My daughter is asking me if this common app question is optional or recommended for selective college admissions:
“Do you wish to provide details of circumstances or qualifications not reflected in the application?”
She wanted to talk about some volunteer experience, but she doesn’t know if that would fit with the intent of this section. Her volunteer experience would be briefly covered in the activities section, but she wanted to tell a story.
She doesn’t want to misuse this and anger an AO. What do people think?
I don’t think this is the correct verbiage for the updated community disruption question, but it is truly optional.
Regardless, I would use the additional info section for writing more detail about an EC rather than the question you highlighted in your post.
The additional info section is limited to 300 words this year, down from 650 in previous years. I would encourage her to keep her extra sentences about her EC short and to the point. No AO is going to be angry that she used that section to add more details about her EC. With that said, this additional detail is unlikely to be the difference between an admit or not. A relatively high proportion of the apps I read use the additional info section, and many of those use it to give more detail on an EC.
To add to this and it gets asked a lot. It’s only optional if you choose to make it optional. To me it says “tell me more about you”. The more they can learn about you the better they can make their decision about you.