Georgetown is a special school that draws attention from all around the country for many reasons – its integration of faith into the curriculum and student life, it’s stellar academics, and also its prime location for international studies – Washington D.C.
The school asks for a two-paragraph statement on your most significant summer experience, a one-page personal statement, and then, a statement on why you’ve applied to the particular undergraduate school you’ve selected – the college, the nursing school, the foreign service school, or the business school.
This probably seems like a lot of additional work, but it’s not. If you’ve already done your work for the Common App, you might be practically done before you even begin.
Your long essay for the Common App can be repurposed as your personal statement, and your short essay, if it’s not already about a summer experience, can be fleshed out to describe a part of you that will gel nicely with the undergraduate college you’re applying to. Make sure to refer to our earlier entry about The Deal when you’re writing the department-specific piece. Remember that you ought to be addressing what makes you a desirable candidate, not what makes the school desirable to you, so even if the topic you chose for your short response has little to do with the field you’re heading into, remember, it’s not always about what you have done, but the way you do things.
We can see that you’ll be a great nurse from an essay about your days working at a record store if it tells the reader you’re an energetic, caring, and dynamic person. It doesn’t have to be about medical care in general.
We can understand what a great business person you’ll become just by reading about your baseball card collecting if the insight you are able to give is from a marketing standpoint rather than just how much you like cards. Try to think differently, and you might be surprised how much you stand out.
Georgetown’s deadline is just around the corner, but don’t panic if you haven’t started the application essay yet. It’s more than manageable given what you’ve already done.
What To Do If You’ve Been Rejected Early Decision
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about – there’s always the potential you won’t get into your top choice. If you find the thin envelope in the mailbox this holiday season, regroup quickly, because there’s a lot of work to be done in what is probably a very short period of time.
- Itemize Your Workload
There’s going to be a lot to do – probably somewhere between six and ten applications in two weeks’ or a month’s time. So before you begin, list all of your work and make sure you have a single source to work from, instead of ten different applications in a pile. Handling such a workload is all about managing your time appropriately.
- Find other options that are comparable to your first choice
Your first choice is gone. Let it go. But the good news is that there are other options out there that are actually very similar to your top choice in many important ways. In many respects, you’ll even find that they’re better. So do your research if you haven’t already, and find out what else is out there. If you were aiming for Amherst, consider Williams and Brown. If you were aiming for Chapel Hill, think of Ann Arbor and Berkeley. Any one of these places might surprise you if you look a bit further into their many nooks and crannies.
- Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose
You’ve got a lot of prompts, but remember that those essays can be handled with fewer essays than you think. After you’ve itemized your workload, consolidate it. Find an efficient way to get things under control, and you may be surprised at how quickly and accurately you can knock these essays out without over-exerting yourself or spreading your interests too thin.