The questions are simple - Why do you want to apply for your major? What makes you want to go to this school? What do you like about our program? Nothing really too difficult, so it shouldn't take me a week and a half to give 100 word answer for each question.
But it does take me a week and a half to write a paragraph, and the reason is fairly obvious. It's blockbuster syndrome. I want every idea to be my greatest ever, every sentence to be the best ever written, and every comma to be the most beautifully placed comma that the admissions officer has ever seen.
So now the question is, is blockbuster syndrome hurting or helping me?
While the writing may be really thought out, it might be worse than a casually written blog post. Less from the heart and more from a robot. And who wants a robot attending their top tier school?
Then there's also the whole time thing. (Especially when you're applying to 15 schools, with 8 of them being early action with november deadlines.)
I guess I'll go back to figuring out things to tell my safety schools when they ask me why I'm applying...
Answer the questions, but don't assume you are done. THen show your answers to a teacher. Ask for exactly one piece of criticism. Apply it. Then show your answers to another teacher and again ask for one piece of criticism. Again apply it. Repeat for another three teachers. It should be pretty good by the end.
ReplyDeleteJust an idea.
You need to make decisions and go forwards, even if you have to back up in the future, you must move forwards.