There are some common questions we admissions consultants hear often from college and graduate school applicants: “I’m applying to six schools, and each one requires essays/personal statements. A lot of the content will be similar! Can I reuse the same essay for different schools? How can I keep the quality and not burn out while writing so many personal statements?”
We understand. We sympathize. Best of all, we have practical solutions for determining whether you can reuse any of your essays for more than one school. The good news is that what makes practical sense in terms of efficiency and not reinventing the wheel also makes sense in terms of quality – if you view the process not as “reusing” but as “adapting.” It is a very rare case indeed where reusing an essay almost verbatim would be advisable. On the other hand, the core content of a personal statement covers points that are important to your candidacy and would naturally be relevant to multiple applications. As you rework your personal statement for subsequent applications, sometimes the quality improves as you reflect further and discover new subtleties.
So, if various schools are asking similar questions, it’s logical to consider using – or really, adapting – some or perhaps even much of your previous essay response(s). However, the school’s essay lengths might be different, and your wording will vary based on the nuances of the question. Most important, many personal statements include some discussion of the specific program the candidate is applying to, and this part would certainly require fresh input for each school’s essay. Read each question out loud, so you can clearly hear exactly what the schools are asking. Many times, an essay prompt has more than one question within it. You don’t want to overlook any of the questions in a prompt. The key is to be guided first by the question and then, more broadly, by your understanding of the character of the school/program – and adapt your essay content (and tone/style) accordingly.
Additionally, we have this advice:
1. Make sure each essay has a distinct theme.
You can do this by developing different aspects of a single experience. For example, if you plan to write about your first summer as a counselor at a sleepaway camp, in one essay, you could describe how you worked to build a relationship with a lonely camper and helped them develop their self-confidence and participate in more activities. During the same summer, you might also have been in charge of the drama group. This could offer the substance for a very different essay about teaching and organizing a group of highly energized, sometimes rowdy young teens.
Don’t waste an opportunity to write about multiple aspects of the same experience that opened different doors to personal growth. Most significant experiences in our lives are truly multifaceted and offer various “threads” that are interesting to explore in essays. Don’t just reuse content by rote copying and pasting; instead, probe it to discern its most valuable points for the essay at hand. You’ll likely find that you can stretch your available material to cover more bases.
2. Chart your list of essays and the qualities you associate with them.
With multiple essays/personal statements to manage, consider using a spreadsheet to list each question, the school asking it, and which experiences, accomplishments, and skills you can associate with those questions. This will help you avoid using the same experience, accomplishment, or skill for more than one question at a given school and will also help you see where you can adapt some previous material for a new application.
3. Portray your multidimensional self.
Make a list of what you feel are your ten most positive qualities. Your list might include such traits as intellectual curiosity, an eagerness for new experiences, a sense of humor, strong DIY skills, and leadership capabilities. That was fun! Now, make a much shorter list (two or three items at most) of what you would consider your weakest traits. These might include procrastination, too much binge watching, and impatience.
As you draft your essays, keep these different layers and textures of your personality in mind. (Sometimes, schools will ask you to identify a weakness and explain how you have worked to overcome it, so being aware of your shortcomings isn’t necessarily detrimental to your application!) Having this list front and center will spark additional insights and angles for your essays. As a result, you will reward the adcoms with a rich, multidimensional portrait of you as a human being.
4. Name dropping? Better double check the names!
If you do reuse and adapt material for different applications, check carefully (and then check again) to make sure you don’t forget to change, for example, “Michigan” to “Chicago” in the new application essay. Sending a “Why I want to go to UPenn” essay to the Yale adcom or a “Why I want to go to Columbia” paragraph to NYU wouldn’t bode well for you! Believe me, it happens.
5. No matter how similar the essay questions are, never simply cut and paste an entire essay.
As we noted earlier, no two questions will ever be exactly alike. As you write or edit from a different essay, keep the school you are writing for front and center in your mind. Individualize each essay as much as possible to accommodate each program’s unique culture, personality, and “flavor.” And by all means, reread the essay prompts when you feel you are nearly done to ensure that you really have answered every one of the adcom’s questions within the prompt.
Do you need help writing (or adapting) your application essays? Could you benefit from an expert’s assistance in identifying the strongest elements of your experience and profile? We can help! Work one-on-one with an experienced advisor who will help you get accepted!
After a successful career in business publishing, Cindy Tokumitsu has worked for more than 20 years with Accepted. Every year, Cindy’s clients have been accepted to top MBA, law, and med programs. She is a pioneer in the niche of EMBA application consulting. Want an admissions expert to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
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