Clicking on some of the top google returns for UVA essay advice led me to multiple websites that have our old essay prompts labeled for this year. Another suggests that one of our prompts actually means "why us?" Please be careful about using third party websites for admission advice.
I've addressed the websites that are trying to convince students we have a "why us" prompt before. Plenty of schools use a "why us" prompt on their applications. If we wanted you to write that kind of essay, we'd ask for it. Don't use the limited space you get for your responses to talk about UVA. After all, we know UVA is awesome - we're here! What we don't know yet is how awesome you are.
Now, let me address the larger point: We strive to be clear and helpful with our instructions and prompts. We want to get applications that fulfill our needs, which is why I constantly implore students to read the application instructions on our website before applying. If a third party tells you that we want things that aren't in our instructions, please ignore them. If someone says they got into UVA because they submitted something we didn't ask for, they are wrong. They simply made the application more cumbersome for themselves (and for us).
If you have questions about the application instructions, please reach out to us for clarification. We have a dean on call during business hours to answer questions by phone, staff answering the general email account, and I have my weekly live q&a sessions on instagram. The UVA admission team is here to help you! When we get lots of questions about the same thing, that helps us update our instructions, too.
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