<p>My common app essay and main supplement essay for my EA school (Yale) are both sort of unique and personal. Neither has anything to do with my extracurriculars/hobbies; each one is more geared towards revealing my personality. Is that a bad thing? Would it be beneficial to make them more contrasting in order to reveal different aspects of my life? It's really not "my thing" to write essays about my academic interests/leadership positions, so I don't know what to do.</p>
<p>As with any essay, if it’s done well and reveals who you are and what you have to offer, then it’s fine. There is no rule that the essays have to be about your ECs/hobbies/academic interests/leadership roles, though many are.</p>
<p>And do remember that you have to address your extracurriculars, in the 150-200 word short answer on the Common App. Leaving it at that can be fine. If you feel like your resume speaks for itself and you want to go talk about other aspects of yourself, 150-200 words can be plenty. As long as you don’t repeat yourself in them, you should be fine. (“Hanging with my grandma” and “I like telling jokes” e.g. aren’t repetitive. “I like reading books” and “I like reading magazines,” of course, no.) </p>
<p>If an example helps, I didn’t really talk about my extracurriculars in my essays, either. I had one major extracurricular and then a few smaller ones. I talked about the major one in the short essay and that was all the words I felt like writing about that one. I may or many not have mentioned one of the smaller ones in my main essay, because the thesis was that I liked reading and I was on our school’s magazine, but it was barely a mention.</p>
<p>Thank you so much! Just like you, exultationsy, I have one main huge EC that I’m going to write about in my short answer. So I guess I’m just going to go free-form for the other essays :)</p>