An admissions or application essay, sometimes also called a personal statement, is an essay or other written statement written by an applicant, often a prospective student applying to some college, university, or graduate school. The application essay is a common part of the university and college admissions process.
Some applications may require one or more essays to be completed, others make essays optional or supplementary. Essay topics range from very specific to open-ended. Common topics include career aspirations, academic strengths and weaknesses, past experiences, and reasons for applying to a particular school.
The University of Chicago is known for its unusual essay prompts in its undergraduate admissions application, including "What would you do with a foot-and-a-half-tall jar of mustard"?
The Common Application, used for undergraduate admissions by many American colleges and universities, requires a general admissions essay, in addition to any supplemental admissions essays required by member institutions. The Common Application offers students six admissions essay prompts from which to choose.
The application process for All Souls College, Oxford has the reputation of being the hardest examination in the world. It consists of several specialist papers and, until 2010, also required candidates to write an essay upon a topic suggested by a single word such as Possessions, which was the topic of successful Fellow, A. L. Rowse. This was especially challenging because it provided great scope to demonstrate imagination and intelligence.
Further information: College admissions in the United States#EssaysFamous quotes containing the words application and/or essay:
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
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—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)