Hmm…someone from our school got admitted to Chicago ED0. Mentioning because we discussed it before.
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Yep. University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University are -not- in the auto-admit list. (surprise surprise).
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Well, D26 hit submit on the Common App this morning! We were up until about 2 am revising her essay so needless to say I am dragging today.
I know this process is about the student, of course, but I feel like I can talk about the difficulties for us as parents on this thread because you all understand. And by far the most difficult thing for me was letting go and just trusting D26. Like I said before, she had a very clear idea of what she wanted her essay to say and how she wanted to express it. I thought I was helping her by editing it but I was just making her crazy. Once I took my mitts off and limited my advice to grammar and word choice, the process went much more smoothly. Is the result exactly how I think the essay should read? No, but it is her voice and I am pretty darn proud of her for sticking to her guns and telling me to butt out. Now we wait.
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I was exactly the same. And D26 essay is perfect how she wanted it. Maybe not how I would have done it, but it’s HER. And the confidence that the acceptances have brought/will bring knowing it was all her, is priceless. Good job in letting go. So hard!
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A big part of what made the difference for me is when she said that if we used the essay with my words, she would never know if she got in on her own merit. And on the flip side, if she gets rejected, part of her would definitely blame me!
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The essay thing was hard here, too! I have a journalism degree, and my background is in editing. 
I rarely mention that because my posts here and on social media are not carefully edited, so I feel like people will be judging, lol.
But I edit better than I write – and what’s more, I LOVE doing it. Both of my girls showed me their common app essays, and I worked with both to hone them. But we had to be really careful that I only made suggestions for flow or clarity and didn’t edit out the flavor.
Because yes, it absolutely has to be the student’s words and phrasing – college AOs can easily sniff out something that sounds like it was written by a 50-something parent.
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Re: essays - my D26 only let me see the 1st draft of her common app personal statement. I was given a big fat ‘no!’ when I asked to look at it again + her other essays.
It’s ok though. I’ve decided to embrace Elsa’s favorite song and I’m going to “Let It Go!” 
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Same here too. I try to stay involved enough on the essays to be helpful, but not so much that she feels like she’s not able to express herself. For the most part, that’s worked really well - she writes what she wants, I give her advice on things she might want to change or where she should add an example, etc. Overall, I think it’s produced some decent essays (my humble opinion, of course!)
That said, for one of her supplementals, I may have asked her several times if she was sure that’s what she wanted to submit. She was pretty adamant, so I let it go. We’ll see what happens!
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My D26 did let me see her essays (common app and supplementals) –and she used me as a sounding board. Honestly though, I was about 99% cheerleader and 1% “Is that the word you meant to use there?”
ETA: One of her supplementals was super funny -she said she wondered if they would think she wasn’t serious -but I told her to go with it. She is kind of silly in the most wonderful of ways -and if they don’t love that essay as much as I do - it is probably not the college for her.
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we are still in the essay throes. S26 and D22 spent all afternoon and evening yesterday going over the “why” essay. After he told me about the suggested changes, I suggested a different approach. He liked the approach! I have not seen the essays, as he chose his sister as his editor. I stayed hands off with them, so it is as hard as for many of you 
Writing and editing are a big part of my professional life (though a very specific niche). But they are his essays …..
I hope he can submit tonight. Our goal was to submit last night, but they worked on them too late (they are not in the same city and had to work around D22’s schedule). So keeping fingers crossed for tonight. EA deadline is in 5 days. And I am so ready to stop nagging!!!
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My D22 applied to a lot of reach schools, thus wrote so many supplemental essays. The reachiest on her list was Brown, and one of the essays was something about a topic or area of interest in which she loses herself, and why.
Yes, well my child wrote about the Dream SMP. If you’re not familiar, it was this Minecraft thing where various YouTubers were roleplaying in some kind of story. A modern-day soap opera, if you will. Also total internet nonsense (in my 50-something opinion).
Now, she spun this whole essay about how storytelling had taken on a new form, and she did a pretty good job of describing the allure. However, she basically told the good folks at Brown – Brown! – that she gets sucked into watching Minecraft YouTubers.
I gently suggested that she consider other topics. (Especially since the kid has several other erudite interests!) She did not listen. And I don’t know if that was the tipping point, but Brown is the only school she was outright rejected from. 
Go figure, LOL.
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100%. D19’s “why nyu” supp (back when that was what the topic was, it’s changed now) fell into this kind of category. Her college counselor hated it and D asked me to read it over, saying “but they say they want to hear my voice, and this is it” - and when I read it, I could absolutely hear her saying all that in my mind. I suggested she stick with it, she did, and got in. (OTOH I was not allowed to read her common app essay until she was a click away from submission and I made it a condition of giving her my credit card, haha)
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D26 only has 1 Why essay and I think it is SO much harder than any other question. She is not finding it easy at all. I think part of it is that she has not visited the school yet. I thought maybe she would scrap the school, which happened on another Why essay earlier - she couldn’t come up with a good Why and said the school didn’t mean that much to her to gush about them or dig deeper. I thought that was helpful though. This one she still wants to apply but is really struggling with that essay. It’s the only RD app she has. I want her to be DONE. This is the very last hurdle.
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My daughter also found the Why Us essay really tough. I think that’s partly because she applied undecided, so she couldn’t talk about a specific major or program. She did talk about a couple of interdisciplinary majors that she might be interested in and drew from coursework she is doing and then she mentioned some specific clubs and how it was a large, diverse University, but it was kind of “meh” (in both her and my opinion). She had a much easier time with some of the more “creative” supplementals. She loved the UMD supplementals and her responses to those were fantastic - her personality and values shined right through on those. She did drop one school from the list (our state school) because they had a “Why Us” and she had no response other than “my parents are making me”, lol. We decided to let that one go.
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That does make it harder, I think! My D has not visited any schools on her list other than 2 of the UCs (and she doesn’t have to write a why essay for them). She didn’t want to travel all the way across the country to visit schools, especially since neither parent could travel with her, due to medical issues. I am sure that her why essays are not as strong as they might be if we lived closer to the schools and could have visited them, but we’ll just have to hope for the best!
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HAHA that is hilarious. The one D26 dropped was because all she could come up with was that it is close to home. None of us like the school much and I was shocked she had it on her list to begin with.
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Those are the best! My D loved those too!
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S26 also only has this one “why us” essay, luckily!! His issue is that it is too short. He knows the school well and they have a cohort program that is exactly what he wants (though probably way too reachy), so there is a lot to write about but only 250 words allowed. That seems to be the main challenge.
uh oh, that’s the prompt S26 chose for this common app essay. Since I have not seen it, I have no clue, if he went down a rabbit hole with it …. 
Ha. A friend of mine (whose son applied to one of the same schools as C26) and I were laughing at the “describe in detail..” question with a 150 word limit!!
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It’s funny you mention the “why us” essay because one of the EA apps that we needed to submit today has one that was sneakily hidden. (I don’t actually this it was that sneaky, we just didn’t see it until it was time to submit.) So now D26 is frantically writing one so we can get it submitted by this afternoon. It’s not going to be too polished, but it will hopefully get her point across!
The only other “why us” essays are on an app that isn’t due until 12/1 and for her reach that isn’t due until 1/15, so she has a little more time with those.
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