<p>Is this mandatory or optional? Just curious.</p>
<p>If answering a particular question is optional, then it will clearly be labeled as such, like some of the demographic questions are. Otherwise, answering the question is mandatory, (unless it is “Not Applicable” to you). If you fail to answer all applicable questions, it might be considered an incomplete application.</p>
<p>Will it be worse for colleges to see that I worked in a company in which one of my parents also work in?</p>
<p>They probably won’t care. You certainly won’t be the first applicant who got a job because of their parents’ connections. </p>
<p>And it has absolutely nothing to to do with your personal qualifications (GPA, class rank, test scores, ECs, letters of recommendations, etc.) – which are far, far more important factors to the Admissions Office.</p>
<p>If it’s the truth, just put it down. By the way, did you read the clam fart thread? It’s hilarious, but the moral of the story is: you can overthink your app trying to figure out what the ad coms will think of this or that. The guy (accidentally) listed clam fart as his EC for 17 years and he still got into Yale.</p>