Prudence wrote:
vatsas wrote:
I am working on the "25 Random Things" essay and I have some questions. Please feel free to chime in!
The latter part of the question prompt - so learning these "25 Random Things" helps us get to know someone's personality, background, special talents, and more.
In this spirit, the Admissions Committee also wants to get to know you - beyond the professional and academic achievements listed in your resume and transcript. You can share with us important life experiences, your likes/dislikes, hobbies, achievements, fun facts, or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are. Share with us your list of "25 Random Things" about YOU.
So based on the "25 Random Things" the Fuqua adcom wants to know the applicant's personality and who we are really. They want us to go beyond our Resume, which is meant for our accomplishments.
Questions that I have -
1. Does this mean that we cant talk about work at all? Few incidents in work life do impact you as a person such as ethical issues, frustrations ,etc. Can't we talk about them? Definitely they are not stated as achievement in the Resume.
2. Can we talk about community contribution? Fuqua application has separate place to feed that information.
3. Generally resume has a section where we talk about about interest and extra-curricular. Can we elaborate on some of them?
The way I see it, a resume would read like your list of greatest hits, but the 25 random things is a chance for you to tell them why/how you got those because of xyz qualities or things you did.
1. I think you can absolutely talk about work as long as it reveals something about you that they wouldn't come to know about otherwise through the essays. I'd stay away from talking about frustration, unless it reveals something positive about you.
2. Ditto for community service and special interests. Your resume might read: Volunteered in ABC organization, teaching Rwandan orphans..so don't put this kind of statement in the essay. Expand on it, tell them an incident that happened in Rwanda where you rose to the challenge or you got bitten by a snake and self administered first aid or something.
My $0.02 cents
Does anyone else have any better ideas?
I think you've pretty much explained it.
There is no problem in citing things from work or anywhere else. Just make sure you give them an interesting incident/story/emotion or something which is not a mere fact listed somewhere on your application. (Rwandan orphans example)
I had a lot of time. So here is what I did.
Wrote everything I could think of in a few days. I had some 45 points when I began to write. Put them in an excel. Weeded the irrelevant. Clubbed a few.
Was left with 20 or so.
Divided them into 2 fields: 1.) School/UG/Work and 2.) Achievements/Passion/Community/Random.
Created a pivot and tried to have a fair mix of everything. There were a couple of areas where I was lacking. Say for eg. I had no passion in school or no community experience in UG. I tried to highlight that point in the rest of my 5 points.
Try to diversify your points (and keep in mind the themes that you want to project). And be careful of not projecting yourself in a negative light. (I had to cut down at least 3 "interesting" points). Use humor only if you're sure you can pull it off.
Cheers!