虽然现在距2015-16Common申请的开放日8月1日，还有20天的时间，但不少大学已经发布了他们的补充文书题目（supplemental essay prompts），这样申请者们就可以提前准备他们大学申请的文书。
目前来说，学生申请多达10所或者更多的大学已经屡见不鲜。一半来书，选校包括目标学校、可达到学校和保底学校，所有学校都是基于学生个人要求、学术要求和费用要求的最佳选择。有了自己的选校清单后，就需要关注学校要求学生写的补充文书题目：一般每个学校两到三篇，所以名校的申请者可能整个申请季下来要写20篇甚至更多文书。文书写作工作量非常大，在高三学年的确让人抓狂。
这也是为什么越来越多的大学今年夏天就提前公布文书题目，包括那些非通用申请系统的大学。这样，申请者们就可以赶在高三忙乱期之前提早进行头脑风暴和文书写作了。
“Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight—insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evidence from observation and experiments.” Kannan Jagannathan, Professor of Physics, Amherst College
“Literature is the best way to overcome death. My father, as I said, is an actor. He’s the happiest man on earth when he’s performing, but when the show is over, he’s sad and troubled. I wish he could live in the eternal present, because in the theater everything remains in memories and photographs. Literature, on the other hand, allows you to live in the present and to remain in the pantheon of the future.Literature is a way to say, I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, this is my name.” Ilán Stavans, Professor of Spanish, Amherst College. From “The Writer in Exile: An Interview with Ilán Stavans” by Saideh Pakravan for the Fall 1993 issue of The Literary Review.
“It seems to me incumbent upon this and other schools’ graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public interest...unless the graduates of this college…are willing to put back into our society those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion... then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible.” John F. Kennedy, at the ground breaking for the Amherst College Frost Library, October 26, 1963
“Stereotyped beliefs have the power to become self-fulfilling prophesies for behavior.” Elizabeth Aires, Professor of Psychology, Amherst College. From her book: Men and Women In Interaction, Reconsidering the Difference.
“Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted.” Attributed to William Hastie, Amherst Class of 1925, the first African-American to serve as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals
