Make Use of Your Application Capital:
No need to wait for lightning to strike twice—use your best work for as many applications as you can.
Just after Christmas when I was 8, I discovered the form letter. I had a pile of thank-you notes to be written and a printer. Why—I asked myself—should I handwrite the same information repeatedly? Why not change a few things (like the name of the gift) and standardize the rest? I was pretty pleased with my results … until the day my aunt went to my grandparents’ and picked up my thank-you card on their mantle. BUSTED.
Good news: The colleges where you’re applying don’t get together for tea. The question for college applicants isn’t, “Can you use the same essay for different college applications?” The question is, “How many colleges can you send a given essay to?” And that answer is, “As many as you possibly can.”
Why Reuse Essays?
Reusing essays isn’t just a smart use of time. It’s the best and most logical use of what I like to call your “application capital,” or assets. You bring to your applications a collection of skills, talents, awards, personality traits, and life experiences. Each of these assets—or “application capital”—contributes to the total application package. Every additional essay you write is an opportunity to feature one or a few of those assets.
You choose your most important story for your main essay, which will go to almost every school where you apply. More than 900 colleges and universities accept the Common Application, so you’ll probably be writing that 650-word essay. About 150 schools accept the Coalition App, which also requires a 650-word essay. The prompts for the two applications are not all the same—though some overlap—but you have the option to go with “a topic of your choice” for either application. In the past, the Coalition App cut students off at fewer words, but they now match the Common App at 650. Perhaps they were trying to be nicer to students by making the essays match, or perhaps they realized they were just getting stunted versions of better essays originally written to be 650 words. We can only wonder.
What About Independent Applications?
If you’re applying to one of the handful of colleges that accepts only its own application, you can more than likely use your Common App essay for whatever the main personal statement requirement is. But you have to plan ahead. You have to know what the prompt is for the stubborn independent school before you commit to your Common App topic. Again, finding a way to make these two essays overlap isn’t just a good use of time—it’s making sure that your best essay is seen by the highest number of schools.
If you’re applying to Common App schools along with the University of California, you will again want to carefully consider your Common App topic. Cutting a Common App essay from 650 words to the California limit of 350 words is much like taking a statue and turning it into a bust. It loses half of its substance. But if it was an important enough choice for your main essay, you probably want California to read about it. And you put a lot of effort into making it a great Common App essay—cutting it down is still better than starting from scratch. With eight prompts for the UC, it feels impossible that whatever you write about wouldn’t work, but I’ve seen it happen. Consider all of the prompts from the outset.
How Many Other Essays Do I Need to Write?
When it comes to supplemental essays, many prompts overlap among schools. If two schools ask you to elaborate on one of your activities, it only makes sense to use the same essay. If two schools ask about your community, or why you are choosing the career path you are pursuing—you only need to make changes if the prompts have different word limits. Read prompts carefully, though. Sometimes topics overlap quite a bit, but not entirely. You should start with the essay you’ve already written, but edit as much as necessary to make it genuinely feel as though it were originally written for the new prompt.
There is one exception to this rule—and I hope my opening story made it obvious. You cannot reuse your essay for “Why do you want to come to our school?” You can use sentences—even short sections—for more than one school. It only makes sense that multiple schools you are interested in would have things in common (small class sizes or urban setting or what-have-you). But your “Why Our School” essay should never sound so general that it might have been written for someone else.
This is just one reason it’s smart to complete your college list before starting your essays. If you haven’t finished (or started?) your college research, jump over to my Subscriber Hub and get my FREE resources for getting organized!
Photo by Max LaRochelle on Unsplash
