1. What is the purpose of an optional essay?
2. Is optional essay actually optional?
3. What if other candidates write an optional essay and I don’t?
4. What do I write in an optional essay when I have already written so much about myself in my previous essays?
5. Can I address only my weaknesses in an optional essay?
Well! after receiving all these questions regarding optional essay, I decided to choose ‘Effective Ways of Writing an Optional Essay’ as our topic for the day.
Business Schools give you an option to write an additional essay so that you can provide more information about you that you could not tell in your previous essays. The only rule is that this information should be the one that can enhance your candidacy, and not ruin it.
You must decide wisely whether you want to write an optional essay or not. Writing an extra essay has its own merits and demerits. The merit is that you are provided with an extra space to tell about yourself and about your unique candidature. The demerit is that if your main essays were not strong enough to hold reader’s attention and you have already wasted the reader’s time, you are going to irritate the adcom member by making him spend more time on reading the extra information provided by you. A shallow essay would put you in trouble. Your essays should be interesting enough that the reader should be willing to know more about you. An easy way to decide whether you want to write an optional essay or not is that you complete all the main essays first without worrying about writing an optional essay. Write the main essays effectively and efficiently. Then ask yourself whether there is any room for providing an extra information or not-the one that you could not cover in any other essay. If the answer is yes, then go ahead with writing an optional essay. If the answer is no then do not force yourself in writing a sketchy essay, which would be a repetitive information of all that you have already covered in your previous essays. Do not sacrifice the quality of your essays for the sake of quantity. Decide to write an optional essay only if that essay would add value to your application.
How to write an optional essay?
Generally business schools give you word limits for writing essays but if the word limits are not mentioned, don’t go overboard by writing endlessly. A 300-400 words are good enough to provide relevant facts supported by real life experiences/anecdotes to write a good optional essay.
If you are stating a weakness such as low GPA /low GMAT score or an inconsistency in your application, make sure that you don’t end up writing a 400 word sob story. Keep your essay to the point, state the facts, take responsibility for your actions and explain how you have matured since then. For example, if you are addressing your low GPA, just state the reasons- was it because of your over participation in extra curriculars/ some family responsibilities that time/ some medical challenges that you couldn’t avoid etc. If there was something that you learnt from those experiences, state that. If you scored high in an extra course that you took, state that. If some extenuating circumstances made you a strong person, state that. The examples and situations can be numerous, it depends on how well you are able to put your experiences in words.
You can also use an optional essay to show other aspects of your personality and ones that have not been covered in your other essays. You can write about your experiences that have played a formative role in your personal development or something that you have learnt and would be a great contribution to the school. You can also write about your personal values that are aligned with the values of school. Your essay need not necessarily be a ‘business-focused ” essay but it should show how your learnings/ experiences/ cultural values etc. can be gelled with the school values. For example, if someone has a passion for travelling and he is applying to Kellogg, he can relate his travel experiences with how he would his travel experience be a good contribution to KWEST (Kellogg Worldwide Experiences and Service Trips (KWEST) are one of the most popular student activities at Kellogg, bringing together incoming students and four or five second-year trip leaders through a variety of outdoor and community service activities on a domestic U.S. or international trip.)
Unless school does not specify some specific guidelines regarding optional essay, this essay is actually optional. For example, take a look at this year’s NYU Stern’s optional essay question:
Please provide any additional information that you would like to bring to the attention of the Admissions Committee. This may include current or past gaps in employment, further explanation of your undergraduate record or self-reported academic transcript(s), plans to retake the GMAT and/or TOEFL or any other relevant information.
Three things that you must consider before writing this essay:
- Do you have any gaps in employment or low GPA or low GMAT?
- If yes, then the explanation for low grades MUST be given. In this case, your optional essay is no more an optional essay. This essay is an important part of your application and you must provide the reasons and what all you have done to overcome your shortcomings.
- If no, then this becomes an optional essay. You must choose whether you want to write this essay or not.
Now take a look at Chicago Booth’s optional essay.
If there is any important information that is relevant for your candidacy that you were unable to address elsewhere in the application, please share that information here.
An open ended question with no specifics or word limits given. If you check the overall application , you will notice that there are 4 main essays and a slide presentation. Now after providing all this information if you think that there is some significant aspect of your personality that you would want to share with admissions committe, only then you must write an optional essay. Do not write it just because it is there. A good essay can be written in 350-400 words.
Myth busters about optional essay.
- Optional essay is optional. Decide wisely whether you really want to write an optional essay or not.
- Optional essay is not a summary of your previous essays.
- Addressing weaknesses is not the only purpose of optional essay.
- A good optional essay can be written in 350-400 words.
An optional essay might look like a tempting option but resist the urge unless you don’t have something noteworthy to share.
Watch this video by Sara Neher, Director of Admissions at Darden School of Business. She gives an insight about what topics all a candidate can pick to write about in his/ her essays:
Further Readings:
- Admission Secrets Of Top 5 Business Schools
- What Everybody Ought To Know About Work Experience
- How To Write A Career Goals Essay?
- 8 Ways To Commit Essay Writing Mistakes
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