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:
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Essay writing is perhaps ... the easiest for the author and requires little more than what is called a fluency of words and a vivacity of expression to avoid dullness; but without ... a real foundation of matter ... an essay writer is very apt, like Dogberry in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, to think that if he had the tediousness of a king, he would bestow it all upon his readers.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)