just got done applying to med schools so i felt this (easily 20 pages of unique text for essays). but it's something i noticed when applying to undergrad too no matter the field/level, the application will always be the bottleneck; the final, direct pass to determining your merit. granted, you can't write very good essays with no experience, and good essays will only do so much to offset low objective criteria, letters of rec, etc. but even then, point is what's actually being evaluated when someone decides on the merit that qualifies you to be a student (and ultimately professional), is how good of an application you can submit. and that expands beyond essays to even your entire journey, gathering experiences and earning stats to put into the application. it's the ultimate meta-game, and in some ways it actually effectively filters for what schools are looking for. but in most other ways it leaves very practically qualified people out to dry and exacerbates the arbitrariness of an already subjective process, as in this case.