Optional U Pittsburgh Secondary Essay

[CaNEM]

Hey,

The optional essay for U Pitt reads:

The recruitment of a diverse student body is a major goal of the University of Pittsburgh's Medical School Admissions Committee. Please tell us whether facets of your life and education to date would contribute to the achievement of this goal. Such facets might include your early education, socioeconomic status, culture, race/ethnicity and work experience.
(Limit your response to 250 words or less.)

My question is, is this essay (and others like it) really OPTIONAL? I mean, do people get accepted without answering it? If it comes down to choosing between a person who completed the essay and one who didn't, do you think they'd pick the person who did it?

I personally cannot think of a damned thing to write about for this essay. What do you guys think?

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[lola]

This essay sucks! Since I have been out of college for 5 years I have something to write. However, if I were still in college I would have nothing to say. It seems bad not to write anything, but only those who didn't and still got accepted last year really know. If you have anything even remotely interesting I think you should write about. How about some work experience? Or maybe you could say you're rich and white which will add to the diversity of the poor non-white people who will be writing about that.

 

[CaNEM]

anyone?

 

[Adcadet]

Is that the only essay for U Pitt?

I wonder if being a poor grad student counts as low SES At least I'm not a typical 21 year old college senior applying then. Perhaps I'll mention my MPH degree I'm finishing. That's a life experience and education, right?

 

[lola]

There is one other essay -- about a moral/ethical dilemma. I'm having trouble thinking of how to answer that. Once I was involved in a reseach project where someone was making up data, but I can't even remember the details of it and the data they were making up was not data to be used in the main ananlysis -- it was recruitment data. It wasn't really a dilemma either. I knew I should say something and I did.

I've been thinking and do think it is important to put something down for the diversity one. Maybe not absolutely necessary, but important. You must have SOMETHING interesting about you that will contribute to the diversity of the class, right? Study abroad? Lived a lot of places as a child? An interesting EC? I'm going to put that I have an MS in Epidemiology and that I've had 3 years of Epidemiology work experience. Not too interesting, but it's a little different.

 

[Cydney Foote]

I'd take the "optional" with a grain of salt. You can use this opportunity to tell the admissions committee more about yourself -- and this helps them remember you better when it comes to make their decisions.

And don't sell your "diversity quotient" short. Lots of things can count towards diversity -- in addition to the ones listed in the question itself, you can also write about travel, personal interests, friends, sports, your family's background, etc. A class' diversity balance is not only to admit people from different SES/racial/culture/work backgrounds, but also to admit people who are not one-dimensional -- people who will bring a new perspective to the class. For instance, if you're not an international student but worked with international students on a research project, a possible topic might be what new things you learned from them.

Good luck!