The Common App essay is due in about six weeks, and the question underneath every draft is whether it will matter. Colleges have answered that in their own filings. Thirty-four of the 73 schools we read on the two most recent cycles rate the application essay "very important" — the top rating on the form — and the list is not what most students would guess.
What the schools say
Section C7 of the Common Data Set asks each college to rate the application essay on a four-point scale: very important, important, considered, not considered. Across the 73 filings we have read for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 cycles: 34 very important, 31 important, 6 considered, 2 not considered.
Put differently: 89% of schools rate the essay in the top two tiers. It is one of the most consistently weighted factors on the form — more schools call it very important than call class rank (23) or test scores (16) very important.
The 34 that rate it very important
Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Washington University in St. Louis, USC, Tufts, Wake Forest, Villanova, UNC, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Caltech, Amherst, Bowdoin, Haverford — and six of the seven University of California campuses we read: Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Irvine, Santa Barbara, Riverside (Davis rates it important), plus the University of Washington.
Two things stand out. First, the essay is the one factor the UC campuses rate at the top. The UCs do not read recommendations, do not consider test scores, and mostly do not consider class rank — the personal insight questions carry the weight that those factors carry elsewhere. Second, the most selective privates are nearly unanimous: among the Ivies we read, only Harvard rates the essay below very important (Harvard rates nothing very important).
The 8 that rate it considered or below
Harvard (considered), Northeastern (considered), NC State, Iowa State, LSU, Cincinnati (considered), and two that do not consider it at all: Penn State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
If Penn State or Cal Poly is on your list, the essay you polish for them is not being read as a factor. Send a competent one and spend the hours elsewhere. Northeastern rating the essay merely "considered" while running a binding round with an 11× advantage tells you where that school's leverage actually is.
A note on Harvard
Harvard's 2025–26 filing rates the essay "considered" — the same rating it gives every one of the seventeen factors except three it marks not considered. This is not Harvard saying essays do not matter; it is Harvard declining to rank anything. Read it as "holistic, and we will not tell you the weights," which is different from Penn State's plain "not considered."
What "very important" changes about the next six weeks
At a school that rates the essay very important, the essay is one of a handful of inputs the reader has said they weigh most — alongside rigor and grades at nearly every school, and alongside recommendations at most of the selective privates. It is also the only one of those inputs still under your control in October. Grades are set. Scores are nearly set. The essay is the lever left.
That does not mean a great essay overcomes a transcript outside the range. It means that, inside the range, the essay is where the school itself says decisions get made.
What the reader is actually looking for
The form does not say. But the schools that rate the essay very important are, almost without exception, the same schools that rate character and personal qualities very important — 31 of 73 do. The essay is where character gets read. That argues for the specific over the impressive: a reader deciding between two files inside the same range is looking for the person, not the résumé restated in prose.
Two schools, same essay, different weight
A student applying to both Penn (very important) and Penn State (not considered) should not write the same essay for both — not because the schools want different things, but because one will read it as a weighted factor and the other will not. The time goes to Penn. That is what the table is for: allocating the weeks you have left to the schools that have said they will read them.
What to do this week
Sort your list into the three groups. For the very-important schools, the essay gets the remaining October weekends. For the important schools, one strong draft and a careful supplement is enough. For Penn State and Cal Poly, send what you have. The table does not tell you what to write; it tells you where the hours go.
Where the numbers come from
Every rating is from section C7 of the named school's Common Data Set, 2024–25 or 2025–26 cycle, read from the school's own published filing. Counts are over the 73 filings we have read on those cycles. Each school page on PrepToDone shows its essay rating with the filing year and source link.
Put your list in and see what each school published about its early round — free, without an account. Which school to spend the binding application on is $9.99 through Nov 15 (regular $49), once. Run your list.
Results are data-based estimates and do not guarantee admission. This article is for informational purposes only and does not guarantee admission outcomes. All data is based on publicly available information and may not reflect current admissions standards.
Written by PrepToDone Team — data analysis on U.S. federal education datasets (IPEDS · College Scorecard).