Pro: College essays provide insight on students

Adriana Guidi, Perspectives Editor

You are on the cusp of reaching a certain GPA or standardized test scores for your dream school, but since you don’t meet these exact requirements, your chances of being accepted are low. You have an awesome essay that adds a positive quality to your application and suddenly, you have a decent chance of being admitted. Wouldn’t writing the essay be worth it to increase your chances of getting into your dream school?

While no student, myself included, enjoys writing a lot of different essays for colleges, they are essential in order to let colleges take a holistic approach in their admissions process, which ultimately benefits the students applying to colleges. A holistic approach, according to collegeapps.about.com, is when “The school’s admissions officers consider the whole applicant, not just empirical data like a GPA or SAT scores.”

The holistic-approach schools require additional essays, and while this may be annoying, it can benefit the students if the essays are well-written. A well-written essay should not be terribly difficult to create as long as you have a good topic to write about and have a parent and/or teachers reviewing the essay. The essays should only benefit you, not hurt your chances. By being a smart student and making sure your essays will add only positives to your application, the essay will benefit you and help you get into colleges.

For students applying to schools that might be more selective in admissions and are considered reach schools, judgement purely off of their GPA and SAT scores is undesirable. By not having an essay to help add positives to your application, students are going to have a harder chance at getting into top schools that require high standardized test scores and high GPAs.

Most essays will give you the chance to talk about yourself, whether it be through an experience or failure that you have had or a passion that you have developed. It allows a college representative to see a student beyond the classroom. It allows them to catch a glimpse of a student’s personality, something that is important to consider before admitting a student to a college. The essay can show the school great qualities about a student, something GPA and standardized test scores cannot show.

According to petersons.com, college essays can certainly make or break whether a student gets accepted or denied to a college. “If you are like most students where you are applying to competitive schools, then your essays will make a significant difference in the number and quality of acceptance offers that you receive.” according to petersons.com.

College essays, if written well, can only add positives to a student’s application. Writing the essays may be time-consuming and take tremendous effort to write, but it is worth it in the long run in order to increase a student’s chance of being accepted into the college of their choice.

Adriana Guidi is a Perspectives Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.