5 College Essay Topics You Should Never, Ever Write About

5 College Essay Topics You Should Never, Ever Write About Usually one to two admissions officers read an essay. Some colleges will choose only to look at your GPA, Course Rigor and SAT/ACT scores. With a minimum amount of practice, most students can reach the 25thâ€"75th percentile score ranges of even the most elite colleges in the country. In other words, there is more upside than downside when looking at an extended test day. Your students’ college essay is their opportunity to reveal their best qualities and to show an admission committee what makes them stand out from other applicants. Work with your students to help them with this important piece of their application. You might be used to turning in your writing assignments on a page-limit basis. Let’s look deeper into the four main reasons that colleges require essays as part of the application process to see why they’re worth your time and attention. Some campuses have a pool of reviewers, while others are more specific. For a small college, there is a chance that you essay will only be read by a couple of individuals, but for a larger school it can make its way through several hands before being put down. This is a tough question to answer as there is no way to know for sure. At a smaller school, it is more likely that the admissions officers will have the time to look at each essay, whereas at huge universities it would seem less likely. In terms of how many officers read each essay, that also varies from school to school. Some read regionally which means that one officer reads all the applications from all the high schools in a certain geographic region. My 11th grader previously did the SAT w/essay and scored 760 R&W, 650 M, and 4/4/5 on the essay. Despite the decline in colleges requiring an SAT or ACT essay, Compass still advises many of our students to make the essay a part of their testing plans. Skipping the essay can leave a student scrambling to fit in an additional test date should his or her college plans change. Some colleges requiring the essay will not superscore test dates without the essay. Just as important, it’s uncommon for an ACT or SAT essay to be a significant negative factor on an application. In smaller to mid size colleges they are certainly read, at least by two readers, and all Honors College essays are read. You can be certain that you did not spend all that time crafting the perfect essay in vain. How much weight a college puts on that portion of the application may differ. Just how many readers digest your words can vary as well. Still, don’t waste the opportunity to put another dimension on your application file. Often they are read in committee where several officers might look at one essay. If you want to know how you will be assessed at any given school, you should feel free to ask the admissions office. If I’m understanding correctly, the only students who need to be taking the writing/essay exams are those applying to the first 9 schools on your list that are “required” or “recommended”? We are in CA so it used to be needed for the UC’s but as you noted even that has changed. So now post-Covid, do you still advise most of your students to take the writing exams, or feel that there is “more upside than downside” to taking them? If you GPA and Test Scores are high enough, they may not feel that and essay is necessary. The role of the essay varies greatly from school to school. A lot of it depends upon the selectivity of the school. It is always worth an applicant’s while to write as strong an essay as possible, but its role in the process is a variable one. in the mean time, between 5-10 min is actually reasonable for a good read. there are different stages for the admissions process. normally essay does not read more than one person unless the vote must proceed and admission counselors decided to work hard for the students they like the most. I cannot make that claim, but I do believe that most of them are read. While essays don’t weigh as much as grades or course selection, if you are applying test-optional or to a smaller school, more attention will be given to this section of the application. when admissions season started, it is not easy to read hundreds of essay during a short period of time.