It’s mid-December, and you’re bleary-eyed from working on your 7.2 college applications.  Like the other 85% of your peer group, you’re submitting your applications online, and the Common Application made the task somewhat easier for you.  Now all you have left are the institutional supplement forms, each of which appears in a standardized format hosted on the Common Application website.  Each, in other words, appears in the same, bland presentation (text prompt followed by text field, repeat) that would remind you of filing your taxes online if your parents didn’t do that for you.  Each, that is, except for one—the last supplement you complete, your application to William & Mary. 

Below William & Mary’s essay prompt, just above the button for uploading the document in which you’ll have written your response, you see a link to a YouTube video.  Intrigued because you’ve never seen multimedia on a college application before, you follow the link and click play...

Optional Essay or Submission:

Beyond your impressive academic credentials and  extracurricular accomplishments, what else makes you unique and colorful? Provide us with some limited measure of your personality. We know that nobody fits neatly into 500 words or less, but you can provide us with some suggestion of The Type of Person You Are. Anything goes—inspire us, impress us or just make us laugh. Think of this optional opportunity as Show and Tell by proxy and with an attitude.