Question about admissions essay

[stevn7]

So I'm about to start writing some admissions essays (very last minute, I know..) and I was wondering: do people usually give their essay a title? Do you at least write "personal statement" on the top? or do you just skip the title completely and get right into the actual essay?

 

I know it's a minor detail but none of the advice articles I've read say anything about this and I just want to be sure before I submit an essay.

[fuzzylogician]

No title is necessary. I always put my name and the name of the document ("statement of purpose" in this case) in the header and "page X of Y" in the footer. However, I hear that these days a lot of applications ask you not to put anything in the header/footer as the application adds this information to the documents you upload automatically, so I'd watch out for that.

[MathCat]

Well, I put a header with my name, the program I'm applying to, and what it was (e.g. SOP). No program asked me not to, although a couple insisted on at least 1" top margin, perhaps to print this information. Several did ask me to include this.

[bsharpe269]

In the top left of the body of the document (so I intended it to be a header even though not in the actual "header" of the document), I included: 

Name

Name of School

Name of Program

Fall 2015

 

I skipped a line after that and jumped right into my essay.

[uselesstheory]

Different programs may ask for specific and different formats for essays (and other application documents), so check to make sure you follow those guidelines!