<p>Just curious about how many people are planning to/not to write the optional "essay".</p>
<p>i was accepted without writing one; I guess it really IS optional…</p>
<p>Haha, good. Are you currently at Penn?</p>
<p>still debating…</p>
<p>im applying early im not writing one. everyone has told me that it is TRULY optional. i know loads who got in without writing one. so its a waste truthfully.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks! I plan to apply early without one as well. I just thought it would be nice to get an idea about what others are doing.</p>
<p>Why not use it as a chance to be creative?</p>
<p>That’s true. I might give it a shot… I’m just not sure yet.</p>
<p>I was accepted, and I didn’t write one.</p>
<p>But then again, I’m not very creative. If you are, go for it!</p>
<p>I might. I think I’ve got an idea of what I’ll say if I do choose to write it. It definitely won’t be one of the more straightforward essays they get–I just don’t know if it will be different in a good way or a bad way, ha.</p>
<p>I dunno if I am yet. I think I will though.</p>
<p>i am, just to show a different side of me.</p>
<p>I was going to do it when I first read the prompt, because I thought I could write an original essay and help myself stand out more in the applicant pool. However, I am debating now because I find it really hard to be original when the prompt is aiming for creativity from all the students.</p>
<p>I think Pg 217’s useful only if you can tell the adcom something that the rest of your app can’t. From what I gather, these admissions folk are scarily adept at figuring things about you from one bullet point on your CommonApp and stuff like that. For like 90% of any school’s applicants, a general list of their activities and their one to two required essays is ample to tell any reader (let alone the adcoms) almost all of what needs to be known about them. Pg 217’s probably going to be useful only to the last 10% and that too, only when it’s done creatively.</p>
<p>I think I will! It seems pretty fun to do! And it can only help, right? (Unless you write about how you finally established your own third reich in 2038, or how you made a career of ‘creative accounting’)</p>
<p>I had to write that extra Yale essay, and I think another University that asked for a personal statement that wasn’t optional, so I’m just copy/paste into page 217, it really wasn’t that difficult. Recycle your essays!</p>