I’m trying to get a better understanding of an issue regarding the supplemental essay. What is your opinion of the following: should the supplemental essay be a second personal statement?
I view all the common app essay topics as really asking “tell me about yourself” with admission counselors looking for a personal statement in response. So are the Yale admission counselors looking for another essay answering the same question (in the broadest sense, i.e. tell me about yourself)? Should the supplement be approached in a manner similar to the common app essay approach, even if the 2 essays are very different in style and content?
Please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application, or on something about which you would like to say more. You may write about anything—from personal experiences or goals to interests or intellectual pursuits. (Please answer in 500 words or fewer).
Your goal is to paint a diverse picture of yourself by telling two different stories to Admissions. Both essays, in theory, should allow an Admissions Officer to know something about you that they could not glean from looking over your academic record or your extracurricular activities.
For example: my son wrote his personal statement about his baseball coach and the life-lessons he learned from a forty year-old man that never went to college. His supplementary essay was about all the inane things he has learned from watching YouTube videos, including guitar tablature, stick shift driving, ping pong and physics. My daughter’s personal statement was about religion, or rather the lack of growing up without any in her life and wondering what the big deal was. Her supplementary essay was about having stage freight after jealously wanting the center stage spotlight for years and how she over came her fears.
You can write a wonderful essay about any topic. You can also write a terrible essay about the very same topic – it all depends on what you say, how you say it and the “tone” of the essay. But, yes, each essay should be different – the content should not be duplicative.
^^ That’s a bit too general. More specifically, both the Common Application Personal Statement and Supplemental Essay should be about the lessons you learned about yourself from whatever topic you choose to write about. That’s to me is the ‘key’ to an outstanding and memorable essay – what you learned – and it should be something so specific that only YOU could write about it!
To add to what Gibby already said - my son, who is now a freshman at Yale, wrote about his experience in 8th grade, when he reached out to a well-known origami artist and learned how to fold an intricately designed origami rose, and how that experience taught him about the meaning of learning and seeking help. His supplementary essay talked about his experience in participating local community art festivals, where he designed and drew sidewalk chalk murals to enrich the festival scenes. Since he intended to study science and engineering, he also needed to submit an engineering statement, in which he talked his summer engineering class experience in between his junior and senior years at Stanford.