We did visit, take the tour and click on every link they sent. Per her college counselor, she would be competitive for the Boston campus if she applied ED, but she didn’t want to ED there. So she expecting a waitlist, rejection or acceptance to one of their other campuses. If they’d had multiple supplemental essays, she likely wouldn’t even have applied.
I was just reading a recommendation on the GA Tech forum for example to make sure one references things they list in their mission statement…everyone agreed that would be a good idea. I do too - it is common sense that telling the school things they want to hear is a good strategy, other things being equal.
My point is this - they know the kids apply to more and more schools, the common app made that easy and it increases the mathematical probability of getting in somewhere. They know that many of the schools require a, for example, “why us” essay. So both sides know that “you are my dream school and the best fit for me” is being told to multiple places so it is effectively untrue…
Did that advice come from someone in admissions? If not, I would discount that. With that said an applicant does have to cover why X major and why at Tech.
I would not advise a student to say a school is a dream school or state in writing that they are a good fit for x school in their why us essay. I don’t know any school that wants to hear that and of course AOs know students are applying to other schools.
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So let’s say you know an applicant is applying to 10 schools that require a “why us” essay. What would you advise them to write for each? And please don’t say “be yourself in your essay” 
It is now quite common for students applying to tippy top schools to apply to 30+. It’s frankly out of control. (For those wondering, you can apply to 20 via Common App, but there are also UC apps, colleges have their own apps, and some colleges are not on the Common App, so it is very do-able for those with the time and money.)
It’s a way of differentiating Susie Smith from Dora Smith, and Jimmy Smith from Johnny Smith, no relation. It’s a way of separating the wheat from the chaff (who has something compelling to say, vs who just says “Please admit me to your prestigious college with renowned professors.” It’s a way deterring kids from applying willy nilly.
Many (most) students will, frankly, write not very good supplemental essays. Many supplemental essays don’t address what the prompt asks for. Many supplemental essays are full of cliche, AI garbage, regurgitated facts from the school website or worse, Wikipedia. Many have grammatical and punctuation errors, say nothing original or interesting, show a lack of higher thinking, are boring, etc…
Despite all that, the good supplements will show a level of cognitive ability and personal insight that a college seeks, or will provide context for the rest of the app that might show something normally viewed as a deficit, or will help shine light on what might otherwise be viewed as just another app from just another average excellent student.
When a college receives 50,000 apps, or whatever the number may be, they are fully entitled, IMO, to make that process as difficult as they like if it ultimately means they get the people they want.
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Students need to first look at the guidance a school gives for that essay. Many are transparent.
Then, anything if the things that posters have suggested in this thread…a major, a specific class/classes, a prof who is doing research of interest, EC and cultural opportunities, access to a city or community or other resources to engage in X. Basically let the school know how you are going to engage on campus and in the community.
Avoid talking about the school’s architecture (unless that fits with the intended major), its ‘beautiful’ campus, or anything related to a ‘dream’ school.
I think @compmom first introduced the idea of likability on this thread and I agree it’s so important. Hard to quantify and define that, but I know it when I see it.
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But how do the schools know that it was fact the applicant who wrote the original, grammatically correct, eye-tearing essay?
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Please read this:
https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/supplemental-essay-tips-2024-covid-disaster-question-on-the-ca
@strannik IMO, it is fairly easy to spot the real thing from AI generated stuff. Generally speaking, AI writing is generally pretty generalized. Get the general idea? 
As someone who works professionally with students on their college app writing, I personally can tell when they are writing the truth of their own experiences, versus asking chat gpt to spit something out. I think AO’s can tell real from fake pretty easily when they read so many apps. Crucially, AI can’t tell the admissions officers what is on a teacher’s mind. The teacher recs are critical at top colleges. Hence, holistic admissions.
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When I interviewed (unpaid alumna, not an adcom) we did not get a copy of the entire application of course. But many (perhaps most?) kids brought along their essays anyway. Even back then (before ChatGPT) the number of kids who did a rather sloppy cut and paste was quite high.
I don’t need to re-read what’s on the website. And if I’d been an actual adcom, it must have been boring as heck to read thousands of essays which pretty much told them everything they already knew about their institution.
The “why us” essays are a chance- a real chance- for a teenager, using actual words that teenagers use, to describe what it is about a particular institution, place, academic opportunity that resonates with them. No adcom wants a regurgitation of their own PR! And it’s an opportunity to try and forge a genuine connection with the reader (the objective for any piece of writing, of course).
Kids can either embrace or steer away from colleges that require supplementals. And if it means fewer kids applying to too many schools that are not going to accept them no matter what- fantastic. But for that truly “I would love to go here” school (and not “grandpa is making me apply because he loved it so much back in '66”) it’s worth taking the time to write something clear, direct, and authentic.
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Essays don’t have to be eye-tearing and in fact, they rarely are. Genuine. That’s the key. Not amazingly written, not perfect grammar and punctuation, not some life or death drama. Just genuine. That can be a million things that AI can’t think of.
I have had students freewheel their supplements and get in. I’ve had students do everything perfectly and not get in. So remember, it’s the whole package. Holistic.
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We were lucky that my D was able to do on campus for visits for all the schools on her list. She made a pros/cons spreadsheet after each visit, and she referred to those notes for her “why us” essays.
There were specific things that were important to my daughter that she looked for on tours, and she was able to speak directly to those things in the “why us” essay.
My D did tell her first choice school that they were her #1.
IMO, there is no formula here because each student is going to have different things resonate with them… I would just try to keep it as personal and specific as possible. If you can substitute the why essay for another school, it’s not specific enough.
My daughter wrote about things like being blown away by an admin volunteering to give her an impromptu department tour; programs or academic approaches that were unique to certain schools; if she met with professors she would mention those meetings. But my personal favorite was an essay she wrote about being handed a badge by a fully autonomous robot while the students were piping in music from the show Hamilton.
As others have said, be authentic and specific to each school.
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True about AI, although it is getting better and better. Pretty soon we’ll be at a point where one will be able to say “write me something that doesn’t look like AI wrote it”.
But AI aside, with the proliferation of advisory services, consultants, etc. how can a college be sure that the parents didn’t just pay someone to write that phenomenal essay or that the teacher with that glowing recommendation wasn’t just a family friend for example? IMHO the supplementals are basically a waste of time for all parties involved. One common app essay makes sense but that’s about it.
I don’t agree, for all the reasons I listed a few posts back. If the school is that selective, they need to see more than just one essay.
I don’t have rose-tinted glasses on, by the way. Yes, students and their parents can and do cheat, and they get away with it. I’ve had parents ask me to review the essays their (ahem) kid wrote, asking if it’s good enough. One parent, kid you not, wrote about flipping Voltaire and Plato in one essay. It was ridiculous.
Real teens write about teenage stuff. Current topics with my students: first car, watching the sun rise, a class science experiment, summer camp, the color red. Not Voltaire and Plato.
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Of course they are “fully entitled” to require what they please. I don’t think anyone suggested otherwise so that seems like an oddly aggressive response, but ok.
The question in my mind is how much it really helps the schools make their decisions given how much work it is. I KNOW how much stress it causes students and how much time it takes. Even a student who applies to a modest number of schools can easily have more than a dozen supplemental essays to write. Every school we visited in person (21) said that in the vast majority of cases they spend only a few minutes reviewing each application. It’s hard to reconcile those statements with the reality of how much work they require in the form of multiple supplements. I’ve also heard several AOs say they consider some of their short answer questions to be “just for fun”. My daughter said to me after hear that…oh please don’t give us any more “fun” tasks…
One supplement per school should really be enough IMO.
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No aggression. Just pointing out that they have to find a way to “see” the anonymous person behind the app so that they can make incredibly difficult selections. Supplements are a way of doing that.
Re fun tasks, what one kid might view as a chore, another views as an opportunity to express themselves in a casual way. My kid, for example, loved these two questions on one of his apps: Favorite food? Where would you love to go? His answers: Tacos. Mexico City for tacos. Those two questions made him want to apply to that college.
OTOH, he had zero interest in answering prompts for a different college and didn’t apply. Different strokes…
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Not sure being selective is necessarily the reason. I see selective universities like penn st and cal poly slo requiring no essays. I was under the impression, universities are asking 5-10 one word answer questions just for fun …
It’s true some highly rejective schools don’t have supplemental essays (Northeastern, Wesleyan, Williams, for example) but most do. I agree a one word answer question is not especially stressful but I haven’t come across a lot of those. Lots of schools require multiple essays and even the ones they label as “short answer” are still essays.
For example, in addition to the 650 word common app personal statement, Brown requires:
3 250-word essays
2 100-word short answer questions
1 50-word short answer
1 3-word short answer
All the but the shortest one require lots of thought/effort…even the 50 words, since it’s supposed to be one (long) sentence.
I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly stressful it was for at least two of my kids to hear that all they needed to do in their supplemental essays was be “authentic” and “likable.” These were kids who were talented and hard-working, had excellent academic records, and were strong writers. But they absolutely hated the kind of personal writing with huge stakes they were supposed to do for college essays, and the kind of stilted “what I think a college wants to hear” voice that they had a hard time breaking out of in supplemental essays definitely didn’t show them in the best light. I think college admissions favors a certain personality type (ahem–extroverts) in a lot of different ways.
I don’t know what the answer is…in this ultra competitive landscape colleges do need ways to differentiate applicants. But I would hope that admissions people would remember that different kids have different strengths and that writing highly personal essays, is frankly, a skill that might be more useful to college applications than to anything else they’ll ever do for a lot of people. And recognize that suggesting kids are getting rejected from schools they love because they’re not likable enough isn’t reassuring.
Both Amherst and Williams give the option of submitting an academic paper instead of a supplemental essay, and I would love to see that become a trend. I’m certain my kids’ best academic work showed a lot more about what they could contribute in college than yet another “why us?” essay could.
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This may be off topic for the intent of this thread.
When my kids were applying to colleges, I realized that it was difficult for them to be reflective or to realize how much they had grown. I sat down with them and looked through the box of things that I had saved - their 5th grade essay, pictures from their 7th grade art fair, their softball “team spirit” award, etc. It got them to reminisce and remember their thoughts and emotions when they were younger. It helped them to understand how much they have grown and what things sparked an interest when they were young. They didn’t reference the early activities, but it helped them create a more personal essay.
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Good essays do NOT only come from extroverts, and do NOT have to be excessively personal to be authentic.
An essay about rewarming last night’s dinner in the microwave because a kid got home from his job stocking shelves at a supermarket too tired to even make scrambled eggs-- there can be exactly one personally revealing element to the story (kid works at a supermarket) and still be successful.
I think people take “personal essay” very literally, assuming it needs to qualify for an episode of some TV talk show (or at least a tiktok about someone’s therapy) in order to be successful.
My suggestion for kids who are blocked on the essay-- read, read, read. There are remarkable works of literature (short stories which will take five minutes-- anyone remember The Lottery which we all read in 7th grade?) which are wonderful examples of a tight narrative, authentic and simple sentence structure, tells something interesting.
I have recommended so many times that I should be getting a cut of royalties, a Calvin Trillin essay about his “system” of parallel parking. Most of us cannot hope to be the writer that he is. but essays like this (and there are dozens… but most HS students cite parallel parking as something they are currently dealing with…) but much of his writing- and others-- is interesting even when it’s about mundane and boring subjects. Especially when it’s mundane and boring.
Parents can help demystify the “personal essay”. It doesn’t need to be that personal! Just don’t write about “Breaking the Matza” because I’ll bet every adcom in America has read that essay!
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