back with us again is rob franek, from the princeton review. welcome. - good to be here.ed to be a college admissions officer. guess you read a lot of college essays. i have without question read many an essay, and some of them stick in my head even though i did that quite a few years ago. how important is the essay in the college application? well, just to set the pecking order, there are two things that are certainly more important than your college essay or your personal statement, and those two terms are used interchangeably. first two things are always gonna be your high school gpa and sat and act scores. those are the days of standardized tests. but after those, then things like interviews and certainly your college essay, that personal statement, comes into real impact in your college application. - okay, so if we want to make a real impact, we want to avoid mistakes, what are the most common mistakes students make in writing the essay? - two things stick out in my mind as the biggest problems that students when creating a college essay submitting it to a school. o