For the University of Florida application (not common app), the following instructions appear:
Your essay is a very important part of your application. What you provide helps the university know you as an individual – independent of grades, test scores and other objective data. Please submit an approximately 3980 character (400-500 word) essay. Please choose one essay topic and write one essay from the topics listed below.
For a different submission (a scholarship I applied to over the summer), I wrote a narrative poem that aligns exactly with one of the UF prompts, and wanted to reuse it for this purpose. Though I could write an essay on the same topic, I now really enjoy the simplicity and rhythm of the piece in poem form, and feel like an essay would not be as effective. The instructions also do mention individuality, and I feel like this poem (yes, written with a cheesy rhyme scheme) does achieve that.
However, the instructions also explicitly ask for an essay, and I’m not sure whether writing a poem would be considered as a creative interpretation or an off-topic piece. I’ve seen mixed ideas on forums about whether poems are creative or too cliche, so I’m really not sure what to do at this point.
The rest of my application (test scores, gpa, extracurricular activities) are in good range for this school, so I can’t decide whether I should take a risk and submit the poem, or rewrite it as an essay. What do you all think my best course of action would be? Thanks so much in advance! 