College supplemental essay mistakes kept messing up my drafts, so I made a tiny checklist and it honestly helped a lot. If you keep searching college supplemental essay mistakes, these are the ones I saw in my own writing most:
- being way too generic about the school
- reusing the same story from the personal statement
- answering the prompt only halfway
- name-dropping programs with no real connection
- sounding formal instead of like an actual person
- forgetting to show why it matters to me
Before submitting, I read each supplement and ask: could this only be sent to this college, and does it sound like me? If the answer is no, I revise.
Super simple, but it caught a lot of weak spots fast.