a strong writer, was well researched, and had a clear plan…yet there was still immense growth over the Fall as he narrowed in even more on what was important to him and was then able to communicate it even more effectively making the essays more compelling. I guess that’s how I would explain it in his case.
Seems that way. We were fortunate in that our S had been motivated since junior year in HS. I think that visits to potential colleges that year ignited his desire.
Agree for sure. S24 was so on top of stuff that I was more of the slow-down and sit with it mindset. Definitely matured over time.
We laugh about the cringiest essay he wrote back in August about healthcare insurance as a Coke Semi-finalist. No way in the world would he have written that essay a couple months later.
D24 has submitted her final application today, and I agree with many that her (already strong) writing became better as she wrote and polished more and more essays. She definitely became much faster and better at meeting word counts without first writing too much that had to be edited down.
Our experience was similar to other replies you have gotten. I had my ideas about what sort of process would work well for S24, giving him lots of time for reflection and revision. My ideas on the subject ended up having almost no influence on his actual process.
To be fair, he is a good writer with a record of good grades on difficult writing assignments, and so he had his own ideas on what process works for him. But I also think a lot of it was just psychological, and indeed social. He needed to feel the need to write, and I could not (and I knew should not) be the source of that feeling.
So as usual, my two cents is the best we can do is make sure they at least understand what they need to do, and then be available to support them whenever they want it. And maybe for some kids that will involve a more spread out, systematic process. But if sometimes it involves pointing out that essay that is due in 21 hours is still at best a half-baked, details-free mess and needs a lot of work . . . join the club.
But so far, at least, all the planes have landed safely on the runway. The innocent passengers’ state of mind not apparently being a major concern of the pilot.
S24 was done applying to all schools EA by October. He submitted his UC applications in October too.
He wrote his common app essay over the summer. He worked on it, on and off, for almost two months, got feedback, and was happy with it by early August. It helped that he had a deadline early August for Pitt. He also wrote out rough drafts of the UC PIQs over the summer. He also spent a lot of time building his college list - ended up applying to 11 schools (3 reaches, rest match/safeties).
Once he got accepted at Pitt (Aug 28th), he took that as the green light to apply everywhere else by early October. The rest of October was spent fine tuning the UC apps. It has been a bit surreal to be completely stress free over college applications at our house while all his peers were stressing over application deadlines in November and over the winter break.
The one advantage of maybe breaking it up into two rounds of applications is that the list can get shorter once you have some EA acceptances. But he just wanted to do EA for every school and be done with it.
This is the dream!! Thankfully, the motivation to get applications and essays done over the summer is coming from her. She likes to get things done and hates having deadlines looming over her. We are also planning to send everything we can as EA, and even if RD, hit submit as early as they are ready to go. Now the question is will her big public school counselor be on top of sending in her transcripts and counselor letter early! (We will talk to her before the end of the school year to let her know the plan).
S24 goes to a very big public school. One huge advantage of having a college list and the counselor recommendation packet done over the summer was that he was able to meet with the counselor in the very first week back for fall semester senior year.
His school only has 2 college counselors for 900 seniors, and giving her the recommendation packet before most kids had even started thinking about their college lists meant she got the school report and counselor recommendation done very fast. She even told him that since he was the only one ready to go that month she was able to take her time with his letter.
I think each kid is different and some do work best on their college applications once back in school when they can talk about it with their peers. My son felt strongly that he did not want to get sucked into the peer pressure of applying to some schools and just took himself out of the whole circus completely.
We were very lucky because we had help from the high school because spring of junior year they work on their common app essay in English class. Before the end of junior year, D had a well flushed out essay that had been through multiple rounds of peer review, along with comments from the teacher and HS college counselor. The college counselors went back to work 8/1 so students could come in over the summer and set up their common app accounts.
My D had hoped to be totally done before school started but there were some schools that sent out honors and merit essay links later. I think she was done done by 10/1 though which was before the ramp up in her ECs. I’m honestly not sure how she would have managed to carve out time after that.
It also heavily depends on if you think they have peaked in their extracurriculars. S24 did his most notable ECs over sumner before senior year, and his biggest accomplishment came in the fall and near winter. He had a big acceptance come through for that summer research a few weeks ago. I can say he truly peaked later in terms of HS ECs. His commo app reflected that experience. And having gone through those matured him and his writing considerably.
I remember some AO in a video documentary saying a terrible essay/supplemental could keep you out of a school, but if you weren’t a good candidate, no essay could get you into the school. I believe it was a retired Dartmouth AO, but not sure if source
my D24 was done with all of her essays by Labor Day. If your child can do this - my kid was motivated and had a summer job with long hours per day but only 3 days per week - I highly highly recommend it. She was able to tweak the essays and submit all her applications by mid-October. I don’t think that her essays would have gotten any better if she’d taken more time - she was able to work on them over the summer months, so was able to do a ton of revising.
