--- title: College Admissions: The Essay Doesn't Matter as Much as You Think description: There's good news and bad news when it comes to college essays canonical: https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-14T22:17:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:02:03.090Z og:title: Your College Essay Doesn't Matter As Much As You Think og:description: Experts agree: nobody ever got in based on the essay alone og:url: https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Your College Essay Doesn't Matter As Much As You Think twitter:description: Experts agree: nobody ever got in based on the essay alone twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # College Application Essays Don't Matter as Much as You Think > Sponsored content. 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It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=8b2d52ce-7777-4dca-aa1d-6327062026a7&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Advice on the College Admissions Process From Author Pamela Donnelly [Watch (HLS stream): Advice on the College Admissions Process From Author Pamela Donnelly](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5Zz72aU1.m3u8) (1:59)  _Published 2014-11-14. Advice on the College Admissions Process From Author Pamela Donnelly_ by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/) and [Julia Lull](https://time.com/author/julia-lull/) Nov 14, 2014 10:17 PM UTC by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/) and [Julia Lull](https://time.com/author/julia-lull/) Nov 14, 2014 10:17 PM UTC **Correction appended, November 14\.** Parents: sit down before you read this. Kids: deep breaths. You know that beautifully crafted, deeply felt, highly unusual college application essay you’ve been polishing? It might not make a difference for your college admission chances. Stanford sociologist Mitchell Stevens spent 18 months embedded with admissions officers at an unnamed top-tier liberal arts college and found that, even in cases where students were within the admissible range in terms of scores and grades, officers rarely looked to the personal essays as a deciding factor. He wrote about his experience for [The New Republic](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120249/colleges-admissions-essay-questions-and-what-they-actually-reveal?utm%5Fcontent=bufferb8f7a&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fcampaign=buffer), and here’s the most interesting part: --- > “” --- The good news? Three former admissions officers I spoke to told me that, contrary to Steven’s observations, officers read every essay that comes across their desks. “We definitely read the essays,” says Joie Jager-Hyman, president of College Prep 360 and former admissions officer at Dartmouth College. “You don’t do that job unless you enjoy reading the essays. They’re kind of fun.” Elizabeth Heaton, senior director of educational counseling at admissions-consulting firm College Coach, and former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania, says she took notes on every single piece of writing a student submitted, whether she advocated for them or not. The bad news? No matter how gorgeous your prose is, you can’t get into college based on the strength of your essay alone. “No-one ever gets into college because you write a great essay,” Heaton says. “You can _not_ get in because you write a really bad one.” And even Joan Didion herself wouldn’t get into college on her writing skills if she had lackluster grades or scores. The officers told me they did sometimes look to the essays to explain weaknesses in the application (like if there was a year of bad grades that coincided with an illness,) but they said that kind information was usually best kept in the “additional information” section of the application. Some officers recalled moments when they were so moved by an essay that they advocated for the student to be admitted despite other weaknesses on the application, but none had ever recalled a time where that strategy had worked. “There were a couple of incidents were I really wanted to admit a student and recommended that they move forward because their writing and personal qualities were so interesting, but I was not successful,” says Shoshana Krieger, a counselor for Expert Admissions who formerly worked in the admissions office at the University of Chicago and at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. “There are certain cases where if a student is simply too far off academically, it’s then just not going to make a difference.” “I never saw a phenomenal essay suddenly make up for everything” Heaton agreed. “These days, there’s just so little wiggle room to be able to make that call.” She also noted that it looks suspicious when a kid with mediocre grades and scores submits a spectacular essay, and raises doubts that the student might not have written it herself. Later in his piece, Steven notes that the college essay may be more of a psychological outlet than a practical asset in the college application process, since it’s one of the only things that’s still in the applicant’s control during the fall of their senior year (most of their transcript and scores are already behind them.) Joie Jager-Hyman said she agreed with that assessment. “There’s so much anxiety right now in the air,” she said. “It’s the thing they feel like they have power over.” She also noted that focus on the essay could help kids become better writers in the long-run, even if it might not necessarily make or break their college admissions chances, and “that’s not totally a bad thing.” So even if all the revising and nitpicking on the college essay may not help your kid get into college, it will almost certainly make him or her a better writer. So don’t put away that red pen yet. **_Correction:_** _The original version of this post misstated the location of Trinity University in Texas. It is in San Antonio._ ## Transcript In the context of things, college is not a destination, it's a vehicle. It's gonna get us somewhere we want them to go. Hi, I'm Pamela Donnelly. I am a college admissions expert. I specialize in getting kids into, the colleges of their dreams, but also, just to the right college for them. Post 2008 with the economic crisis. What I've seen is a tremendous teeter totter of disaster, and this is the tuition rates rising because of the economic, you know, problems that the country has been having. While the admissions rates right now are about 18 % more difficult to get into most schools than it would have been even five or ten years ago. The way to keep a student [ INAUDIBLE ] is to help them remember that is a blip on the chart of a much larger movie called life. So, we don't want them to be so focused on an SAT score or a [ MUSIC ] A particular grade in a particular class, that it can feel really disproportionate to the realities. The reality is we want them to begin with the end in mind. We want them to begin knowing that our goal is to get you a happy, joyous, life where you have purpose, right? Our goal is not to have this thing called a 4. 0, and where's that 2400 on that SAT? So many students come in with a fear of letting the parents down. But, I'll remind them that they're one or two years, usually, away from being legally an adult, able to vote, able to, you know, do all kinds of grownup things. Coming of age is a process. So, teaching them that it's okay to do that. You know that song from Frozen? Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Right? Once you put it in those applications, I want you to remember that scene where Anna takes her scarf and throws it to the wind because at some point you do have to let it go. I love that she steps into her power in that moment, and these young men and women are stepping into their power and who they are about to become. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/"},"headline":"College Application Essays Don't Matter as Much as You Think","datePublished":"2014-11-14T22:17:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-01T09:02:03.090Z","description":"There's good news and bad news when it comes to college essays","url":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/","keywords":["Living","Education","College","High School","Harvard","University","dartmouth","College Admissions","Yale","Ivy League"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Julia Lull","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/julia-lull/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/","name":"College Application Essays Don't Matter as Much as You Think"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Advice on the College Admissions Process From Author Pamela Donnelly","description":"Advice on the College Admissions Process From Author Pamela Donnelly","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5Zz72aU1/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-11-14T16:34:09.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5Zz72aU1.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/","duration":"PT1M59S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3585539/college-application-essays-dont-matter-as-much-as-you-think/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```