The Interfolio Blog

We wrote a post a few weeks ago about how to write a great personal statement, so we thought we'd follow up this week with some thoughts on a new trend some universities have started in essay requirements.

Typically colleges and universities require a number of answers to short questions in addition to two longer essays. But in today's Inside Higher Ed, MIT and UPenn discussed a change they've recently made to requiring fewer essays, and focusing instead on short paragraph-form answers to a series of questions. 

Why the change? The universities cited a number of reasons, including that they were trying to help applicants by reducing the amount of time commitment an application would require. But the real heart of the switch came when it became clear that admissions personnel were able to tell more about an applicant and get a better answer to questions when a smaller word-limit was imposed. 

A column in the MIT newspaper The Tech noted that short-answer questions tend to "force the student to respond directly and... tend to elicit more honesty -- which is great from an admissions perspective." Inside Higher Ed noted that essays, by comparison, tend to become long-winded and with more formal writing, something that schools hope to avoid since the writing samples are meant to give them insight into a student's personality just as much as they demonstrate actual writing talent.

Not all schools are making the change to short-answer essays, but some lessons can be learned from this change regardless of the length of the piece you are writing. Most notably, when writing your essays, make sure to stay on task and answer the question as succinctly as possible. In addition, remember to infuse your essays with personality and use the writing samples as your opportunity to show the school who you are outside of academic accomplishments. Check out our tips on essay writing for more info, and leave us any ideas you have on writing great application essays in the comments!