Additional Information Section

It’s a section where you can provide any information that doesn’t fit elsewhere in the application. Take a look at your application. What’s missing? Can it fit into any other section (essays, extracurricular activity list, etc?). No? Add it in the Additional Information section.

BUT FIRST, Ask yourself, “Does this influence your application in a significant way?”

• Any explanations for interrupted education or particular impacts of conflict not explored elsewhere in the application (for example, external circumstances that led to lower grades, or explaining that you had to switch schools several times, etc).

• Include that you work with SYE Initiative, a “community-based organization” (CBO) that supports students from conflict zones applying to college. This is highly recommended, as universities across the United States are starting to learn about us and we have a strong reputation of working with awesome applicants!

• Important details about your activities that wouldn’t fit in your activities list

  • Use this sparingly-- at most only us this option for one extracurricular activity and only if you really haven’t gotten the point of the extracurricular activity across in that section, and after you’ve worked with your mentor on this section

    • Be brief

    • Be specific and focus on impact

    • Put your details in descending order of importance

    • Avoid special formatting

• Health issues that interrupted your education

  • Focus on information, this is not an essay, you are simply sharing the facts of your life

  • Focus on impact. How did this health issue affect you? How much school did you miss because of it? How’d you make up the work? Did your grades go up afterward?

  • Be careful in talking about mental health issues-- work with your Mentor or with the SYE team to ensure that you are not posing more concerns than necessary for an admissions officer.

• Any potential “red flags” on your application

  • Anticipate any questions the admissions officer might have and address them here (got a bad score on TOEFL but a great score on the SAT? Explain what went wrong with TOEFL?)

• Physical or learning disabilities or difference

  • If relevant, you can address professionally diagnosed physical or learning disabilities in this section (ADHD, dyslexia, etc).

• Family member disability or parent unemployment

• Unusual grading systems

  • Explain the Syrian or Iraqi grading system in a way that somebody completely unfamiliar with the system would understand. At larger universities, they will have an admission officer who focuses exclusively on Syria or the Middle East, and so will know everything they need to know about the system, but this may not be the case at smaller universities, where there are only one or two admissions officers all international students. Here's a document that could help you.

• Unusual classes or online courses

  • You can add any classes that you have taken online that are not already discussed in the extracurricular activity section

• Use the additional information section as a second personal statement

  • Additional information should be straightforward, bulleted facts, not an essay.

• Details that show you might be overly obsessed with academic perfection

  • Have near perfect grades but got a slightly lower grade in one class? Don’t draw attention to this. They’ll see that you have the strong grades, and you don’t need to draw attention or try to explain something that doesn’t matter significantly to them anyways

• Give excuses

• An overly complex abstract from a scientific paper or explanation for a project

  • Assume that the admissions officers know absolutely nothing-- make sure they are able to understand every word

• Pasting a resume that repeats everything you’ve already said in your activities list

  • The additional information section is ONLY for information that can’t be found elsewhere in your application