Ran into a hitch with a supplemental essay

[cckrspnl56]

I'm currently finishing up my essays for Fletcher's early admissions. They require two essays: a forward-looking statement of purpose and a past-looking supplemental essay. I finished my statement of purpose and am mostly satisfied with it, but I have run into some difficulty with the second. This year, the questions are:

1. Share something about yourself to help the Admissions Committee develop a more complete picture of who you are.

or

2. Tell us more about how you first became interested in international affairs, or in pursuing an international career.

or

3. Describe the elements of your personal, professional, and/or academic background that have prepared you for your chosen career path.

I ended up doing #3. I thought it was decent until I attended a recent Fletcher chat where they advised a student to avoid repeating their resume in their essay.

I'm finding it very difficult to avoid repeating my resume when it comes to describing my preparations for graduate school. As someone who did not become interested in international relations until undergraduate and is applying with only one year of work experience, I don't know how else to explain my background without using the extra-curricular activities and work experience found in my resume. I included my educational background, of course, but that's about it.

Any advice?

Edit:

I realized after looking over this post and my essay that I'm not even answering the question. It's asking for my preparation towards my desired career, not graduate study. With that in mind, I think I'll be able give that essay better direction, although I'm still unsure how to avoid repeating my resume.

Edited November 12, 2009 by cckrspnl56

[riz1]

Last year, I went with option 1. I spoke at length about my parents' struggles as refugees to come to this country, and the impact their experiences have had on me in shaping my personal identity and influencing my worldview. I think it worked all right.

Going with option 3 is definitely walking a thin line, because as you now know, you shouldn't simply rewrite your resume in paragraph format. However, if you can extract a couple of specific examples from your experiences, and then expand on them to tease out any threads or themes, you might be able to make option 3 really work for you.

[zourah]

This year, the questions are:

1. Share something about yourself to help the Admissions Committee develop a more complete picture of who you are.

or

2. Tell us more about how you first became interested in international affairs, or in pursuing an international career.

or

3. Describe the elements of your personal, professional, and/or academic background that have prepared you for your chosen career path.

I ended up doing #3. I thought it was decent until I attended a recent Fletcher chat where they advised a student to avoid repeating their resume in their essay.

I also ended up going with #1 so as to give myself a break from the "brag about yourself" feeling I was suffering writing SOPs. I went completely off-course and gave them a brief glimpse into my extreme bookishness, from the relevant (history, current events) to the completely unrelated (fiction, more fiction, my childhood plans to become a novelist). I felt like it gave them a better idea of who I was and what perspective I would come in with than an attempt at explaining exactly when I fell in love with the idea of traveling the world and how I tamed that wanderlust into something resembling a career plan. I hope that your rewrites on #3 are going well, but if not, consider taking a different tack entirely. This is one essay where you can, in fact, have a little more fun.