I have a mediocre common app essay and excellent supplement essays for all my universities. I didnt realise that everyone else wrote like 600+ words for the common essay (i wrote 446 words btw), when the minimum said 250 words. So i thought it had to be around 250-500, but i guess i was wrong.
Which is more important? common or supplement?
Both of them are Important...the supplements are more of why you want to go that college while the main thing s more of about your personal life...thats why supplements mostly ask you for essays on which program you want to study and stuff like that...BOTH are important..Dont worry about the word limit...anything is fine as long as it isnt too long like 1200 or so...
Don't worry too much about your word count. 446 is fine. I actually have read the sample essays from my school and 4 out of 5 are around 500 words. They are excellent essays written by students accepted by Harvard. So, calm down.
The admission stuff actually won't spend lots of time to read the long essays.
I agree. essay length isnt THAT important. its content, not length. And supplements are important, especially if its a question asking u why u want to attend a particular skool. however, if u feel that ur common app essay is weak, dont leave it be, try to tweak it. supplements arent the only thing they look at!
I too agree with the replies,,
The admissions office need to deal with over 1000 applicants
If you are to the point, precise, and eloquent, it wouldn't matter how long your essay is
Thank you all for your comments :).
Are common app essays tweakable? Because my 'upload document' part is greyed out, after i sent common app to one university...
i agree but keep in mind that its hard to get to a reflective level and tell a story without at least 500 words, at least thats how i see it. People forget the reflective level part in their essays, thats why there often so short. But at the same time, you don't want to get over 750 and yes there are great essays shorter than 500. There was someone who once got into Yale w/ a 73 word supplement. But overall, i wouldn't say length doesn't matter, you just have to know your writing style and do so accordingly, for some people and some essays, there are such things as essays being too short.
AS for your actual question, the common app is almost always more important. Keep in mind lots of execllent schools like Dartmouth and Wash U St.Louis don't even have supp essays and alot like Duke and Penn have optional ones, and really those questions asking you why you want to come to a school aren't as important as you might think, i have given people advice to be very specific on this website dealing w/ those essays but in reality, it plays very little role unless your truely a borderline candidate, fact is, for 99% of you it won't be a deciding factor at all in determining whether or not you get into a school. That's why Early Decision is also overrated, those stats they show of higher acceptance rates ED are due to a much more competitve applicant pool.
But that's just my two cents, i don't want to pretend like im any kind of expert, thats just the sense ive gotten from resarching schools i like and seeing hte type of kids who get in and dont, for some schools like brown, i could be completely wrong.
I did tell a story and i was slightly reflective for sure. At first i wrote like 700 words but i cut it down until 'every word fights for itself' and got down to 446. T_T
I talked about a personal, significant experience, and i brought out a point how it has impacted me and thus changed me to a different, more matured person. I definitely answered the question I think... O_o. Hopefully it's not too bad :)
If you have similar application qualities, of course both are as important, someone who has the same grades/qualities but has almost perfect essays will have a definite edge. Also, this edge varies with each college.
Advice: I would try my best for each essay.