<p>Hey. My name is Will Jo and I’m trying to apply to SU regular decision.
I am up to the supplement questions provided by Common App, which are:</p>
<p>Short Answer Questions (Several Sentences)</p>
<li><p>What are your career and academic aspirations?</p></li>
<li><p>What paid work experience have you had and what skills and/or knowledge did you gain?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I just want to know how much people wrote for these questions.
I don’t want to write too much yet I don’t want to write too little. Please give me some suggestions or how much you guys wrote.</p>
<p>Oh man.
Good Luck!
For the first question. I've finished at 410 words. Thats about a substantial paragraph in my opinion and plan to write around the same length for the second question. I wonder if this will be enough.</p>
<p>And good luck juliannejae!
hope you get in.</p>
<p>Whatever you feel is sufficient will most likely be good enough. While of course I’m not saying write two sentences, by no means do you have to write 410 words for each. It's not quantity on these essays but rather quality. If you feel that you will be able to do both, than by all means go for it. I personally wrote about 200 words to answer each question which is essentially one paragraph. Good luck with your writing, hope it comes out well.</p>
<p>I was a transfer and just got into Newhouse yesterday...
My questions were a bit different, but:
My basic personal essay was 910 words.
For "what are your career aspirations?" I clocked in at 370.
"Work experience" was 513.
.. I think it's just how much you really need to explain yourself. I'm a rather verbose writer, and I had to shorten my personal essay by 300 words to feel comfortable with it. :P</p>
<p>Even if you have never had a paid job, I would not leave that question blank. Use it as an opportunity to tell them something else about yourself. For instance, if you never had a paying job was it because you were - very involved in athletics or other school activities - if so, talk about that (focusing on it in a different way then you might have done already elsewhere in your application) and what skills you developed through it. If it was because you were actively volunteering in your community or church then absolutely talk about that and what you gained there - if it was because your parents needed you to help watch younger siblings after school or help in the family business for free then here is a place were you can talk about skills, responsibility, and the lessons you learned contributing to the welfare of your family - if it was for a hobby, talent, other interest that you managed to develop in some way then there is the angle to write from. </p>
<p>I'm sure there are other alternatives that I haven't thought of. The point is to be like a politician. If you watched the presidential debates or interviews you know they use every question, not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to get their message out. Tell Syracuse what you want them to know about you. Good luck!</p>
<p>i'm also having difficulty with the work experience question because while i have had paid work experience, they were for odd jobs i.e. tutoring, babysitting, & refereeing kids soccer games & i wouldnt really say that i've gained anything all that valueable from it.
but i did do an (unpaid) internship in my local community and that really did teach me valueable life lessons but i dont want to write about it and have admissions officers thinking that i cant follow/answer basic questions... or maybe i'm just being really paranoid.</p>
<p>& my short answer questions included those 2 + "who or what influenced you to apply to syracuse university?"?</p>
<p>You have three questions? I haven't seen the "who or what influenced you" one???
I'm kinda nervous!!</p>
<p>I just have</p>
<p>"1. What are your career and academic aspirations?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What paid work experience have you had and what skills and/or knowledge did you gain?</p></li>
<li><p>(Optional) At Syracuse University, our mission of Scholarship in Action extends beyond the classroom to include engagement opportunities with our campus community, the City of Syracuse, and locations across the globe. Tell us how your academic interest might intersect with real-world engagement through this mission. We encourage you to begin by visiting our home page at Syracuse</a> University for current examples of Scholarship in Action at Syracuse University."</p></li>
</ol>
<p>yea, but i didnt use commonapp. i used the embark site that the syracuse website provides which has all 3 questions + that optional.
... i think i'll just switch to doing it on commonapp instead. would that be a bad idea?
cuz i honestly do not want to do 5 essays in less than a week.</p>
<p>lovesthepants -
Okay so if you don't want to write about your internship, take a better look at your "odd jobs". How did you manage your time (homework, ECs, family activities, and those jobs)? How did you promote yourself as a babysitter or tutor? Did you learn any marketing skills? What about negotiating your fee? That's a business skill. What about the level of maturity required to convince a parent that you were capable of caring for or teaching their precious child? What kind of feedback did you get from your customers? Were there problems that needed to be solved? Did you make a mistake and learn from it? As a soccer referee, how did you handle the irate parent or coach whose team you might have made a decision against? These are all important skills that a college would want to hear about. You don't need to have held down a job running Microsoft to apply to college. You gained something from these experiences. That's what you write about. Maybe all you gained was some insight into yourself and how you function in a work environment. If you were proud of how you handled yourself, talk about that. If you had problems and either solved them at the time, or can look back now a see how you would act differently, then you have something valuable to write about too.</p>
<p>i got an email from them awhile ago saying that if youre filling out the common app than the optional essay isnt optional...you just dont have to do it because the commonapp essay takes that essays place.</p>