Additional Essays: The Part that Most Masters Applicants Discover Too Late

IIf you are planning to apply for your Master's or PhD degree abroad, you would know that you would need to write your SOP, get your LORs made, and also create an academic CV for yourself. And as we have covered in our article on SOP Practical Requirements, even the SOP itself can come with its own set of surprises in the form of word limits, character limits, formatting requirements, and the occasional complete absence of an SOP requirement. If you haven't read that article yet, we'd recommend doing so before proceeding.

However, there is another category of surprises that even students who have prepared thoroughly tend to get caught off guard by - and that is what we at InkStudio call as Additional Essays.

What are Additional Essays?

Several universities, beyond their SOP requirement, also ask applicants to submit essays that cover content that your SOP would not, and in most cases, cannot cover. Unlike SOP customization, which is largely about adjusting and trimming content you have already written, Additional Essays typically require work from scratch: fresh brainstorming, fresh positioning, and a fresh perspective on a different aspect of who you are.

To illustrate what we are talking about, we have added actual screenshots from inside the application portals of different universities in the sections that follow.

Before we proceed, a word of caution. A lot of universities use the label 'Personal Statement' very loosely. As we mentioned in our SOP article, this label can refer to an SOP. But equally, it can also refer to a diversity essay, a personal history statement, or something else altogether. This is why simply reading the title of an essay is never enough — you must always read the prompt carefully to understand what kind of essay is actually being asked of you. You will see exactly what we mean as we go through the examples below.

Diversity Essay

A Diversity Essay (or Statement) is one of the most commonly required additional essays across graduate programs in the US. As the name suggests, this essay asks you to reflect on your background, identity, perspective, or lived experiences, and how these would contribute to diversity in the academic community you are seeking to join.

What you see in the screenshot below is Harvard's version of this requirement:

Harvard – Diversity Essay

Now look at the example from Northwestern University below:

Northwestern University – Diversity essay (labelled as ‘Personal Statement’) + another essay titled ‘Additional Information’

Pay close attention here, because this example illustrates two important points at once. First, Northwestern (just like Harvard) has labelled its diversity essay as a 'Personal Statement' – which, as mentioned earlier, is a label you must never assume means an SOP. The prompt makes it clear that this is a diversity-oriented essay. Second, in the same portal section, you will notice a separate essay requirement titled 'Additional Information' — which is yet another essay on top of the first. So for this application alone, a student would need to handle at least two essays beyond the SOP.

Personal History Statement

A close (or should we say, elder) sibling of the Diversity Essay is the Personal History Statement. When you go through the question prompts, you will realize why we say this.

The Personal History Statement typically asks you to write about your personal journey – so you may (or rather must) also talk about the challenges, experiences, and circumstances that have shaped you and your path to graduate education.

The universities below all ask for this as a distinct essay requirement:

Northeastern University – Personal History Statement

Johns Hopkins University – Personal History Statement

Purdue – Personal History Statement

UC Berkeley – Personal History Statement

You will notice that while the spirit of the requirement is similar across these universities, the specific prompts differ in important ways — in some cases asking about overcoming adversity, in others asking about your background more broadly. These differences matter when deciding which stories and examples to use.

Now, there is an important practical point here. In our experience, the content that works for a Diversity Statement often also works for a Personal History Statement, though it may require some modification to fit the specific prompt. Some universities appear to have reached the same conclusion, which is why they combine the two into a single essay. University of California, Santa Barbara is one such example, as you can see below:

This kind of combined prompt is actually simpler for the applicant in one sense — you only write one essay instead of two. But it also means that essay has to do double duty, which requires careful planning in terms of what you choose to include.

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Using AI to Write your SOP and Additional Essays?

With the growing availability of AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), you might be tempted to use them to write your application essays. Is that a wise approach? How low should your AI Detection score be? What do Universities have to say regarding this issue? Click the button to know more

Risks Involved in Using AI for Writing University Application Essays

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Video Essay

Some universities ask for videos which involve a student recording their response to a specified question prompt in a video format. This may involve uploading the recorded video directly or at times uploading the video on to YouTube and then sharing the link.

Examples of video essays with prompts are as follows:

Parsons – Masters in Design

Carnegie Mellon University – Masters in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

The obvious difference between a video essay and a written one is that here, you are not just being evaluated on your content, but also on how naturally and confidently you communicate when speaking. A well-crafted written essay cannot substitute for this, and conversely, someone who is excellent on camera still needs to ensure the substance of their response is strong.

However, some universities may also ask you to submit an impromptu video response – something we can see below:

Syracuse University – MS in Business Analytics

In these cases, unfortunately, you will have to rely on your own presence of mind while responding – there is no one that can help you with a requirement of this nature as your will need to record yourself live from the university’s application portal at a pre-specified or pre-booked time. This is a fundamentally different challenge from either a written essay or a pre-recorded video, and it requires a very different kind of preparation altogether.

Program-Specific Additional Essays

In addition to the above, many graduate programs ask questions that are specifically tailored to their program, department, or research focus. These are not generic essays that can be repurposed across universities – they often require responses that demonstrate a specific kind of fit with what the program is looking for.

University of Washington – MS in Data Science

IESEG – Master’s in Management

Northwestern University – Master of Engineering Management

Miscellaneous Additional Essays

Some additional essay requirements do not fall neatly into one of the categories above. Ohio State University, for instance, uses a Q&A format for additional essays in its MS in Computer Science and Engineering application, which changes not just the content but the way you present it:

Ohio State University – Masters in Computer Science and Engineering – Additional Essays in QnA Format

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a particularly interesting case because several of its programs require additional essays on top of a 1000-word SOP. The screenshot below shows what this looks like for many UIUC programs:

UIUC – Additional Essays apart from a 1000-word SOP – Requirement for most programs

And the screenshot from UIUC's Physics program is especially worth examining closely:

UIUC - Masters in Physics

If you look carefully, you will notice that this set of prompts covers multiple essay types at once.

Question 1 in this case can be equated to Personal History Statement, Question 2 to Diversity Essay (just like Essay 4 of UWash - Data Science additional essays that we had covered earlier).

Question 3 is often asked by several universities as a separate additional essay for other programs as a slight variant, often worded as ‘Do you think your grades are a true reflection of your abilities? Why or why not?’

Question 4 is also asked by several universities, and you can often treat this as a question to explain ‘Extenuating Circumstances’ if at all you have faced so far.

Fordham University – Masters in Quantitative Finance

In this, Question 1 is often asked by other universities for other programs as well, with variations in question prompt, and is often called as a ‘Leadership Essay’.

Stanford University has its well-known 'Enriching the Learning Community' prompt, which at first glance may look like a Diversity Statement but is slightly different in its focus — asking more specifically about the contribution you would make to the academic community, rather than about your background or identity alone.

Stanford University – Enriching the Learning Community

And HEC Paris, for its Master's of Marketing as well as several other programs, has its own set of additional questions:

HEC Paris – Masters of Marketing (and multiple other programs)

It is worth stepping back at this point and looking at the full picture. What this collection of examples tells you is that Additional Essays are not rare exceptions — they are a recurring and significant part of the graduate admissions process at many universities, including some of the most prestigious ones. They span multiple formats (written, video, Q&A) and multiple themes (diversity, personal history, leadership, academic setbacks, extenuating circumstances, community contribution, and program-specific fit).

None of these can be handled by simply customizing the SOP you have already written. Each requires its own preparation, its own positioning, and in most cases, its own distinct story.

This is why a lot of students find themselves scrambling near deadlines. They assume the essay work is mostly done once the SOP is ready, only to discover that several universities on their list need essays that have to be built from the ground up. And unlike SOP customization, which can often be done in a few focused sessions, Additional Essays can take considerably longer if the right stories and themes have not been identified in advance.

Remember, the screenshots that we have attached here were the screenshots provided to us by our students for those additional essays which they encountered while filling out their application forms for the respective universities (and programs). This is not the full set of additional essays that universities can ask. The same university can ask for different additional essays for different programs. Moreover, these essay requirements are also subject to change (every year, we see 5-10% universities modifying their essay requirements).

This is why it is important to not just work on your SOP, LORs, and Resume in time, but also start filling out your university applications as you may discover several such requirements which you can only figure out while you fill the application forms.

A lot of counselors help with the SOP and leave it at that. At InkStudio, we work with applicants through every essay requirement — from identifying which essay type a prompt is asking for, to brainstorming the right content, to drafting and refining the final response. This is because along with your SOP, the additional essays tend to be quite critical in the assessment of your candidature by the Admissions Committee.

If you would like your application essays to be exactly in line with what each university is looking for, tell us your requirements below.

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