Starting this summer, applicants using the Common Application will have five new essay prompts to choose from, including one that asks them to describe “a place or environment where you are perfectly content.” The maximum length, now 500 words, will increase to 650.
Those changes, announced on Tuesday, reflect a continuing discussion about the role of essays in the admissions process. In a realm ruled by numbers, the written word is often seen as a crucial means of revealing what tests and grade-point averages cannot: a student’s essence, the story behind a transcript. Even small changes in essay requirements have long captured the attention of applicants and those who advise them.
Several college counselors complained last fall when they learned that the 2013-14 Common Application would not include the “topic of your choice” prompt, which has been one of a handful of options for more than a decade. The open-ended prompt, some counselors say, can be a welcome invitation for teenagers—often confined by requirements—to express themselves creatively.
Other counselors, however, had worried that the prompt was too general, an invitation to write vaguely. At the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual meeting last October, one counselor who welcomed the prompt’s removal said limiting students to the same topics would level the playing field.
For better or worse, the open-ended prompt appealed to many students. During the 2011-12 admissions cycle, “topic of your choice” was the most popular of the Common Application’s six prompts, chosen by 36 percent of all applicants.
In an interview last week, Scott Anderson, the Common Application’s director of outreach, said the new questions were meant to preserve the “flexibility” of broad questions while helping students focus their responses. “We wanted to make sure all students have a home,” Mr. Anderson said. “So we’ve framed it differently. In the instructions, we’re asking, ‘What do you want people to know about you?’ And then we use these questions to get at it.”
Danya Berry, college liaison and registrar at the Dayton Early College Academy, served on a committee of college counselors who advised the Common Application on the new prompts. Ms. Berry, who spends a lot of time helping students hone their writing skills, likes the new set of options. “I don’t think it will inhibit writing,” she said. “Students will still feel free to talk about themselves.”
Indeed, each of the new prompts invites applicants to reflect on personal experiences. “Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it,” one prompt says. “If this sounds like you, then please share your story.” Another asks students to discuss a moment that “marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.”
Applicants who tackle the new prompts later this year will have more room to write than before—but not a word more than the instructions specify. As of August 1, technology will allow the Common Application to enforce word limits for the first time.
In the current system, applicants upload their essays as separate documents, and so they are free to submit 800 or 1,000 words, which plenty do. The new platform will require students to enter their responses into a window. At the 650-word limit, they will be unable to type any more. (The system will also not accept an essay of fewer than 250 words.)
The Common Application’s board members decided to raise the word limit after they went back and counted the words in especially effective essays. “We wanted to see how many of them were 500 words or less,” Mr. Anderson said, “and 650 seemed like kind of a sweet spot.”
That seems like plenty to Ms. Berry. In the end, she suggested, word limits and the phrasing of questions might matter less to students than to counselors. “You’re not going to find five questions that will satisfy everyone,” she said, “but students are going to adapt. They’re going to figure it out.”
