David Graves      July 6th, 2015 in Blog


Every year, our office reviews the freshman application for changes
that we would like to see for the next year. During this review, we
also look at the short essay questions that are required for First Year
applicants
who apply Regular Decision or are deferred Early Action (Early Action applicants do not submit essays unless they are deferred). 
For 2016, we have made a few minor changes in our short essays. We require  one short essay
that all RD or deferred EA applicants must complete, and three
additional short essay topics with the applicant selecting to respond to
two of these. Essay 1 should be between 200-300 words, while essays 2-4

should be between 150 to 200 words, but remember to focus on substance
and
not word count.  Before submitting your application and essays in the
Fall, always remember to proofread and edit!  The First Year application
will be available on September 2, but we thought that some people would
want to know the essays earlier than that date.

Here are the four essay questions as we now have them, with
Essay 1 being required (200-300 words) and Essays 2-4 being three options
from which the applicant can select two (150-200 words).
  
  1. (Required) The
    UGA faculty has defined the qualities that the student body should demonstrate in the Admissions
    Philosophy Statement    .  After reviewing this, help us understand which of your qualities will add value to our community of scholars. (200-300 words)
  2. Describe a problem, possibly related to your area of study, which you would like to solve. Explain its importance to you and what actions you would take to solve this issue.
    (150-200 words)
  3. Tell us an interesting or amusing story about
    yourself that you have not already shared in your application.     (150-200 words)
  4. UGA’s First Year Odyssey Program offers more than 300 seminar courses for new freshmen.
    Some examples include “The History of     Horseracing”, “Einstein and the Theories of Relativity” and “The Zombie
    Plague”. If you could create your own seminar course at UGA

    in any subject area that interested
    you, what would it be? What would the course be named and what would you hope
    to learn?     Please write your response in the style of the UGA First Year Odyssey descriptions as seen on their website.

    (150-200 words)

In addition, here is a great essay from last year that I posted earlier to give an example of strong writing skills.

It’s Christmas morning. I’m asleep in a beautiful princess bed
adorned with flowers and puffy pink pillows. I’ve always slept with Weez
on Christmas Eve.

Now let me make a little
sense of all of this. Weez is my little sister (her nickname) and we
always have a slumber party in her room on Christmas Eve. Seeing her
experience the magic of Christmas never gets old… even when she’s
kicking me and stealing the sheets at two in the morning.

I
can’t help but feel the same things she does when she first wakes up
and realizes what day it is. Then comes the mad dash downstairs to see
what fun toys Santa left under the tree. Once all of the presents are
opened, Weez always seems to have more fun playing with the boxes than
the toys that came out of them. Sitting there, building a box fort with
her, I realize that she’s the present I’m most thankful for. She’s
taught me how to be more appreciative of the people around me than the
things around me. Wow. Here I am with one of the greatest presents of
all, my adopted sister.

Griffin H., thank you for letting us share your essay with future applicants to UGA.
 



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