You know from school that you shouldn’t turn in an essay you already wrote for another class, but can you do that for your college essays?
The short answer is yes, you can. But there are a lot of caveats, and the way you reuse essays will depend on the kind of essay you’re writing.
Let’s get into it.
Reusing Your Personal Statement
Application systems like the Common Application actually require you to reuse the same personal statement for multiple colleges.
When you apply to college through the Common App, the personal statement you write will automatically be sent to every school you apply to. That’s why it’s important that your personal statement not address any school in particular. If you mention a school by name, all the other schools will see it.
Now, you might be wondering what happens when you apply to schools that don’t use the Common App.
Are you also allowed to reuse your personal statement then?
In short, yes.
If you’re applying to other schools through individual application portals or other application systems (like Coalition), you’re allowed to reuse your personal statement.
But there’s a catch.
It’s likely that you wrote your personal statement in response to a Common Application prompt. Since essays should clearly align with a prompt, no matter the application you’re submitting, you’ll still have to ensure that your personal statement aligns with an available prompt.
If not, you may have to tweak what you’ve already written to fit.
Thankfully, most personal statement prompts are fairly similar, so you shouldn’t have much trouble using the same personal statement across all your applications.
Reusing Your Supplemental Essays
So you can use your personal statement for multiple applications, but what about your supplemental essays?
The answer is yes and no.
As a reminder, supplemental essays are essays that supplement your personal statement. They are assigned to you by specific schools. For schools that require supplemental essays, you’ll usually have to write 1-4 per school. If you add that up, it’s a lot of essays to write.
Supplemental essays also revolve around a pretty standard set of prompts. These prompts include questions about why you’re interested in a particular school or major, what your experiences with diversity and community have been, any personal challenges you’ve faced, and how you’ve excelled in your academics and extracurriculars.
Because supplemental essays often overlap, it may be tempting to just copy and paste the same supplemental essay into each application with the same prompt type.
Unfortunately, recycling your supplemental essays isn’t so easy.
While it is possible to reuse content from one supplemental essay to the next, you should be strategic about when and how you recycle information.
How NOT to Reuse Your Supplemental Essays
Recycling supplemental essays is somewhat of an artform. By the end of your application journey, you’ll be well-versed.
For now, here are two methods you should avoid.
Avoid copying and pasting your supplemental essays.
Since the whole purpose of supplemental essays is to write an essay directed at a specific school, simply using the same essay for multiple applications probably won’t work out in your favor.
Copying a supplemental essay directly into another application doesn’t allow you to customize your essay to align with the values and offerings of the school in question. To be able to use an essay across multiple schools would mean that your essay is too generic to be truly valuable.
Avoid writing entirely new essays for every single supplemental essay.
If you can’t copy and paste your essays, then you might be tempted to write entirely new content for every single supplemental essay.
Doing so is also a mistake because it’s not an efficient use of your time.
While every essay can’t be exactly the same, they also don’t have to be completely novel.
The key to recycling your supplemental essays is about finding the balance between recyclable stories and individual customization.
3 Tips for Reusing Your Supplemental Essays
1. Categorize each of your supplemental essays by prompt type. Then group like prompts together.
Before you can even think about recycling your essays, you’ll probably need to organize them.
There are lots of ways to keep track of your applications and essays, so the best thing you can do is find a system that works for you. You want to find something that you easily understand and will be able to update regularly.
Two of the main features you should look for in a tracker are a) a place to list prompts, and b) a way to categorize them by prompt type.
The supplemental essay prompt types are generally defined as:
These prompt types each ask you to fulfill particular expectations (and we have guides for each of them, so be sure to consult them as you start writing).
Our downloadable Essay Tracker lets you list all of your supplemental essays, copy and paste the essay prompts, and note which prompt type they fall under.
Going through all this work will save you time in the long run. You can’t even begin to think about where there’s overlap until you know which supplemental essays correspond with which prompt types.
Once you note the overlap, you can go back through essays you’ve already written for similar prompts and extract ideas or sentences to use in your new essay. You shouldn’t grab the whole essay, but you can reuse concepts, arguments, snippets, and examples.
Just be sure to write new connections between yourself and the school to which you’re applying.
2. Create an “idea bank” by identifying a few strengths, stories, and key points that you can easily adapt to different prompts.
Recall from our supplemental essay guide that supplemental essays should revolve around one of your strengths.
The second step to recycling your supplemental essays is choosing a few stories, strengths, and key points that you can use across your essays. These examples should all be related to very important parts of your life.
Put these all together, and you’ll have an idea bank. Having these stories on hand will make writing your supplementals easier because you’ll have a bank of ideas to draw from.
Let’s illustrate this tip with an example.
Say you’re interested in applying to engineering programs, and one of your main extracurriculars is participation in a robotics club.
Here’s what part of your bank might look like.
- Stories: Winning the robotics final. Solving that difficult coding problem. Dealing with a team disagreement.
- Strengths: Intellectual curiosity. Problem-solving. Teamwork.
- Key Points: I’m a team player who makes sure everyone’s voice is heard. I find creative solutions to problems. I am interested in using my skills to help my community.
With that bank in hand, you can address almost any supplemental essay prompt thrown your way.
Now let’s say that you’re responding to the following two prompts.
The first, from Cornell College of Engineering: How do your interests directly connect with Cornell Engineering? If you have an intended major, what draws you to that department at Cornell Engineering? If you are unsure what specific engineering field you would like to study, describe how your general interest in engineering most directly connects with Cornell Engineering. It may be helpful to concentrate on one or two things that you are most excited about.
The second, from the University of Michigan: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (Required for all applicants; minimum 100 words/maximum 300 words)
These are two vastly different prompts. Starting from scratch, you’d have a lot of work in front of you.
But because you have your idea bank, you already know what direction you can take the supplemental essays in. All you have to do is decide how to connect your story to the school you’re applying to. (For more on that process, look to the supplemental essay guide.)
So from your idea bank, your supplemental essay ideas might look something like this:
-
Cornell: The story I want to tell is about solving that difficult coding problem. I want to show off my intellectual curiosity and problem-solving strengths and make the point that I am interested in using my skills to help my community. I will connect it to Cornell Engineering’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in computer science.
-
University of Michigan: The community I choose is my robotics team. I’ll describe what it was like to win the robotics final after overcoming an argument. I want to show my teamwork strength and make the point that I’m a team player who makes sure everyone’s voice is heard. I’ll connect all this to the University of Michigan College of Engineering’s new “people-first framework for engineering.”
See? Two vastly different prompts, quickly and easily outlined by drawing from the idea bank. You can also easily see how these ideas would apply to other kinds of prompts about community, diversity, challenges, and more.
3. Pay close attention to the prompts.
As you’re deciding what parts of your essays to reuse, be sure to keep an eye on the prompts.
It’s important to read every supplemental essay prompt multiple times. You need to answer every part of the prompt, so diagramming it can be important.
When you reuse information, you want to make sure that you’re not missing part of the new prompt that didn’t exist in the prompt for which you wrote the essay that you’re borrowing from.
Let’s look at the University of Michigan prompt again, but this time we’re going to annotate its parts.
Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage((These are the kinds of communities they’re looking for. It means that you have a lot of freedom in how you define your “community.”)). Choose one((You should only talk about ONE community.)) of the communities to which you belong((“To which you belong” indicates that you should be writing about a community in which you are an active member.)), and describe that community((Your essay should 1) describe that community.)) and your place within it((And 2) describe your place within it.)). (Required for all applicants; minimum 100 words/maximum 300 words)
Your essay, then, has several jobs: choose a community, describe the community, and describe your place in the community. And you should do all that while making a case for why you belong at the University of Michigan.
It’s a lot to juggle, especially if you’re moving quickly and trying to use a community essay you already wrote for another school.
So take your time, read the prompts, and make sure that you’re reusing the appropriate information and including everything you need to.
Key Takeaways
To sum this whole post up, your personal statement will likely be the exact same across the majority of your college applications. That’s kind of the point.
But your supplemental essays need to be specific to the school to which you’re applying. That means that you can’t just copy and paste supplemental essays that have similar prompts.
Instead, you can reuse ideas, snippets, examples, and sentences from one supplemental essay to another when it’s most appropriate. You can also create an “idea bank” of options to draw from to speed up the process. Just be sure that you’re customizing each supplemental to the school you’re applying to. It’s also a good idea to read each prompt thoroughly so you can include exactly the information that is requested of you.
There are a lot of factors to consider, but taking your time to stay organized and be thoughtful about where you allow overlap will save you time and energy in the long run. And we all know that time and energy are both in short supply during college application season.
You’ve got this. (And if you don’t feel like you’ve quite got it yet, check out our guides or reach out to work with us. We’re here to help!)
