<p>hey on the supplement it asks you to write about your last two summers. how long is everyone thinking theirs' is going to be? about 300 words? 400? 500? and should we just talk facts about what we did, or is there some room for saying how we felt about our activities or what we really enjoyed?</p>
<p>I wrote:</p>
<p>[Name of program] Summer 20XX (X Weeks) because I attached an additional resume that gave a few sentence blurb about each thing I participated in.</p>
<p>The moral? It doesn’t have to be an essay.</p>
<p>Just give them the facts. If the experience was overwhelmingly life changing, then you can use it for your long essay.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach here. If you are a good writer and can use this as an additional opportunity to showcase your writing, go ahead and write an essay - as long as you answer the prompt. Son#1 (P’ton 13) wrote an essay that was very straightforward. Son #2’ (hopeful '16)'s essay is informative, but shows his personality and sense of humor.
Do what works for you and what feels natural.</p>
<p>Sorry to hijack the thread but I have a similar question:</p>
<p>The prompt says
“Please tell us how you have spent the last two summers (or vacations between school years), including any jobs you have held, if not already detailed on the Common Application”</p>
<p>If everything I’ve done over the last two summers is on my Common App under either the EC/jobs or honors section, do I still bother to write down what I’ve done and just explain it further?</p>
<p>Again, think of this as an opportunity to add something to your appllcation. If all you are going to do is repeat the same information that’s already in common app list, don’t do it. Could you use it as an opportunity to give some context to some of your summer activities and reflect on why you did them?</p>
<p>The response has to be 300 characters or less, according to the common application rules. I’m not sure whether or not this holds true if you are applying using the Universal application form or something else though…</p>
<p>Sorry, I meant 2500 characters…300 characters is for the same question in the Stanford application.</p>
<p>does it say that when you look at the Princeton Supplement online?</p>
<p>I wrote a sentence blurb for each activity on my common app activities list, and wrote my activity essay on on of the activities. If a bulleted list is only reiterating my activities list and more in depth essay won’t add to much either, does anyone recommend leaving it blank (or have any other recommendations)? Has anyone else left it blank?</p>
<p>Bah. I did an extremely poetic piece that had voice but almost no verbs. My summers revolve around developing spoken word albums (compiling all my poems from the year, revising them, slamming them, revising them again, and recording them over piano compositions), and the structure of my essay reflected the struggling, fragmented nature of that process. I never had the opportunity to do any major summer programs, so I hope this essay will work.</p>
<p>Mine was a simple list. I just said I traveled with my family first summer and did research for the next two. </p>
<p>I was accepted SCEA, btw. And without a “summer program”.</p>
<p>I did 2 paragraphs (1 for each summer). I had listed the activities on the ec part of the common app, but I used the spot to go more in depth and tell them more about what I actually did. I didn’t have an extra resume though, but I’m an SCEA admit</p>
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<p>anyone care to expound on this? would it really be better to leave it blank if everything we did during the last two summers is on the common app or in a resume or something?</p>
<p>I wrote about how I did the Veterans History Project one summer and then this summer I just completely decided to have fun and go on a self-exploritory mission and spent most of my summer hanging out in Central Park and having fun!!</p>
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<p>Just rewrite the programs/whatever in list form.</p>
<p>I had all of my summer experiences (research, community service, olympiad camps) included in a resume attached to the common app. I didn’t want to just reiterate those, because it felt like a waste of a 2500-character opportunity to show another side of me.</p>
<p>Instead, I wrote about the weekly hiking trips I took with a few of my friends every summer (we’re all pretty avid hikers). I actually shortened a 1000-word personal narrative I had just written for English class, and submitted that.</p>
<p>I exhausted the character limit, because I happened to have something unusual to say about my 2010 summer that I had nowhere else to elaborate. Certainly Princeton does not give you 2500 characters (~500 words) for you to make a summary of what you have already outlined in the Common App, or a half-hearted bland response just to fill the blanks. No question on the Supplement is coincidental or incidental; every answer is a chance for you to distinguish yourself.</p>
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<p>Sure, but you don’t want to overburden or annoy admissions, either. My supplemental essay was already about my most important summer activity, as I wrote about an instructor at a camp I went to, and so I didn’t feel the need to elaborate further. Others may.</p>