<p>the duke application has an essay labeled as optional. the prompt is as follows.</p>
<p>Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you'd like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you've had to help us understand you better-perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background-we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke. (250 word limit)</p>
<p>As a white male with not much to write about, would it be better to skip this essay or write something that may not be too impressive? thanks!</p>
<p>As you know, Duke is hyper-competitive, with tens-of-thousands of superbly qualified, entirely deserving, and excellently credentialed applicants denied annually (10.8 percent aggregate acceptance rate last year). For this precise reason, the optional essay really isn’t (IMHO).</p>
<p>Non-submission of the optional essay is almost certain to reduce your selection opportunity significantly, BUT NOT BECAUSE DUKE DIRECTLY PENALIZES YOU. Rather, your competitors can – and will – utilize their optional essay to enhance their admission-desirability, and you will not. To illustrate, one applicant might use this essay to document his passion bioengineering (one of Duke’s “crown jewel” undergraduate program), while another might employ the essay to indicate how a serious illness during part of his sophomore year substantially altered his values and goals (also subtly explaining why his grades that year weren’t stellar). Accordingly, these applicants will attain a competitive admissions advantage that you will not have, unless you capitalize on the optional essay as an approved method to promote your candidacy.</p>
<p>I read your statement indicating that you had little to write about; please forgive me, but that honestly sounds like a lack of initiative and imagination. Do you want to optimize your Duke acceptance probability, or not? If so, write a compelling “optional” essay.</p>
<p>@TopTier @cmckeon45: To clarify, this is NOT the optional essay that Duke has been asking for quite some time asking “Why Duke?” or “Why engineering?” I agree that it’s in your best interest to answer that one and differentiate yourself from the pack if at all possible. This is a brand new question this year focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity. For some background, see these articles:</p>
<p>They debated using simply an optional checkbox to indicate a student’s sexual orientation (as other schools have done), but decided an essay was better.</p>
<p>Since this is brand new, it’s hard to say how people will perceive this question and if straight applicants will feel obligated to put something down (after all, they do ask about family and cultural background). Personally, if I didn’t have something significant to put down on this topic, I would NOT write something just to write. It shouldn’t hurt you at all I’d imagine – it really is optional. I agree that the “Why Duke?” optional essay, however, should be answered as that is something you should think about. If your sexual orientation/gender identity is something that hasn’t shaped your experience or identity much, then don’t feel obligated to answer the question. Duke is seeking diversity in all areas – hence why they added the question.</p>
<p>That’s interesting. Gender/orientation issues may have motivated the question, but the actual prompt is much broader and could be taken by applicants in about 100 different directions relating to “community” or “culture” defined very broadly. I had been interpreting it as being fairly similar to a question that Michigan has used for a number of years. </p>
<p>For comparison, here’s the one U of M uses: </p>
<p>@cmckeon45, my apologies to you for a “half cocked” response (post #1). @bluedog and @SomeOldGuy, I followed this recent application modification in the Chronicle and in some private discussions with the DAA and with Undergraduate Admissions. I have no problem with this new OPTIONAL essay question, although I anticipate it will be infrequently used. @cmckeon45 is correct that he – and many other applicants – should appropriately leave this new “optional essay” unanswered. Obviously, my comment (post #1 to this thread) focused entirely on the traditional “optional” essay: “Why Duke,” and there I continue to believe that it really isn’t at all optional, for the reasons delineated. </p>
<p>Not to hijack the thread at all, but would writing about religion be acceptable in this section? It truly is an aspect that makes me who I am. I know that writing about religion is really risky and looked down upon, but would it be acceptable in this case?</p>
<p>Writing about religion is fine. While the question might have been thought of with regards to gender/race, it is broad where you really should write about one of your passions or something that does make you different. </p>
<p>I love the optional essays, because it ALMOST is a vehicle that eliminates qualified applicants in favor of a just as qualified applicant who really loves the school. In my mind, there is no reason not to write the community optional essay. I am also a middle-class, white male, and I am still using this essay to help my application to its capacity. As @SomeOldGuy pointed out, Michigan has a very similar prompt, which I am applying to EA and using the same essay for both! </p>
<p>I do, however, have a question related to the other optional writing piece: a “brief resume”. I am not so sure about what to do for this prompt. I am inclined to use a well-written, descriptive statement of the extracurricular activities most important to me. However, I do not want to neglect the clearly added “brief” part concerning the resume as well. I am curious what you all would suggest that I do?</p>
<p>By saying “really loves the school” I really meant that the applicant is able to convey this through their essays. I am sure your daughter did an excellent job at this as well. Of course there will be people who get in without doing the optional essays, but they rarely hurt you and I see the possibility of helping the applicant as far out-weighing the time spent writing and editing the essays. </p>
<p>My son did not do the optional essay, and was accepted ED yesterday. All the Duke people we heard talk about it definitely stressed that it was optional.</p>
<p>Interestingly, it felt “dangerous” from an admissions perspective for him NOT to speak in that space, as it may feel “dangerous” for a (say) transwoman to speak about gender identity in the main common app essay. But it seemed the right thing to do.</p>