<p>How risque can I get in my optional essay (I’m writing a short story)? Are the adcoms more conservative or liberal in terms of appropriateness?</p>
<p>I don’t know what you mean by “risque.” THey want to hear your real voice. Go ahead and be creative, have fun, etc. If you are writing a short piece of fiction, you would have to be really inappropriate to have to be worried about “conservative or liberal.”</p>
<p>The short story is meant to be a piece of fiction - I’m prefacing my comments with that because some applicants fail to have that insight.</p>
<p>And so, as a prompt that is meant to allow you to freely express your creativity and provide a space for you to (ideally) create art, I wouldn’t worry about appropriateness too much. As WCASParent properly states, you’d have to go to great lengths to cross a line.</p>