Peyton Manning
New Member
- Joined
- May 28, 2018
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DO NOT QUOTE, thanks.
Need some help figuring out how to best approach my Diversity/Unique Addition to Class theme prompt that I see on so many of my secondaries. Most of them are in the 1000-2000 character limit so I don't get a whole lot of space to expand upon these ideas.
My thoughts:
1) Focus primarily on my immigrant experience moving to the US from Africa at a young age (~6 years old). Moved to the US because of my parents job. Knew English from school classes prior to but had to adapt to a new environment that basically ran only on English (rather than the 2 languages I learned growing up from my culture/family). Talk about overcoming a disconnect that existed initially between my life at home (traditional African household) and my life outside of home (adapting to America in the friends I made, what I do outside of school, losing my accent, learning sports, etc) and how I am proudly both an African and an American.
2) Focus primarily on my unique experiences in the United States. I have lived in many different locations throughout the country due to my mom's job, majority of the locations I lived in took place before middle school. Talk about how I bring a wealth of experiences from growing up, going to school, making friends and living in many different locations around the country (states in the South, North, East, West). How this is the "unique" thing that I bring to medical school as I have learned how to interact with and associate with people varying different skin colors, ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences (not to mention learning all the subcultural concepts that exist in different parts of our country). Not to mention the adaptability/resilience that I developed moving around a bunch as a child.
Ideally I want to combine the two because I believe it would be a really strong diversity essay talking about how I am not only an immigrant to the USA as a child but I also had to grow up learning to live in a new country while adapting to different parts of that country as a result of moving around a lot, etc. But I feel like I would have trouble fitting all of these different concepts into a 1000 character prompt/200 word prompt (which over half of my diversity secondary prompts are around). Thoughts? Especially @Goro @LizzyM
Also, I was wondering how important the whole "show, don't tell" aspect is when it comes to short secondary prompts? A 1000 characters is really hard to incorporate several specific anecdotes and still cover all the bases that I would want to cover. Especially when it comes to describing the number of places I have lived in and such (I couldn't reasonably even come close to fitting a specific story or two about each place I have lived in).
Need some help figuring out how to best approach my Diversity/Unique Addition to Class theme prompt that I see on so many of my secondaries. Most of them are in the 1000-2000 character limit so I don't get a whole lot of space to expand upon these ideas.
My thoughts:
1) Focus primarily on my immigrant experience moving to the US from Africa at a young age (~6 years old). Moved to the US because of my parents job. Knew English from school classes prior to but had to adapt to a new environment that basically ran only on English (rather than the 2 languages I learned growing up from my culture/family). Talk about overcoming a disconnect that existed initially between my life at home (traditional African household) and my life outside of home (adapting to America in the friends I made, what I do outside of school, losing my accent, learning sports, etc) and how I am proudly both an African and an American.
2) Focus primarily on my unique experiences in the United States. I have lived in many different locations throughout the country due to my mom's job, majority of the locations I lived in took place before middle school. Talk about how I bring a wealth of experiences from growing up, going to school, making friends and living in many different locations around the country (states in the South, North, East, West). How this is the "unique" thing that I bring to medical school as I have learned how to interact with and associate with people varying different skin colors, ethnicities, backgrounds, and experiences (not to mention learning all the subcultural concepts that exist in different parts of our country). Not to mention the adaptability/resilience that I developed moving around a bunch as a child.
Ideally I want to combine the two because I believe it would be a really strong diversity essay talking about how I am not only an immigrant to the USA as a child but I also had to grow up learning to live in a new country while adapting to different parts of that country as a result of moving around a lot, etc. But I feel like I would have trouble fitting all of these different concepts into a 1000 character prompt/200 word prompt (which over half of my diversity secondary prompts are around). Thoughts? Especially @Goro @LizzyM
Also, I was wondering how important the whole "show, don't tell" aspect is when it comes to short secondary prompts? A 1000 characters is really hard to incorporate several specific anecdotes and still cover all the bases that I would want to cover. Especially when it comes to describing the number of places I have lived in and such (I couldn't reasonably even come close to fitting a specific story or two about each place I have lived in).
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