It’s wonderful to be back on campus after two weeks of whirlwind travel. Booth is filled with energy and excitement as our entering students arrive on campus. The entire school is gearing up for the kick-off of CORE on Tuesday next week — one of my favorite events of the year. It’s a great time to be in Chicago!
Over the past two weeks, I learned a lot about what’s on your mind and your concerns regarding the application process. One of the most common questions was about Essay 3 (the slide presentation): In four slides or less please answer the following question: What have you not already shared in your application that you would like your future classmates to know about you?
I thought I’d explain the philosophy behind the question first and then describe ways in which you might approach it. First, this question allows you to portray parts of your candidacy that have not already been addressed in other parts of the application. We find this a useful tool in order to understand what you deem important in your personal and professional life. The Admissions Committee does not have any expectations about what we might learn in this section, so you have complete freedom in sharing what you think would be relevant for us to know about you. Second, the Committee is interested in content not your presentation skills. You don’t need to be a graphic genius or an experienced consultant to be successful. You can use words, images, graphs, etc. to communicate your messages.
So let me provide you with a few recommendations on your approach. If you’ve read my earlier posts about knowing yourself, you should have already identified key messages or activities that you want to communicate to the Committee. If you’ve mapped these messages into the other application components, you may find that there are a number of items still on your list — Essay 3 is a perfect place to put them. I would start by putting a written description on each page of the presentation and then spend some time thinking about how you might convey these messages. Don’t get bogged down by trying to be creative; focus on communicating effectively.
A few parting remarks:
- Read the question thoroughly and be strategic about what you decide to include.
- Make sure that the content you choose is relevant to your candidacy.
Our hope in asking this question was to allow you the freedom to communicate what’s important to you beyond the questions we ask, amd hope this post gives you one way of approaching it. Good luck!
Read the full article: The Presentation — What’s it all about?