Accepted! 50 successful college admission essays - Gen Tanabe, Tanabe Kelly 2008

Don’t throw away a good essay
Recycling your essays

In this chapter you will learn:

● Why the Common Application is the ideal way to recycle

● How to save time by modifying one essay to submit to many colleges

● Warnings about recycling

Don’t throw away a good essay

After a workshop we gave on essay writing, a student approached us with a bewildered look. He said, “I understand the importance of a good essay, and I even have some ideas. But I’m planning to apply to a lot of colleges, and I don’t think I can write that many good essays.”

Fortunately, we reassured him that he would not have to dedicate the next six months of his life to writing essays. The solution to his problem is recycling.

Recycling has nothing to do with aluminum cans (although we encourage that type of recycling as well) but everything to do with saving time.

After all, why go through the diffi cult and time-consuming essay-writing process again and again to answer each school’s essay questions when you can often modify a few essays to answer all of them? Most students fi nd that if they write just a handful of good essays, they have enough to answer an almost unlimited number of questions.