I remember thinking that people who had an office job were something special. So, when I first saw the big city, I was astounded that such diversity of culture existed and I knew nothing about it. Sure, I had read about it in books and seen it on TV, but I was never truly exposed to it in the flesh.
essay about diversity experience
Holding on to stereotypes can block our perspective and prohibit fully embracing the value of diversity. Diversity has value from both a personal and a professional perspective. From my own personal experience, diversity has come to mean enlightenment, enjoyment, beautiful variety and an expanded life experience.
The reason these drastically different ideas come to the table is because each person in this very diverse group had drastically different life experiences. These unique experiences shape who we are and create value to the companies embracing diversity as a business must.
Not all graduate programs require submission of a diversity essay. If the option is available, it is highly recommended that you submit an essay. A diversity essay provides additional information to the committee reviewing your application, which may be helpful when applying for funding or fellowship opportunities.
The diversity essay should be 500 words or less responding to the following statement: Describe your leadership, work experience, service experience, or other significant involvement with racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or educational communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in higher education, and how these experiences would promote a diversity of views, experiences, and ideas in the pursuit of research, scholarship, and creative excellence.
Diversity essay prompts come up in both personal statements and supplemental essays. As with all college essays, the purpose is to better understand who you are and what you care about. Your essays are your chance to share your voice and humanize your application. This is especially true for the diversity essay, which aims to understand how you might uniquely contribute to the college community.
One easy way to make your essay more engaging is to share a related story. The beginning of your essay is a great place for that, as it draws the reader in immediately. For instance, this student chose to write about their Jewish identity, and opened the essay with a vivid experience of being discriminated against:
Remember that colleges not only learn about who you are, but also what you might contribute to their community. Take your essay the final step and show admissions officers how your diversity impacts the way you approach your life.
Writing about discrimination can be difficult, but if you are comfortable doing it, it can make for a powerful story. Although this essay is short and focused on one small interaction, it represents a much larger struggle for this student, and for that reason it makes it very impactful.
While including emotional reflection in the latter half of the essay is important, the actual sentences could be tightened up a bit to leave a stronger impression. The student does a nice job of showing us their experience with antisemitism, but they just tell us about the impact it has on them. If they showed us what the impact looked like though, the essay would be even better.
While this student has a non-traditional topic, they still present it in a way that pays respect to the key aspects of a diversity essay: depicting their perspective and recognizing the importance of diverse views. Just as someone who is writing about a culture that is possibly unfamiliar to the reader, the student describes what makes Marvel and DC unique and important to them and their friend. They also expand on how a lack of diversity in superhero consumption led to them feeling ignorant and now makes them appreciate the need for diversity in all aspects of their life.
Choosing a nonconventional topic for a diversity essay requires extra care and attention to ensure you are still addressing the core of the prompt, but if you accomplish it successfully, it makes for an incredibly memorable essay that could easily set you apart!
While this is a great essay as is, the idea of diversity could have been addressed a little bit earlier in the piece to make it absolutely clear the student is writing about their diverse perspective. They position Marvel and DC as two behemoths in the superhero movie industry, but in the event their reader is unfamiliar with these two brands, there is little elaboration on the cultural impact each has on its fans.
Pivoting to discuss positive experiences with student government and Spanish classes for the rest of the essay demonstrates that this student has a positive approach to life and is willing to push through challenges. The tone of the essay shifts from heavy to uplifting. He explains the joy he got out of helping his classmates and connecting with his grandparents, once again providing emotional reflection to make the reader care more.
Overall, this essay does a nice job of demonstrating how this student approaches challenges and negative experiences. Admitting that the responsibilities of his childhood had a silver lining shows his maturity and how he will be able to succeed in government one day. The essay strikes a healthy balance between challenge and hope, leaving us with a positive view of a student with such emotional maturity.
Although the content of this essay is very strong, it struggles with redundancy and disorganized information. He mentions his passion for government at the beginning of the student government paragraph, then again addresses government in the paragraph focused on his Colombian heritage, and concludes by talking about how he wants to get into government once more. Similarly, in the first paragraph he discusses the struggle of maintaining his Colombian identity and then fully delves into that topic in the third paragraph.
Instead of starting this essay with a summary of what the essay is about, the student should have made their hook part of the story. Whether that looks like them being exasperated with comments their classmates made about politics or them looking around apprehensively at the seven strangers on their program as they all boarded their flight, they should start off in the action.
The Optional Diversity Essay prompt is:We have all had unique experiences in life. Sometimes those experiences, whether positive or negative, help define our perspective. Please share an experience or personal history that has shaped your view on diversity. Diversity includes, but is not limited to: race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and physical abilities. And how that perspective would enrich the educational experience of your peers and the SIPA community. (250 words maximum)
My only advice based on what I've read so far is, if you have nothing to say on this essay, you would be better of skipping it. This is for your personal life experiences, within the examples the prompt provides, that you feel have shaped your perspective. Thinking about this in the context of the world of policy, public and international affairs, many of our graduates end up working in organizations and industries that have historically underrepresented certain populations. And the journey of getting to a place to even apply to SIPA is vastly different too.
If you have lived it, and you have done your research into your future career, you will know what part of your story to share it. If you do not have a story to share within this diversity context (which is perfectly fine), the worst thing you can do is to leverage another populations' lived experiences to force a perspective. And, please be reminded that this is not space for another personal statement. In case you will be working on other parts of your application, here's a post round-up addressing other questions I've been getting lately:
We have several diversity specialists on the SBC team, including a former board member of The Consortium. In partnership with The Riordan programs, two of our diversity experts recently led an MBA essay workshop for URM applicants. In that presentation, they shared how candidates can optimize all aspects of the essays.
This topic is broad, and it can feel overwhelming to try to capture all your thoughts into 500 words. Instead, consider the purpose of this essay as sharing your perspective or philosophy on diversity issues and choose one or two themes to discuss in depth. Examples of themes include intersectionality, managing differences and/or similarities of identities with clients, visible vs. invisible identities, transference and countertransference issues, privilege and oppression, identity development, etc.
Because diversity is such a broad topic, you may find it difficult to create an essay or personal statement on this particular topic without direction. Here are some topic ideas that can help you connect your experiences to the topic of diversity. Before we dive in, for help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers.
One of the first ways to discuss diversity in an essay is by defining it. Many people consider diversity the mixing of different cultures and people groups into one cohesive group, but is it more? Could it be the attitude of respect and appreciation shown to people in these groups within a community?
This essay can explore the contributions of different cultural and ethnic groups within society as a whole. It can build the argument that diversity is important by exploring the connectivity of the modern world and how different people groups impact one another.
Diversity in the workplace seems like a worthy goal, but does it have drawbacks? This essay lets you explore potential drawbacks. For example, diversity initiatives cost money to implement, and that can hurt the organization. Similarly, while diverse teams benefit from the different backgrounds of their members, they sometimes do not work as efficiently as teams made up of people who share similar life experiences, viewpoints, or cultures. 2ff7e9595c
Comments