Do colleges read short answer questions carefully?

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office, the office we learned from, read the tiny short-answer questions on an application closely, and for more than one reason. Several selective colleges ask a handful of them alongside the essays: the biggest challenge society faces, how you spent your last two summers, a moment in history you wish you had witnessed. Some cap the answers at fifty words.

Students tend to write them last, late at night and in a hurry, on the theory that nobody lingers over a box that small. Readers notice, and what they notice can reach well beyond the box itself, back into how they read the rest of the file. The first reason is what those few lines can give a reader that nothing else can.