<p>My friend had a UW recruiter visit his school recently, and told me something that's way different than what I've heard Apparently, the recruiter said that the third essay (or additional comments) is not actually supposed to be an essay; it's designed to be simple statements that can be unrelated. A sentence here, a paragraph there, it doesn't have to be conjoined like a typical, standard essay.</p>
<p>Is this true, or is my friend making something up here? I've always heard that you're supposed to write a standard, regular essay for that particular prompt (if you can call it that).</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s an additional “essay”, it’s just extra space to include anything else you think they should know. For example, I got a low grade at a university and verified with UW that a certain class at a community college would count as replacing it before I signed up for the class. So when I applied and wrote my essay it would have sounded really funny to explain that in my personal statement so in the additional comments part I just wrote "please note that the grade for [class] at [community college] replaces the grade for [class] at [university]. Also, there is hard limit of 500 words (originally I’d written a lengthy paragraph explaining the circumstances surrounding the first grade).</p>