Unsure if approaching secondaries correctly

[hellowalnut]

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Are you supposed to be brief and straightforward in secondaries, especially for the shorter ones, or should you be more descriptive and provide personal anecdotes?

For example, for shorter diversity essays, writing "I have x years/experience of y which gives me insight to z and skills such as a, b, and c" without really providing explicit examples?

Like is that too standard, too shallow, or unoriginal? Should I be structuring these differently?

 

[MCATISEZ]

Depends on the secondary


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[DrHart]

Are you supposed to be brief and straightforward in secondaries, especially for the shorter ones, or should you be more descriptive and provide personal anecdotes?

For example, for shorter diversity essays, writing "I have x years/experience of y which gives me insight to z and skills such as a, b, and c" without really providing explicit examples?

Like is that too standard, too shallow, or unoriginal? Should I be structuring these differently?

Depends on the secondary. Some want specific examples of [diversity, cultural awareness, teamwork, facing challenge, etc.] Some do not need a specific example. Answer the question they ask you. But yes, there is room to play with it.

 

[aldol16]

For essays that ask specific questions, use the character/word limit as a rough estimate on how in-detail you should go. You get more room for detail with a secondary asking "Why this school?" with a 500 word limit than one with a 250 word limit. For others, like "Do you have anything else to add?" the word limit doesn't tell you anything because some people will have lots of information to add and others will not - the high word limit is just there to accommodate everyone and make sure no one runs out of space.

 

[DrDwayneJohnson]

For essays that ask specific questions, use the character/word limit as a rough estimate on how in-detail you should go.

I agree with this as a general guideline. However, if applying to St. Louis, I do not think it would be wise to use the entirety of the 10,000 characters for their secondary. Shoot your shot though OP.

 

[hellowalnut]

Thank you all! This is very helpful. These 1000 character diversity statements are more difficult than I originally thought...

 

[Goro]

Are you supposed to be brief and straightforward in secondaries, especially for the shorter ones, or should you be more descriptive and provide personal anecdotes?

For example, for shorter diversity essays, writing "I have x years/experience of y which gives me insight to z and skills such as a, b, and c" without really providing explicit examples?

Like is that too standard, too shallow, or unoriginal? Should I be structuring these differently?

Stop overthinking and just answer the prompts

 

[sleepyhead22]

Thank you all! This is very helpful. These 1000 character diversity statements are more difficult than I originally thought...

I tried to at least do more than 50% of the character limit for any given secondary. For 1000 character prompts I tried to do around 650-700. For short ones like 250 characters I usually needed every single character which was more of a challenge. It takes some time figuring out the best way to answer certain questions, and I felt like the secondaries I did in the middle were my best (knew how I wanted to answer things but hadn't gotten burned out yet). Good luck!