I read on nearly all the forums that there should be a balance of personal (extracurricular or volunteer) and professional essays in the application submitted. I have some volunteer experience to write about but I believe that I'll do better justice to the essay questions asked if I were to write about professional experiences (I may be partial because I am proud of a couple of achievements)

My question is - since there are other areas in the application where I can mention my extracurricular work (I did win an award for the volunteer work), can I concentrate on writing the essays with a professional theme?