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The Writing section of the Common App has two optional boxes besides the personal essay. Additional information is for context that does not fit anywhere else, and it was cut from 650 words to 300 starting with the 2025 to 2026 application. Challenges and circumstances is a separate question, up to 250 words, for hardships that affected your schooling or opportunities.
Neither is a second essay. Used well, they help a reader understand your record. Used badly, they repeat what is already there.
What belongs in additional information
- A change of school, and what it meant for your courses or activities.
- An unusual course schedule or grading system, or courses your school did not offer.
- A significant activity that needs more detail than the activities list allows, such as a business you run or research you did.
- Responsibilities at home or work that limited your time for activities.
- A dip or jump in grades, when the reason is not a hardship covered by the next question.
What belongs in challenges and circumstances
This question is for circumstances that affected your ability to learn or take part: health, a disability, family or financial hardship, an unsafe or unstable living situation, no quiet place to study, or disruptions like natural disasters. You choose whether to share anything at all, and there is no penalty for leaving it blank.
If a hardship is the reason your record looks the way it does, put it here rather than in additional information.
What to leave out
- A second personal essay, or a poem, or a story that did not fit your main essay.
- A list of awards and activities that are already in your application.
- Excuses without context. Explain what happened and what you did, plainly.
- Anything a counselor letter will already cover in more detail.
How to write it
- 1Lead with the fact the reader needs: what happened, and when.
- 2Connect it to your record: which grades, courses or activities it affected.
- 3Say what you did about it, in one or two sentences.
- 4Stop. Short and factual reads as confident. Bullet points are fine here.
An illustration
Illustration, about an invented student: "In 11th grade I moved from a school on a block schedule to one on a semester schedule. Two of my courses had no equivalent, so my transcript shows AP Chemistry starting in spring rather than fall. I studied the first unit on my own over winter break and earned a 4 on the exam." Four sentences, all facts, and the reader's question is answered.
Questions
A score out of 100, a note on every sentence, the paragraph costing you most and a 10-point draft check, in 5–10 minutes. We never write a word of your essay.
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