Apply to college for the first time or transfer to complete your degree. The higher the level of competition and the more prestigious the award, the more the honor is worth. Where in the world did fried rice come from? In my application and in the Common Application, there's an Additional Information section, where you can write about anything else. But again in the interest of transparency, here goes: I'm still cringing a bit. But this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid showing a preference. There are just too many of them around. This letter is probably the weakest overall of all my letters. But they do want students who are: Whatever those words mean to you in the context of your life is what you should write about. SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination BoardTM. This is the first of many marks the admissions officer made on my application. If you keep reading to the end, I'll have advice for both younger students and current applicants to build the strongest application possible. I think this essay was probably neutral to my application, not a strong net positive or net negative. Back then, we had a set of different prompts: I chose to write on a topic of my choice. //