<p>So I want to get an idea of what the consensus is on the best formats for the two Penn supplement essays.</p>
<p>The way I wrote mine, I used the first essay “how would you engage yourself” to show how Penn fits me, and then I used the longer essay to show how I fit Penn. Both essays had a little of both elements, but that was how I generally focused things.</p>
<p>Did you guys do things my way, or the opposite? Did you write both essays answering both questions, or focus on the same question in both? Or did you do something entirely different?</p>
<p>The other question that I had was what content to use for the essays. I heard that it is better to “show” than to “tell”, so I wrote both of my commonapp essays about a specific event, and then tied them up with what I learned at the end. I felt, however, that writing both of the supplement essays with this structure would be overkill (in a bad way), so I ended up writing the penn essays like a more conventional persuasive essay. Is this acceptable, or should I scrap them and reformat?</p>
<p>I know that the above is convoluted, and I appreciate any feedback/advice.</p>