Sometimes students place great emphasis on their main essay at the expense of the short-answer essays.  Yet, these shorter essays provide colleges the opportunity to see the specific reasons for why you chose them among all of the other schools.  You can use these essays to really prove to a college that you have done your homework and you know their school.

I strongly suggest that you before you fill out the short-answer questions, you should do your homework about the school. Check out their website and get to really know the campus, their academic programs, their extracurricular activities, the arts, cultural and athletic scenes in and around the campus and some details about the community of which the school is a part.  Which teams are longstanding rivals to the school?  In which coffee houses do students hang out?  Which initiatives has the school promoted? What kind of relationship does the school have with its surrounding community? What are alumni up to? What’s the hardest/most interesting course in the major that you think you’ll be taking? What’s the name of the school newspaper/literary journal, etc.

If you know these details, you can incorporate them into an honest essay that shows the things that draw you into the life of the college.

Happy writing!

-Dr. Kirschner