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Your Definitive Guide to Supplemental College Application Essays

Including supplemental essay examples to inspire your own.

Supplemental college application essays come in a vast range of topics and sizes and are often the biggest challenge for students after getting through the grueling initial application stages. These essays are crucial in the admissions process, as they provide a more personal and detailed context of your candidacy. They allow you to speak about more specific topics than the more general and broadly-structured personal statement or Common App essay that you submit in your primary application.

In this blog, our college essay advisors go over the general categories and purposes for the various supplemental essays you may have to navigate, and offer examples of short, medium, and lengthy supplemental essays.

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Article Contents 25 min read

Why are supplemental college application essays so important.

Supplemental essay prompts are usually provided directly by colleges as part of the secondary application, after you’ve submitted your primary application. Some colleges ask for multiple essays of varying lengths while others may ask for just one long-form supplemental essay. The specific prompts and word count requirements vary widely between schools. Every admissions committee creates their own supplemental requirements, including secondary essay prompts, to help them form a holistic picture of the applicant and judge how well-suited they would be for their school.

At the outset, it’s vital to understand that the term “supplemental” does not mean optional or second in importance. A supplement fills or makes up for an absence or imbalance, and that’s precisely the role these essays play in your application. Think of it a bit like adding colored paint to a black and white drawing. Your high school resume , transcripts, and test scores have given admissions committees an initial sense of what your candidacy. Supplemental essays, when correctly attuned to the personal statement, create a more nuanced portrait of your as an applicant.

Supplemental essays present a unique challenge as they have to be written in a short period of time, typically in 2 weeks or a month. Colleges send out secondary applications only after receiving your primary application and they provide strict submission deadlines. Additionally, unlike your personal statement, it’s not always possible to write supplemental college essays in advance since colleges frequently change their exact prompts from one year to the next and secondary essays need to always be tailored in response to specific prompts. However, that doesn’t mean you have to wait till you actually receive your specific prompts to start work on the essays.

A good strategy to tackle advance work on supplemental college essays is to spend 2 to 3 weeks writing rough drafts of the most common supplemental college essay types. Depending on the colleges you’re applying to, you can focus on specific prompts they’ve frequently asked in previous years. You can also check out college essay examples to get a better idea of what kind of content you need to come up with.

As you’re working on your primary application in the summer before senior year of high school or in September/October of your senior year, you can spend a few minutes each day brainstorming ideas for the previous year’s secondary essay prompts from colleges you’re applying to and creating a few rough drafts. For instance, most colleges ask for the “why us” essay, so you should definitely brainstorm your answer to that question in advance for all the colleges you’re applying to.

The advantage of following this strategy is that you will probably be wrapping up your primary application, including your personal statement or Common App essay, just as you begin work on your secondaries. Writing an effective personal statement requires a lot of brainstorming, journaling, introspection, free writing, rough drafts, and revisions. In the process, you’re sure to have spent plenty of time identifying key experiences, events, incidents, and people in your life, and also thinking about your own strengths, weaknesses, motivations, ambitions, and failures. Not all of this would have made it into your personal statement, and you can re-use a lot of this rough material as inspiration for your supplemental essay content. Moreover, you would have already honed your structuring and writing skills working on your personal statement, and the basic written communication skills required for the secondary essays are the same.

The goal of this advanced writing process is to have ideas and inspiration ready for when you actually receive your specific essay prompts. All your pre-writing and brainstorming will give you plenty of base material to work with, and rather than starting from scratch, you can spend the critical time before your supplemental deadline tailoring your essays to respond to the specific prompts and word counts. Remember, this is going to be a very busy period for you: while different colleges have different supplemental application dates and timelines, they generally occur within a similar period of time, typically between October and November for early decision programs and December and January for regular applications. So, you’re bound to have some overlap between the secondary essay deadlines for different colleges you’re applying to. You might end up having to work on secondary essays for multiple colleges within the same 1 month period. That’s why it’s all the more important that you complete your brainstorming in advance and create a few rough drafts of essays in response to the most commonly expected prompts.

Now, let’s discuss some general trends and categories frequently used for supplemental college application essays.

How to Tackle Different Supplemental Essays Prompts

While these categories cover the general focus of most supplemental essays, it’s important to note that schools change their secondary and supplemental essay prompts regularly, sometimes every year, and as a result, topics and categories evolve over time. Nonetheless, these are the most common categories both historically and currently.

Here are some helpful tips to keep in mind while working on any essay type:

The School-Specific Supplemental Essay

What is it?

As we mentioned previously, this is one of the most frequently used supplemental college prompts. These are typically between 250-350 words in length, although this varies widely from school to school. This is actually one of the easiest types of secondary college prompts to answer. Students don’t usually choose their undergraduate institutions randomly, rather, they make their choice after careful deliberation and research. To answer the school-specific essays, use that research! Schools want to know you’re engaged with their overall mission and clearly understand their place in the world, as well as what you specifically hope to get out of the campus experience aside from a Bachelor’s degree.

Sample essay prompts

Dartmouth : While arguing a Dartmouth-related case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1818, Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, delivered this memorable line: \"It is, sir,\u2026a small college, and yet there are those who love it!\" As you seek admission to the Class of 2026, what aspects of the College's program, community, or campus environment attract your interest? (maximum 100 words) ","label":"Dartmouth","title":"Dartmouth"}]" code="tab1" template="BlogArticle">

How to write this type of essay

• Provide specific details that tie to an overarching theme : It’s very important to set up the connection between your academic ambitions and what the college has to offer. Think deeply about what you hope to achieve and why you’ve identified this specific college. Back up your thesis with specific details about the college. It’s not enough to say – “I love XYZ college, and I’d love to pursue ABC major there.” The why is crucial. Remember, in this essay, colleges don’t want to see you simply discuss you and your journey; they want to know how that journey led you to them. Back up your claims with details about what attracts you to them, which could be anything from the campus and famous alumni, to the college’s unique values, or their innovative curriculum.
• Go beyond the obvious : This type of essay is, crucially, asking you to do your research and go beyond the obvious. Don’t just talk about a school’s generally known reputation or what’s on their homepage. Instead, try to identify specific projects, academic opportunities, research avenues, extracurriculars, or faculty that interest you, and relate them to your goals.
• Consider what you can do for them : Think not only about why this college is a great choice for you, but why you are a great choice for them. Why do you think you’ll fit into their campus? Are there college traditions you would be proud to continue? Can you contribute to any on-going projects or initiatives on campus? Demonstrate why they should choose you by using a concrete example.

The Extracurricular Essay

In this essay, you may be asked to talk about a particularly meaningful extracurricular activity. You might have already covered the basic details of this activity in the activities section of your application, but supplemental essays dealing with your extracurricular activities get into more overtly personal territory. Remember, the intent here is not to simply get a rehash of your activities section or transcript; rather, in these essays, schools want you to get into the deeper aspects and psychological nuances of your involvement in those activities.

It’s important to keep in mind that most prompts will not directly reference extracurriculars, but the most likely answer to these kinds of prompt will include a discussion of an extracurricular activity. For instance, some colleges ask you to elaborate on an activity where you demonstrated leadership or what helps you explore your creative side.

University of California: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. (maximum 350 words) ","label":"University of California 2","title":"University of California 2"}]" code="tab2" template="BlogArticle">

• Pick the right activity : It’s important to pick the right activities to talk about in your supplemental essays. Research the school’s website and social media to see their mission, values, and what kind of qualities they value in their matriculants, and choose an activity that reflects these. While you obviously want to remain genuine in your essays, it does not mean you cannot be strategic. Choose an activity you know will resonate with the college you’re applying to. Another tip: If you’ve already discussed one activity in detail in your personal statement, avoid repeating that here. Additionally, don’t pick achievement-oriented activities just because you think this might impress the admissions committee. You’ve already communicated your achievements in the activities section – in this essay, you have a chance to share another side of your personality and show the admissions committee more of what makes you unique. So, you can either focus on activities you are passionate about but haven’t mentioned elsewhere, such as cooking, woodworking, non-competitive chess playing, and so on. Or pick a compelling angle for activities you’ve already mentioned. For instance, if you’ve noted being a musician in your application elsewhere, this essay would be an opportunity to discuss why and how it’s been meaningful in your life, and potentially the lives of others.
• Do not be repetitive : Think of the personal circumstances, feelings, failures, and learnings surrounding your extracurriculars and write an essay that elaborates on one of these aspects. For example, even if you do end up picking your top activity from your primary application to write about, make sure the essay you write covers a unique aspect of your experience that you haven’t discussed elsewhere in your application before. Continuing our previous example, don’t just cover the obvious aspects of musical performance, but get into the psychological impact of performing, and of what specific types or music have impacted you through immersive practice or playing. 

Check out this infographic:

This type of essay is often the hardest for students to navigate, and also comes with the longest minimum word count requirement, often 500 or more words. If you’ve had your head down in the grind of coursework and achievement-oriented activities for most of your time in high school, odds are, you haven’t had a lot of time to engage in community service or collective projects outside of school. In a sense, this is a supplemental essay that requires some advanced planning: volunteer or community service work is a widely-understood key to getting admitted to competitive universities, so you will need something to refer to in this regard. Moreover, in this essay more than any other, colleges want to see an account of meaningful experience rather than a mere description of activities performed. They’re looking for long-term involvement, thoughtful self-reflection, and a clear personal growth journey. It’s a lot to ask from a high school student writing a 500 word essay!

However, part of the brilliance of this type of essay is its flexibility. You don’t need to have built a new community center with your bare hands to have impacted your community. Maybe you’ve participated in a group project that benefitted other students, or maybe you took part in planning a school event. Even a part-time job likely had some impact on your neighbors and fellow citizens. You could also discuss “informal” activities, such as helping your elderly neighbor with her grocery shopping, helping your family with a cultural project, your background as a member of a minority group, and so on. Think creatively about the ways you’ve acted in the world, and from that, determine how those actions have impacted others.

MIT : At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world\u2019s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (200\u2013250 words) ","label":"MIT","title":"MIT"}]" code="tab3" template="BlogArticle">

• Find what makes you unique : If you’re having trouble identifying which communities you’ve been a part of, or which part of your identity to focus on, try the “what makes me unique?” angle. This is definitely something you would have brainstormed for your personal statement, so bring those notes out! We are all a part of various communities, whether we realize it or not, and we all contribute to them in our own unique way. You might have a unique skill or talent, or maybe it’s a personal quality that helped you deal with an issue in the community. Alternatively, maybe your background and identity are a key part of your life’s journey, and you have many experiences related to that. There’s no “wrong” community you could discuss, whether it’s a Dungeons and Dragons club you created with your friends, the ethnic community you’re a part of, or the neighborhood where you grew up. The key is to identify what makes you unique.
• Focus on your growth journey: The easiest way to discuss community engagement in a “meaningful” way is to focus on how you, individually, found growth and learning through your participation in a larger community, and how you simultaneously impacted them. No matter what the community is, the growth narrative is important. There has to be a clear two-way impact that demonstrates how your engagement and contributions affected those around you.

Create Your Own Class Essay

One of the more creative type of essays, these prompts ask students to come up with their own class, reimagine a whole department, conceptualize their ideal lecture series, and so on. This essay is your chance to show your creative and out-of-the-box thinking, while also expanding upon your academic interests and sharing your passions with the admissions committee. This essay is essentially a more creative alternative to the “why this major” essay.

Boston College : Boston College strives to provide an undergraduate learning experience emphasizing the liberal arts, quality teaching, personal formation, and engagement of critical issues. If you had the opportunity to create your own college course, what enduring question or contemporary problem would you address and why. (maximum 400 words) ","label":"Boston College","title":"Boston College"}]" code="tab4" template="BlogArticle">

• Get creative : You can really use this essay topic to stand out from the crowd. Come up with a creative answer and expand upon it with fun, yet thoughtful details that show your intellectual curiosity and unique perspective on the world.
• Align your answer with the college : Remember, you’re being asked to come up with a course for the specific college you’re applying to. What’s their mission? What kind of curriculum do they have? What type of learning do they value? Find out the answer to these questions and incorporate these details in your essay. For example, if the college you’re applying to values an interdisciplinary learning environment, try to come up with a course that incorporates both science and humanities concepts.
• Use your experience : This prompt is also the school’s way to learn more about your personal goals and experiences. Try to ground your motivation for creating this course in your own life. For example, if you want to create a curriculum that covers the influence of fashion on punk rock culture, try to connect it to your own interests or skills, such as a sewing hobby or your love of underground culture.

The Major or Field of Study Essay

This can be a tricky essay type to handle for college students who are still undecided about their major, which is very natural for high school students. Luckily, not all colleges ask for this type of essay. You can expect this essay mostly from colleges focused on a specific stream of study, who want to know why you’re attracted to that field. Some elite universities, like Ivy League schools , also ask this question because they want to see the applicants’ long-term academic ambitions and how well these fit in with their own mission.

Interested in learning more about how to gain acceptance to an Ivy League School? Check out this video!

Sample essay prompt

MIT: Pick what field of study at MIT appeals to you the most right now, and tell us more about why this field of study appeals to you. (maximum 100 words) ","label":"MIT","title":"MIT"}]" code="tab5" template="BlogArticle">

• Include personal as well as college-specific details : Similar to the “why us” essay, you need to refer to specific details of the college program, faculty, academic curriculum, research opportunities, and campus life. Connect these details with your own experiences and passions and explain why this college or program aligns with your academic or professional interests. Think about key formative events and personal motivators for your interest. For example, if you’re applying to a top science, technology, engineering, or medicine (STEM) college such as MIT, you obviously have a specific passion for one of these subjects. While you can and should expand on your personal ambitions, don’t forget to explain why MIT is the best option to help you achieve them.
• Focus on the long-term : In a way, this type of essay is analogous to the “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” interview question. If you do have a clear plan of how you see your future academic and professional life developing, this essay is where you share it. However, you need to make sure you don’t just spin a beautiful story that isn’t based in reality. Your ambitions should be supported by thorough research, real-world industry knowledge, and a careful consideration of your own strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, don’t just include grand ambitions for the sake of sounding impressive – back them up with personal motivations, or better yet, include concrete, achievable goals. For instance, if you’re applying to the best undergrad business schools , your supplemental essay shouldn’t simply say “I want to be youngest CEO in the USA” or “I want to feature in a 30 under 30 article” – instead, it should focus on specific business interests and goals, for example – “I want to use my leadership skills, business training, and community engagement experience to eventually pay it forward by expanding the economic and business opportunities in my own community.”

The Quirky Essay

This type of essay is meant to catch you off-guard or ask you to write about something not often discussed in the context of admissions. These essays are often among the shortest in terms of length, and generally hope to evince some humor and self-awareness from the writers. Topics for these essays include odd talents, strange experiences, or hyper-specific situational questions like what superpower you’d choose if given the chance. They can also be quite general: Princeton, for instance, includes a prompt asking, simply, “what brings you joy?”.

Princeton: What brings you joy? (maximum 50 words) ","label":"Princeton","title":"Princeton"}]" code="tab6" template="BlogArticle">

• Keep the tone light : When responding to such prompts, don’t get too caught up in trying to be ultra-intellectual, serious, or different from the crowd. Be creative, have fun, and try and show a lighter side of your personality to the admissions committee. Match the tone of the question and don’t overthink this one too much!
• Be genuine : The tricky part about responding to these random and creative prompts is to make your answer humorous while also being as honest and genuine as possible. Sincerity is key – make sure you don’t pick an answer you think sounds funny, or impressive, but that isn’t strictly true and backed up by the rest of your application. For instance, if asked “what kind of bird are you”, if you respond with something like “eagle” and talk generically about your leadership qualities without any specific details, admissions committees will be able to tell you aren’t being genuine. You can give any answer you like here! The important thing is to justify it with real aspects of your personality that add some interesting color to your application.

Now, let’s look at how to structure essays depending on the length. We’ll also go over an example for each essay type. 

Short Supplemental Essay (250 Words or Fewer) Examples

According to our college admissions consulting experts, these can be quite dangerous for some students, so don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because an essay has a short word count, you don’t need to spend much time on it. This can actually be one of the toughest types of essays, since you have very limited space in which to capture the admission committee’s attention and make your point. When you start writing, you might find that by the time you’ve set up your premise, you’re already done with 80% of the available word count! The key here is to include crisp, well-structured sentences to directly address the question being asked. There’s not really any space for a “hook” here, such as a quote, story, or layered personal experience. Only include a story or a personal experience if the question explicitly asks you too. In just 250 words or less, you won’t be able to describe too complex an event or activity, so just cut straight to the point.

Recommended Structure

• Direct opening sentence : Your first sentence should clearly address the essay prompt and set up the topic. Don’t worry about this being a boring or straightforward strategy – that’s what you need here!
• Specific details to support the topic : Add personal details and self-reflections suitable for the prompt to support your opening sentence. Remember, every word is crucial here so leave out any unnecessary facts and descriptions – stick to what’s relevant. Try and focus on a single experience, reflection, opinion, or topic, as you really won’t be able to do justice to any more. At the same time, make sure you don’t sacrifice flow to brevity. Each sentence should connect smoothly to the next, setting up a logical pathway from your opening thesis to your conclusion.
• Conclusion : Add the key takeaway or reflection and tie it back to the prompt.

To see how a short essay should be structured, let’s take a look at this prompt from Brandeis :

“Justice Brandeis once said, ‘If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.’ Tell us about something bold that you’ve recently done.”

Here’s a sample answer:

Although painting isn't itself an especially wild or bold activity, showing my art for the first time felt very bold indeed. As someone with a motor impairment, I've never been able to draw well, and found art classes throughout elementary school incredibly frustrating and embarrassing. However, discovering the wide and extremely varied world of abstract art a few years ago, I was finally bitten by the art bug, and began experimenting with acrylic paint. At first, I just learned how to operate the varying dilutions and textures of paint, but over time I became obsessed with the idea of color gradients and shading, and how the paint itself can do a lot of work that doesn't depend on a completely steady hand. I amassed a small stack of canvasses, and this past year asked around at the two art galleries in town to see if anyone was interested in putting some of my pieces up. Fortunately, and to my surprise, one independent gallery offered to show my entire collected work for a month. Not only did I receive a tonne of really positive and encouraging messages from visitors to the gallery, but I even sold 3 pieces! I was honestly terrified at every step of the way, but that first sale was about the most confidence-building event I've ever experienced. It felt bold, but also made me hungry to continue making art and sharing it with others. (237 words) 

Medium Supplemental Essay (250-500 Words) Examples

Shorter than your personal statement, longer than a short answer, these essays require you to balance a logical flow with a crisp central narrative.

While the basic structure of this essay can be similar to the long-form 650 word essay, you’ll need to make a few adjustments to suit the shorter length.

• Opening paragraph : You can choose to add an “anchor experience” for these essays, or you can write it in a more direct style, responding to the prompt and getting straight to the point. It depends on what you want to say and how you want to say it. For example, if your essay is focused on personal experiences, then an evocatively described personal experience could be a great hook. However, if the prompt asks you to provide your opinion about a specific issue or creatively imagine a specific scenario, then getting right to the point is a better idea.
• Main body : Here, you describe your central thesis and add further details to support it. You have to be very efficient with your choice of experiences and even with the details of any experience you chose to include. Each sentence should be in service of the essay prompt. Review this section with the questions “Is this related to the essay prompt? Does this help to answer the question being asked?”.
• Conclusion : The key to an efficient, memorable conclusion of a medium length supplemental essay is economy of words. In a single sentence, you should address the question being asked and also communicate your own central thesis, with a focus on what makes you special. Crafting this conclusion will take you time! First, identify the points you want to make, and then figure out a way to compress them into as few words as possible, without sacrificing clarity.

Let’s check out an example of this type of essay.

University of California: Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement? (maximum 350 words)

Growing up as the precocious daughter of hard-working immigrant parents, academic excellence and achievements were always the two key cornerstones of my life. My parents inculcated the importance of doing well in school in me from a young age. After all, it was education that had enabled my parents to escape the poverty and trauma of their homeland and find refuge in this country. With a natural penchant for academics and a love for learning, I never had cause to question this life-long commitment – not until junior year of high school.

That was the year when my parents’ restaurant business took a huge hit, and from a regular middle-class American immigrant success story, we were brought to the brink of bleak poverty. It was a shock to our family that took us through some of the toughest times I’ve ever experienced. We all had to make sacrifices, and one of the most profound changes I experienced in that period was a total shift in my priorities, as I had to work at my parents’ restaurant every day after school to help keep the business afloat. From being a grade-A student, I became a struggling straggler who could barely keep up with tests and exams, much less take on extra credit projects. At one point, I even considered quitting school! The worst part was watching the pain in my parents’ eyes, knowing they couldn’t provide the ideal home environment they had envisioned for me, which they themselves had never received.

However, looking back, I consider that period one of the most significant learning experiences of my life. It tested my commitment to my academic interests, which had previously always been so easy to pursue, and I came through with a system that allowed me to contribute at home and also excel at school. It made me further appreciate the struggles my parents had gone through as immigrants juggling family, work, education, and a major cultural adjustment. And finally, it made me appreciate what a gift and privilege education truly is, and vow never to take it for granted. (347 words)

Want to know a surprising fact? You might actually find the long-form supplemental essays easier to write than their shorter counterparts! These essays are typically 500 to 650 words long, which means you have plenty of space to build a coherent narrative, expand on your thesis, and support it with relevant details. When writing a longer supplemental essay, you can actually re-use many of the same strategies you employed for your Common App essay or personal statement. The basic structure (which we’ll explain in a moment) will be similar, and you can even recycle some of your rejected personal statement ideas to write an exemplary supplemental essay.

You can go for the commonly used 3 to 5 paragraph essay structure here. Include the following:

• Introduction : For longer essays, it’s critical to have a strong opening that hooks the reader and draws them into your narrative immediately. Admissions committees are reading thousands of essays, so you want to shake them out of their “reading fatigue” by capturing their attention with story, personal experience, unique quote, etc. In this paragraph, you should also clearly set up the central thesis of your essay. Critically for supplemental essays, ensure that your central thesis directly addresses or answers the prompt. Tie the “hook” of your opening paragraph in with this central thesis.
• Body paragraphs 1/2/3 : While the 5-paragraph structure is the most commonly used essay format for long-form essays, you can include more or fewer, as per the requirements of your specific narrative. Remember to be selective when you choose the experiences to support your thesis. In these paragraphs, you build on the central narrative you set up in introduction, supported with your self-reflections and personal examples. Include only the necessary details that help to build the central theme of the essay. Your essay should be written in a natural, direct style, but you can try and include evocative details and personal reflections to help communicate your point.
• Conclusion : As with all other supplemental essays, the conclusion is critical. You must include a key takeaway, learning, or crisp one-liner to sum up your answer to the question being asked.

Harvard : An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science, or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you. (maximum 650 words)

“It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.”

It’s a hot summer’s day, I’m red-faced, sweaty, and out-of-breath, hunched over a pile of earth, delicately brushing away tiny amounts of ancient mud, and John Bishop’s words suddenly pop into my mind. Our project director, Professor Saltzman, had led a brief session that morning concluding with this memorable quote, and it stayed with me for one clear reason: I felt it perfectly encapsulated my own journey, from a guy who cared too much about where he was going, to someone who now primarily cared about the business of these long, long, dead ancient women and their kitchen tools. The irony of the realization made me chuckle a little, disturbing the earth around the little kitchen mound I was excavating, and then I went back to my gentle brushing, once again fully absorbed.

It was simply not a picture of myself I could have believed merely months prior. From a very young age, I had a vision of myself as a lawyer. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather, carving an illustrious career that would begin, like theirs, at Harvard, and end with me on the Supreme Court. This dream hit a minor snag when, due to a medical absence is junior year, I missed my AP History exam. Mr. Griffin, my history teacher, suggested that I complete a summer archeology program he was affiliated with to make up the credit. And that was how this “minor snag” actually ended up diverting my passions, interests, and ambitions away from law and firmly into the field of archeology.

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. I was resistant to what I perceived was a distraction from my true interest, the practice of law – I thought then I’d much rather be shadowing my father in a cushy air conditioned office than sweating it out in a desert, digging for broken bits of ancient pottery. But within a couple of days, I found to my surprise that I loved every second of it. The director of the program, Professor Saltzman, liked to walk us through our findings, however minor, at the end of each day. For the benefit of the younger students present, he often delivered lectures expanding upon the critical contextual history of that period. I was amazed at how these small, faded pieces of pottery could tell us so much about the socio-cultural norms of 8000 years ago; from which countries they traded with to what they ate, from their dominant gender roles to the kinds of currency they used.

Most amazing of all, at least to me, was how archeology could actually help envision the lived reality of these people from long ago. Our key findings in that dig were the kitchen utensils of a woman we nicknamed “Leda”, a widowed fisherwoman with two children. Every day, we would discover a new piece of evidence and spend hours classifying, dissecting, and contextualizing it to discover all it could tell us about how Leda lived her life. I realized that all the physical discomforts were worth the thrill of bringing these tiny pieces of history back to life.

In those 4 weeks, I experienced a kind of wonder, and joy in learning, and intrinsically motivated intellectual curiosity, that I had never experienced before in my life. With law, I was primarily attracted to all the perceived prestige and privileges that accrued to the profession; with archeology, the subject matter itself drew me onwards to push past my prejudices and discomforts. Today, I hope to continue to pursue my passion for archeology by continuing my work under Professor Saltzman as an undergraduate at Harvard, and hopefully discover the secret lives of many more Ledas in the future. (643)

The personal statement is a more general essay with a broader scope, typically submitted as part of your primary application, whereas supplemental essays respond to specific prompts and are submitted with your secondary application directly to each school. You only need to write one personal statement (such as the Common App essay) which goes out to all your colleges, and it should therefore never include any college-specific details. On the other hand, each college asks for their own set of supplemental essays, and they may often ask you to expand upon your interest in the specific college, program, or major you are applying to. A personal statement is a single long-form essay of 650 words or more, whereas colleges can ask for multiple supplemental essays that can range in length from 35 to 650 words.

The most commonly used supplemental college essay prompts are:

• The “why us” essay that asks you to discuss why you want go to a specific college
• The extracurricular essay that asks you to discuss your activities, talents, or skills
• The community essay that asks you to expand upon your identity, diversity, community engagement, and so on
• The “why this major” essay that asks you to discuss your specific academic interests
• The “create a class” essay that asks you to creatively design a major or come up with your own class
• The “quirky” essay that can include creative, zany, out-of-the-box, informal prompts

Supplemental college essays can range in length from 35 words to 650 words. Every college has their own prompts and requirements, so you should check the admissions website of your colleges to learn more.

The “why this school” college essay is one of the most common supplemental college essay types. It’s very important to be college-specific in this essay, and to include details of your special interest in the concerned college supported by your knowledge of their unique offerings. You will have to do some research on the college so you can make your essay as specific and unique as possible.

Yes, supplemental essays are a critical part of your application. They help to personalize and flesh out your application, building on your achievements, transcripts, and scores, to show the admissions committee a well-rounded, unique individual. Crucially, supplemental essays are a chance for you to show how well your thinking and experiences align with the college’s missions and values and why you would be an excellent candidate for their program.

A word count of 250 words or less can pose a significant challenge for students. To write an effective short answer, you need to be concise and direct, addressing the question asked while building a logical flow from introduction to conclusion. There’s no space in such questions for fancy opening hooks and elaborate narratives – just stick to the relevant experiences and reflections and always connect back to the prompt itself.

It depends on the topic! It’s not a good idea to copy paste the essay content for college-specific prompts such as “why us” or “why this major”, where the expectation is that you will talk in detail about the unique features of that college which attract you. However, for more generic topics like “what inspires you” or “how did you serve your community”, you can certainly re-use topics and themes between essays. Just make sure you edit each essay to meet the specific word count and include college specific details wherever possible. Additionally, you should always read and understand the prompt thoroughly before drafting your essay. Respond to the spirit as well as the letter of the prompts in your opening and concluding sentences, even if you’ve re-used most of the main body content from another similar essay.

Supplemental college essays certainly afford you greater room to be creative and informal than your personal statement. However, the extent to which this style of writing would be appropriate depends on the prompts. The short answer, zany, creative prompts, are the perfect place to show a lighter side of your personality and introduce a little humor in your application. But an essay about significant obstacles you’re overcome, or your long-term academic goals, might not be an ideal place to get overtly casual and humorous.

You will receive your secondary application directly from the college after you submit your primary application. The deadline to complete secondary applications varies from college to college. Most colleges ask you to submit your completed supplemental application, including essays, within 2 weeks or a month of receiving the prompts. This isn’t a lot of time, especially considering most colleges will be sending out secondary applications in the same rough time period and you’ll have to work on multiple applications at once. However, you can prepare in advance for your supplemental essays by brainstorming ideas and writing rough drafts in response to previous years’ prompts.

Every college has their own unique secondary application requirements. You should check the admissions websites of your colleges to learn more about their specific requirements. Some colleges may ask for just a single 650-word essay, while others may provide 5 or 6 prompts of varying lengths. Generally speaking, most colleges don’t ask for more than 1 or 2 long supplemental essays (500+ words), along with 2 or 3 shorter essays.

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Supplemental Essays Guide: How to Write, Tips & Examples

Reviewed by:

Former Admissions Committee Member, Columbia University

Reviewed: 9/11/23

Writing stand-out supplemental essays may be your ticket into your dream school. Follow along for our complete guide on writing perfect supplemental essays for college.

If you’re working on supplemental essays, you’ve already spent countless hours perfecting your application. However, even the perfect application must be followed by stellar supplementals to get you into your dream school. That’s right, supplementals are a highly important piece of the application process - so how can you perfect yours? 

In this complete guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about writing excellent supplemental essays, including examples from well-written essays , tips for common essay prompts, and each possible length. To top it all off, we’ve also included answers to the most frequently asked questions about writing stand-out supplemental essays.

Let’s get started!

What are Supplemental Essays? 

Supplemental essays are additional writing samples that you submit along with the rest of your college application. Many high-ranking schools ask for these essays, as they are intended to be more specific than your personal statement. It’s a chance for you to further demonstrate why you are a good fit for the school you’re applying to.

How Important are Supplemental Essays?

In short, supplemental essays are an extremely valuable part of your application. Your application allows schools to see the base of your work ethic through numbers (grades, extracurriculars, awards, and more), but it doesn’t give any indication of your personality. 

These essays are your first opportunity to give your university an idea of who you are and what you are passionate about. 

Excellent essays can tip the scales in your favor, especially for highly competitive schools where most candidates have excellent grades. An in-depth, well-written essay can set your application apart from others.

What are Colleges Looking For in Supplemental Essays? 

In supplemental essays, colleges look for honesty, specificity, and the ability to answer the prompt accurately and succinctly. We will look at several common prompts that colleges often use: 

• “Why This Major?”
• Community/diversity
• Extracurricular

Using these prompts helps college admissions get a better idea of who you are as an applicant.

How to Write Different Supplemental Essay Prompts

Every college has a unique set of prompts they distribute to their applicants each year. However, most prompts follow core formats. Here are some of the most common types of supplemental essays and how to write them.

The “Why Us?” Essay

The “Why Us?” or "Why This School?” essay is one of the most common prompts in circulation. Top schools such as Brown, Columbia, and Cornell have all been known to ask applicants to answer this prompt as part of their application. So, how do you write the “Why Us?” essay? Let’s talk about it. 

When a college asks you why you want to go there, the admissions committee wants to know a few things:

• The specific things about this school that appeal to you (have you done your research?)
• How you will contribute to this school’s college life
• How attending this school will help you achieve short and long-term goals

With this prompt, avoid listing reasons you want to go to the school unless you are directly instructed to do so. This is an opportunity to show the admissions committee how much their school matters to you, what programs and courses most interest you, and how the school will help you develop your passion and achieve your goals. 

You should do thorough research on the school and consider what sets it apart from other colleges on your list . Avoid providing general reasons that could be said about any other college. 

Writing this essay is your chance to showcase why you are passionate about attending this specific school and why it matters to you. Finally, conclude your essay by explaining how and why attending this school will help your long-term goals. 

‍ “Why Us?” Essay Sample from Columbia University:

“Computer science is at the core of my academic passions and my life ambitions. What I value in life is being around brilliant technologists. At Columbia, I have worked with and befriended the most driven and gifted programmers I’ve ever met. In January, I formed a team with three Columbia freshmen for MIT’s annual strategy-game-playing artificial intelligence competition. Ben, Ryan, Koh and I spent the month reviewing matches, debating approaches and tweaking our models. More than once we coded through the night. Their caliber was clear in the subtle insights that their multi-disciplinary backgrounds gave them and they gave me something to aspire to.

I have many interests that lie outside of my intended major but that I want to continue to pursue, and Columbia provides an environment for those diverse passions. Recently, while at a Columbia math club meeting with Ben, I ran into a political science major, Mathieu. He was elated to point out the insights that a love of math granted him in his courses and his conviction encouraged me to explore the peculiar intersection of the two fields.

I love teachers who love to teach. At Columbia, I’ve seen faculty who have a love for what they do and who care about students. While touring, I sat in on a quantum mechanics lecture. Professor Norman Christ strode into the room at eight on-the-dot and jumped into a discussion of WKB complex value approximation. For three straight hours, he guided us through the intricate world of QM without any notes. His enthusiasm brightened that drizzling Monday morning. That I could follow the lecture at all is a testament to his lucid explanations and extraordinary knowledge. When I came to him with questions afterward, he helped me truly understand a topic that initially felt years out of reach.”

Why this is a successful essay: In this essay , the writer starts by talking about their major and how Columbia provides an excellent program. They continue to add how they could positively impact Columbia if accepted. Take note of how the writer lists their key topic at the beginning of each paragraph and then connects Columbia to each topic. 

This student also mentioned that they enjoyed a Columbia professor's lecture, which is an excellent way of showing their deep interest in the school. Showing in your essay that you are passionate about the program and that you’ve done your research can be a point in your favor. 

The “Why This Major?” Essay

Although this prompt is very similar to the “Why Us?” essay, your answer should focus entirely on why you’re passionate about your degree. Think of this essay as an opportunity to tell the story of how you developed your passion. Try creating a timeline before you start writing to help organize your ideas. It should look something like this:

1. The first time I thought about pursuing this major was: __________________                              

2. I started to get more serious about pursuing this passion when:___________________

3. I’m now applying to this program so that in the future, I can: ___________________

Creating a timeline can help you easily convey how important your major is to you and the journey you’ve taken to build upon your passion. 

You can also include, if it applies, what specific things about your school’s program that drew you to your current selection. However, the main focus of this essay should be how you developed your passion for the subject and what you want to do in this field later on.

"Why This Major" Essay Sample from Yale:

“Literature and anthropology are telescopes into the past; philosophy, a prism into the mind. I want to ask the hard questions: Do I have free will? Is meaning lost in translation? Is there eternal truth? What is an “I”? Am I my mind, body or something more? Literature is an empathetic account of the past, anthropology a scientific documentation of human lives. I want to find commonality in lives separated by time and space, find meaning within them, partake in the collective memory of humanity, and interrogate what it means to be human.”

Why this essay works: 

In this short essay example from a Literature and Anthropology student from Yale, the student gets straight to the point. Demonstrating the questions they have that they hope to answer throughout their education is an excellent way to show that you’ve given your major a lot of thought. 

They’ve also captured the true essence of their major in the last sentence by stating they want to “partake in the collective memory of humanity” and “interrogate what it means to be human.” Whatever major you choose, write honestly about what calls you to the subject and demonstrate that you have a thorough understanding of the genre of material you’ll be studying. 

The Adversity Essay

As one of the most challenging essay prompts, the adversity essay presents students with the uncomfortable task of recalling a difficult life experience and explaining how they overcame it. 

For some, choosing an instance of adversity can be the most challenging part of this prompt. Keep in mind that adversity looks different to everyone. Your story doesn’t have to be overly tragic to write a good adversity essay; you simply need to approach your issue from a place of growth. 

One of the main mistakes applicants make when writing the adversity essay is thinking that their adversity story needs to be overly tragic or complex. Instead of focusing on the actual adversity, your essay should mainly focus on the steps you took to overcome the adversity and learn valuable lessons moving forward. 

If a school asks you to write an adversity essay, the admissions committee wants to know how you handle a challenge. If you buckle under pressure, you may not be able to handle the intensity of a heavy workload. 

Therefore, schools want to know that you are capable of facing challenges head-on and have the capacity to learn from your mistakes. 

Adversity Essay Sample from Harvard University:

“When I was a freshman in high school, I didn't care about school or my education. I couldn't see a future where it mattered whether I knew how to say 'how are you' in Spanish or how to use the Pythagorean theorem. Because I couldn't see the point of these classes, I found myself disconnected from the high school experience as a whole, which resulted in low grades. My parents expressed their disappointment in me, but I still couldn't bring myself to care; I was feeling disconnected from my family, too.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was depressed. I stopped spending time with my friends and stopped enjoying the things I used to enjoy. I was feeling hopeless. How could I get through three and a half more years of high school if I couldn't even get through a semester? I couldn't stand the thought of feeling this way for so long – at least it felt so long at the time.

After a few failed tests, one of my teachers approached me after class one day. She said she also noticed a difference in my demeanor in the last few weeks and asked if I was okay. At that moment, I realized that no one had asked me that in a long time. I didn't feel okay, so I told her that. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her that I was feeling disconnected from school and classes and just about everything at that point.

My teacher suggested I visit my guidance counselor. So the next day, during study hall, I got a pass to visit with my guidance counselor and told her I was feeling disconnected from classes and school. She asked me what my interests were and suggested that I take an elective like art or music or a vocational tech class like culinary arts or computer coding. I told her that I wasn't sure what I was interested in at this point and she told me to take a couple of classes to see what I like. At her persistence, I signed up for art and computer coding.

It turns out art was not my thing. But it also turns out that computer coding is my thing, and I am not sure I would have realized that had I not gone to see my guidance counselor at my teacher's recommendation. After taking computer coding and other similar classes, I had something to look forward to during school. So even when I still dreaded taking Spanish and Geometry, I knew I could look forward to an enjoyable class later in the day. Having something to look forward to really helped me raise my grades because I started caring about my future and the possibility of applying for college to study computer science.

The best thing that I took away from this experience is that I can't always control what happens to me, especially as a minor, but I can control how I handle things. In full transparency: there were still bad days and bad grades, but by taking action and adding a couple of classes into my schedule that I felt passionate about, I started feeling connected to school again. From there, my overall experience with school – and life in general – improved 100%."

Why this is a good essay: In this essay , the applicant focuses on personal development. They begin by addressing their low grades and poor mental health at a younger age and how the experience affected them. The main focus of the essay, however, is how they found the motivation to get back on track and improve their grades. 

The student has taken this essay opportunity to not only explain the poor grades that Harvard will see from freshman year but has also proven that they have the ability to pull through when times get tough. Remember, the adversity essay should focus mainly on how you’ve learned and grown from a negative experience rather than focusing on the experience itself. 

Community/Diversity Essay

Essay prompts that ask about your experiences in your community help colleges to better understand your unique perspective. Many schools aim to cultivate a diverse environment to enrich the student experience and make sure students from all different backgrounds feel welcome on campus. 

Diversity can relate to your ethnicity, culture, birthplace, health, socioeconomic status, interests, talents, values, and many other things. There is no “correct experience” when it comes to choosing a topic here. In this essay, you have the opportunity to celebrate your unique perspective.

Think about experiences that are important to your identity. For example, you could write about your hometown, a family tradition, a community event, a generational story, or whatever feels most authentic to you. 

Keep this essay authentic; avoid fabricating a story or using someone else's experience. This story needs to come completely from you and let your school get some more information on who you are.

Community/Diversity Essay Sample from Duke University:

“The pitter patter of droplets, the sweet smell that permeates throughout the air, the dark grey clouds that fill the sky, shielding me from the otherwise intense gaze of the sun, create a landscape unparalleled by any natural beauty. I have gazed upon the towering cliffs of Yosemite, stood next to Niagara Falls as the water roars, succumbing to the power of gravity, and seen the beaches of Mexico basked in moonlight, yet none of these wonders compares to the simple beauty of an Arizona rainstorm. To me, our rain represents more than humidity and darkness; its rarity gives it beauty. The uncertainty of when the next day of rain will come compels me to slow down, and enjoy the moment.

Out of the three realms of time; past, present, and future, the present is the only one we can experience, and I take advantage of every moment I have. When I pause my running to enjoy a sunset that dazzles the sky with brilliant colors of purple and orange, when I touch my brush to a canvas and focus on my movements in the present, when I drive home after a long day of improving our robot, and decide to drive around my neighborhood to finish “Garota de Ipanema”, which just popped up from my playlist of 700 songs, I am taking advantage of the moment.

So next time it rains, step outside. Close your eyes. Hear the symphony of millions of water droplets. And enjoy the moment.”

Why this is a successful essay: This essay is an excellent example of pulling a unique experience from your life and expressing its importance. The applicant tells a compelling story about their unique perspective on rain in Arizona and does an excellent job of expressing how special the seemingly mundane event is to them. 

The language used here is visually descriptive, which makes the reader feel as if we are experiencing the event with the writer. This is an excellent way to get the admissions committee to feel connected to your story and get a better understanding of who you are and what you enjoy doing in life. 

The Extracurricular Essay

Many schools are interested in how you spend your time outside of the classroom. Extracurricular essays are quite common as supplemental essays, although students often struggle with how to make an entire essay out of their extracurricular activities. That’s why it’s important to brainstorm and create a story.

Think of a problem that arose while you were participating in one of your extracurricular activities, such as:

• Your sports team lost an important player
• You were injured during a dance recital
• Your music group needed funding 
• Your local soup kitchen was at risk of being shut down, etc.

The problem you choose can be big or small as long as it lends itself to a story. Think about the problem and how you took steps to solve it with your team or other members of your community. 

Use your extracurricular essay to show how your passion and motivation extend beyond the classroom. You can choose any activity to write about, as long as it was not during regular school hours or related to a specific course. 

Extracurricular Essay Sample from Yale:

“ Haunted romanticism, ravaged gaze, desperation bordering on lunacy, Saturn Devouring His Son first caught my attention as a bored nine-year-old wandering around a museum, and once again as a high-school student, after catching a glimpse of it in a textbook. 

Because after looking at angelic frescos after more Church frescos, I could not stop myself from flipping back to the tiny printing of this unholy piece. I sought to discover the story behind it—what caused this artist to create something so raw and naked, in the age of staid royal family portraits?

I became immersed in unraveling each bit of the story, how Goya had long transitioned from a royal painter, to a harsh, but veiled critic of society, the desolation that occurred during the French occupation of Spain, the corruption of Charles IV— who was really only a puppet ruler to Godoy. I learned how kingdoms rose and fell—and rose again, how art is unafraid to capture the seditious attitudes of the common people, and how it has endured to teach us of past mistakes.

I fell in love with dissecting the messages from the past, and discovering how we still have not listened to them.”

Why this essay is successful: 

The prompt for this Yale extracurricular essay was “Write about something that you love to do,” and the writer has certainly delivered. Here, the writer goes into detail about why they enjoy going to art museums outside of school. They’ve kept their essay focused on the meanings behind the paintings, giving the reader a deeper understanding of not only what fascinates them - but why it does.

The real key to an extracurricular essay is showing your passions outside of school. There is no right answer; you should simply focus on what interests you and explain why. Try to make the reader feel as if they are there with you. Think about the smells, the sights, and the feelings that surround your extracurricular interest and include them in your essay. 

College Supplemental Essay Length 

All of the essay types above come in different lengths. Some essays will ask only 150 words or less, while some have no word limit at all. Here, we’ll go over how to adjust your writing depending on your word count. 

Short Essay

There is a broad misconception that writing a short essay is “less work,” which we are unfortunately here to squash. Writing shorter-form essays (150 to 500 words) can be more challenging because you have less room to make your point, and your writing must be concise. 

To write an excellent short-form essay, start by brainstorming your ideas and move on to writing once you have a solid idea of the main points you want to include. Avoid fluff, repeating the question, reciting your resume, and run-on sentences. The best short essays are honest and to the point. 

If your essay is too long when you’ve finished writing, go through each sentence and ask yourself: “Could I tell this story without this sentence?” If yes, cut it completely. If you answered no, find ways to subtract unnecessary words. Having a friend help you edit is a great way to find out which parts are making the text longer without lending anything to the story. 

Medium Essay 

A medium essay is a sweet spot. Typically, a length of one to three pages flows easily and allows the writer to include all necessary information without repeating themselves or taking anything away. 

Because of this, make sure not to go over or under the word count. Most students do not struggle to keep their writing within these parameters, so it’s important to respect them. 

Although you have more room in a medium-length essay, your writing should still be concise and flow well without including excess information. It’s always a good idea to have a teacher, friend, or family member look over your story. 

Make sure that when they edit, they are looking for things like grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and unnecessary information. They shouldn’t take too much out of your essay because you don’t want the voice of the essay to change. 

Long Essay 

When tasked with writing a long essay (three pages or more), it can be challenging to continuously provide fresh information and avoid repetition. However, repetition and dragging sentences is the main thing you’ll want to avoid in a long-form essay. To do this, you should rely heavily on planning and your thesis statement.

Your thesis statement sets up your article, allowing you to break the information into parts and tackle each step individually. Brainstorming before you start writing is critical as it ensures you have enough relevant information to fill out the full length of your paper. 

How to Write School-Specific Supplemental Essays? 

It’s a good idea to tailor your supplemental essays to match the expectations of the school you’re applying to. Here are some guides on how to write outstanding essays for specific schools: 

• How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Vanderbilt Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the University of Michigan Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Duke Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Princeton Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Northwestern University Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the UPenn Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the University of Washington Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Boston College Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Cornell Supplemental Essays
• How to Write the Bowdoin Supplemental Essays ‍
• How to Write the Pepperdine Supplemental Essays

These guides will help you write stellar essays!

FAQs: Supplemental Essays

Here are our answers to some frequently asked questions about supplemental essays.

1. Do Colleges Care About Supplemental Essays?

Yes, colleges care about supplemental essays. Your writing gives colleges extra insight into who you are as a person beyond your grades. Strong essays can give you an advantage in your application to many different schools. 

2. What to Include in Supplemental Essays?

Stick to the prompt. Your response should approach each aspect of the prompt while providing genuine information about your life experience. 

Each essay prompt is different, but admissions committees always love to hear a good story. Use descriptive yet concise language to get your points across while transporting the reader into your world.

3. When Should I Start My Supplemental Essays?

You should start planning your essays as soon as you receive the prompts for each. Once you’re confident in your plan, begin writing your essay as soon as you can to give yourself plenty of time to edit before submitting. 

4. Are Supplemental Essays Hard?

For students who are not strong writers, it can be challenging to get started on your essays. However, the most important part of your essay is to remain genuine, tell your story, and be concise. 

5. How Do I Start Writing My Supplemental Essay?

Before you start writing, brainstorm and create a solid plan for what you want to include. This will help you write with ease and remain on track while you’re writing your paper. You can also look at good essay examples for inspiration. 

6. Where Do You Submit Supplemental Essays? 

If using the Common Application, you can submit your essays in the Writing Supplements section. Generally, you will submit your essays along with the rest of your application.

Final Thoughts

Your supplemental essays are an important part of your application and should be given plenty of time and attention. No matter what essay prompts you are given, ensure that you are consistently speaking from the heart and telling a compelling story. 

Keep in mind that your experiences are what make you unique, and you do not have to exaggerate or fabricate anything to craft an excellent supplemental essay.

If you are still struggling with writing compelling essays, you can always seek professional help to get assistance with writing, editing, brainstorming, and overall crafting stellar supplementals. 

Good luck with your essays!

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How to Write a Supplemental Essay for College Applications

Discover tips for tackling writing supplements, and read a sample essay from a current student.

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A supplemental essay gives you an opportunity to tell the admissions committee about something you weren't able to cover in your main essay.

Prospective students are usually aware that they must write an essay as part of the college application process . But they may not know that some schools will ask for additional writing samples such as a supplemental essay.

Avoid These College Application Mistakes

Courtney Rubin and Cole Claybourn July 26, 2023

These writing supplements are usually shorter than the main college essay , but they're no less important, experts say.

"Every word counts in getting your story across," says Deborah Davis, president and founder of Davis Education & Career Consultants LLC, based in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Some colleges ask for just one supplemental essay while others may require several.

For example, Wake Forest University in North Carolina had six additional questions for prospective students to respond to on its 2020 undergraduate admissions application. However, a couple of the questions asked applicants to write lists – for instance, a personal top 10 list – rather than a full paragraph or two.

Supplemental essay prompts come in all shapes and sizes. In some cases, schools let applicants choose from several options. For instance, the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill 's fall 2019-20 application included four prompts – such as "What do you hope will change about the place where you live?" – from which prospective students had to select two.

Davis says two of the most common prompts she's seen are "What do you want to major in?" and "Tell us about a favorite activity."

While word counts for supplemental essays vary, they tend to be limited.

Wake Forest has a 150-word limit for each of its supplements, says Tamara Blocker, the university's senior associate dean of admissions. UNC caps applicants' short answer responses at 250 words each, according to the school's website.

In contrast, The Common Application , a platform that allows students to apply to multiple colleges at once, has a suggested 650-word limit for the main essay and 250 words for others.

These types of written responses are more like vignettes or snapshots, rather than full-blown essays, says Stephen Farmer, vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions at UNC.

"I think – I hope, anyway – that students feel the opportunity maybe in the shorter responses to worry less about form and just be a little more open with us," he says.

To help prospective students familiarize themselves with supplemental essays, U.S. News obtained an example from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Ryan Sheehan from Wallingford, Pennsylvania, wrote the short piece and is a computer science major in the class of 2021.

As part of his application, Sheehan responded to the following prompt: "There is a Quaker saying: 'Let your life speak.' Describe the environment in which you were raised – your family, home, neighborhood, or community – and how it influenced the person you are today."

"As the son of two journalists, I have grown up under a lifelong inquisition: How is your room such a mess? Can you please stop chasing the cat? Will you come down from the tree already? Granted, those are all from this past year, but the point still stands. Like any good journalists, my parents have also always had a propensity for uncovering the truth. On the third night that I had my license, I decided to go to the library to study. Before 15 minutes had passed, I noticed the librarian peering at me through the shelves before quickly averting her eyes and whispering, "He's here," into her phone. Even so, regardless of how many spies they've hired over the years, I have always looked up to my parents immensely. However, I have found my inherited inquisitiveness to be a trait most useful in a place far from the realm of reporting: the robotics lab. After four years of spending almost more time in the lab than at home, I have learned that nothing is more important than asking the right questions. As a programmer, I need to be able to communicate with my builders. Come press time, if I don't interview them properly, our robot will invariably end up as a hunk of unresponsive aluminum. To make a machine, the team must work as one. So although I may be writing source code instead of a breaking story, I am glad I had such nosy parents after all."

Karen Richardson, former dean of undergraduate admissions and enrollment management at Tufts who is now dean of admission at Princeton University in New Jersey, explained why she liked this response: "This is a great essay because, in just 250 words, it shows rather than tells the reader who Ryan is and the things that matter to him. It gives us a sense of his family life and academic interests, and it even shows us he has a sense of humor. As an admissions committee, we learned a lot about Ryan in just one paragraph."

Here are five additional tips from admissions officers to help prospective college students craft strong supplemental essays.

Answer the Question

This may seem obvious, but applicants should carefully read a supplemental essay prompt and make sure they understand what it is asking before answering it, Richardson says.

Prospective students may want to reuse an essay they wrote for another college, but that doesn't always work because supplemental questions tend to be more tailored to an individual institution, she says.

Start With an Outline

Applicants may have their own writing process, but Davis encourages those she works with to create outlines. She says prospective students should brainstorm the personal qualities, skills or experiences they would like to convey in their supplemental essays.

Don't Repeat Yourself

Supplemental essays are a chance for applicants to give more information to an admissions committee to further show why they are a good fit for a school, Davis says. So prospective students should make sure they aren't repeating something that's already been covered in their main essay.

Narrow Your Focus

Probably the biggest mistake applicants make in supplemental essays is choosing a topic that's too big, Farmer says. For example, he says prospective students may attempt to settle a complex political issue in just one paragraph.

"I think it's better to do something small and do it well than to do something big and skate over the surface," he says.

Maintain Your Voice

It's a good idea for applicants to ask another person for editing help, but too much input can be detrimental to an essay, experts say. If lots of people – teachers, parents, peers – read and weigh in on an essay, they can weaken how clearly a student's voice comes through in the writing.

"It's great to read something that sounds like it was written by an 18-year-old and not by a machine," Farmer says, "or by someone who's trying to be prematurely middle-aged."

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Sample Supplemental Essay for College Admissions: Why This College?

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Most college applicants fail to put adequate time into a supplemental college essay. The Common Application's personal essay allows a student to write a single essay for multiple colleges. The supplemental college essay, however, needs to be different for every application. Thus, it's tempting to dash off a generic and vague piece that can be used at multiple schools, resulting in a  weak essay .

Don't make this mistake. Your "Why This College" essay must be specific, demonstrating a high level of interest in and commitment to this particular school. To better understand how to ace this supplemental essay prompt, let's analyze a sample essay written for Oberlin College .

The essay prompt reads:

"Given your interests, values, and goals, explain why Oberlin College will help you grow (as a student and a person) during your undergraduate years."

Sample Supplemental Essay

I visited 18 colleges over the past year, yet Oberlin is the one place that most spoke to my interests. Early in my college search I learned that I prefer a liberal arts college to a larger university. The collaboration between the faculty and undergraduate students, the sense of community, and the flexible, interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum are all important to me. Also, my high school experience was greatly enriched by the diversity of the student body, and I am impressed by Oberlin’s rich history and its current efforts connected to inclusiveness and equality. To say the least, I’d be proud to say I attended the first coeducational college in the country.

I plan to major in Environmental Studies at Oberlin. After my campus tour , I took some extra time to visit the Adam Joseph Lewis Center. It’s an amazing space and the students I chatted with spoke highly of their professors. I became truly interested in issues of sustainability during my volunteer work in the Hudson River Valley, and everything I’ve learned about Oberlin makes it seem the ideal place for me to continue exploring and building upon those interests. I am also impressed by Oberlin’s Creativity and Leadership Project. I’ve been a bit of an entrepreneur ever since second grade when I made a dollar producing and performing The Runaway Bunny for my extended family. I’m drawn to a program that supports the move from classroom learning to creative hands-on, real-world applications.

Finally, as the rest of my application clearly demonstrates, music is an important part of my life. I’ve been playing the trumpet since fourth grade, and I hope to continue performing and developing my skills throughout college. What better place than Oberlin to do so? With more performances than days in the year and a large group of talented musicians in the Conservatory of Music, Oberlin is an ideal place for exploring my love of both music and the environment.

Understanding the Essay Prompt

To understand the strength of the essay, we must first look at the prompt: the admissions officers at Oberlin want you to "explain why Oberlin College will help you grow." This sounds straightforward, but be careful. You're not being asked to explain how college, in general, will help you grow, nor are you being asked how attending a small liberal arts school will help you grow. The admissions offers want to hear how  Oberlin , in particular, will help you grow, so the essay needs to include specific information about Oberlin College.

A strong "Why This College" essay will make a case for why the school in question is a good fit for the student. The case should be made by connecting facts about the school—unique opportunities, educational values, campus culture, et cetera—with the student's goals, values, and interests.

From the Admissions Desk

"We want to see [in the "Why This School" essay] that students understand the unique educational model at High Point University. We know that students have access to more information than ever before and that most colleges focus on the classroom experience. We want students who desire 25% of their time to be experiential ... who want to grow as people of character with strong values and to fully immerse themselves in our life skills education."

–Kerr Ramsay Vice President for Undergraduate Admissions, High Point University

A good way to see if you've responded to the prompt well is to swap out the name of the college you're applying to with the name of any other college. If the essay still makes sense once you do a global replace of the school name, you haven't written a good supplemental essay.

A Critique of the Supplemental Essay

The sample essay certainly succeeds on this front. If we were to substitute "Kenyon College" for "Oberlin College" in the essay, the essay would not make sense. The details in the essay are unique to Oberlin. Demonstrated interest can play a meaningful role in the admissions process, and this applicant has clearly demonstrated that she knows Oberlin well and her interest in the school is sincere.

Let's look at some of the essay's strengths:

• The first paragraph makes several important points. First of all, we learn that the applicant has visited Oberlin. This may not seem like a big deal, but you'd be surprised how many students apply to a large number of colleges based on nothing but the schools' reputations. Also, the student notes that she wants to go to a  liberal arts college , not a larger  university . This information isn't really specific to Oberlin, but it does show that she has thought about the options available to her. The final point in this first paragraph gets more specific—the applicant is familiar with Oberlin and knows the school's socially progressive history.
• The second paragraph is really the heart of this essay—the applicant wants to major in Environmental Studies, and she is clearly impressed with the program at Oberlin. She has visited the Environmental Studies building, and she knows of some of the unique opportunities offered at Oberlin. She has even talked with Oberlin students. This paragraph can't help but make a favorable impression on the admissions folks—the applicant is drawn to Oberlin, and she clearly knows exactly  why  she likes Oberlin.
• The final paragraph adds another important dimension to the application. Not only does the student find the Environmental Studies program attractive, but her love of music makes Oberlin an even better match. Oberlin has a top-rated music conservatory, so the applicant's dual love of music and Environmental Studies makes Oberlin a natural match for her.

Admissions officers can't help but feel that Oberlin is a great match for this applicant. She knows the school well, and her interests and goals line up perfectly with Oberlin's strengths. This short essay will certainly be a positive piece of her application.

A Final Word About Supplemental Essays

The content of your supplemental essay is extremely important, and poor decisions on this front can lead to a weak supplemental essay . But content isn't everything. You also need to focus on the presentation of your ideas. Make sure your essay is entirely free of any grammatical errors, and be sure to avoid common stylistic problems . The admissions officers need to conclude that you are sincerely interested in attending their school and that you are an excellent writer.

• Sample Weak Supplemental Essay for Duke University
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• How to Demonstrate Interest in a College
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• Sample College Admission Essay—The Allegany County Youth Board
• Sample Responses to a College Deferral Letter
• Oberlin College: Acceptance Rate and Admissions Statistics
• UC Essay Examples for the Personal Insight Questions
• Bad Essay Topics for College Admissions

Harvard Supplemental Essays 2023-24

Harvard Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

If you’re applying to Harvard , you might be wondering how to approach the Harvard supplemental essays. Harvard is one of the most prestigious schools in the United States and the world, and as such is ultra-competitive. As an applicant, you’ll want to take every opportunity to distinguish yourself, starting with the Harvard essay prompts. This may feel daunting, but writing stellar Harvard application essays is guaranteed to make your application shine.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about writing your Harvard supplemental essays. This includes understanding the Harvard essay requirements and showing you where to find Harvard essay examples. We’ll also go over general Harvard application requirements that you should know, including the Harvard acceptance rate and application deadline.

Want some advice on how to get into Harvard? You’ve come to the right place. Now, let’s go over some quick facts about the Harvard supplemental essays. 

Harvard Supplemental Essays: Quick Facts

Harvard university essay quick facts.

• Harvard acceptance rate: 4% – U.S. News rates Harvard a highly competitive school.
• 5 short-answer questions (200-word limit)
• Restrictive Early Action: November 1st 
• Regular Decision: January 1st 
• Harvard application note: The Harvard supplemental essays for the 2023-2024 cycle have changed from past years. All five Harvard supplemental essays are required for all applicants.
• #1 Harvard Essay Tip: Your essays are your opportunity to show Harvard how you’ve interacted with the world. This includes how your experiences have shaped you into who you are and the kind of impact you hope to make.

Please note that essay requirements are subject to change each admissions cycle, and portions of this article may have been written before the final publication of the most recent guidelines. For the most up-to-date information on essay requirements, check the university’s admissions website.

Now that you know the basics about the Harvard application, let’s dive into more information about the Harvard supplemental essays. 

What are the Harvard Essay Prompts?

The Harvard essay prompts for the 2023-2024 have changed dramatically from past years. Previously , Harvard only required a short extracurricular essay. Students then had the opportunity to write an additional essay, choosing between a few Harvard application essay questions. These included topics such as how you hope to use your college education and unusual circumstances in your life.

Now the Harvard supplemental essays are different. According to the latest information for first-year applicants, Harvard requires 5 short-answer essays of 200 words or less. 

Here are the Harvard essay prompts for this year :

Harvard University Essay Prompts

1. harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. how will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to harvard, 2. briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. , 3. briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are., 4. how do you hope to use your harvard education in the future, 5. top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. .

If you’ve read the Harvard supplemental essay prompts for their optional essay in years past, these questions may look familiar. Before, students might write one long Harvard application essay that only touched on one of these questions. Now, Harvard is requiring their applicants to succinctly respond to multiple prompts. 

You might find writing multiple Harvard application essays is more intimidating than writing just one. And that’s okay! Even though this is the first year the Harvard supplemental essays are structured this way, these prompts are nothing new. We’ve still got all the information you need to successfully tackle the Harvard supplemental essays..

But before we dive into the Harvard supplemental essay prompts, let’s first talk about your Harvard personal statement. 

Harvard Personal Statement

When you apply to Harvard, your Harvard application must include a personal statement. Both the Common App and Coalition App require you to write a personal statement, choosing from a selection of prompts. This essay is also what the Harvard admissions committee considers your Harvard personal statement. Unlike your Harvard supplemental essays, your personal statement is not school-specific. That means it can be submitted to any school you are applying to.

The 2023-24 Common App prompts are broad, and intentionally so! The prompts are meant to give students the space and opportunity to write about something they care about.

You can write about:

• Your background
• A lesson you have learned
• A time that you challenged a belief
• Something you’re grateful for
• An accomplishment, a topic that fascinates you
• Any topic of your choosing!

Harvard encourages students to write about something they’re passionate about, not something they think would impress the Harvard admissions committee. According to this list of tips about the Harvard personal statement, “The point of the personal statement is for you to have the chance to share whatever you would like with us. Remember, your topic does not have to be exotic to be compelling.”

Whatever you write your personal statement about, it should stand apart from your Harvard supplemental essays. Each one of your Harvard application essays should tell the Harvard admissions committee something new about you. Or, it should elaborate and build upon something that you haven’t had enough time to discuss elsewhere in your application. 

What should I write my Harvard essay about?

There is no one perfect essay topic that will automatically earn you admission to Harvard. The best Harvard supplemental essays will communicate something unique about you, giving the admissions committee a window into who you are. 

One way to come up with ideas for your Harvard supplemental essays is to read successful application essays! In this list of Ivy League essays that worked, you’ll see essays about everything. From AP Biology to Adventure Time to a family member’s hospitalization for schizophrenia. The quality of your writing, and whether the topic is important to you, is more important than the topic itself. 

Harvard personal statement examples

In this guide to past Harvard personal statement examples, you can read essays from previous years. These essays answered many of the same questions Harvard asks today—except using far more words. Not all of these Harvard personal statement examples align with the current Harvard prompts, but they’re still examples of great writing.

Additionally, these Harvard personal statement examples still show the diversity of topics, as well as styles, that Harvard looks for. Though the Harvard essay requirements are different this year, there are many overlapping topics covered in the Harvard personal statement examples. 

Choosing a topic

If you’re still stuck coming up with a topic for your Harvard application essay questions, try a brainstorm! Brainstorming or free writing about the different short answer questions is a great way to generate potential essay ideas.

Strong essays often focus around moments of change or personal growth. Think about an experience you grew from, or maybe one that demonstrates your values and what matters to you. You can also look to your application for inspiration. What aspects of who you are do you feel like your extracurriculars, grades, or potentially test scores leave out? 

Harvard Short Answer Questions

In the next sections, we’ll go over each of the Harvard supplemental essays individually. For each of the Harvard essay prompts, we’ll discuss what the prompt is asking for and how you might approach it. And we’ll give you tips on what to include in your Harvard supplemental essays to make them stand out. 

This year, the Harvard supplemental essays consist of 5 separate short-answer questions. The Harvard supplemental essays are called “short-answer” because of the word limit. You only have 200 words to provide a strong, detailed, and specific answer to the Harvard essay prompts. Limiting your Harvard supplemental essays to only 200 words can be tricky. So, it’s important you choose your topic wisely, consider the important details, and make every word count.

You can look up the Harvard supplemental essays with the Common App’s search tool . By searching for Harvard, or any other college, you can go over their school-specific writing requirements for that college. On Harvard’s website you can find guidelines for your Harvard application, including requirements for the Harvard supplemental essays. 

Now, let’s go over each of the Harvard essay prompts in more detail.

Harvard Essay #1 – Contributing to Harvard

The first of the Harvard supplemental essays is about contributing to Harvard.

Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?

This question is a bit misleading. Although it’s phrased as a single sentence, there are really two parts to this prompt. What in your life has shaped you into the person you are today? Then, how does that affect what you’ll contribute to Harvard’s community? 

For the first of your Harvard supplemental essays, think about what “diversity” means to you. Maybe it’s where you grew up, your race, your gender or sexuality. Or maybe you’ve had a unique upbringing that falls outside of those identity categories. Once you have identified the piece of your upbringing you would like to share, think about how it’s shaped you. What value has that brought into your life, and how can that part of you enrich Harvard’s community? 

For example, maybe you went to school in a really homogeneous suburb. Think of a place where everyone was the same race and from the same socioeconomic class. Once you recognized that, you tried to do everything you could to learn about different perspectives. Maybe you volunteered outside your community to try and understand the experiences of people outside of that bubble. This intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness is a product of your upbringing that impacts how you’d interact with others at Harvard.

Harvard Short Essay #2 – Intellectual Experience

For the second of your Harvard supplemental essays, you’re asked to focus on the intellectual.

Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. 

This Harvard application essay should speak to your academic interests and your intended concentration— Harvard’s version of a major . Even if you don’t know what you want to concentrate in, that’s okay! You don’t have to worry about your Harvard supplemental essays defining what you will eventually go on to study. All you need to do is focus on a moment in your education, or in your life, that stimulated you intellectually.

Each of the Harvard supplemental essays are trying to learn something specific about you. In this one, Harvard is trying to see if you are intellectually curious and passionate about learning. As a prestigious university, Harvard puts a huge value on its students having a desire to learn. If you are applying to Harvard, this should be a pretty easy question to answer! 

If something doesn’t immediately come to mind, try asking yourself these questions. What moment made you love English, or Math, or Science? Was it inside or outside of the classroom? Was it a political debate, or a conversation with a family member? An essay topic you didn’t expect to enjoy but ended up adoring? As long as you explain an intellectual passion, there’s no wrong answer.

Harvard Essay Prompt #3 – Extracurricular Activities Essay

If the first two Harvard supplemental essays focused on identity and curiosity, you can think of the third as focusing on action. The next of our Harvard supplemental essays centers around the things you do outside of the classroom. 

Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.

You may have already gone into detail about one of your extracurricular activities or other experiences in your Common App. If so, you should consider selecting a different one to speak about here. Having all of these individual Harvard supplemental essays allows you to share so many facets of who you are. Don’t limit yourself by describing the same thing multiple times!

This question is very open-ended. Since you only have 200 words, focus on answering this question succinctly and honestly. Don’t overthink it — simply pick one of these experiences and describe how it has shaped who you are. 

You could talk about grocery shopping with your mom, working at a summer camp, or being the captain of the swim team. What matters most is that you pick an experience that really impacted you. This could be something that inspired a change in your perspective, or helped you develop a new skill. The most important part of question 3 of your Harvard supplemental essays is not which activity you pick. It’s in showing how it has shaped you. 

Harvard Essay #4 – Education and the future

For #4 of your Harvard supplemental essays, Harvard tasks you with envisioning your future. 

How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?

A Harvard education can get you a lot of places. Harvard knows that it’s a renowned institution—there’s a reason that the Harvard acceptance rate is so low. However, you don’t need to inflate its ego by discussing Harvard’s prestige. Instead, think about how a Harvard education will prepare you to make a positive impact in the world.

Also be wary of writing your Harvard supplemental essays in a way that inflates your own ego. Don’t just say you think you’ll be the next Elon Musk or the President of the U.S. Focus less on who you’ll be and more on what you’ll do. Think about what technology you could create to make peoples’ lives easier or policies you could enact to reduce poverty. Many Harvard students go on to achieve amazing things. However, make sure you’re focused on why those things are important and not the achievement itself.

You can also use the 4th of your Harvard supplemental essays to sneak in some “why Harvard” details. Consider mentioning a specific Harvard class or professor that you wish to study under. Maybe five years after graduating, you want to be writing a book with Professor X. And five years after that, you want to be teaching at Harvard on the same topic. 

Harvard Essay #5 – Roommate Essay

This final question for the Harvard supplemental essays gives you an opportunity to chat with an imaginary future roommate. 

Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.

In the last of your Harvard supplemental essays, you can get a little creative. Since this question gives you complete freedom over what you include, it can be helpful to save it for last. Then you can look back at your other Harvard supplemental essays and brainstorm what the admissions committee hasn’t heard yet. If you could only describe three things about yourself, in 200 words, what would you say?

Since you’re hypothetically talking to a roommate, don’t be afraid to be more joking or casual—let your personality shine through! But, keep in mind that an admissions officer will still be reading your essay. So long as you’re being appropriate and true to yourself, you get to decide what to share and how to share it!

That being said, don’t mention only things that are superficial. Remember, this is still part of your application, and your reader is deciding whether you belong at Harvard. “I leave my clothes all over my bedroom floor, but I promise to never leave them in the common room,” may be the truth. However, opt for the personal over the mundane! What do you geek out about? How do you like to spend your free time? What Harvard experiences are you most looking forward to?

How to write the Harvard supplemental essays

So, we’ve gone over the individual Harvard application essays. Now let’s talk about some general tips that you could use to answer any of the Harvard essays.

Be specific

Whether you’re writing about your extracurriculars, your upbringing, or Harvard itself, be specific. Generalizations can feel like they let you say more in fewer words. But, they don’t say as much about who you are or your experiences.

Instead of saying “I’ve always been passionate about history,” get specific! There are lots of people who like history—what exactly about history interests you? A specific time period? A social movement? Is it something about the discipline itself? Did you always feel this way about this subject? The more specific you are, the more the Harvard Admissions team can learn from your Harvard supplemental essays. 

This tip also applies to when you’re talking about Harvard. At some point in your Harvard application essays, you’ll want to mention something about why you want to attend Harvard. There are a whopping five Harvard essay prompts, after all! Avoid the obvious, like that Harvard has good academics and is prestigious. Be specific — you can list clubs, professors, majors like Sociology or Economics , or anything else that’s specific to the school. This shows that you’ve done your research and you want to come for a reason, not just the Harvard degree. 

Be yourself

At the end of the day, your Harvard application essays are for Admissions to get to know you better. The more introspective you can be before writing them, the more you can use the essays to demonstrate your values. Since the Harvard acceptance rate is so low, you’re competing against many incredibly qualified applicants. Sure, you might have stellar grades—but so does the average Harvard applicant. Your answers to the Harvard essay prompts are a way to set yourself apart. And the best way to do that is by being yourself. 

When you’re writing your Harvard application essays, it can feel intimidating to try and be “unique.” It can feel like you’ve never had a truly unique experience. But no one is exactly like you, so the more true to yourself you can be, the better! In your Harvard application essays, you don’t need to perform anything that you think Harvard wants to hear. Just be honest and speak about yourself and your experiences.

Show, don’t tell

This tip on perfecting your Harvard application essays is a classic: show, don’t tell. Instead of simply stating the facts or your feelings, you put the reader into the experience using dialogue, imagery, and storytelling. 

For example, you might start your Harvard application essay by saying, “I was the most excited I had ever been.” Instead, could you describe how that excitement felt? Were your palms sweaty? Was your heart racing? Paint the reader a picture so they can imagine what it must have felt like to be there with you.

We know you do only have 200 words for these Harvard essay prompts. However, that leaves more than enough room for an evocative anecdote. Many students place this type of anecdote at the beginning of their Harvard application essays as a “hook.” A hook is something that grabs the reader’s attention, and pulls them into the essay. It makes them want to keep reading. Since the admissions committee will be reading so many essays, using a hook like this can make your essay stand out.

Grammar and spelling

It’s not super exciting, but it is non-negotiable: your Harvard application essays must have perfect grammar and spelling. The Harvard acceptance rate is 4%. You don’t want to let a typo or a run-on sentence be the distinguishing factor between you and another applicant. 

Use spell check, use an online grammar checker, or give your Harvard application essay to a parent or friend. Reading the essay out loud is also a great way to catch typos and grammatical errors. If something sounds wrong when it’s read out loud, you know that you have to go in and fix it. Reading out loud also forces you to look at each word. So, it’s less likely that a copy-paste error like having two “and’s” in a row would slip by. 

Get creative

Don’t be afraid to have fun with your Harvard application essays! The Harvard essay prompts might seem pretty straightforward. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take them in a more fun direction. 

One way to stand out is to get a little creative. Sure, there’s probably such a thing as being too creative. You don’t want to be so quirky that you forget to answer the question, or come off smug. But adding a little natural humor or excitement into your essays is a totally acceptable way to get the admissions committee’s attention. 

If after reading these tips you’re still in doubt, consider reading some Harvard personal statement examples. Keep in mind our Harvard personal statement examples are from before changes were made to the Harvard essay requirements. However, they cover many similar topics as the current Harvard essays. Even though the Harvard essay prompts aren’t exactly the same, and the word count is certainly different, they’re still valuable. Our Harvard personal statement examples can show you how many different ways there are to answer the same questions. And how to write an essay that stands out. 

Does Harvard like risky essays?

Judging from personal experience, yes! When I wrote my Harvard application essay in 2015, they were still asking for the optional extended personal essay. I chose to answer the prompt that asks what your roommate should know about you—similar to the current prompt. 

Instead of writing an essay, I wrote a play/screenplay where I meet my roommate for the first time. It was formatted like a play, with dialogue and stage directions, and set in the Harvard dorms. I researched specific things about Harvard and Harvard Square, and incorporated different places in the dialogue to make it feel more specific. I also shared a lot about myself: my values, quirks, extracurriculars, and more. And I guess they liked it, since I was admitted in the class of 2020!

In general, Harvard is looking for students who aren’t afraid to stand out. This includes students who are intellectually curious and passionate about what they believe in. It might feel harder to get creative in only 200 words. But, since you have five questions, you can always pick one of them and take a risk! Write a poem, use a quote or song lyrics, write with a specific audience in mind. As long as you’re using correct spelling and grammar, and you’re answering the question, the world is your oyster!

What does Harvard look for in applicants?

So what does Harvard look for in applicants? If you want to know how to get into Harvard, you’ll need some idea of what Harvard is looking for. 

First and foremost, you need to make sure you’re answering all of the Harvard essay prompts. And, be sure you’ve fulfilled all of the Harvard application requirements. That means:

• Including your Harvard personal statement
• Answering the Harvard application essay questions
• Meeting all of the Harvard essay requirements
• Submitting all of the required materials.

You also need to carefully observe the Harvard application deadlines, and pick which deadline works best for you. 

Outside of these Harvard application requirements, what else do you need to think about to know how to get into Harvard? Start by thinking about why you want to go to Harvard. It can seem like a simple question, but why Harvard specifically? Why are you a good fit? Why would you excel there? And why do you need to be there, specifically, to reach your highest potential?

Looking for more concrete answers to how to get into Harvard? On Harvard’s website, they provide admissions criteria . Stellar academics are understandably important, but Harvard also considers factors like leadership, character, and community involvement. One way to show Harvard that you embody these factors is through your answers to the Harvard application essay questions. 

When is my Harvard application due?

There are two Harvard application deadlines. Regardless of which deadline you choose to submit by, you’ll need to submit a complete application. This includes:

• Your answers to the Harvard application essay questions
• Your (optional) SAT scores
• Letters of recommendation
• Extracurricular list
• Any other Harvard essay requirements or supplements

One Harvard application deadline is Restrictive Early Action, and the other Harvard application deadline is Regular Decision.

Harvard Restrictive Early Action

The Harvard application deadline for Restrictive Early Action is November 1 . Restrive Early Action means that you can only submit your application early to one institution. Unlike Early Decision, it’s not a binding acceptance. So if you get into Harvard early, you can still apply to other schools Regular Decision. 

You should only apply to Harvard early if you’re confident that you’ve satisfied the Harvard essay requirements. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve answered all of the Harvard application essay questions to the best of your ability. When writing your answers to the Harvard supplemental essays, give yourself enough time to draft and brainstorm. Don’t write your answers the night before the deadline. If you haven’t filled the Harvard essay requirements or answered the Harvard application essay questions, don’t rush! Rather than hurry to submit Early Action, give yourself until the Regular Decision deadline.

Harvard Regular Decision

The Regular Decision deadline is January 1 . This gives you plenty of time to fulfill the Harvard essay requirements, including answers to all five Harvard essay prompts.  This might make for a busy Winter Break, but it’s worth it to make sure that you’ve confidently satisfied all of the Harvard application requirements. 

Additional Harvard Resources from CollegeAdvisor

Hopefully by this point you’re feeling more confident about answering the Harvard essay prompts. Although the Harvard application essay questions are different this cycle, you’ve still got plenty of resources to depend on. 

If you’re still looking for advice on how to get into Harvard, check out our guide that covers every step of the Harvard admissions process. We also have webinars like this one where you can hear from Harvard students about their college journeys. 

Don’t forget that if you’re still struggling with answering the Harvard essay questions, you can read these Harvard essay examples: Harvard personal statement examples from years past. Even though these Harvard essay examples are a little out of date, Harvard personal statement examples can give you a feeling for what kind of essay Harvard is looking for—regardless of the Harvard application essay questions. 

Harvard Essays – Takeaways

Now that you’ve reached the end of our guide to the Harvard supplemental essays, you’re ready to write your own. Here are some key takeaways to keep in mind: 

Harvard University Essay Key Takeaways

• The Harvard application essay questions are different this year. Be sure to check Harvard’s website for the most up to date Harvard application requirements. 
• This year, there are 5 Harvard supplemental essays. Each essay has a word limit of 200 words. 
• When writing your essays: Be specific. Be true to yourself. Show and not tell. Always check your spelling and grammar. Don’t be afraid to get creative!
• Be mindful of the two Harvard deadlines: November 1st (Restrictive Early Action) and January 1st (Regular Decision).
• Wherever you are in your college journey, CollegeAdvisor is here to support you. From guides to Harvard’s extracurriculars , to Harvard personal statement examples and what to expect after you apply, we’ve got you covered. Even though the Harvard personal statement examples aren’t answering the same prompts as this year, they can still be educational. Give them a read and see for yourself! 

Thanks for reading our guide to Harvard’s supplemental essays—now go forth and write!

This essay guide was written by advisor, Rachel Kahn . Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.

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Supplemental College Essay Prompt Examples

What is a supplemental essay?

While most students know that all colleges expect them to write a Common App essay, also known as a Personal Statement, parents and students are not as familiar with the supplemental college essays they need to write. Besides the central personal statement, every student needs to respond to supplemental college essay prompts. In this post, we are sharing everything you need to know about supplemental college essay prompts as well as supplemental college essay prompt examples and ways to think about the prompts. These essays or questions are called supplemental essays.

How many supplemental essays do I need to complete?

Depends on the schools you are applying to. Some schools require no supplemental essays while others require many. Schools like Stanford, Yale, Johns Hopkins and Tufts have many supplemental essays. Other schools like Arizona State University, Drexel, Northeastern have no supplemental essays at all. Schools like Harvard and Princeton will require additional essays that look much like the Personal Statement and some students may have to write two, three or even up to four 650+ word additional essays. This is especially true for students applying to Honors Colleges at universities.

Are supplemental essays as important as the personal statement in college admissions?

Supplemental essays are very important to the application. Supplementals offer students the opportunity to highlight fit factors for a university and show off the interesting person that they are. Supplementals offer students the chance to speak to research-based work (always a plus!), service projects, community work, and passion areas.

What are common supplemental essay topics?

Supplemental essays for each school often repeat. The most common supplement questions are: 1) Explain why you chose your major? It is good to have a major to talk about here. For students who are undecided, it is better not to center the essay around being undecided. Picking a major and highlighting an interest in it can actually serve a student well. Other questions schools commonly ask are : 2) Tell us about an extracurricular you do just for the fun of it. It is important to actually create a strong outline for these essays and do serious research and thinking before writing. Investing time in planning these responses, sharing novel experiences and showing very specific knowledge will help students stand out from peers with generic responses. 3) Why us? This requires school-specific research and work figuring out where the student connects to the school. 3Students often want to lean into university, student and campus life. The campus is an immediate go-to for students on these prompts-the mountains or the city, the lakes and trees on campus, playing on a team, etc.

What schools want in response to this essay prompt is to know that students are going to use the most resource-rich time of their lives thoughtfully over four years. Students can start this essay by making a list of areas they will look forward to academically –professors and research opportunities with them, classwork, special academic programs offered uniquely on the campus they plan to attend, and more. Students can connect the school to their own meaningful experiences during high school. For example, students applying for engineering should mention high school engineering projects they have worked on over summers or during the school year. Many students have gone through Boeing’s program or Project Lead the Way in school. They might have completed an engineering camp like UPENN Summer Engineering or Cooper Union Summer STEM. It is important to highlight that work in the “Why Us?” essay to connect to ways one might contribute to specific university programs.

What makes a good supplemental essay?

A strong supplemental essay will be more technical than narrative. There are a few golden rules for the supplemental essays: 1) First, each essay should be about a different topic. Students should not repeat or talk about the same things. This is a chance to really show the admissions committee who you are and repeating answers about the same topic is a missed opportunity. 2) Present your adult self-committees are less interested in hearing about things like reading Harry Potter or watching TV as a favorite extracurricular in student essays. They want to hear about research, playing music, reading physics books voraciously, engaging in math for fun. They want to understand what makes you tick academically more than personally and casually. This doesn’t mean the essay responses cannot be quirky or fun. But, they should be packed with information showing off your areas of academic strength, too.

What are the supplemental essay questions from the top 10 schools in the country for this year?

-Princeton University Supplemental Essays

Princeton has many supplemental essays. Responses range from 50 to 250 words.

1) Briefly elaborate on an activity, organization, work experience, or hobby that has been particularly meaningful to you. (150 words)

2) At Princeton, we value diverse perspectives and the ability to have respectful dialogue about difficult issues. Share a time when you had a conversation with a person or a group of people about a difficult topic. What insight did you gain, and how would you incorporate that knowledge into your thinking in the future? (250 words)

3) Princeton has a longstanding commitment to service and civic engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals.(250 words)

4) What is a new skill you would like to learn in college? (50 words)

5) What brings you joy? (50 words)

6) What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment? (50 words)

7) Princeton also requires students to submit a graded written paper as part of your application.  Learn more .

-Harvard University Supplemental Essays

Harvard offers a brief space for students to highlight one area of particular importance extracurricularly alongside a lengthier essay that resembles the Common App in nature. Harvard allows students to write on a topic of their choice allowing them to choose from one of the following topics:

• Unusual circumstances in your life
• Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities
• What you would want your future college roommate to know about you
• An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you
• How you hope to use your college education
• A list of books you have read during the past twelve months
• The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty. 
• The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission? 
• Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do? 
• Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates. 

– Columbia University Supplemental Essays

Columbia has many supplement questions that ask students about their interests in reading, academic and cultural interests. Because Columbia has a lengthy series of requirements in the Common Core, their admissions committee evaluates whether students will be interested enough in the core curriculum through some of their questions.

List Questions:

• List the titles of the required readings from academic courses that you enjoyed most during secondary/high school. (75 words or fewer)
• List the titles of the books, essays, poetry, short stories or plays you read outside of academic courses that you enjoyed most during secondary/high school. (75 words or fewer)
• We’re interested in learning about some of the ways that you explore your interests. List some resources and outlets that you enjoy, including but not limited to websites, publications, journals, podcasts, social media accounts, lectures, museums, movies, music, or other content with which you regularly engage. (125 words or fewer)

Short Answer Questions:

• A hallmark of the Columbia experience is being able to learn and live in a community with a wide range of perspectives. How do you or would you learn from and contribute to diverse, collaborative communities?  (200 words or fewer)
• Why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspect(s) that you find unique and compelling about Columbia. (200 words or fewer)
• Please tell us what from your current and past experiences (either academic or personal) attracts you specifically to the areas of study that you noted in the application. (200 words or fewer)

– Massachusetts Institute of Technology Supplemental Essays

MIT has a series of short answer essay questions:

• Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (250 words or fewer)
• Pick what field of study at MIT appeals to you the most right now, and tell us more about why this field of study appeals to you. (100 words or fewer)
• We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. (200–250 words)
• At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (200–250 words)
• Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (200-250 words)

-Yale University Supplemental Essays

• Students at Yale have time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the  list  provided.
• Why do these areas appeal to you? (125 words or fewer)
• What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)
• What inspires you? (35 words)
• Yale’s residential colleges regularly host conversations with guests representing a wide range of experiences and accomplishments. What person, past or present, would you invite to speak? What would you ask them to discuss? (35 words)
• You are teaching a new Yale course. What is it called? (35 words)
• Yale students embrace the concept of “and” rather than “or,” pursuing arts and sciences, tradition and innovation, defined goals and surprising detours. What is an example of an “and” that you embrace? (35 words)
• Yale’s extensive course offerings and vibrant conversations beyond the classroom encourage students to follow their developing intellectual interests wherever they lead. Tell us about your engagement with a topic or idea that excites you. Why are you drawn to it? (250 words)
• Respond to one of the following
• 2A. Reflect on a community to which you feel connected. Why is it meaningful to you?  You may define community however you like.
• 2B. Reflect on something that has given you great satisfaction. Why has it been important to you?

Additional supplemental essays can be found on university websites by clicking on the links below:

Stanford University Supplemental Essays

University of Pennsylvania Supplemental Essays

California Institute of Technology Supplemental Essays

Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essays

Northwestern University Supplemental Essays

Duke University Supplemental Essays

Dartmouth College Supplemental Essays

Brown University Supplemental Essays

Vanderbilt University Supplemental Essays

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how essential are supplemental essays.

I've been working on my college applications, and I'm wondering how important supplemental essays really are. Do colleges really pay attention to them as much as the main essay? Thanks for any insights!

Hi there! Supplemental essays are indeed an essential component of college applications. While the main essay, also known as the personal statement, showcases your personality and experiences, supplemental essays allow colleges to get to know you even better and understand how you might fit in with their specific campus. Depending on the college, the topics for their supplemental essays can range from 'Why this college?' to more creative prompts.

Colleges review these essays with a significant weight, as they demonstrate your interest, thoughtfulness, and genuine curiosity in attending their institution. A well-crafted supplemental essay can indeed make a difference in your application and show the college that you have done your research, that you understand the school's culture, and that you can articulate how you'd contribute to the campus community.

So, to answer your question, yes, supplemental essays do matter, and you should invest the necessary time and effort to ensure they're well written and reflective of your aspirations before submitting your application. Good luck!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Supplemental Essay Guide 2023-24

What do the 2023-24 supplemental essay prompts really mean, and how should you approach them? CEA's experts are here to break them all down.

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Agnes Scott College 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Alvernia University 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide  

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How to Write the Cornell University Essays 2023-2024

The largest of the eight Ivy League universities, Cornell University is made up of eight undergraduate schools that applicants apply directly to. Because of this, you will be required to submit a school-specific supplemental essay (or essays) in addition to one campus-wide essay.

Cornell is an incredibly prestigious school with tens of thousands of applicants each year. In order to be one of the chosen few to attend, your essays will need to be thoughtful, well-written, and uniquely you. In this post, we’ll explain how to write the Cornell essays so you can maximize your chances of acceptance.

Read these Cornell essay examples to inspire your writing.

Cornell University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Before you apply to Cornell, you should determine which specific college is right for you. Each of Cornell’s colleges has its own majors and specific graduation requirements, though there are some majors that exist within multiple colleges. Understanding the differences between the colleges is essential when applying, since you will need to highlight the specific resources offered by each of them in your essays.

Below are the supplemental essay prompts for Cornell’s colleges (click to jump to the right section):

All Applicants

Brooks school of public policy.

• College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

College of Arts and Sciences

• College of Engineering

Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

College of human ecology, school of industrial and labor relations, college of art, architecture and planning, in the aftermath of the u.s. civil war, ezra cornell wrote, “i would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” for over 150 years, cornell university has remained deeply committed to ezra’s vision. explain how your life experiences will help inform your contributions to a learning community devoted to “…any person…any study.” we encourage you to think broadly about your life experiences, including how local (e.g., family, school, neighborhood) or global communities you’ve been part of have helped shape your perspective. (350 words).

Cornell prides itself on its motto, “any person…any study” so it’s important that you approach this prompt with care and attention to the deeper meaning behind the phrase. Before you start writing, consider what the school means by “any person…any study”.

Any Person…Any Study

As the prompt states, Cornell was founded in 1865 and within its first few years, Black and female students were admitted in a time when most universities were closed to them. Cornell has a history of accepting anyone of any background, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, or sexuality. 

Any one can attend Cornell, but the second part of the founder’s motto emphasizes the idea that you can study any thing at the school. From the range of eight undergraduate schools specializing in everything from classic arts and sciences to architecture to public policy to hotel management, you can find a major, minor, or department that aligns with any interest you might have. 

This phrase stands for the possibility for people to do whatever they want with a Cornell education. Your response should allude to these ideals to demonstrate to the admissions committee that you understand the school’s history and the deeper meaning that enables you to pursue anything regardless of where you came from.

Approaches to the Essay

Now that you have more context, there are a few general ways to go about answering this prompt that you might want to use. Below, we’ll go over what each one might entail so you can get a feel of the best way to attack this essay to showcase your connection to Cornell.

Any Person Approach

For students who find that an aspect of their background is central to their personality, this might be a good route for you. In this essay style, you can highlight how your race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation, sexuality, etc, impacts the way you see and approach the world.

You’ll need to show the reader what your unique personal characteristic is, demonstrate the way it affected your thinking, and illustrate how you will bring your unique perspective to Cornell. It’s also a good idea to tie in the “any study” part by mentioning how your background or your way of thinking influenced your academic interests.

A student who grew up as the only international kid in their school might write about how the lack of others with shared cultural experiences made him feel lonely and isolated. This led him to spend a lot of time in his imagination where he found creative writing as an outlet and now he wants to pursue English at Cornell. He’s planning to join the student newspaper and publish his short stories to share with others who also enjoy escapism through writing.

Another example of a student taking the “any person” approach would be a Latinx student who had to serve as a translator for her parents from a young age, which exposed her to many legal and procedural discussions. Because of this, she developed an interest in conflict mediation and wants to concentrate in Human Resources at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Although a larger focus in this essay approach might be on your background, still make sure that you are relating your personal experiences to your studies and the school.

Any Study Approach

Maybe you don’t think there’s anything significant enough in your background to highlight, but you are really passionate about your chosen major. In that case, you could consider structuring your essay so you showcase what you love about your major, why you are drawn to that particular topic, and how your knowledge in that field will help you contribute to the campus community.

Even if you go down this road, you still want to emphasize how your interests or passions have given you a unique perspective that will make you a beneficial contributor to the Cornell campus.

For example, a student might describe how they are addicted to the Food Network, hosted their own annual Chopped competitions with their friends, and dream of opening their own restaurant because cooking allows them to express their creativity in a way no other medium can. They are planning on working in the restaurant run by Hotel Administration students to continue exploring creative ways to cook.

On the other hand, a student who is in love with robotics could write about how piecing parts together to create a fully-functioning robot helps her appreciate the power of collaboration. She wants to work with others as an engineering student to both create more intricate robots and to solve global problems by technology and bringing together multiple perspectives.

These aren’t the only two ways to go about writing this essay, but they are good starting points to help you frame your ideas. Remember, regardless of whether you focus more heavily on your unique background or your academic interests—or if you split the essay evenly between the two—make sure you are touching upon both “any person…any study”.

Why are you drawn to studying public policy? Drawing on your experiences, tell us about why you are interested in your chosen major and how attending the Brooks School will help you achieve your life goals. (650 words)

This is a fairly straightforward “Why This Major?” prompt. A prompt like this seeks to understand your motives and interest in your intended major, how your background aligns with this interest, and what you intend to do with the major after college.

Before you begin writing, you should do some self-reflection. Ponder these questions for a bit and jot down some notes:

1) What are your genuine reasons for deciding on your major/this particular school?

You should ideally have picked a subject that you have a passion for, or at least a moderate interest in. If your reasons include parental pressures, money, or prestige, you’re already off to a bad start. You aren’t bound to any major until after you declare well into your college career, so if your reasons are any of the above, consider picking a different major to write about.

2) What are specific examples of things you enjoy in your field of study?

Instead of thinking “math” or “reading,” think “the paired samples t-test in statistics” or “novels that explore existentialist themes.” Specificity is essential to a good “Why This Major?” essay.

3) How will this major help you achieve your life and/or career goals?

Again, avoid writing about things like money or status. Universities want to see individuals with depth, people who strive to live fulfilling lives, realize their potential, and contribute to the betterment of the world, even in some small way. Saying that you want to make a lot of money is one-dimensional and self-serving, and will definitely not lead to a successful essay.

4) What was the best part of your experience, both within and outside the classroom?

5) Do you move into a certain emotional state of mind every time you explore this field of study? What do you find appealing about this state of mind?

Questions 4 and 5 are the ones you will probably be able to probe for personal anecdotes about the field of study. Remember, anecdotes are going to be your biggest asset when answering this prompt.

It’s okay if you’re undecided and picked this major because it appealed to you a bit more than others. Just be sure you can back up your decision with stories and experiences. If you can’t corroborate your interest at all, you may want to consider writing about a different major.

There is a writing trope you may have heard before that applies here: “Show, don’t tell.” Sure, you can explain that you have an interest in public policy then explain things you’ve done that are related to your intended major, but a better way to go about structuring your response is to let your background illustrate your passion for public policy. Allow your experiences and their outcomes to show your interest so that you don’t have to waste a chunk of your word count talking about your interest explicitly.

For example, consider two hypothetical responses from a student who wants to study Spanish in college:

• Example 1: I have always liked the Spanish language for a few reasons. I am of Mexican descent and grew up in California, where I learned to speak Spanish at 14 years old. My predominantly Mexican neighborhood has greatly influenced my worldview, making me want to major in Spanish. The language is part of my identity and is becoming more and more essential in the modern United States, so I feel like studying it will help me further people’s understanding of it.
• Example 2: I am a Mexican-American who grew up in California. Every day of my childhood, the musical sounds of the Spanish language fluttered by my ears, but I didn’t understand them until I began learning the language at 14 years of age. When I finally knew enough to get by in conversation, it was as if a new world had spawned right before my eyes. I would greet street vendors as I walked by, help lost travelers find their way around my town, anything to fully immerse myself in this culture that had been in my blood since before I understood it. As I fell in love with the language, I began to read about its origins and the linguistic principles that made it what it is today. Spanish is more than a language to me; it’s a work of art. Taking vacations and traveling throughout the United States only furthered my fascination with the language. Everywhere I went, I could find a predominantly Spanish-speaking community. That’s when I realized how important Spanish has become in the modern world. Studying the language in college will deepen my understanding of it, and allow me to gain the knowledge I need to teach and be a translator for this increasingly important language that resonates with me so much.

The first example sounds rather generic and uses many declarative statements that lack feeling, so it doesn’t strongly convey the students interest in Spanish or motives for taking on the major. The second example, on the other hand, paints a vivid picture of the student’s formative experiences that inspired such a deep passion for the field of study. It thoroughly explores the student’s motivations through anecdotes, and even discusses future career plans.

The next part of the prompt moves away from your interest in the major, and toward your interest in the Brooks School. As before, you should strive for specificity here. Brooks offers two undergraduate majors: Policy Analysis and Management , and Health Care Policy . Browse your desired major’s website to get a feel for how this major at Brooks is different from equivalent majors elsewhere. One place to look for unique features is in the course offerings (here are PAM courses and here are HCP courses ).

You’re trying to express a strong interest in Brooks, so you don’t want to say something common to most schools. Saying that you appreciate Brooks’s interdisciplinary approach to health care policy is inadequate because almost every college offering a Health Care Policy (or similar) major has a multidisciplinary approach. It simply isn’t possible to study this field without tackling multiple fields of study such as economics, political science, and health.

Instead of being general in your response, find something particular to focus on that piques your interest. For example, let’s say an Asian student is applying to Brooks to major in Health Care Policy, and her racial and gender identity serve as career motivations (which, incidentally, can be a strong personal angle to use when writing why she is interested in this major). She might notice that of all the HCP programs she’s looked at, only Brooks has a focus on the effects of demography on health care policy. Since she wants to pursue a career in helping to ensure that Asian women get proper representation in healthcare policy making, Brooks’s concentration on demographics is a unique feature that will contribute to her professional goals.

Remember to be well-intentioned in your motivations, honest and specific about your interests, and sincere in your entire response, and you will have a strongly crafted essay that is sure to catch Cornell’s attention.

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Prompt 1

Why are you drawn to studying the major you have selected please discuss how your interests and related experiences have influenced your choice. specifically, how will an education from the college of agriculture and life sciences (cals) and cornell university help you achieve your academic goals (650 words).

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is the second-largest school at Cornell with majors ranging from communication to entomology. Even if you decide to apply as an undeclared major, you need to have potential areas of interest in mind to fully address the essay prompt.

The first half of this prompt follows the “Why This Major?” format that will become familiar as you apply to more colleges. You should use your current experiences to explain why you want to study the major you selected. A longitudinal approach lends itself well to this portion of the essay.

Think about the following questions we went over before to help you direct your response:

1) What are your sincere reasons for choosing this major and/or this particular school?

2) What are specific examples of things you enjoy in this field?

3) How will completing a degree in this major help you achieve your life and/or career goals?

4) What was the best part of your experience in this field, both academically and in your free time?

5) Do you experience a certain emotional state or frame of mind every time you explore this field of study? What about this state is appealing to you?

For example, if you want to study animal science, you could begin by explaining how you always loved going to the zoo growing up. You can then transition into describing how this love of animals led you to volunteer at the local animal hospital, and conclude your essay by explaining that your time at the animal hospital inspired your desire to become a veterinarian. 

The second half of this prompt asks you to explain why you want to study your intended major through CALS and Cornell. You need to provide college-specific examples that directly relate to your prospective major . Find courses (course offerings can be found after clicking on your desired major), clubs, research opportunities , or opportunities for outreach that would be difficult to find at another university. Be very careful not to mention something generic that could apply to many schools, such as location, as this indicates that you have not done sufficient research and aren’t as interested in CALS as you claim to be.

Specificity is key. For example, a prospective Viticulture and Enology major could discuss the Stocking Hall teaching winery, which allows students to gain hands-on vineyard harvesting experience. A prospective Global Development major could talk about the course called “Just Food,” which offers a comprehensive review of food system paradigms in just one course. Don’t be afraid to discuss relevant programs in colleges outside of CALS as well, as CALS is interdisciplinary.

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Prompt 3 (optional)

The college of agriculture and life sciences (cals) is dedicated to the exploration of the agricultural, life, environmental, and social sciences and welcomes students with interests that span a wide variety of disciplines. given our agricultural history and commitment to educating the next generation of agriculturalists, please share if you have a background in agriculture or are interested in pursuing a career in agriculture, regardless of your intended major. (100 words), select all that apply:, a primary source of income for my parent/guardian(s) comes from ownership of or employment by an agricultural entity., my extended family owns or operates an agricultural entity., i have experience working in an agricultural entity., i have interest in pursuing a career in an agricultural entity..

Bear in mind that immediately after the prompt there is a section where you are asked to select all that apply. This is not a writing portion, but rather a quick survey for the admissions committee to know about your background.

The prompt itself is optional, but if you have a substantial agricultural background or a keen interest in pursuing a career in agriculture, we encourage you to respond to it. The prompt is rather straightforward, so if you are able and willing to answer it, it should not be a stressful undertaking.

For this kind of prompt, you may wish to consider a collection essay structure. If you have an agricultural background, you won’t be able to thoroughly describe your responsibilities and experiences with just one anecdote. The best structure to respond to this prompt is a small collection of personal anecdotes that showcase your background as well as your sincere interest in an agricultural career.

Despite our recommendation of a collection structure, you may find it helpful to connect each of your anecdotes with some kind of thread. A narrative that links each of your anecdotes together may provide the admissions committee with a clearer picture of where you came from, where you’re going, and why.

For example, consider a hypothetical student who grew up on a farm and developed a deep passion for the agricultural sciences. He might have started helping his family do farm work from a very young age, waking up at the break of dawn to feed the chickens and milk the cows. He might write about how these formative experiences forged his entire identity and how he’ll always be a farm boy at heart. 

He could then move into a discussion of how some of his tasks became his full responsibilities when he got old enough, and how he now does more and more of the essential work as his dad is getting older. He could wrap up his response with a sincere examination of his future goals, whether they be to come home and improve his family’s own farm through his education or to move into agricultural research to improve farming methods for everyone.

Be genuine about your experiences and passions — let them both shine through in your word choice and anecdotes.

At the College of Arts and Sciences, curiosity will be your guide. Discuss how your passion for learning is shaping your academic journey, and what areas of study or majors excite you and why. Your response should convey how your interests align with the College, and how you would take advantage of the opportunities and curriculum in Arts and Sciences. (650 words)

This prompt is a pretty standard “ Why This Major? ” archetype. Unless you are undecided , you should narrow down the broad statement of your “passion for learning” into a more manageable focus on a specific topic you are interested in pursuing. In order to write a successful essay, you need to accomplish three main things:

• Explain how your interest developed
• Detail your goals and aspirations
• Describe how you will use school resources to your benefit

Beginning with explaining how your interest developed, the best way to do this is through examples. Whether you include a few examples of you deep in research or you share an anecdote about your first encounter with the subject, make sure to paint a picture for the reader. Show us what about the topic excites you, how it makes you feel, and why you fell in love with it. Here are a few examples of successful ways to accomplish this:

Example 1: “ My mom’s bookshelf is the cheapest, fastest airplane you will ever find. On the left, bound in thick leather is Shakespeare’s first play, Henry VI. Move one over and we’ve traveled to the south of the continent to Greece for a quick tour of Plato’s Republic. Next stop: tsarist Russia for War and Peace. Every day, I get to leave behind the drone of suburban Ohio and transport myself to a new country and period. The noise of the outside world falls away as I travel through the pages, across space and time. ”

Example 2: “ Age 7: I see a white rhino at the zoo and buy a stuffed animal, affectionately named Rob the Rhino.

Age 11: I ask all my friends to donate to the World Wildlife Fund to support endangered rhinos in place of a new lego set for my birthday.

Age 15: I learn climate change causes the rhinos’ grasslands to dry up and flood in an unpredictable cycle.

Age 16: I found the Forces of Nature club in my school to develop creative solutions to protect habitats from the effects of climate change. ”

Once you’ve established what your interest is, where it came from, and why you are passionate about it, it’s time to be more forward-looking. Cornell wants to admit students who are ambitious and driven, with a passion for changing the world. Now’s the time to share your aspirations with the admissions committee.

Tell the reader what you hope to accomplish one day in regards to your field of study. You might know exactly what you want, for example a student who is going into Information Science might want to create a social media platform that actively promotes diversity of ideas rather than echo chambers as part of its mission. On the other hand, another student might know they want to major in psychology, but they don’t know how they want to use it yet.

In the event you don’t have a clearly defined goal, it’s okay to admit you don’t know where your studies will take you—after all, the whole point of college is to explore new ideas and figure out what you are passionate about. Don’t completely write off this portion of the essay though. Still talk about what you hope to bring to the world in a broader sense. Rather than describing the specific contribution you will make to the world of medicine, describe how you are studying biology to learn about the inner workings of the human body so you are equipped to handle any organ or system.

Finally, you’ll want to dedicate a good portion (around 200-300 words) on the Cornell-specific opportunities you will utilize during your four years to both deepen your passion and work towards your goals.

There are two key things to keep in mind. First, quality over quantity is everything here. Name dropping four classes and three professors without expanding on why you are drawn to them won’t add much to your essay. Instead, pick three or four resources that closely align with you and explain why you are excited about this opportunity and how it will help you achieve your goals.

Secondly, the offerings you discuss have to be unique to Cornell. Nearly every school you apply to will offer Chemistry 101 or have a finance club. You need to spend some time poking around Cornell’s website to find distinctive opportunities you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else to prove to the admissions committee you genuinely want to go to the school. Below are some ideas of things to look for as you research the school:

• Look at the course roster and find classes in your major (don’t just pick Biology 101; the more specific, the better!)
• Find professors in your department and the research they conduct
• Explore unique clubs and extracurriculars that align with your interests 
• Look into special programs or centers (ie. Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity or College Scholar Program
• Research Cornell-specific study abroad programs and hubs

For example, the student who loves books and reading may want to one day become a fantasy writer to help others immerse themselves in new worlds. They could mention wanting to take the Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Witchcraft First-Year Writing Seminar at Cornell in their essay.

College of Engineering Short Answer Questions

Note: upon selecting this college on the common app, you will be asked to provide the 3 words that best describe you and the three words that you would use to describe cornell engineering. this is essentially a major-specific short response section..

It’s challenging to distill your personality down to three words, so to begin, come up with a long list of words that you think characterize you, and then narrow them down to the ones that are most important to you. They don’t need to be directly related to engineering, but you want to choose words that at least describe qualities of yourself that could translate to the field of engineering broadly. If you need help, you can ask your friends and family for ideas.

You don’t have to write the most exotic words, but you should avoid very simple descriptors like “fun, nice, smart.” These choices can come across as cliché, and don’t tell the admissions committee anything about you. Try more interesting words like “determined, upbeat, daring,” or even nouns like “brother, athlete, artist.”

If words are your strong suit, you can try to be more creative with your choices. You might even want to pick a word from another language if that language or its culture is an important part of your identity. Maybe you’re a hard worker, a lighthearted person, and you help your father fix cars in your predominantly Hispanic community; you may choose to write “indefatigable, whimsical, mecánico.” Note that you should strive to only choose words you know/use regularly. Don’t just use a thesaurus to try to find big words, because you may accidentally use a word with a nuanced meaning that isn’t what you’re looking for. Additionally, if you use flowery language in this section but not in your writing supplement, this will come off as contradictory and insincere.

The same idea applies to the three words you choose to describe Cornell Engineering. You should do plenty of research on Cornell Engineering before even attempting to choose three words. Determine what is important to their program, reach out to friends you may know in the program, or look through their website and social media to figure out what their program is all about.

You should not attempt to randomly select words about engineering in general. In fact, you could write an inspiring answer by picking some that seemingly have nothing to do with engineering! Avoid picking generic, simple words as well as words of empty praise, such as “unique,” “competitive,” “prestigious,” and “innovative.” Anyone can tell Cornell that it’s a good university — doing so here would sound hollow and plain. Try to think of more nuanced and descriptive words that wouldn’t apply broadly to every engineering college.

For example, you might choose “eclectic,” “defiant,” and “virtuous.” These are creative choices, but more importantly, they are words you could defend in an interview. If asked about “eclectic,” you can mention the diversity of the fields which Cornell has facilities for — the university has centers in subjects ranging from data science to nanomedical technology to waste management. You can defend “defiant” by discussing how a certain lab you researched never settles for the status quo, but instead seeks to always go beyond what is deemed possible. Finally, you might defend “virtuous” by mentioning Cornell Engineering’s mission to “ advance the quality of life on our planet. ”

College of Engineering, Prompt 1 

How do your interests directly connect with cornell engineering if you have an intended major, what draws you to that department at cornell engineering if you are unsure what specific engineering field you would like to study, describe how your general interest in engineering most directly connects with cornell engineering. it may be helpful to concentrate on one or two things that you are most excited about. (250 words).

This prompt is sort of a mix of two traditional kinds of prompts: “Why This College?” and “Why This Major?” It’s primarily a “Why This College?” prompt, as it asks twice how your personal interests connect with Cornell Engineering, but if you do have a specific intended major, you will have to back up your choice as well.

Before you begin writing, you should thoroughly consider what you want to get out of college. Think about your academic and career goals beyond getting a degree or making a lot of money. Colleges don’t want to hear superficial or self-serving goals; they are seeking students with passion and drive who want to contribute to the world in some way.

After you have some idea of your goals, do ample research. You need to establish at least a tangible connection with the college in a way that shows how it will help you achieve your goals. A tangible connection involves specific reasons for choosing the college that are unique to that college. This is where research will really be useful. Browse the departments and courses , faculty , and research groups to find some unique features of the college.

For example, a student might be particularly interested in computer-aided diagnosis because it was used to help diagnose his grandmother’s lung cancer and save her life. He might write about the Biomedical Imaging and Instrumentation concentration within the Biomedical Engineering major. Courses like “Computer Vision” and “Computer Analysis of Biomed Images” would be essential to mention in his essay. 

Additionally, he might want to write about the Vision and Image Analysis Lab. He could also discuss how the head of the lab, Dr. Anthony Reeves, does research on “computer methods for analyzing digital images especially with regards to accurate image measurements and with a primary focus on biomedical applications,” which is exactly what this hypothetical student wants to study.

The hypothetical student above very effectively establishes a tangible connection to the college through specific courses, a lab, and a particular faculty member whose research expertise resonates with him. You should strive to link your personal interests and goals with particular parts of the college in this way.

If you don’t have an intended major in mind, you should still emphasize your general engineering interests. Provide anecdotes that demonstrate the experiences that got you interested in engineering in the first place, then try to connect those experiences with some aspect of the college.

Additionally, if you can, you should try to establish an intangible connection with the college. This involves looking into Cornell Engineering’s values to see how much they align with yours. For example, Cornell’s Diversity Programs in Engineering (DPE) focuses on “enhancing equity for [their] community in terms of: ethnicity, race, sex, gender, orientation, identity, first generation status, socioeconomic class, and veteran status.” Perhaps your racial or gender identity is particularly important to your conception of who you are. You could write about the DPE initiatives to establish this sort of intangible connection in value systems.

There are several things you should avoid when writing your response:

• Empty flattery: Don’t simply write about how good Cornell Engineering is or how cool a specific major is without elaborating in a very specific manner. Talking about the university with such vague flattery suggests you have nothing more substantive or specific to say.
• Name-dropping: You should do research on the college, but don’t name classes or faculty members just to have them in your essay. A list of names doesn’t speak to your goals or interests. Instead, explain why those courses, activities, or professors are interesting to you. The college wants to hear about what resonates with you, but also about why it resonates with you.
• Being generic: Don’t write about resources common to all colleges such as location, class size, a strong program in X, etc. This would suggest that you don’t have anything specific to say or that you copied the response you wrote for another school.

College Engineering, Prompt 2, Option A

Describe an engineering problem that impacts your local community. this could be your school, neighborhood, town, region, or a group you identify with. describe one to three things you might do as an engineer to solve the problem. (250 words).

This prompt is designed to elicit several things: your ability to locate and describe problems that can be solved through engineering, the kinds of problems that personally motivate you, and your critical thinking skills. In many ways, the prompt is like a future-tense version of the common community service essay , but rather than writing about previous service experiences, you’re tasked with writing about how you would serve a community to which you belong.

Before you begin writing, think back to when you were younger (or even to as recently as last week). What physical features of your natural and created environments have bothered you in your hometown, school, or other community to which you belong? Perhaps there are too many unfilled potholes or maybe your local playground is becoming rundown and overgrown. The problem doesn’t have to be profound and widespread; it just has to be important to you and amenable to engineering solutions.

In addition to things that have bothered you, try to think of deep-rooted issues and problems that might only apply to particular neighborhoods or groups of people. Use all of these thoughts to create a preliminary list of problems. Once you have a list, narrow it down to the one problem that you most connect with and can think of viable solutions to. This prompt is attempting to gauge your critical thinking skills as well as to understand your passion for engineering.

Once you determine your problem, brainstorm some of the possible solutions to it. These solutions can take shape in a number of ways. You can try to approach the problem through different subfields of engineering to see how alternative areas of expertise can contribute to the same issue in unique ways.

For example, a student might come from a city with a rather dated transit system. Perhaps her home neighborhood is served by an above ground train network that is lacking in accessibility. She might have noticed this problem upon seeing a man in a wheelchair unable to get up to the elevated platform. When writing about this issue, she can propose several solutions involving different kinds of engineering. For example, she might think of three potential solutions:

• “As a mechanical engineer, I can design an elevator car and cable system to provide greater accessibility within our transportation network.” (She can also adapt her response to the kind of engineering she wishes to study – e.g., “As a structural engineer, I can design the foundations of an elevator shaft that could be affixed to the existing elevated train structures.”)
• “As a civil engineer, I can design a workable ramp system that can be attached to each of the train stations in the transportation network. Each station will have its own needs and regulations, which I can use my training as an engineer to adapt to.”
• “As a civil engineer, I could contribute to a total overhaul of the transportation network by designing a trolley system at ground level or perhaps even an underground subway network in which it would be easier to provide wheelchair accessibility.”

Bear in mind that this essay has a limit of 250 words, which will be taken up quickly if you present a problem and provide multiple solutions to it. Be mindful of your word count and avoid overly flowery language and unnecessarily complicated words/sentences. Let your critical and creative thinking be seen in your choice of problem and your proposed solutions. 

And remember, you aren’t an engineer yet; you haven’t even started college! Don’t feel like you have to have all the right answers. You shouldn’t overdo it with your proposed solution, but also avoid being too minimal in your descriptions. Think through what information is necessary to include as part of a solution and use that to guide your essay.

College of Engineering, Prompt 2, Option B

Diversity in all forms is intrinsic to excellence in engineering. engineering the best solutions to complex problems is often achieved by drawing from the diverse ingenuity of people from different backgrounds, lived experiences, and identities. how do you see yourself contributing to the diversity and/or the inclusion of the cornell engineering community what is the unique voice you would bring to the cornell engineering community (250 words).

The goal of this type of essay is to find out how your values and background influence your personal views and goals. Admissions committees look to build diverse classes, so you’ll want your response for this to be individualized and authentic. To learn more about this kind of prompt, check out our tips for writing a diversity essay .

What to Consider Before You Write

Coming up with a good topic for a diversity essay can be tricky. This is what you’ll want to keep in mind as you think of how to approach the question:

• Think about your various identities and what makes you unique. This could be your community, racial identity, religion, hobbies, disability status, gender, language, hometown, country of origin, etc. You may want to make a list and write about the one you are most familiar with and feel most comfortable talking about.
• Consider how you relate to this identity and how you feel about being a part of this group. Have you developed any personality traits through this background? If so, how have they changed over time?
• Have any major formative events occurred in your life because of this background? What were they and how did they shape you into the person you are today?
• Have you learned any skills through one of these identities? What are they?
• How can you connect this with Cornell Engineering?

It is important to consider how your emotions tie in with one of your identities and what personal stories demonstrate this emotional connection. This way, you can write an essay that shows an aspect of your background and how it has shaped you.

You’ll want about 25% of the essay to summarize the part of your background that you are describing* and the remaining 75% to talk about how you have been impacted by it. As you wrap up your response, write about how your background will make you a good addition to the Cornell Engineering community.

Mistakes To Avoid

Don’t list all your identities: This essay isn’t the time to talk about all your personal identities. Instead, focus on one of them and dive deeper into what it is and why it’s important to you.

Don’t focus solely on negative experiences: It’s fine to mention negative experiences related to your identity, and you should absolutely make sure that the experiences you write about are authentic to you. However, admissions committees often look for stories with positive or optimistic endings. Not everything has a happy ending, but it’s harder to write a successful and compelling negative essay.

Don’t pick a cliché topic: There are topics such as immigration stories that have been used time and time again in supplementary essays. Think about an identity you have that may be unique or more nuanced.

Here’s how a response might begin:

One community that I’ve been part of for many years is the jazz piano community. Although jazz is often seen as being “outdated” or “pretentious” by the outside world, true jazz lovers know that it is actually one of the only music genres that stays current with new beats and rhythms. Jazz is always adapting, but jazz pianists must adapt as well. They improvise while also keeping a fast tempo and staying moving between keys. My years playing piano taught me to go with the flow and to accept alternative, unusual, or unique outcomes–usually, the best jazz pieces are created in the spur of the moment. Sometimes engineers get mired in the details or the singular desired outcome, which closes them off to potential accidental breakthroughs. As a student within the College of Engineering at Cornell, I would use the adaptive out-of-the-box thinking that I’ve learned through improvisation and apply it to my engineering projects.

This example starts by describing how jazz, an important part of the student’s background, is perceived, then connects the skills and lessons that the student learned through improvisation to a skill that can be applied to engineering. The student describes how the job of a jazz pianist is not just limited to piano, and that those lessons can be applied to other aspects of life. The student also connects his response to the College of Engineering, thus connecting his identity to Cornell.

What kind of business student are you? Using your personal, academic, or volunteer/work experiences, describe the topics or issues that you care about and why they are important to you. Your response should convey how your interests align with the school to which you are applying within the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business (the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management or the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration). (650 words)

The SC Johnson College of Business is made up of two schools: The Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the School of Hotel Administration. Our breakdown will focus on these two schools separately, but keep in mind that you can write about both in your essay, especially if your interests and goals are best served by both schools.

Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management

The Dyson School is known as one of the most competitive at Cornell. In order to stand out among the tough competition, you will need to clearly explain why your goals and interests align with Dyson’s unique program.

Your choice to apply to Dyson should extend beyond a basic interest in economics or management. Dyson’s program is interdisciplinary in nature, and the school encourages its students to study various disciplines outside of AEM. Having a distinct interdisciplinary focus such as agro-economics is a great way to stand out in your supplemental essay.

Your reasons for applying to Dyson should be supported by your present interests and activities. For example, a student discussing agricultural economics could discuss leadership roles in a local 4H club, or efforts to learn more about agricultural economics through recent journals and news pieces.

Aim to be as detailed as possible when discussing your future goals and clearly connect them to Dyson’s offerings. The agricultural economics student could talk about how Dyson’s flexible curriculum would also allow them to take agriculture classes.

Be sure to include your post-college goals and how the College of Business would help you achieve them. For example, our hypothetical agro-economics student might be interested in starting an organization to eliminate food deserts, by diverting food that would’ve otherwise gone to waste. They could mention the course “HADM 4315: Hunger, Health and Nonprofit Social Enterprise” in the School of Hotel Administration (remember that you can talk about both schools in the College of Business!). This would allow the student to learn “management best practices for leading nonprofit food service organizations.”

School of Hotel Administration

SHA consistently ranks as the best hotel school in the United States, and applicants should have a clear, demonstrated interest in hospitality-related careers. In addition to relevant experience, SHA looks for the interpersonal skills required to be successful in the hospitality industry.

Your hospitality experiences should directly show why you chose to apply to SHA and why you are interested in hospitality management. For example, instead of simply listing your duties as a bellhop at a local hotel, describe how the integration of many fast-paced movements at a hotel invigorates you.

Connect these experiences to your long-term plans and aspirations, and explain how the Hotel School will provide you with the tools you need to achieve these goals. If you want to manage a hotel one day, explain how SHA will provide the hands-on experiences and practical skills you will need to run an establishment.

SHA is the only college at Cornell that requires an admissions interview, which focuses on the applicant’s interpersonal skills. While describing your experiences within hospitality, make sure to highlight personal attributes such as your empathy or adaptability, especially through anecdotes. Perhaps a hotel client once lost his dog, and you went above and beyond to help him make missing dog signs, even putting them up across the city. Maybe the hotel’s fitness center yoga instructor once called in sick at the last minute, and you stepped in with your knowledge of yoga, leading the class in her stead. These details allow an admissions counselor to see that you would thrive at SHA.

How have your related experiences influenced your decision to apply to the College of Human Ecology (CHE)? How will your choice of major impact your goals and plans for the future? Your response should show us that your interests and aspirations align with CHE and your choice of major. (650 words)

This prompt is sort of a blend between the “Why This College?” and “Why This Major?” prompts. The College of Human Ecology (CHE) wants to find the applicants who have the most sincere interest in the school and their anticipated major, so this essay is your chance to let your background and passion shine through.

Before you begin writing, think about the reasons for your decision. What life experiences led you to want to study at the College of Human Ecology? If you’ve decided on a major, why do you want to pursue that major? Think about your academic and career goals, but don’t just write about wanting a prestigious education or trying to make a large salary. Colleges don’t like selfish and shallow goals; they want students with deeper aspirations and a genuine interest in their respective fields.

CHE focuses on the exploration of human connection and the human experience. Human Ecology is interdisciplinary by nature and has strong roots in research and public engagement. Your supplemental essay should reflect these themes while also explaining your interest in your intended major.

Use your high school classes, extracurriculars, and personal projects to explain why you applied to CHE. If you want to study nutritional sciences, you could discuss your role in the Health Club at your high school. Make sure to explain why your intended career path interests you. Maybe you’re a runner and you’re fascinated by how diet impacts physical performance. Connecting your unique personal experiences to a broader desire to improve the human experience — and potentially adding interdisciplinary elements — will help deepen your connection to the College of Human Ecology.

The next part of this prompt asks how your specific major will contribute to your plans for the future. Be as specific as possible. For example, instead of broadly stating that studying fashion design and management will help prepare you for the fashion industry, discuss how the studio-based classes will provide you with both a strong physical skill set and a portfolio of work for job applications. Or if you want to start your own sustainable fashion brand, mention how the courses in Fiber Science will allow you to learn about innovative ways to create eco-friendly fibers and dyes.

After you have some idea of your motivations and goals, do your research. You need to demonstrate how CHE and your desired major will help you achieve your goals. Look over the departments and courses , faculty , and research to find some unique features of the college that you can benefit from during and after your college career.

If you don’t have a specific major in mind, you should still show interest in CHE by mentioning two or three majors you’re considering and why . Include personal stories that can corroborate your interest in Human Ecology, then try to connect those stories with a couple of CHE majors.

As we discussed before, there are several things you should avoid when writing your response:

• Empty flattery: Don’t simply write about how good the College of Human Ecology is or how cool a specific major is without elaborating in a very specific manner. Talking about the university with such vague flattery suggests you have nothing more substantive or specific to say.

Using your personal, academic, or volunteer/work experiences, describe the topics or issues that you care about and why they are important to you. Your response should show us that your interests align with the ILR School. (650 words)

The School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) studies the world of work, and the intellectual interests you write about should also involve labor and human capital. The ILR community has a strong drive for public service, so making social service the focus of your essay will help explain your choice in ILR. This isn’t exactly a community service prompt , but you might want to mention any service experience you have, how you feel about that experience, and how that experience has motivated your interest in ILR.

Given the specificity of the prompt, it’s imperative that you provide concrete examples of how your experiences relate to your intellectual interests. For example, you can discuss how studying disability rights in your American History class made you want to become an advocate, or how volunteering in a local lawyer’s office helped you discover a deep interest in labor law.

Your essay should also explain why you are interested in your chosen subject matter to fully address what makes it exciting to you. Does the ability to advocate for others inspire your passion for disability rights in the workplace? 

Your reasons can be more personal too. Maybe you have a friend or relative with a disability and have witnessed how many workers with disabilities are underpaid and exploited. Or, perhaps you’re interested in labor law because you want to defend workers in minority groups from discrimination.

Once you’ve established your experiences and motivations, you need to draw connections to ILR. This is where research will be extremely helpful. Look into ILR’s departments and courses , faculty , areas of expertise , and research opportunities to inspire your writing. Keep in mind that all undergraduate students at ILR have the same major — Industrial and Labor Relations. Nevertheless, there are opportunities to focus your study on one of the related disciplines , so be sure to write to your strengths and interests.

Choose ILR-specific programs to explain why the school is the right fit for you. For example, a future law student could mention ILR’s intensive legal writing seminars. The prospective student could also discuss the Labor & Employment Law Program in NYC, which focuses on managing repositories for documents related to acts of workplace discrimination.

Note: Upon selecting this college on the Common App, you will be asked to provide the 3 words that best describe you. This is essentially a major-specific short response section.

How do your interests directly connect with your intended major at the college of architecture, art and planning (aap) why architecture (b.arch), art (bfa) or urban and regional studies (urs) b.arch applicants, please provide an example of how a creative project or passion sparks your motivation to pursue a 5-year professional degree program. bfa applicants may want to consider how they could integrate a range of interests and available resources at cornell into a coherent art practice. urs students may want to emphasize their enthusiasm and depth of interest in the study of urban and regional issues. (650 words).

Before you scroll down to the writing supplement prompt, you’ll be asked for three words that best describe you. It’s tough to distill your personality down to three words, so to start, come up with a long list of words that you think characterize you, and then narrow them down to the ones that are most important to you. If you need help, you can poll your friends and family.

You don’t need the most exotic words, but you should avoid very simple descriptors like “fun, nice, smart.” These choices are too safe and plain, and don’t tell the admissions committee anything about you. Try more interesting words like “determined, upbeat, daring,” or even nouns like “brother, athlete, artist.”

If words are your thing or you consider yourself a writer, you can try to be more ambitious with your choices. You might even want to pick a word from another language if that language is an important part of your identity. Maybe you’re a hard worker, a lighthearted person, and a singer of Latin music; you may choose to write “indefatigable, whimsical, cantante.” Note that you should strive to only choose words you know and use regularly. Don’t just use a thesaurus to try to find big words, because you may accidentally use a word with a nuanced meaning that isn’t what you’re looking for. Additionally, if you use flowery language in this section but not in your writing supplement, this will come off as contradictory and insincere.

Now, let’s move onto the actual prompt. Since the prompt asks for different things depending on whether you are applying as an architecture, art, or planning student, we will break down the responses accordingly. However, like most other “ Why This Major? ” essays, all three types of applicants should still describe their interest in the topic, explain their goals, and describe how the AAP resources will be beneficial to them.

Architecture

The prompt tells Architecture students to “provide an example of how a creative project or passion sparks your motivation to pursue a 5-year professional degree program.” The major focus for your essay should be on a project you worked on that led to your love for architecture.

Try and pick a project from high school, that way it’s more recent, and pick something longer-term that you worked on to highlight the impressiveness. An essay about a year-long model bridge you built out of toothpicks for your design class will have a lot more to delve into than one about a lego structure you built with your younger brother in a weekend. 

That being said, if you think you can write a passionate, deeply emotional essay about a moment you shared with your brother that also opened your eyes to the wonders of architecture through tiny plastic blocks, go ahead!

Make sure to describe the project in detail—highlight what the development process looked like, explain your thought process (were you stressed about each detail or did you lose track of all time as you worked for hours on end?), and provide imagery to show your actions and the final product—that way the admissions officers get a feel for the heart and soul you put into your work. Remember, you are trying to prove to them you love architecture enough to spend the next five years studying it, so don’t hold back on showing us your passion.

Also remember to save space in your essay to address how you will further your passion for architecture at Cornell. Like we mentioned in previous sections, hone in on three or four highly-specific and unique opportunities you want to take advantage of while at Cornell. Make sure to include both what excites you about the given resource and how it will prepare you for your future goals.

Art students within AAP are told they “may want to consider how they could integrate a range of interests and available resources at Cornell into a coherent art practice.” While this prompt is more geared towards the Cornell resources and opportunities you will utilize as a student than the other two, that doesn’t mean you can completely forgo discussing your passion for art.

Like any other essay, you’ll want to make yourself the focus. Through detailed examples, show the admissions committee how you first got into art or what draws you to the subject each day. The prompt specifically mentions “integrating a range of interests,” so it would be a great idea to demonstrate how you combine interdisciplinary topics through your art.

For example, a student interested in climate activism might describe how she started a business to paint other people’s campaign posters and then donate the proceeds to environmental justice campaigns. Another student might highlight how they used their passion for graphic design to mimic other art mediums like sculpting and photography.

It’s also important to include your goals for your art in your response. Obviously, you don’t have to have your whole life figured out at 17, but in order to explain how you plan to use Cornell resources to develop a “coherent art practice” you should be able to articulate what you want in a general sense. Whether you want to bring back the era of rococo paintings or you think it would be cool to open your own gallery one day, share your dreams with us in the essay.

Finally, you’ll need to provide both depth and breadth when discussing the Cornell offerings you want to take advantage of. Try and discuss resources across a variety of areas—classes, professors, extracurricular organizations, special centers, etc. Cornell even has its own museum on campus you could get involved with! 

Aim to include three to five resources you want to engage with, depending on how much space you have. The key is to tie each resource back to yourself, either by mentioning how you are excited by an aspect of it because it connects to your interest or previous experience in a particular way or by explaining how participating in the opportunity will help you achieve your goals.

Urban and Regional Studies

The prompt is fairly generic for urban and regional studies majors: “URS students may want to emphasize their enthusiasm and depth of interest in the study of urban and regional issues.” Luckily, the lack of specificity means you have the freedom to write about anything you want.

You might want to talk about your personal experiences and how aspects of where you grew up affected you. Another approach could be to discuss a regional or global issue in the field of urban studies and discuss why you are drawn to that problem and how you would go about fixing it. You might focus on extracurricular involvement related to the subject that was particularly meaningful to you. Or, perhaps you want to express your enthusiasm through highlighting the ways you think about the world around you as an urban planner.

The moral of the story is there is no wrong way to structure your answer to this question.

Similar to Architecture and Art applicants, once you establish your passion for the topic and explain what you love about it, the next step is to put your interests in the context of Cornell. Again, quality over quantity—we are looking for a few well-developed descriptions of why you are drawn to each resource and what you hope to get out of them.

Also make sure to weave your career goals into the essay. You can smoothly transition from talking about your established interest and current events to how you want to use an urban and regional studies degree in the future, or you can discuss how certain opportunities will give you the skills and tools to go down a certain path one day.

Where to Get Your Cornell University Essay Edited

Do you want feedback on your Cornell essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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