Help Interpreting a Secondary Question

[pillowsnice]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I am looking at NYU's secondary questions and was wondering about this one:

The most meaningful achievements are often non-academic in nature. Describe the personal accomplishment that makes you most proud. Why is this important to you?

Can I interpret this as an overcoming a challenge type question? For example, I wrote about overcoming a public speaking fear for other secondaries. Can this technically be called a personal accomplishment? Or do they want something more tangible like running a marathon or something like that?

 

[jd989898]

Overcoming fear of public speaking seems like weak material for the prompt. I think there's a distinction between overcoming a challenge and achieving an accomplishment. To put it into simple terms, I think an achievement is something you could mention to almost anyone and leave them impressed. On the other hand, overcoming a challenge isn't something you would bring up to everyone; It's more of a triumph over a personal struggle to be happy about on a private, personal level.

tl;dr
An "achievement/accomplishment" would be a win for anyone.
"Overcoming a challenge" is a win only for those people presented with that challenge.