2015 college essay prompts
The Common Application, otherwise known as the Common App, released its list of essay prompts. While it is true that the Common Application essay prompts are flexible enough for any personal statement or story, it also helps to know just what admissions officers look for when they read them. Keep in mind, students only have to choose and respond to one of the five choices. Overall, admissions offices are looking for you to reveal something that distinguishes you or sets you apart from others in your own voice. This first question is broad and gives you a lot of latitude. The prompt asks you to write about either a passion or something that defines you as a person.
How to Write the UC School Application Essays 2015-2016
The changes you see reflect the feedback and consensus of nearly individuals who responded to our recent survey. Among the survey highlights:. New language appears in italics: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale.
Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
Attention Juniors: The college application season has officially begun. The Common Application, otherwise known as the Common. Get started on the supplemental essay prompts and the new essay prompts for the Common Application.
Every Spring, our office reviews the freshman application for changes that we would like to see for the next year. During this review, we also look at the short essay questions that are required for First Year applicants who apply Regular Decision or are deferred Early Action Early Action applicants do not submit essays unless they are deferred. For , we have made a slight change in our short essays. Instead of requiring four short essay responses, we now will have one short essay that all RD or deferred EA applicants must complete, and three additional short essay topics with the applicant selecting to respond to two of these.
On the same day that the final Class of admissions decisions were released, the Common Application publicized its new essay questions for the Class of
Some students choose to write about sports. Or their love of helping others. Or even about their unusual hobby of collecting those kitschy plastic-domed snow globes.
2015-2016 Common Application Essay Prompts
The changes you see reflect the feedback and consensus of nearly individuals who responded to our recent survey. Among the survey highlights:. New language appears in italics: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success.
Common app 2015 essay prompts
The platform will allow unlimited editing on all essays at any time, a change from the three-edit maximum imposed on the personal statement last year. That said, it is nice to see the Common Application adjusting to accommodate the needs and desires of a wide range of academic institutions. After all, the original purpose of the Common App was to make the admissions process easier and more streamlined for students and colleges — not to shackle them to a new set of immovable standards. Changes were also made to three out of five of the prompts, including some simple clarifying edits and one complete replacement. As the Common App notes on their website, revisions appear in italics:. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. No matter what story or quality a student wants to write about, it will likely be easily molded to fit this prompt. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure.
The changes you see reflect the feedback and consensus of nearly individuals who responded to our recent survey.
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2015 Essay Questions
Improve your essay and impress admissions officers with our free Peer Essay Review. Submit your essay now to get fast feedback. Because the application allows for shared words total between two prompts, there is a bit of strategy involved as to the length of each essay. If you have a stronger or more detailed answer for one of the prompts, it is okay to write more for that essay but ideally, you should devote roughly words to that essay and to the other one. Under no circumstances should you have one essay longer than words and the other one shorter than words—balance is key. Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations. This prompt is really asking you to talk about some of your major influences and your interactions within a group. You can certainly use your family as the base for your essay, but you should be careful to really dive deep down into your personal feelings and motivations as opposed to getting caught up talking mostly about your family members. Many applicants choose to write about their family, though, which means that your essay will have to be extremely well written or delve deeply into your unique personality in order to separate from all of the other applicants covering similar themes. Writing about your school can be a good strategy if you attend a school that has an economically and racially diverse student body. However, if you attend a competitive school with mostly affluent students, it might be difficult to write an essay that will play well with admissions counselors. Writing about a more nuanced and specialized community, perhaps related to some sort of hobby or extracurricular passion, gives you an opportunity to really show off unique and distinctive elements of your personality. For example, you could write an essay about how your participation in the Model United Nations officer corps inspired you to pursue an education and career in international relations. The only exceptions are communities that are defined simply by personal traits and not interaction such as race or sexual orientation. Since these are personal qualities, an essay on these topics is best saved for the second prompt.
