Final answer:
The relationship between the submitted essay and the college's response is a function.
Step-by-step explanation:
The relationship between the submitted essay and the college's response can be considered a function because for each unique essay submitted, there will be a corresponding college response of acceptance, denial, or waitlist. Each input (the essay) has a unique output (the college's response), and there is no possibility of having multiple college responses for the same essay.
In this case, the essay serves as the independent variable (input) and the college's response serves as the dependent variable (output). You can think of it as a one-to-one mapping, where each essay is mapped to a single response from the college.
Therefore, the correct answer is a. Yes, it is a function.