College essays - not as much duplication as had hoped

[Anonymous]

Son is in the middle of getting common app essay done and organizing thoughts on the supplements. He (and I) assumed there would be a lot of overlap, but it turns out there's very little. Even schools with similar prompts (ie cultural identity) have enough length variance as to make them too different to reuse. 250 words vs 500.

Anyone finding the same? I assume if he had a list of 10 other schools, they could match up better

[Anonymous]

Wrote the longer ones first.
Easy to cut out; harder to add meaningful content

[Anonymous]

They do this on purpose. It weeds out students who are less interested in their school.

[Anonymous]

We found once you got around to 8-10 schools, 90% are just rehash/edit.

[Anonymous]

Same concepts just constantly editing for word count.

Found that easy.

[Anonymous]

my kid stopped stressing about reusing and wrote something new each time.

[Anonymous]

I've noticed that, OP. One may have a community one and why this major. So, DC had to use two different topics b/c the expected community one would overlap too much. For schools with no why major essay, a different community essay made more sense when they aren't asking about major. Then, there are the random ones. So far, DC has 4 supplemental essays done and no repeats. They haven't even started any why this school essays or leadership essays.

[Anonymous]

My daughter just said that. I’m sure if you’re applying to 10 or more schools, there’s overlap. But right now, her list is 8 and there’s very little overlap

[Anonymous]

Very little overlap for DC (last year). Each school had two or three supplementals on top of the common app personal essay. The good news is they were all short--300 word range. Essentially just needed to embrace the reality that the schools all had different essays. In a way I think it helped DC really focus on schools that they really wanted versus applying to some because it was easy to do so (bc they could recycle an essay or two).

[Anonymous]

Yes. Last year my son spent a LOT of time on supplemental essays. It was a bit of a surprise to me.
He was adamant about customizing to exactly what they asked for, and it took a very very long time.

[Anonymous]

My kid has written 20-25 different essays so far.

[Anonymous]

Find schools w/o them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Find schools w/o them.

All the schools without them are the ones that are my DC’s safeties. Every target or reach has at least one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Find schools w/o them.

All the schools without them are the ones that are my DC’s safeties. Every target or reach has at least one.

Apply to more safeties then.

[Anonymous]

Stop complaining! Start writing!