supplement essay vs essay

Don’t Sweat the Supp Stuff: Advice for Crafting Your Supplemental Essay

It can feel daunting to choose what to write about in your college application essays. How do you sum up the complex, dynamic individual you are with such limited space?

The short answer: You can’t. But that’s OK.

The goal of your application is not to share every detail of your multifaceted life. Rather, the process allows you to share your story with the admissions committee about what makes you a strong match for the institution. Each piece of the application reveals something about your academic experiences and personal journey that shows us how you might contribute to the Hopkins community.

In some ways, the essays help tie together the rest of the application. They offer space for you to tell stories that represent the most important parts of your identity, which provide context for other components of the application.

Let’s zero in on the supplemental essay .

The supplemental essay portion of the application is specific to each school. Each institution has intentionally crafted a question (or multiple) to help determine whether a student might be a good match. We look for individuals who share Hopkins’ institutional values but will also bring unique experiences and perspectives to the community.

Below is the supplemental essay prompt for students applying for entry to Hopkins in the fall of 2025:

How has your life experience contributed to your personal story—your character, values, perspectives, or skills—and what you want to pursue at Hopkins? (350-word limit)

Picture your life in college. What does your community look like? Which aspects of your identity are most important for you to develop and nurture?

Now jot down some thoughts about experiences or parts of your identity that have had a significant effect on your life. Maybe it’s a hobby you love, a cultural tradition, or an instance when you discovered something new about yourself.

Once you have a list, think about how each of these will continue to play a role in your college life. Choose one to focus on and spend some time building it out.

Keep in mind this essay is not an exercise in “tell us everything you know about Hopkins.” While it’s important for the admissions committee to see you’ve done your research and understand what Hopkins has to offer, simply listing what you hope to pursue on campus is only half of the puzzle. Be sure to connect the dots by explaining why you wish to pursue those things, and how they’ll help you remain connected to and grow in your identity.

If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas or crafting your essay, reach out to your school counselor or an English teacher. They can help you brainstorm and ensure your piece is answering the prompt in a meaningful way.

Happy writing!

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Last updated March 7, 2023

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Blog > Essay Advice , Supplementals > How to Write Supplemental Essays that Will Impress Admissions Officers

How to Write Supplemental Essays that Will Impress Admissions Officers

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Alex McNeil, MA Admissions Consultant

Key Takeaway

Welcome to the wonderful world of supplemental essays.

If you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance that you’ve completed (or at least have begun thinking about) your Common Application personal statement.

But believe it or not, you’re not done once you’ve sorted out your personal statement.

That’s right—many colleges require you to write even more essays as part of your application. These essays are called supplemental essays , and you’ll usually write 0-4 per school you apply to.

Hopefully you’re starting to do the math… If I apply to 10 schools that require an average of 2.3 supplemental essays, then that’s 20+ essays I have to write on top of my personal statement!

And, to make matters more dire, supplemental essays are really important to your application. Schools only require them because they play a critical role in admissions decisions.

That’s why having good supplemental essay strategy matters. There’s no time to waste, and they need to be good.

But thankfully you’ve found yourself here, at the ultimate guide to supplemental essays. We—Alex, Ben, and Kylie—have compiled our years of admissions and essay-writing knowledge to tell you everything you need to know about writing supplemental essays. (And, as you’ll see, we also have more specific guides for the most common supplemental essay prompts.)

In this guide-to-end-all-guides, we start out with supplemental essay basics and then break down the supplemental essay strategies that have worked for our clients again and again. Once you reach the end, you’ll be able to download a free essay tracker to keep you organized and on track.

Ready? Here we go.

What are supplemental essays?

Supplemental essays are a kind of college essay.

As a refresher, recall that there are three main kinds of college essays:

Personal Statement: A personal statement is a singular essay that is the keystone of your entire application. It goes to all the schools you apply to, and it covers a topic that is deeply meaningful to you. Personal statements are typically around 650 words. (For more about personal statements, see our college essay writing guide .)

Supplemental Essays: Supplemental essays are essays required by specific schools. They typically have different prompts than the personal statement and are usually shorter in length.

UC Essays: UC essays are their own beast in the college essay-writing world. Their purpose is a blend of personal statement and supplemental essay. (For more about UC Essays, see our UC guide.)

Supplemental essays serve a unique purpose. The reality is that the majority of your college application has to be written with several colleges in mind, especially if you’re applying to schools through application systems like the Common Application or Coalition.

That means that the majority of the information admissions officers base their decisions on is relatively generic information that doesn’t address why you’re a good fit for their school in particular.

That’s where supplemental essays come in.

Supplemental essays give you the opportunity to tell an admissions officer why you belong at their school specifically. They also allow colleges to ask you questions based on what they’re looking for in applicants.

Imagine that you’re interested in adopting a new dog. You browse your shelter’s online photo gallery, see the statistics about the age and weight of each dog, and read the brief descriptions of their temperament. The online profiles give you quite a bit to go on, but you still can’t quite picture how each one would fit into your family. You need just a little more information. So you drive to the shelter, meet the animals, and ask the shelter staff more questions about the animals you’re interested in.

Okay, college admissions are obviously a lot different than adopting a dog. But you get the metaphor. Sometimes the information on the Common App alone isn’t enough. Admissions officers need more information about which students are going to be the best fit for their college communities. And the one tool universities have to get that specific information are supplemental essays .

In short, some schools require supplemental essays because they want to get more information about how well your academics, extracurriculars, values, or otherwise align with their institution.

What’s the difference between a supplemental essay and a personal statement?

We can look at the differences between personal statements and supplemental essays across three categories: purpose, length, and research.

Supplemental essays serve a very different purpose than personal statements. While personal statements are deeply meaningful reflections that go to all the colleges a student applies to, supplemental essays are school-specific. Your personal statement is a place for you to write about something related to one of your core strengths. Supplementals are opportunities for you to show how your core strengths make you a good fit for a particular institution. Since they have different purposes, you’ll need different writing strategies to approach each kind of essay with.

Essay lengths vary by school and type, but supplemental essays are generally shorter. The Common App personal statement, for example, is maximum 650 words. Supplemental essays, on the other hand, typically range from 100 to 400 words (although occasionally some will be longer). When added together, you’ll likely be writing at least a couple thousand words for your college applications.

Finally, personal statements and supplementals also require different levels of research. Whereas personal statements typically require no research, supplementals require a lot. Because supplemental essays are school-specific, you’ll need to do research about every single school you write a supplemental essay for. We’ll get into that more in a second.

So personal statements give admissions officers a deep insight into who you are, while supplemental essays build on that narrative and sometimes include school research.

How important are supplemental essays?

Supplemental essays are important. At schools with sub-20% acceptance rates especially, they alone can be the difference between a deny and an admit.

Take this story from Ben’s time at Vanderbilt as a cautionary tale:

A prospective engineering student has an unweighted 4.0, near-perfect test scores, and extracurriculars that show both reach and impact. But none of their essays says anything about why they want to study engineering or why they want to go to Vanderbilt. Because they can’t communicate why they are a good fit, they get denied.

Unfortunately, Ben saw this situation time and again.

Sure, you could write your personal statement about how much you love engineering or what a good problem-solver you are. But doing so still doesn’t allow you to talk about why you align with the engineering options at a particular school .

Supplementals are your one chance to communicate this information with admissions officers, so use it wisely.

Types of Supplemental Essay Prompts

Are you feeling overwhelmed yet? Don’t fret. While you’ll be writing a lot of supplementals throughout your application process, you won’t necessarily have to come up with unique ideas for each of them. That’s because most supplemental essay prompts can be broken down into seven common categories: “why us,” diversity, community, academic interest, “why this major,” personal challenge, and extracurricular activities. Because there are similarities between prompts, you can reuse some of your essay ideas and content from school to school—and we have a whole post about how recycle your essays effectively. For now, let’s take a quick look at the prompt types. If you’re interested in any in particular, you can click through to our more in-depth post about each.

These prompts ask students to write an essay that explains why they want to attend a particular institution, school, or program.

Some diversity prompts ask students to write about some aspect of their background or identity that makes them diverse. Other diversity prompts ask students to write about a time they engaged with diverse perspectives.

Community prompts ask students to write about some aspect of the community they come from. Other community prompts ask how a student will contribute to the college community they’re applying to join.

Academic Interest

These prompts ask students to demonstrate intellectual curiosity by elaborating on a particular academic interest.

Why this Major

These prompts allow students to make a case for why they want to study a particular major at a particular school.

Personal Challenge

Personal challenge prompts ask students to write about a moment or period when they encountered a personal challenge. Often personal challenge prompts will encourage students to think about how they grew as a result.

Extracurricular Activities

Extracurricular activities essays ask students to discuss one of their resume items.

Okay, so there’s lots of prompt types that ask you to do different things. But no matter the supplemental prompt type you’re responding to, your supplemental essays will have some commonalities in form and function. We’ll dive into those commonalities in the coming sections.

What should a supplemental essay look like?

Because supplemental essay prompts can be more direct than personal statement prompts, students often get confused about what a supplemental essay should look like.

Let’s use a simple example prompt: “Why do you want to attend X school?”

Since the prompt is formatted in the style of a straightforward question, many students (logically) begin their essays like this:

“I want to go to X school because it is a great academic fit for me. I love the location, and the weather can’t be beat. I know I would be happy there because there are lots of things to do. I would be so excited to work with Professor Y because their research is exactly what I want to do in the future. I love the traditions on campus and can envision myself joining in them, especially the annual puppy days before finals. Overall, I think I am a good fit”

While that essay directly answers the question, it doesn’t have an engaging hook or storyline. When you write a supplemental essay that explicitly addresses the question without paying attention to style and form, it reads more as a short answer question than an actual essay.

Like a personal statement, a supplemental essay should still be an essay. Even for supplemental essays under 150 words, there should still be some kind of essay structure. The essay should begin with a hook, build up a story, and offer a brief conclusion that ties everything together.

So now that you know that your supplemental essays should still be essays rather than short answers, let’s get to the juicy stuff: strategy.

The 3 best supplemental essay strategies

As with any part of the college application process, you should consider approaching your supplemental essays with an explicit strategy from the start.

Since supplemental essays are the main way for you to signal school and academic fit, your strategy will likely revolve around deciding when and how to demonstrate your academic, social, and value-based alignment with the school in question.

Strategic supplemental writing also means balancing your narrative across your personal statement and supplementals. Planning ahead to determine what information will go where can save you a lot of trouble later on in the application process.

Strategy #1: Do strategic school research.

The first step in writing good supplemental essays is knowing how to do school research. It’s also about knowing how to use your school research effectively. In the case of supplemental essays, “school research” means a lot more than simply googling a school and pulling out a few facts and figures. Unlike the research you did when building your school list, your supplemental essay school research is a lot more intentional and targeted.

Think of supplemental school research like the final stages before buying a car. Your initial research—the school list-building research—helped you narrow down all your options to find cars with the right facts and figures for your needs. But now you need to think in terms of specifics. Looking at Car A, you see that the infotainment is perfectly suited for your music-loving needs and the 4-wheel drive will let you drive to your favorite remote hiking destinations. Car B has all the safety features you could ever ask for and has enough cargo space to go on long road trips. For each car, you can explain exactly why you and the car are a good match.

In the same way, your supplemental essays will draw attention to the specific points of connection you have with a school. After reading your supplemental essay, you want your admissions officer to say, “Wow, they really belong here.”

But the mistake most students make when doing supplemental school research is that they look up a few professors or programs that align with their interests, and they plop those brief references into their supplemental essays without actually making it clear why they’re important.

While this method does show some effort and may impress admissions officers at schools with lower acceptance rates, it won’t cut it at schools where the majority of applicants get rejected.

Let’s go over how to do supplemental school research the right way.

How to do school research

This kind of school research may seem a bit elusive. There are so many places on a school website to look that it can be overwhelming. But the key to doing successful school research isn’t about finding those little nuggets of information.

It’s about creating a cohesive story that makes it seem only logical that you be admitted.

And how do you do that?

By looking at the values the institution holds dearly and positioning yourself in clear alignment with them.

It’s easy to find an institution’s values if you know where to look. Most often, they appear in the following places:

a) The school’s motto

We’ll use Lewis and Clark College’s motto as an example. A quick Google search of “Lewis and Clark College motto” informed me that their motto, in English, is “to explore, to learn, to work together.” Right off the bat, that tells us a ton about what Lewis and Clark College values and looks for in students.

If I were to write a supplemental essay (and—surprise!—one of their supplemental essays is actually about the motto), then it’d be easy to draw from areas of my own life that represent the values of exploration, education, and teamwork.

b) The school’s 5-year plan

Schools are future-minded institutions, so they always have plans that discuss where they want to be five or ten years down the road. These plans are written by university leadership and lay out values, goals, and strategic initiatives that the institution will be devoting resources to. They can tell you a lot in a short amount of time.

c) Departmental websites

Don’t just find an interesting professor and call it quits. Take the time to go through and actually read the website for your department of interest. Look at the kinds of research professors and students are doing. Departments often have a list of where students tend to end up after they graduate, so take note. Find anything you can about what the department looks like and values.

For instance, take this press release from the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. The headline says, “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is investing nearly $12 million in four College of Engineering faculty members this fall through its prestigious program for outside-the-box thinkers .” There you go. Without even reading on, you can tell that out-of-the-box thinking is a popular characteristic among these Georgia Tech faculty members. You could then craft your supplemental essay around a time you showed out-of-the-box thinking yourself.

The beauty of this strategy is that it works no matter the kind of supplemental essay prompt you’re responding to. It is as applicable to a “diversity” or “why us” prompt as it is to an “extracurricular” one.

Setting your supplementals apart using school research

Take this example, which we sent out recently in our newsletter .

Say you’re interested in attending Johns Hopkins University to study business.

You set out to answer their supplemental prompt: Founded on a spirit of exploration and discovery, Johns Hopkins University encourages students to share their perspectives, develop their interests and pursue new experiences. Use this space to share something you’d like the admissions committee to know about you (your interests, your background, your identity or your community) and how it has shaped what you want to get out of your college experience at Hopkins. (300-400 words)

You could talk about how devoted you’ve been to DECA and mention a JHU business faculty member whom you admire. But that essay wouldn’t be memorable at all. Admissions officers have likely read hundreds of similar essays.

Instead, using your newfound school research knowledge, you start by googling JHU’s strategic plan . You keep diving deeper. You find that they have a specific initiative to engage more with their local community in Baltimore. You dive even deeper and see that part of that initiative revolves around encouraging the JHU community to shop locally .

Ah ha! You actually created a holiday market at your school and invited local vendors to participate. You brought your community together, and you helped them make the decision to buy from local businesses.

You now have a story that shows your business interests and connects seamlessly with the values at Johns Hopkins University. And it’ll lead to a supplemental essay admissions officers haven’t read before.

Okay, that is a very specific example. Remember, school research needs to be specific to you and your interests. When you are clear about your strengths and keep your own activities in mind, you can point your research towards what the school does that most clearly relates to you.

Strategy #2: Make a case for school or academic fit.

Each supplemental essay should have a specific purpose. We’ve already established this fact in this guide, but it’s worth restating. One of your application essays needs to make a case for school or academic fit. There’s no other way to slice it.

Institutions are like people. They have unique personalities, values, and preferences that attract students and community members to them. A single school will not be the right fit for every student. That’s why it’s so important to take academic and school fit into account when building your school list, and that’s why institutions factor these considerations into their admissions decisions.

What is “academic fit”?

“Academic fit” is particularly important when you’re applying to a specific major (like computer science, engineering, music, etc.). The concept is fairly straightforward.

It measures how well your academic background and interests meet the standards of a particular school or program. While academic fit includes measurements like your weighted and unweighted GPA, the level of rigor you’ve taken throughout high school, and your standardized test scores, it isn’t just about your statistics. It is also relevant to how you talk about your intellectual vitality in your essays.

This could look like showing disciplinary alignment. If you’re dead set on studying business but you’re applying to a school without a business program, for example, then you won’t have good academic fit, no matter how solid your academic record is.

It could also look like showcasing your intellectual curiosity or an academic passion. These kinds of academic values can signal to an admissions committee that you are a good fit for the program.

What is “school fit”?

“School fit” is a way to categorize how well you align with the overall vibe and intellectual community of a school. Academic fit is part of school fit, but school fit encompasses more. It’s like a friendship test. Do your personalities mesh well? Do you have similar values? Can they meet your needs and vice versa? Do your extracurricular activities align? Do you envision yourselves having a future together?

School fit is important because you don’t want to end up at a school that doesn’t align with your wants and needs across these categories. Transferring is always an option, but being mindful of school fit from the start can help you get it right the first time.

When it comes to your supplementals, signaling those intangible measures of school fit can also be one of the best tools in your application toolbox. Because they’re intangible, they’re harder to communicate. But communicating them correctly can help set you apart.

Overall, academic and school fit are application essentials. If your academic background hasn’t prepared you for a particular college environment, or if you can’t clearly communicate why you’re a good academic fit, then an admissions officer might believe that you’d be better off elsewhere. Similarly, there’s no point in applying to a school that you’d be miserable at, and there’s no point in admitting you to a school that you’d likely transfer from anyway. Keeping the concepts of “academic fit” and “school fit” front and center meets student and institutional needs.

How to show academic fit

We’ve written on Reddit about the importance of academic score in college admissions. While each institution has its own process, academic scores are usually some kind of measurement of a student’s academic success in high school, calculated based on statistics like GPA, number of rigorous classes, and standardized test scores.

Since academic scores are based on things that have already happened, you have very little control over them as you put together your application.

To a certain extent, there’s nothing you can do to overcome a low academic score. That’s why it’s important to put the right schools on your school list .

But what you do have control over is how you communicate academic fit.

Remember that your entire application should cohere to form a unique personal narrative . Your academic alignment with the programs you’re applying to is part of that narrative, and supplemental essays are a fantastic place for you to drive home why you belong in a particular program.

It’s often easiest to show academic alignment in “why us,” “why this major,” and “academic interest” supplemental essay prompts. But it is possible to accomplish with other prompts, too.

No matter the supplemental you’re writing, consider applying these tips to show academic fit.

a) Think about the academic values the admissions committee will be looking for.

You’ve already done your school research and have probably learned something about the values a school is looking for. Now you can think more specifically about what kinds of values admissions committees will be looking for in their applicants. Make a list of these values.

Here are a few values we’ve looked for as admissions officers to get you started: teamwork, creative thinking, resilience, leadership, communication, intellectual curiosity, real-world applications.

Once you have your list of values, start circling the ones that apply to you and your experiences the most. Then you’ll be able to incorporate those values into your supplemental essays.

b) Consider how your previous experiences relate to your future goals.

Another approach to showing academic fit is thinking linearly about how what you’ve done in high school relates to your future academic and career goals.

Especially with prompts that ask you to reflect on concrete experiences, taking this approach can be a great way to bridge the gap between your resume and academics. Showing an admissions officer why your background experiences make you a natural fit for a specific program can be an effective supplemental essay strategy.

Overall, remember: schools want students. When in doubt, show academic fit.

How to show school fit

How you show school fit will depend on the type of school you’re applying to. There are three main levels: the institution as a whole, individual schools or colleges, and particular majors or programs. Each level requires a different school fit focus. Let’s start by going through the types:

Level 1: The Institution

For some schools, you apply to the institution as a whole. Think liberal arts colleges or other schools that don’t require you to declare a major upon application.

Level 2: Schools & Colleges

Other schools have you apply to a college or school. Think of applications that have you choose a “college of arts and sciences” or “a school of engineering.” These are institutions within an institution, so the dynamics are a little different.

Level 3: Major

Finally, others yet will have you apply directly to the major you want to study. If you indicate the major you want to apply to, or if you’re asked to respond to a “why this major” supplemental essay prompt, then you’re likely applying directly to a major.

For each of these levels, school fit will look different because the community you’re applying to join has a different makeup. So bear those differences in mind as you consider the two following tips about aligning with school fit:

a) Write supplemental essays that connect your extracurricular activities to major or program fit.

One way to demonstrate school fit is by showing that you’ve already been doing what students at that institution do. We’ll pretend that for one of your extracurriculars, you participate in hack-a-thons.

Let’s also say that during your school research, you found that your top-choice computer science major values technical skills and diverse perspectives. Finally, we’ll also pretend that the first hack-a-thon you did was a special event intended to introduce more girls to computer science, and you found it a really empowering experience.

Using what you know about school fit, you can craft a supplemental essay about one of your hack-a-thon experiences that shows the technical skills and diverse perspective that you bring to the table. Writing your essay in a way that highlights a convergence of your background with their offerings is exactly what your supplementals need to do.

b) Write supplemental essays around community values.

Especially if you’re applying to an institution as a whole, you can also consider incorporating institutional values into your supplementals. These values, taken from your school research, don’t necessarily have to be about academics.

Let’s return to our Johns Hopkins example about organizing a holiday market to encourage students to shop at local businesses. That example seamlessly demonstrates school fit because it hinges on values the student shares with the institution. While the example may gesture towards academic fit because a holiday market is inherently related to business, it doesn’t do so explicitly. The focus is more on the underlying community values.

All this talk about fit is also to say that none of your applications will look exactly the same. Because institutions have different makeups and expectations, the shape your application narrative takes will vary from institution to institution.

Strategy #3: Highlight your strengths.

Every college essay you write should be rooted in a strength.

If you’ve read any of our other guides or blog posts , you’ve likely seen this statement before.

We say it again and again because it’s true. And very important.

Admissions officers don’t admit students at random. They admit students who will be good additions to their community. All communities need a range of people and personalities—strengths, if you will.

To help admissions officers know how you’ll add to their campus, it’s critical that you tell them what your strengths are.

That doesn’t mean literally writing, “I am a strong critical thinker.”

What it does mean is writing essays that demonstrate positive characteristics about yourself.

Recall that application strengths can include things like critical thinking, open-mindedness, problem-solving skills, a passion for justice, artistry, and more. These kinds of traits are what you want your admissions officer to learn about you from any piece of writing you submit with your application.

We’ve already covered how to write strengths-based personal statements in our college essay writing guide .

But when you’re juggling a personal statement and several supplemental essays, it can be tricky to balance your strengths in an authentic way.

Juggling Your Strengths

You don’t want all your essays to talk about the same strength. You also don’t want your strengths to seem disparate or unrelated. And you really don’t want to come across as braggadocious.

It’s therefore important that your essays all tie together to form a cohesive application narrative .

So writing strengths-based supplementals requires a certain kind of balancing act.

Picture your college application narrative as a seesaw (stick with me for a second—I promise this is going somewhere). Imagine that your personal statement is the base of the seesaw. Without anything else on the seesaw, it is you in your most genuine, balanced form. It is the fulcrum upon which your entire application narrative rests. But it’s not yet complete. It’s limited in how much information it actually reveals about you.

Now imagine that you add in all your application data—your transcript, test scores, activities list, and letters of recommendation. We get more information, but the application data are heavy, weighing it down on one side. Your application narrative becomes slightly off-kilter. We see the strengths you describe in your personal statement, but they’ve become filtered through the lens of your application data.

Finally, we add your supplemental essays to the other side. They stitch together your personal statement and data to create a roundedness to your application narrative. They restore balance.

That means that the strengths you write about in your supplemental essays have to complement those in your personal statement. And the strengths in both have to make sense alongside your application data.

While your personal statement should be about a core strength, your supplemental essays should be about different strengths that support and cohere with your personal statement. It’s all about how you disperse your strengths across your essays. You want to show depth AND diversity.

Here’s an example breakdown of strengths:

a) Personal statement: problem-solving skills

b) Supplemental 1: passion for justice

c) Supplemental 2: teamwork

Without even reading the corresponding essays, we get a sense of who this person is by their strengths alone. We can envision them primarily as a problem-solver, but we also see that they use their skills to pursue justice. And we understand that they are someone who does all these things alongside others rather than as a lone wolf.

Just one of these strengths alone wouldn’t give the whole picture. It’s about finding the right mix of breadth, depth, and balance.

How to organize your supplemental essays

There are countless spreadsheets out there that can help you track and organize your applications and supplemental essays. It’s a good idea to browse through a few of them and see what format works best for you.

But we believe that one of the most efficient ways to organize your supplemental essays is to categorize them by prompt type.

Sorting your essays by prompt will allow you to group similar prompts together. That means you’ll have an easier time seeing where there’s overlap between essays, which will allow you to reuse ideas or snippets across your applications to write them more efficiently. (Using the same material for multiple supplemental essays is allowed, but there’s a right and wrong way to do it. We have a whole post on recycling your supplemental essays .)

Key Takeaways

There you have it! Everything you need to know about writing a supplemental essay. If you haven’t already, check out our mini-guides that cover the most popular supplemental essay prompts. You’ll find even more specific strategies and examples to guide you on your supplemental essay writing journey.

If you want to see some outstanding supplemental essay examples before you get started, head on over to our college essay examples .

When you're ready, grab your essay tracker and give your supplementals a go. If you need any more guidance, our Essay Academy program is chock-full of more strategies, insights, and examples from our team of admissions professionals.

Interested in more admissions insights? Read our next post , where we go behind the admissions curtain to reveal how admissions offices actually process tens of thousands of applications.

Happy writing!

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Everything You Need To Know About The Supplemental Essays

What Is Supplemental Essay?

How to Write Supplemental Essays

Supplemental Essay Questions

Mistakes to Avoid

supplemental-essays-for-each-university

Besides the Coalition App or Common App essay, universities generally ask for supplemental essays specific to that university. These supplemental essays are crucial for a stand-out application, and you'll want yours to be impressive.

So, what is a supplemental essay? Why is it important? And more importantly, how do you go about writing one? Let's dive deep into these questions and explore everything you need to know about supplemental essays!

What Is a Supplemental Essay?

A supplemental essay is an additional written response required by many colleges and universities as part of the application process, in addition to the Coalition App or Common App essay .

Generally, colleges will have their own prompts that applicants answer to create multiple short essays.

These essays are submitted in addition to the main essay with your Coalition or Common Application . The purpose of these essays is to provide the admissions committee with more insight into your personality, interests, and suitability for their student body and campus.

How To Write a Good Supplemental Essay

While different universities might have different criteria or might look for different things in your essay, there are common guidelines to follow when writing a supplemental essay.

1. Prepare Before You Write

Review the application requirements and prompts from every university you’re considering attending.
Think about each topic and how it might relate to your background or a specific experience in your life.
Rather than trying to fit your entire life story into the essay, consider a period, simple event, or piece of your childhood that gives the reader thoughtful insight into who you are as a person.

If you still can’t decide on an angle, consider asking others what they think makes you stand out or what’s unique about your personality or interests. That might spark a new idea or, at a minimum, get you thinking about the topics with a fresh perspective.

2. Start Brainstorming Your Supplemental Essay

If you’re still unsure how to start writing your college essay, just start writing. Don’t think, just write. It doesn’t even have to be the first draft. You’re just dumping ideas on a page, hoping a brilliant thought will jump off. Some of the best work starts this way!

3. Format Your Supplemental Essay

Generally, there’s no right or wrong way to format your college application essay , but there are common tried and true practices. Review your target university’s requirements and essay examples to see how successful applicants formatted their essays.

You’ve written plenty of papers over the years. Think about your writing process. How did you start those essays? Did you create an outline or just start writing? Did you start with a hook or write it at the end?

4. Don’t Be Afraid of a Common Topic

College essays have been around for decades. Choosing a unique topic is not only intimidating but extremely difficult. Instead of selecting a unique topic, pick one that excites you. As you read a topic, are you forming the essay in your head? Does a specific experience or hobby come to mind? Then, that’s your topic!

Many applicants who think they have to choose a unique topic will miss the opportunity to showcase how they think and what they value because they are trying to write too “outside the box.” Your essay should be thoughtful and tell the reader more about YOU.

5. Use Your Authentic Voice

Use an authentic, conversational voice in your college application essay rather than using the academic voice you used on many of your high school papers.

Don’t try to impress the admissions officers with big words and avoid derogatory words and cliche phrases. Be you. That’s what they want to read.

6. Word Count Matters, But It’s Not All that Matters

Some applicants feel like they need to use every word available. Others struggle to meet the minimum word count requirements. Most experts agree that the best college essays are about 500 words.

If you’re close to that number and satisfied with your essay, stop writing. Admissions officers can tell if you’re adding fluff to fill space or giving minimal effort to your essay.

7. Edit and Edit Again

Every word counts when you only have 250-600 words. It’s important to be concise, coherent, and honest in your writing. That doesn’t always happen in the first draft.

Once you’re confident with your essay, try to find an expert to edit it. Ask a teacher, school counselor, or someone with an advanced degree to review the piece. Have someone check it first for content. They should make sure the essay doesn’t confuse them and they don’t have questions.

A great way to perfect your essay is by having an expert take a look at it. Former admissions officers of top universities work with Crimson to ensure our students submit stand-out essays.

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The Different Types of Supplemental Essay Questions

Broadly speaking, there are eight main supplemental essay types . Below we explore these types AND offer some Top Tips on how to answer them!

1. The "Why us? / Why you?" Question

For a "why us" prompt, your focus should be on

What does the school offer?
How does it align with your interests, passions, and values?

The college is asking you: “Why are you choosing us?” For a "why you" essay, your focus should be on:

Your interests, passions, and values
How they align with the school’s offerings. The college is asking you: “Why should we choose you?”

How To Answer This Question?

The ‘Why us’ / ‘Why you’ questions are two sides of the same coin, but the order in which you present the items, and the amount of the essay you spend on them is reversed for each.

Ultimately, your goal with this essay should be to sincerely, authentically, and excitedly tell admissions committees what you will get out of going to their school in particular, and what you will contribute to their school as a student there.

Which specific opportunities will you take advantage of? How will you bring your skills and past experiences to bear as a leader and collaborator on their campus?

Top 3 "Why This School?" Essay Tips

2. The Academic Interest Essay

These essays ask you to explain your intended choice of major, or if you don’t have one, your academic interests in general. They are typically short answer questions — with universities often asking for responses in 150–250 words.

When answering this prompt you must address three questions:

Why you want to study your elected future major (or if you are undecided, you’ll need to write about your primary areas of academic interest)?
What your your goals are for the future?
How pursuing this course of study will help you to achieve them?

You don’t need to know exactly what you plan to do in the future, but it’ll make your essay a lot stronger to have a few ideas and try to develop those ideas with a bit of detail!

3. Describe an Extracurricular

Tell us about an extracurricular activity you’re involved in and how it has shaped you. Once again these questions normally ask for a 150–250 word response. In these essays you explore one of your extracurriculars in greater depth.

In this essay, it’s more important to talk about something that matters to you than it is to talk about something that is impressive. With this question, admissions officers want to know

Which item on your activities list is most important to you, and why?
What is something about your participation in that activity that we can’t learn elsewhere on your application?
What you have learned through your experience doing that activity that you can take into the future?
How this extracurricular positively impacts others and/or embodies your values?

4. The Meaning of Community

Colleges may word these questions somewhat like this: “Our college campus is all about community and valuing a diverse group of people. In what ways do you value community? How have you contributed to communities in the past? What would you bring to our community?”

As you can see, in this case you need to narrow it down to what you would bring to this specific university’s community.

In asking this question, admissions officers are trying to find out: What in particular does our school have to offer that you’d like to get involved in as a future student? And what will you contribute or bring to the table as a student on our campus?

In answering these questions you must show how your past experience as part of a community informs what you’ll contribute.

My Brown Supplemental Essay

5. The Second Common App Essay

These essays can vary in content just like the Common App essay , and they are similar in length (500-650 words). They might ask you to write about

A person who has inspired you
An experience that has shaped how you approach the world
A quote that prompts you to share your own personal interpretations and perspectives

This supplemental essay type typically asks you to write a 500–650 word piece using a usually broad prompt to guide your answer. Writing this essay is like writing a second Common App essay — but you must be sure to pick a new topic that explores a new area of your past, interests, personality or attributes.

6. Short Takes

Some colleges ask you to provide brief descriptions of yourself or things you like in 100 words or less — sometimes without even using complete sentences. They might ask for

What two adjectives your friends would use to describe you?
Your favorite word?
What your favorite snack is?
Who (living or dead) would you like to ask a question to, and what would you ask them?
If you were teaching a class, what it’d be called?

These short answer questions can be hard to tackle! Top tips include: answer the question, but don’t repeat it, consider the underlying message you are sending, explain your answer and be specific!

7. The Write a Letter to Your Future Roommate Prompt

This prompt is pretty self-explanatory, with the aim of it being for admissions officers to gauge what you will bring to campus as an enthusiastic, passionate, intellectual and empathetic member of the college community.

They can be creative, humorous, reflective, inspirational — whatever theme and style reflects your personality best.

These questions provide a great opportunity to show what you will bring to campus on a micro level. Will you be the ball of energy that exudes positivity, or the reflective listener who is always there to lend a helping hand?

This question must be handled with honesty and reflect a side of yourself that will provide a true insight into to who you are beyond the classroom.

8. Miscellaneous Prompts

These are the creative or otherwise unusual prompts :

Design a major
Design a class
What do you do for fun?”
Choose an image that represents you
What gets you excited about learning?

They typically vary in length and style. While not common, they can be great fun for applicants to respond to!

These questions vary, but some basic tips include: be personal (go deep!), be humble (no bragging!), be intellectually curious (show your love of learning), and be genuine (no platitudes or clichés).

3 Mistakes To Avoid in Your Supplemental Essay

1. repeating information.

You’ve already told admissions officers about your grades , test scores, extracurricular activities , and awards. Give them new information.

Tell them something they don’t already know. They want to see what kind of student you will be and how you will contribute to their campus community.

2. Starting With a Dull Sentence

If you start your essay by explaining what it will be about, you’ve already lost your audience. The first sentence is the best opportunity to grab the reader’s attention. Jump right in! They’ll be excited to be part of the journey.

3. Being perfect

The real you isn’t perfect, so why would the person in your essay be perfect? Your essay is about a complicated person who makes mistakes and overcomes adversity. Colleges want to see the authentic, flawed, hopeful, and determined YOU!

What Are the Supplemental Essays for Each University?

To learn more about each university’s Supplemental Essay prompts and how to answer them, check out our blogs, providing you with expert tips and strategies on how to answer them!

Brown Supplemental Essay
U Chicago Supplemental Essay
Columbia Supplemental Essay
Cornell Supplemental Essay
Dartmouth Supplemental Essay
Duke Supplemental Essay
Harvard Supplemental Essay
MIT Supplemental Essay
U Michigan Supplemental Essay
Northwestern Supplemental Essay
Penn Supplemental Essay
Princeton Supplemental Essay
Stanford Supplemental Essay
USC Supplemental Essay
Yale Supplemental Essay

Final Thoughts

These tips are the foundation for writing great supplemental essays that enhance your college applications. However, these essays are only one piece of the package you’ll deliver when you click "‘submit." To learn how Crimson can help you tick all the boxes for a strong college application, click the link below and schedule a free one-hour consultation with one of our academic advisors .

What Makes Crimson Different

About the Contributor

Crimson Education Strategists

Our Crimson strategists are top graduates from the world's most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford, and Cambridge. They bring their firsthand experience and deep insights to stay ahead of the curve in college admissions, providing you with the most up-to-date strategies for success.

How to format & structure your college application essay.

Big Changes to the UCAS Personal Statement: What You Need to Know

10 Great Common App Essay Examples From Accepted Students

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, common app essay vs supplement: which carries more weight.

Hey everyone, stressing a bit here. I've been working on my Common App essay and it’s coming along, but I just started looking at the supplements for the schools on my list. So, I gotta know, how important are those supplements compared to my main personal statement? Should I be putting just as much effort into those? Thanks!

The short answer is that both are crucial components of your application, as they play different roles in creating a comprehensive picture of who you are. For most schools, the Common App essay is a chance to see your personality and values at a high level. It's the only essay every college you apply to through the Common App will see, which is why it's so important. Since you're not catering your response to any one school or group of schools, what you say is entirely up to you, and that freedom means schools can learn a lot about you based on what you choose to include.

Supplements, on the other hand, are a way for colleges to gauge your interest in their specific institution and to determine how you might fit into their community. While there are certain values like intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, and altruism that all colleges value, each school also has its own set of criteria that it looks for in applicants, which can vary slightly from one institution to another.

Ideally, you should put equal effort into crafting both your Common App essay and your supplemental essays. You also want to make sure you aren't repeating yourself in your responses—if you wrote your Common App essay about volunteering at your local animal shelter, and you have to write a supplement about an extracurricular activity, you should probably write about something else, so that admissions officers learn something completely new about you from your response.

If you want help with any school's particular supplemental essays, you can check out CollegeVine's essay breakdowns on our blog. Best of 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.

What are your chances of acceptance?

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Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write the Most Common Supplemental College Essays: A Complete Guide

Note: This post focuses on supplemental essays. If you want advice on the Common App prompts, check out our guide to the Common App essays .

Your grades are in, your test scores have been sent, and recommendation letters have been uploaded…but there’s one last component of your college applications left: the essays. For many students, essays are the final and most daunting hurdle to clear before hitting submit.

Your essays, however, are your opportunity to tell admissions officers how you want them to remember you. Maybe you didn’t do so well on the SAT, or maybe you got a lower grade than you hoped for in Honors Chemistry, but you can’t change your grades or scores.

The essays, however, are entirely in your control. There is so much freedom to tell your story and what makes you unique. Our mission at CollegeVine is to make the essay-writing as stress-free as possible. Read on for our tips and tricks on writing a college essay that will give you the best chance at getting that thick envelope!

Content overview:

Why this college?
Why this major?
Elaborate on an extracurricular activity or work experience.
Discuss a community you belong to that has impacted who you are today.
Crafting the essay
Avoiding pitfalls

Want to learn more about Supplemental Essays? Check out one of our popular recorded live streams on this topic.

Common Types of College Essays

Colleges will find a hundred different ways to ask a question, but most of the time, the prompt boils down to one of the following common essay themes.

Common Essay #1: Why this college?

Students’ most common mistake on a “Why this college?” essay is lack of specificity; in particular, some students will list attributes that can apply to multiple schools, which is what you want to avoid at all costs.

When it comes to a “Why this college?” essay, you need to discuss qualities and programs specific to that school. It is not enough to merely list or name-drop, however. Instead, talk about why this item is important to you. Here’s how this plays out:

What not to do:

I want to go to the University of Southern California because it is a highly ranked school in Los Angeles. In addition, I like its Cosmic Writers Club, as well as the Incubate USC program. I am especially excited about the abundant film resources.

Why the previous response doesn’t work:

There are many reasons you want to avoid a response like this. Let’s start with the first sentence: replace the school’s name with UCLA and the accuracy doesn’t suffer. What this means is that the sentence is not specific enough to USC. In addition, you never want to state, or even imply, that you’re applying to a school due to prestige or ranking.

The exception for the previous rule is if a school is ranked highly for a specific program of interest. For example, if you want to pursue creative writing and a school has the number one creative writing program in the country, you can mention this because it is a quality specific to that school. A school’s overall prestige, however, should not be mentioned in your essay.

Why else doesn’t this response work? Let’s look at the second sentence. The writer does well to mention specific programs within USC. However, the response fails to discuss why they liked these programs or how they would benefit from having access to them.

What to write instead:

As someone with a lasting love for writing and a blossoming passion for entrepreneurship, I was so excited to find a large urban school like the University of Southern California that would give me the resources to pursue both. From classes with award-winning authors—amongst them Professor T. Boyle, whose environmental fiction works are similar to those I hope to someday publish—to clubs like the Cosmic Writers Club, which unites author hopefuls, USC offers more resources than I could ever exhaust in my journey to publish my first book.

On the business side, USC is known for fostering the type of creativity and innovation needed in pursuing start-ups. In particular, I was so excited to learn of the Incubate USC program, a unique mothership of ideas that nurtures the creativity of students. With the help of this program, I would be able to pursue my growing interest in the world of start-up ventures.

Why the previous response works:

This response not only mentions programs and resources specific to USC, but it shows how the student would take advantage of these opportunities. In addition, this response portrays passion and ambition, infusing elements of the student’s personality while still staying focused on answering the prompt.

Other things to keep in mind:

The first time you say the school’s name, you should write it out. After that, you can abbreviate.
Avoid writing what every other applicant is going to write. For example, every NYU applicant is going to mention NYU’s location in New York City. Unless you have a unique twist on this, you should skip it.
Don’t mention frivolous things like dorms or dining halls. Your reasons for liking a school should be more substantial.
Do your research. For example, don’t say you’ve always wanted to go to a city if you’re writing an essay for a rural school.
Do not copy and paste your “Why this college?” essay and simply change the school name. Many non-Harvard admissions officers have received essays from students about why they want to go to Harvard. If your “Why this college?” essay is so general that you can copy and paste it, your reasoning will not impress admissions officers.

For more tips on writing this essay, see our complete guide to the “Why this college?” essay , including a real sample essay.

Common Essay #2: Why this major?

One of the most important things to remember is that admissions officers are not looking for a résumé. This is not to say you can’t discuss your activities and how they culminated a passion for a specific major. The challenge, however, is to use these activities to tell a story rather than a mere list of achievements.

How do you do this? Share your thought processes. Many times it is the thoughts surrounding an activity more than the activity itself that will show the reader your journey to choosing a major.

Other tips:

Don’t ever say that your reason for choosing a major is money-making potential. If you want to mention life beyond college, then talk about how this major will help you achieve your dreams. If your dream is to produce a feature-length film and a film major will help you get there, say that. But don’t say your dream is to be a rich film producer.
Undeclared? That’s totally okay. Just be sure to list a couple potential majors, and explain your interest in those. Under no circumstances should you say you have absolutely no idea, as that will make you look like you don’t care. For more tips, see our post on how to write the “Why this major?” essay if you’re undecided .

For more tips on writing this essay, see our complete guide to the “Why this major?” essay , including a real sample essay.

Common Essay 3: Elaborate on an extracurricular activity or work experience.

Is there an activity or work experience in your application that you have more to say about? Maybe there’s a story behind it that you want to tell. Some questions to consider are:

How did you become interested in this extracurricular?
What is your role in the activity or work experience?
Why do you do it?
Have you experienced growth within the activity over time?

There are endless angles you can pursue here, but your essay should, in short, show your motivation behind participating in a certain activity or job.

What you don’t want to do, however, is simply restate something that’s been said elsewhere. If you have already spotlighted an activity in another essay for a given college, don’t write about the same activity. Your goal here is to share new information and your breadth of experiences.

As with the “Why Major?” prompt, it is more powerful to share a story with the reader rather than to detail the activity itself.

For more tips on writing this essay, see our complete guide to the Extracurricular Activity essay , including a real sample essay.

Common Essay 4: Discuss a community you belong to that has impacted who you are today.

“Community” can mean many things, so there are many possible approaches to this prompt. Some applicants respond with a community they’re linked to through culture, and others through sports or a club.

One thing you can emphasize is personal growth—or other aspects of who you are as a person—that has come from belonging to this community. The majority of the essay should, in fact, center around how being part of this group has changed or impacted who you are as a person.

What to avoid:

Do not discriminate against other communities in your response.
Try not to talk about your community in broad terms, but instead focus on your place within this community.
Avoid using the essay as a chance to complain. If you choose to talk about challenges in a certain community, find a way to give your essay a sense of resolution. This can consist even of talking about how you’ve grown as a person or learned how to confront these obstacles in a productive way.

Writing the Essay

Phase 1: ideation.

Highlights of this section:

Thinking of an idea
Portraying individuality
Staying true to yourself
General tips and tricks

Now that you’re familiar with some of the most common types of essay prompts, let’s dive into the ideation process. Here are some questions that it’s good to ask yourself when you’re just starting out, particularly when the prompt deviates from the more straightforward archetypes above:

What makes you unique?
What is your story?
Is there something you weren’t able to say in your application that you think admissions officers should know?
Did you mention something earlier in your application that you want to elaborate on?

Remember that your essays, and application in general, should read like a portfolio in which all components are complementary without being redundant. If the application is like a drawing, then the essays should contribute to creating one coherent image without sketching the same line more than once or leaving gaps in the drawing.

Don’t shy away from being quirky! The more you present yourself as your own unique person, the more likely the admissions officer is to remember you. Take the following cases, for instance:

A football player who scores a winning touchdown in the last five seconds of the game.
A football player who knits scarves for residents of a retirement home in his free time.

In the first case, telling this story doesn’t do anything to differentiate this football player from others. However, the second story portrays a unique student with two interests the reader might not otherwise have paired together. Individuality is the goal here.

Of course, don’t exaggerate , lie, or pretend to be someone you’re not. In particular, don’t write something just because you think the admissions officer wants to hear it. They have read enough applications to separate the genuine voices from the insincere. As such, your only job is to put your true self on the page!

Here are some other things to keep in mind while brainstorming college essay topics:

Narratives will always be more successful because they engage the reader emotionally. They are also an easy way to demonstrate how you’ve changed and grown over time.
If you have already emphasized something in your application, don’t dedicate an essay to it unless can share an entirely new perspective. When in doubt, choose a new topic.
Your essay doesn’t have to be about something rare and incredible. You don’t have to have started a company or traveled the world to write a solid essay. In fact, some of the strongest essays have taken a simple, perhaps even everyday occurrence, and portrayed it in a beautiful way that shows a unique way of thinking.
Be sure to answer all aspects of the prompt while still giving the reader insight into who you are. It’s very easy to speak about some topics in third-person or broad terms (example: “What is your idea of success?”). Don’t do this. Instead, find a way to link the prompt to your own life.

Overall, think of the essays as a way to let the admissions officer get to know you on a personal level. Humanize yourself.

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Phase 2: Crafting the Essay

Show, don’t tell.
Perfecting the first and last sentence
What does the essay say about me?

You have likely heard this next tip a hundred times throughout high school, but it’s vital to writing a strong essay: show, don’t tell . The whole point of essays is to give insight into who you are and how you think. Can you effectively do that if you’re merely listing off things that happened? Nope. Let’s take a lot at two examples:

An example of telling: The cat ran out the door, and I got scared.
An example of showing: The doorbell rang, accompanied by the creak of the mailbox as the mailman slipped the day’s envelopes inside. I ran downstairs and threw the door open, knowing today was the day I was going to hear back. My excitement made me oblivious, though, and it wasn’t until I saw a blur of dark fur dash through the open door that I realized my mistake.

The second example takes the facts and turns it into a story. It gives the reader a sense of anticipation as well as a character to identify with and root for. That’s what “show, don’t tell” does for your essay.

Now let’s talk about the two most important parts of your essay: the first sentence and the last sentence.

Your first sentence’s job is to hook the reader. Aim for a first sentence that surprises, even slightly jars, the reader to wake them up and get their full focus on your essay. Here are some examples:

It wasn’t supposed to be blue.
Was the car meant to sound like that?

In both cases, the writer has intentionally withheld information, providing just enough to leave the reader wanting to know the rest of the story. What isn’t supposed to be blue? What happens next?

As for the last sentence, its job is to resolve the essay, leaving the reader with a sense of peace and finality. Give the reader one last great impression to remember you by. Here’s an example:

“I’ve learned to hold my failures close; not so close that they burden me, per say, but just

close enough that they can guide me as I journey onward.”

This sentence works because it gives the reader a sense that, though the story continues on in the form of the narrator’s ongoing journey, the story on the page has been resolved. It feels peaceful.

Now then, after you’ve completed your first draft, the next thing you want to do is ask yourself the following question : What three things about me can the reader get from reading this essay? If you’re having trouble answering this question, then the essay needs to share more about you. Otherwise, you’re ready for revision!

Phase 3: Revision

Careless errors
Staying under the word limit
Getting a second opinion

You’ve done the hard work. You came up with a brilliant idea and poured your heart and soul into the writing. Now comes the tedious part: revision.

Most importantly, college essays need to be absolutely devoid of grammatical or spelling mistakes . You don’t want to give your admissions officer the impression that you didn’t care enough to proofread, especially after all of your hard work.

Another aspect that tends to frustrate students is the word limit. If you’ve made it under the word limit, great! If not, here are some methods of cutting down.

Example: In visiting your campus, it occurred to me that the method with which you schedule your classes is ideal because…
This can be cut down to: The way you schedule your classes is ideal because…
Most times phrases such as “I think,” “I believe,” “it seems,” and other similar wording is not necessary and simply takes up extra space. Use your judgement, but generally, these phrases get the boot.
Keep an eye out for the word “that.” This can almost always be cut.
If you use a long hyphen (—), no space is needed between words. This will bring your word count down. Don’t get too hyphen happy, though!

If the above tips are not enough to get you below the word limit, you may need to remove entire paragraphs. If a paragraph does not drive the story forward, or is unnecessary in understanding the progression of the story, you may want to remove it.

Once your essay is mistake-free and below the word limit, your next task is to send it to at least three trusted individuals. Ask them the following questions to guide their suggestions:

Does it make sense?
Does it sound like me?
What does it say about me? (Check that this aligns with what you want it to say about you).

Take note of their responses and decide what changes you want to implement. Be receptive, but remember to stay true to yourself and your vision.

Avoiding Pitfalls:

Avoid discussion of taboo subjects or things that can be perceived as controversial. Everyone is entitled to their own views, but you don’t want to chance saying something controversial that your reader might disagree with.
Never appear discriminatory in any way. Colleges tend to be vastly left-wing and progressive.
Don’t turn in work that isn’t your own. When does accepting another person’s edits become plagiarism? If they are rewriting entire sentences in their own words, it is no longer your own work.
Avoid clichés! It is okay to write about a common experience (like a sports injury or service trip), but only if you have a unique take on them. Don’t write on a popular topic if you will simply describe the same lesson that everyone else learned.
Don’t write your essay directly into the application text box or it may not save your work. Write it in a separate document and copy and paste it later. Then, double check that the format is correct.

At the end of the day, your essays should just leave the reader thinking: I want to have a conversation with this student. You want to show that you’re an multifaceted, mature person with an interesting story to tell. At CollegeVine, we’re rooting for you all the way—go get writing!

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

Supplemental Essay Guides from College Essay Guy

Are you looking for some extra guidance on your supplemental essays? Look no further! In this blog post, we'll explore College Essay Guy's incredible (and free) Supplemental Essay Guides!

Whether you're applying to a West Coast liberal arts school, an East Coast STEM college, or any college in between, you'll love these supplemental essay guides. Our partners at College Essay Guy have created school-specific crash courses which include that school's prompts, tips for writing your best response, and detailed examples with analysis of each prompt.

Here's what you'll find in this blog post:

What is a supplemental essay? 🤔

Why are supplemental essays important💡, how do i write my supplemental essays ✏️, looking for more college essay help 📝.

Supplemental Essay Guides from College Essay Guy

As College Essay Guy explains , supplemental essays are "additional pieces of writing required by many highly-selective universities." These essays are different from your personal statement and focus on a prompt that is specific to that college. For example, a college may ask how you would engage in their community if admitted or why you want to study at their college specifically . Or they might ask you to share something that wouldn't be gleaned from the rest of your application: like sharing an unusual talent , a time you felt empowered or on top of the world , or what piece of technology you'd want to show a historical figure .

With college applications, making a personal connection is key. These supplemental essays help add personality and unique context to your application that can further the connection between you and a reader! Your response to prompts like those above can also allow colleges to see how you and the school fit together (and whether you've actually done your research to find out how and why you fit together), and also get a clearer sense of who you are and what you value.

Many colleges will encourage you to have fun with your supplemental essays and to use them as an opportunity to take a risk, be creative, or get a little vulnerable.

CEG has you covered! Take a look at their Supplemental Essay Guides for a breakdown of 70+ colleges' prompts, each with examples from past students, tips and analysis for your own essays, and more!

Are you looking for that unique twist to make your college essay stand out? It might actually be in your niche laptop stickers or celeb fandom! In our podcast episode, "How The 'Little Things' Make Your College Essay Stand Out," we discuss how the little things in your life can be essay inspiration, and small tweaks to make your essay really stand out.

Our guest, Tom Campbell, is a Community Manager with the College Essay Guy Team . With years of admissions experience at Pomona College and College of the Holy Cross, Tom brings valuable experience and shares insider insights that could make a huge difference in your college essay! Here is a preview of a few of the College Essay Guy resources we talk about in the episode: Brainstorming Exercises

The Values Exercise in the episode (at 12:06 )
Essence Objects Exercises in the episode (at 13:51 )
Includes the Laptop Sticker and iTaylor examples from the episode (at 15:17 and 20:58 )

How to Structure Your Essay

Overview of Narrative and Montage paths from the episode (at 23:20)

Social Resources

Join the College Essay Guy Students-Only Discord
Join the College Essay Guy Parent Community

For more advice on all things high school, college applications, and more, follow us on Instagram ( @scoirinc )! See you next time for more college application advice! ☺️

The links included on this page are sponsored, and Scoir will receive a small commission if you choose to purchase.

This article was originally published on May 30, 2023. It was updated on June 25, 2024 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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College Application

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.

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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Succeeding With Your College Supplemental Essays: Everything You Need to Know

Padya Paramita

May 25, 2021

College applicants often underestimate the importance of supplemental essays and mistakenly put them off until the last minute. However, you should know that they make up a crucial component of your application. Different colleges have various characteristics that they look for in incoming students and supplemental essays are often what they use to determine a good fit. So, don’t underestimate the prompts for college supplemental essays that await you. To help guide you through how to navigate these essays, I’ve outlined why they’re important, the difference between personal statement and supplemental essays, and the categories of common examples of schools that use them, and tips for students to maximize their chance of receiving an acceptance letter.

Why are College Supplemental Essays Important?

College supplemental essays matter because top universities and colleges care a lot about the idea of “fit”. Fit indicates whether you are the kind of student that will work well in a particular college community. Different schools have different characters, different personality types that they’re looking for, different kinds of ways they’re involved in certain activities. The most important portion for a school to know if you are or aren’t a fit for their community are your supplemental essays. Responding to the questions carefully and making sure you’re answering what they’re asking and showing your personality through those supplements can really make a difference in convincing a top school that you’re a right fit for them.

Factors such as academics and test scores are just the foundation of your profile. This is why they consider fit—are you the right kind of student for them or could they picture you more at a different university? Therefore you need to use college supplemental essays to convince them that you’ll take advantage of their resources and that you’re the kind of student they want. College admissions are increasingly competitive, and it’s not just about being perfect. Fit can outweigh your test scores and grades—of course, those are important too—but it’s also important that you address how much you fit the school.

Personal Statement vs Supplemental Essays

When it comes to the personal statement, it doesn’t matter how much of the prompt you address. In the Common App , for example, the last prompt says that you can write an essay on a topic of your choice. The prompts themselves give you indications that the personal statement is looking for a story about you, something with an emotional arc, a transformation in you, or a big learning moment for you.

The college supplemental essays on the other hand can range dramatically from personal writing to academic writing or analytic writing. Some supplements ask you to be very specific about your impact through a certain extracurricular or specific research that you’ve done. Unlike in the personal statement, you don’t need to tell a story that shows your personality in some way. Instead, you can be focused on providing the concrete information that they’re looking for. One clue to that is how long is the supplemental essay that you’re writing. Some supplemental essays are relatively short. Some of them have prompts where they only give you 35 words to respond, or 200 characters, which is much shorter compared to the personal statement.

In asking for short essays, colleges just want specificity. They just want creative, unique answers different from what other students have written. But they don’t need you to tell the story the same way as the personal statement. Then, on the flip side, if you’re dealing with a longer supplemental essay asking you to expand on a longer extracurricular activity, for example, you are going to have to be specific on your experiences and what you’ve done, and why you’ve done it. So, your personality should still come through in your college supplemental essays . But many of them are much more specifically focused than the personal statement, in which it’s really fine to tell any story close to you, whereas for the supplements you need to look closely at the kind of additional information they’re looking for about you as an applicant.

No matter what you write for either, you don’t want to repeat yourself. They are called supplemental essays for a reason. They should contain new information and provide a broader picture of you.

Can You Reuse College Supplemental Essays Across Schools?

Yes, but do it carefully! Reusing essays can save you time and energy. If you reuse material, make sure to do it strategically, and make sure what you’re reusing fits the prompt. Students should not force an essay in there that doesn’t really fit just because they already have it written. It is really important that the supplemental essay answer you provide does answer every part of the prompt.

The “why school” prompts for college supplemental essays specifically are phrased in a lot of different ways but are essentially asking you to explain why you’re applying to the school, what resources that school has that fit you, why you’re interested in those things. Those essays can be reused across schools, but all of the specific examples need to change. Schools can tell if the things you’ve provided in the “why school” essay are generic. If it’s relevant to every single school, you’re doing it wrong. If there’s information that’s easily found on the first page of the school’s website you’re doing it wrong. The “why school” essay needs to include information that’s unique to that school. So, write about names of classes, names of professors, names of programs, extracurricular activities, specific things that only exist in that school that you’d take advantage of and why.

Common Supplemental Prompts and How to Answer Them

Why school essays:.

The most common type of college supplemental essays is the “why school” essay. Let’s take a look at how different colleges frame this question this year.

Barnard College: What factors influenced your decision to apply to Barnard College and why do you think the College would be a good match for you? [Max. 300 words]

Tufts University: Which aspects of the Tufts undergraduate experience prompt your application? In short, Why Tufts?’ [100-150 words]

Northwestern University : Other parts of your application give us a sense for how you might contribute to Northwestern. But we also want to consider how Northwestern will contribute to your interests and goals. In 300 words or less, help us understand what aspects of Northwestern appeal most to you, and how you'll make use of specific resources and opportunities here.

For any of these prompts, make sure you’ve conducted your research! Explore the detailed requirements, courses, faculty, and resources available to undergraduates and see how they align with your profile and interests. Emphasize your “demonstrated interest” in the school—drive home that you’re the right fit for this college and vice versa. You might explain how well you understand the mission or educational philosophy of the school or program. You must focus on how one or two particular aspects of the college suit you. Be as specific as possible and make sure that you show your enthusiasm.

Why Major Essays:

Next, we have the “why major” essays. For prompts such as these, you must prioritize clarity and precision when explaining your interest and background that make you a strong candidate for your intended major, as well as detailed knowledge of the school and its programs. Some example essay questions are:

University of Illinois: Please provide an essay that explains why you chose your intended program of study. What interests you the most about this major? Please be specific - those evaluating these essays are highly interested in your response. If Undecided, what areas of study do you look forward to studying in college? [50-500 words]

Bucknell University: Please explain your interest in your first-choice major/undecided status and your second-choice major, should you opt to list one [Max. 250 words]

Start with an idea or a problem that you find most compelling within your intended field to show your unique approach to the discipline. Use your response to explain your academic interest — not your major. Your major should be determined by your interest, instead of your interest by your major. Connect your past experiences and academic activities to your interest. How did your intellectual curiosity develop out of your activities? Identify which major or program would best help you explore your interest before sitting down to write the essay and then explain why.

Essays on Your Activities

Another really common set of college supplemental essays involve asking you to expand on one of your activities, or questions that ask which activity you would pursue for the rest of your life if you could only pick one. Some example prompts are:

Harvard University : Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. [Max. 150 words]

Vanderbilt University : Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. [200-400 words]

California Institute of Technology : Describe three experiences and/or activities that have helped develop your passion for a possible career in a STEM field. [10-120 words each]

The reason colleges ask these questions is that they want to know the kind of community impact you’ve made—have you affected the people around you? What kind of impact have you had on your community? And impact isn’t only about the number of people you’ve reached. It’s about how much you’ve affected certain people and which kind of people you’ve connected with and why.

The bigger the scale of impact the more impressive it is. Not only should you write about an involvement that appears on your activities list, but you should choose one that appears high up since it needs to be an activity that looks really important to you. The best extracurriculars cannot be explained fully in the small amount of space they give you in your activities list description. 150 characters including spaces is hardly enough to explain the impact you have had in your most important extracurricular. Use your response to expand on what kind of leadership you demonstrated in the activity. If it’s something new you started, expound on why are you’re so motivated to spend time on it and what relationships you built along the way.

Identity Essays

Some supplemental essay prompts want to hear more about your background—who you are, where you come from, what unique perspectives you can bring to the college. The key to this essay is to capture a part of you that you haven’t necessarily talked about in your personal statement. Example prompts include:

University of Washington: Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. [Max. 300 words]

University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill: Expand on an aspect of your identity (for example, your religion, culture, race, sexual or gender identity, affinity group, etc.). How has this aspect of your identity shaped your life experiences thus far? [Max. 250 words]

University of Pennsylvania : At Penn, learning and growth happen outside of the classroom, too. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity, and how your identity and perspective will help shape this community. [150-200 words]

Colleges want to gauge how you would add to the diversity of their campus. Remember, the word “diversity” doesn’t only include factors that are out of your control such as race or ethnicity. If you want to talk about your cultural or religious community - since your familial background is one of the topics that many of these college supplemental essays have primarily encouraged—that’s great! But if you believe it wouldn’t make you stand out, think about a community that you’ve found thanks to an extracurricular activity or work experience. No matter what community you choose, you shouldn’t dedicate all of your words to your explanation of the premise.

This essay should be about you—think about how your perspective has been shaped by the community and vice versa. How would you be different had this community not existed? Make sure you haven’t elaborated on this part of your profile elsewhere in your application. This essay is a great way of providing more context on something meaningful that admissions officers wouldn’t easily be able to guess.

College supplemental essays can be easy to write off. Don’t underestimate them! One of the hardest parts of your college applications is not the writing itself, but coming up with good ideas to answer the questions. They often require a lot of thinking and trying to come up with the best examples from your life and you don’t want to rush that. So take your time and consider the various prompts before taking the leap and writing them. Good luck!

Tags : supplemental essays , college essays , how to write supplemental essays , college supplemental essays , supplemental essay tips

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How to Write Every Type of Supplemental Essay

What are supplements, school-specific guides and examples, why are supplements important, intellectual curiosity, drive to improve one’s community, determination and resilience, school fit / how you are a particularly good match for a school’s specific culture, where can i find each colleges’ supplements, the 5 main types of supplemental essays, “why do you want to attend [x] school”, “why are you pursuing [x] major”, “how have you overcome challenges or adversity”, “tell us about your….intellectual interests, most meaningful extracurricular activity or community you belong to, background and/or identity…etc.”, "out-of-the-box".

Most colleges and universities will ask you to submit, at minimum, one extra essay in addition to the 650 word personal essay. While your grades and test scores lie at the foundation of your college applications, supplements are a key part of the writing “package” that college admissions officers review to decide whether to admit you to their school. Supplemental questions require a range of answers, some as short as 30 words, others, multiple full length essays of up to 1,000 words.

We’ve put together guides for all the top schools! Our school-specific supplement guides go in-depth on how to answer every top school’s supplemental essay question(s), complete with examples!

Your personal statement and supplemental essays are your opportunity to tell your story and let admissions officers hear your voice. Admissions officers rely upon essays to get a sense of your personal characteristics, unique qualities, and your potential to thrive as a student on their campus.

Colleges are looking for students who are outstanding academic performers. That being said, in the holistic review process, they are also looking for evidence of:

The goal of the supplement is to answer one question: “Why are you an especially good match for our school, and not better off at a similar one?” The best way you can improve your odds of admission is to showcase your unique qualities and make a case for why you belong at the colleges you’re applying to through your supplements.

On the other hand, a weak supplement can inadvertently convey disinterest in a school, a lack of care or time invested into the application, and overall is a missed opportunity to help you stand out from other applicants.

If you are not sure where to find prompts for your colleges’ supplements, check colleges’ official admissions websites and the Common App . You’ll typically find prompts for supplements hiding in different nooks and crannies of the Common App, usually under “Writing Supplement” but sometimes under “Questions→ Writing” or “Questions → Activities.” Supplements often take time, research, and multiple drafts– they matter greatly, so as always, start early and seek as much help and as many resources as you need!

Below, you’ll find guides for how to write each school’s specific supplements! Before you jump into the writing process, however, read through our strategic advice for writing winning supplemental essays.

Although it may seem that colleges require an overwhelming amount of writing, bear in mind that most of the supplements you will have to write can be categorized into common categories. This means that you can use the very similar answers to answer similar questions asked by different schools. Strategically recycling your writing will help make your application process much more efficient!

The main types of supplemental questions that come up again and again are:

While you should make sure to tailor your essays very carefully to each school’s prompt and offerings (if your “why school” essay is too interchangeable, for example, it runs the risk of being generic or superficial), reusing the basic structures and stories of your common supplements is a smart strategy.

Other supplements may be much more “out-of-the-box”, such as UChicago’s famous Extended Essay prompts , or other schools’ unique questions about inspirational figures, lists of your best-loved books and media, your favorite snacks, and other esoteric topics. Some of these may be harder to recycle, but surveying all of the prompts for your supplements in advance of drafting and looking for patterns may even reveal recurring unusual prompts–for instance, both Yale University and the University of Virginia ask you to create and explain a hypothetical college course that you could teach.

Your interests will change, but the values of a university are unchanging . If you’re serious about that school, you should know those values. Log on to that university’s website and look through as much material as you can – their mission statement, the college’s leadership, their history, student publications, even their YouTube channel. Talk to as many current students from that school as possible; visit the school and talk to students around campus if you can. While there’s no need to quote their mission statement in your supplements, your writing should be informed by the same kind of mindset and values that you and the university share.

If you are looking for even more guidance on how to respond to common supplemental questions or are seeking out the right strategy for a particular school’s supplement, Command Education offers several resources. Check out our article on “How to Write College Supplements” and read our school-specific supplement guides below to learn how to convince your dream school you’re the right fit for them!

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Which program are you applying to?

How can you write great supplemental college essays.

The Common Application is used by over 1,000 colleges and universities in the United States and around the world, including all of the Ivy Leagues. In the 2023-2024 college application season, there are seven common app essay prompts to choose from. In addition, many schools require supplemental essays.

On the Accepted blog, our college admissions experts break down and analyze supplemental essay questions from all the top colleges and universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and dozens more.

Looking for a specific school's supplemental essays?

Click the links below to read our advice on how to answer each college or university's supplemental essay prompts.

Common App Essays
Brown University Supplemental Essays
Columbia University Supplemental Essays
Cornell University Supplemental Essays
Dartmouth College Supplemental Essays
Harvard University Supplemental Essays
NYU Supplemental Essays
Princeton University Supplemental Essays
University of California System Supplemental Essays
University of Michigan Supplemental Essays
University of Pennsylvania Supplemental Essays
Yale University Supplemental Essays

College Reality Check

Unlocking the Hidden Power of Supplemental Essays

Forbes has a list of 80+ schools that do not require supplemental essays.

College-bound teens who hate writing essays or believe that essay writing is not their strongest suit rejoice!

By choosing strategically, they can apply to college without writing a single literary word.

Unfortunately, chances are you may have to write several of them if your college list contains selective schools, given that most of them require supplemental essays.

Secondary essays.

College-, school-, or institution-specific essays.

Regardless of the name, these are the same things. They’re all supplemental college essays .

If a college asks for one (or more in most circumstances), you must submit it.

Many college admissions agree that supplemental essays account for about 25% of the weight of your college application as they provide information about you that your GPA, class rank and test scores can’t.

It also allows college admissions officers to see whether or not you know the school you’re applying to.

College Essay vs. Supplemental Essay: What’s the Difference?

A college essay comes in different names.

They include:

Common App essay
Coalition App essay
Application essay
Admissions essay
Personal essay
Personal statement

You can call it any name you like, but a college essay is an entirely different type of written composition from a supplemental essay, though both can help you get into the college of your preference.

It Only Takes One College Essay to Apply to All

A college essay is anywhere from 250 to 650 words or 500 to 650 words.

It all depends on which college application platform you intend to use or the college of your liking accepts — the Common Application has a lower minimum word requirement than the Coalition App (250 vs. 500).

What’s nice about a college essay is that you must write it only once .

The one you include in your college application will reach all the colleges you apply to.

So, in other words, college admissions officers from different institutions will read the same essay, although those who don’t consider it in the application process won’t look at it.

That’s nice — just one essay for all the schools on your college list!

However, including colleges that require supplemental essays on your list changes everything.

Supplementals are Usually Shorter but More Than Just One

As mentioned, supplemental essays are also called school-specific essays.

That’s because they’re exactly that — you write each essay with a particular school in mind.

Compared to personal statements, supplementals are usually shorter , although it’s not uncommon for some colleges to set the maximum word count to 650 or sometimes more.

But then most of them are anywhere from 35 to 250 words long.

There are shorter ones (sometimes just a single word!), which is why they’re called short-answer questions .

Although you usually need fewer words to write a supplemental essay, you often have to write more than just one supplemental essay when applying to a single college.

On average, colleges require two to three institution-specific essays.

Applying to ten postsecondary institutions requiring supplementals could leave you writing anywhere from 20 to 30 college supplemental essays in a single admissions cycle!

Why Supplemental Essays Matter in College Admissions

College admissions officers, especially at competitive schools , want to know applicants in a certain way.

They want to learn not only about your academic accomplishments, personal achievements, unique life experiences, individual strengths, core values, and prospective goals.

They also like to know how those would fit on the campus of the specific school you’re applying to!

Due to this, supplementary essays are college-specific.

Colleges Want to Know How You’ll Fit on Campus

Your college essay alone may not reveal how you would make a perfect addition to a specific campus.

Again, every college you send your Common App or Coalition App to will be able to read it, which is why it’s crucial for your personal statement to focus on you as an individual and a learner, not the institution you like.

On the other hand, a supplemental essay should focus on what makes you a good fit for the college.

If you may, think of a writing supplement as an opportunity to convince college officers that you are a better choice than another applicant with the same academic profile as yours.

Show that your positive traits, hobbies, interests, and personality all fit on campus.

Talking about your weaknesses is fine, too, although it would be a great idea to point out you are working on them and how attending the college you are applying to can turn them into your strengths.

Of course, you won’t be able to write about how you’ll fit on campus without knowing the college.

Colleges Also Want to Know How Much You Know Them

College admissions officers want to know what you can add to the campus community.

Similarly, they want to know how the school can meet your academic and career goals .

Supplemental essays are an opportunity for you to discuss both and prove to your top-choice college that you are applying to the right school and also show that you are the right applicant .

For this, you must know what sort of academic program can make your professional dream happen.

It’s vital to know, too, which type of campus community can make you a well-rounded student and equip you with the skills necessary to succeed beyond college.

You can tailor your college application to fit the school’s needs through supplementals.

They allow you to demonstrate how you will fit with its culture, values, and mission.

Ultimately, they let you express why sending you an acceptance letter is worth it.

Increasing Your Admissions Chances Through Supplementals

Because supplemental college essays are major role players in the admissions process where they are required, I cannot stress enough the importance of giving your best when writing them.

What you say in them can spell the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.

College application is stressful , and writing various supplementals can make it even more nerve-racking.

But avoid panicking.

It’s of utmost importance for you to take a deep breath, compose yourself, and then pay attention to blowing the minds of college admissions officers with your supplemental essays.

That can be a challenge , but totally doable.

The secret is to know the steps necessary to nail those supplemental essays.

Research. Before writing a supplemental essay, ensure you have researched the college or university enough. Study its values and culture. Examine its alumni members. Look into its programs and facilities.
Introspect. It’s not enough that you know about the college — it’s also a must to explore why you intend to go to it. Determine what you want academically, socially, and professionally.
Stick to the prompt. Most of the time, institutions allow applicants to pick from various supplemental essay prompts. Choose well and ensure that you talk about what your selection asks of you.
Be genuine. No matter how tempting it is to exaggerate your achievements and capabilities to increase your admissions chances, don’t! Showcase your true self and write what you believe the college needs to know.
Write well. Besides your writing supplement’s content, your writing skill also counts. Mind your grammar, punctuation, and sentence structures. Remember to draft for flow and organization.
Proofread. Misspelled words, missing punctuation marks, grammatical slip-ups, etc. — they can take away from a well-thought-out and well-written supplemental college essay.
Get feedback. Before college admissions officers read your supplementals, ask others like your parents, teachers, or mentors to check them out and provide suggestions.

Supplemental essays allow your application to stand out, so grab the opportunity in every way you can!

Independent Education Consultant, Editor-in-chief. I have a graduate degree in Electrical Engineering and training in College Counseling. Member of American School Counselor Association (ASCA).

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How to Write the NYU Supplemental Essay 2024–2025

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New York University (NYU) boasts almost two hundreds years of history, three campuses around the world, and a nearly $6 billion endowment . NYU’s esteemed alumni include many famous actors and musicians, including Idina Menzel, Adam Sandler, and Donald Glover. Their alumni also include many well-known CEOs, such as Tom Freston (MTV Networks), Daniel Schulman (PayPal), and Cathy Minehan (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston). Hoping to become a Bobcat ? Let’s dive into the NYU supplemental essay.

NYU campus; Institute of Fine Arts, Duke House

New York University’s 2024-2025 Prompt

What personal experiences or challenges have shaped you as a bridge builder, how have you been a bridge builder in your school, community, or personal life, what specific actions have you taken to build bridges between diverse groups, ideas, or cultures, how do you envision being a bridge builder during your time at our university and beyond.

General Tips

The NYU admissions team has only set one prompt for applicants this year. The essay must be 250 words or fewer , and in your response, you can answer multiple of the questions posed, or just one. Students do not need to write an essay response for this prompt in order to apply to NYU. Although the NYU supplemental essay is optional, we still recommend that you at least attempt to write the essay. If none of your drafts are working, or you’re too strapped for time to compose a thoughtful essay response, then you don’t have to write one.

That said, this essay provides applicants with just one more opportunity to share who they are as a person with the NYU admissions team. This is a good thing: the more you can share, the more chances you have to stand out from the crowd. Standing out from a crowd of 118,000 applicants is challenging, but your NYU supplemental essay gives you the opportunity to do so.

Write about your unique, individual experiences. Use specific, concrete (as opposed to abstract) details. Get personal where you can and vulnerable when you feel comfortable. All of these writing techniques will help your essay feel more vivid to the reader. And a vivid essay is a memorable one.

NYU Supplemental Essay

In a world where disconnection seems to often prevail, we are looking for students who embody the qualities of bridge builders—students who can connect people, groups, and ideas to span divides, foster understanding, and promote collaboration within a dynamic, interconnected, and vibrant global academic community. we are eager to understand how your experiences have prepared you to build the bridges of the future..

This is the opening paragraph of the NYU supplemental essay, minus the line introducing the questions the prompt proceeds to pose. In this paragraph, the NYU admissions team sets the stage for the prompt. From this paragraph, it’s clear that NYU is looking for independent thinkers who value collaboration and diversity.

Think about the times in high school when you’ve collaborated. Who did you collaborate with, and why? What were your dynamics as a group/team/partners both before and after the collaboration? In other words, how did the experience of collaborating change your relationship dynamics ? If you can identify the answer to that last question, then you’re well on your way to answering this prompt effectively.

Now, let’s break down the questions the prompt proceeds to pose. Remember, you can respond to one or more of these questions.

This question calls for a narrative response. In other words, tell a story of a time when you were challenged to build a bridge. Describe the people or events that influenced the way collaborate with others. You can build a whole essay off of this answer, or you can start an essay with this story and move onto one or more of the other questions posed by this prompt.

It might be helpful to start your brainstorming process for this essay by considering how you would answer this particular questioned, even though it’s posed second. That’s because regardless of which questions you choose to answer in this essay, your real bridge building experiences will form the basis of this essay.

Consider the phrase “bridge builder” expansively. Maybe you built connections between two classmates who didn’t get along. Maybe you founded a non-profit that improved relations between different socioeconomic groups in your city. Or maybe you’ve worked to connect older generations to younger generations by coding a chatbot that teaches senior citizens how to use technology.

However you have built bridges in your life, identify one or two of those occasions/experiences to focus on in this essay. Then, free-write about these experiences before you broach the rest of the essay. This exercise will force you to narrativize your bridge building experience, which will ultimately benefit your essay-writing process overall.

Building off of the last question, you’ll need to get specific when answering this question. If you like, you can make a list of the actions you took. You can even write up a timeline of those actions if that is helpful to you. Think of this listing process as akin to writing a list of job responsibilities on a resume, except that you can get even more specific here. Once you have this list, work off of it (staying specific) while drafting your essay.

This question asks you to look toward your aspirational future at NYU. Like the last question, your response will benefit from specificity. Consider the specific programs, groups of people, organizations, initiatives, and so on that will be relevant to your bridge building intentions. Who do you want to build bridges between? Why do you want to build those bridges? What will be the impact of building those bridges? And, most importantly, how will you build those bridges? If you’re able to answer all of these questions, then you’ve got all the tools to nailing this essay response.

If you need help polishing up your NYU supplemental essay, check out our College Essay Review service. You can receive detailed feedback from Ivy League consultants in as little as 24 hours.

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How to Write the NC State Supplemental Essays 2024–2025

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Lindsay Petry, Founder

Personal Statement vs Supplemental Essay

This post will be short and sweet.

College applications require two essays, the personal statement and the supplemental essay (otherwise known as the college specific essay). Today we explore if there is a difference.

The answer is a resounding yes! We beg you, please do not, under any circumstances, use the same essay for both components.

So what are the differences you ask?

The difference is the purpose of the essay. The personal statement is about showing the admissions counselor who you are as an individual. What personal characteristics do you possess? How can you positively contribute to the institution's community? Do you align well with the college's values?

The supplemental essay is all about your fit with the institution. Why did you choose to apply to that specific major? Why did you choose that institution? How can you achieve your academic and career goals there? What makes them unique to you?

Your application is the story of you. Think of the essays as two acts in that story, one is showing your personal side and one is showing your professional side. So, what story do you want to tell the admissions counselor?

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Supplemental Essay Writing Style vs Personal Essay?

I had a question about how I should write my supplemental essays. I've noticed from reading other common app essays and working on my own that some people like to write the common app essay by incorporating a metaphor or something very intricate. However, I was wondering for the supplemental short essay questions - is there a particular way I should approach these, or can I just get straight to the point into the answer as opposed to personal essays? I hope this question makes sense

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A dietary supplement in the management of patients with lumbar osteochondrosis: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study.

Graphical Abstract

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. study design, 2.2. participants, 2.3. intervention.

collagen hydrolysate (300 mg/capsule); ○ collagen type II (180 mg/capsule); ○ mucopolysaccharides (90 mg/capsule); ○ hyaluronic acid (30 mg/capsule);
n-acetyl-glucosamine (100 mg/capsule);
bamboo extract (70 mg/capsule);
L-lysine hydrochloride (25 mg/capsule);
vitamin C (30 mg/capsule);
other ingredients: gelatin, magnesium stearate.

2.4. Outcomes

2.4.1. patient-reported outcome measures (proms), 2.4.2. radiological assessment, 2.4.3. adverse events, 2.5. statistical analysis, 2.5.1. sample size, 2.5.2. statistical analysis, 3.1. baseline characteristics, 3.2. patient-reported outcome measures (proms), 3.3. radiological assessment, 3.3.1. pfirrmann grade of disc degeneration, 3.3.2. 3d-mri measures, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions, supplementary materials, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Click here to enlarge figure

Variable	Supplement (n = 23)	Placebo (n = 22)	p Value
Age (years)	52.7 ± 10.4	56.5 ± 14.5	0.331
Gender (n, %) Female Male	10 (43.5) 13 (56.5)	14 (63.6) 8 (36.4)	0.236
BMI (kg/m )	26.8 ± 4.4	27.4 ± 3.9	0.645
normal weight (18.5–25.0) overweight (25.1–29.9) obese (30.0–34.9)	8 (34.8) 8 (34.8) 7 (30.4)	8 (36.4) 7 (31.8) 7 (31.8)	0.978
Smoking status (n, %) non-smoker ex-smoker current smoker	7 (31.8) 13 (59.1) 2 (9.1)	8 (34.8) 12 (52.2) 3 (13.0)	0.867
Diet (n, %) omnivore only or mainly vegetarian	20 (87.0) 3 (13.0)	20 (90.9) 2 (9.1)	0.673
Allergy (yes, %)	5 (21.7)	13 (59.1)	0.016
Disease (yes, %)	12 (52.2)	15 (75.0)	0.206
Medication (yes, %)	13 (56.5)	13 (59.1)	0.862

Variable	Supplement (n = 23 *)	Placebo (n = 22)	p Value (between Groups)
Oswestry Disability Index (ODI, %)
before intervention after intervention	22.2 (6.0–48.0) 17.0 (4.0–42.2)	18.0 (4.0–60.0) 16.0 (2.0–46.0)	0.750 0.860
p-value (within groups)	0.092	0.121	-
ODI improvement	2.1 (−8.0 to 16.9)	2.0 (−15.9 to 28.9)	0.906
Visual analogue scale for back pain (VAS, %)
before intervention after intervention	40 (10–80) 35 (3–70)	40 (5–80) 30 (0–70)	0.782 0.812
p-value (within groups)	0.129	0.019	-
VAS improvement	−7.5 (−50.0 to 25.0)	−6.0 (−40.0 to 20.0)	0.461
Quality-of-life score Short Form 12 (SF-12)
PCS before intervention PCS after intervention	42.8 (24.4–53.1) 43.5 (19.7–51.7)	43.1 (22.1–57.2) 44.0 (23.0–53.5)	0.847 0.542
p-value (within groups)	0.615	0.592	-
PCS improvement	0.34 (−13.2 to 14.2)	−0.26 (−23.4 to 9.4)	0.542
MCS before intervention MCS after intervention	52.1 (22.5–65.3) 55.9 (29.6–62.2)	51.6 (29.8–64.0) 54.6 (36.6–68.7)	0.847 0.869
p-value (within groups)	0.236	0.053	-
MCS improvement	−1.3 (−11.9 to 9.9)	−1.9 (−19.1 to 8.0)	0.796
Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ; MET-min/week)
before intervention after intervention	1940 (0–27,360) 2130 (0–11,640)	5920 (240–30,000) 4800 (0–28,200)	0.036 0.056
p-value (within groups)	0.341	0.341	-
PA improvement	−100 (−24,120 to 11,040)	−960 (−5760 to 6680)	0.778

Variable	Supplement (23 Patients 115 IVDs)	Placebo (22 Patients 110 IVDs)	p Value (between Groups)
Disc degeneration * (n, %)
before intervention after intervention	61 (53.0) 53 (46.1)	59 (53.6) 52 (47.3)	0.929 0.859
p-value (within groups)	0.291	0.345	-

Variable	Supplement (23 Patients 115 IVDs)	Placebo (22 Patients 110 IVDs)
Improvements regarding Pfirrmann grades (n, %)	9 (39.1)	10 (45.5)
three-grade improvement	1 (4.3)	0
two-grade improvement	3 (13.0)	3 (13.6)
one-grade improvement	5 (21.7)	7 (31.8)
No changes regarding Pfirrmann grades	14 (60.9)	10 (45.5)
Worsening regarding Pfirrmann grades	0	2 (9.1)

Variable	Supplement (23 Patients 115 IVDs)	Placebo (22 Patients 110 IVDs)	p Value (between Groups)
Mean volume (in mm )
before intervention after intervention	18,621.1 ± 4181.4 19,361.4 ± 4489.3	17,805.5 ± 4547.9 17,388.3 ± 4369.7	0.534 0.143
p-value (within groups)	<0.001	0.036	-

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Share and Cite

Laky, B.; Huemer, D.; Eigenschink, M.; Sagl, B.; Thell, R.; Wagner, K.-H.; Anderl, W.; Heuberer, P.R. A Dietary Supplement in the Management of Patients with Lumbar Osteochondrosis: A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Study. Nutrients 2024 , 16 , 2695. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162695

Laky B, Huemer D, Eigenschink M, Sagl B, Thell R, Wagner K-H, Anderl W, Heuberer PR. A Dietary Supplement in the Management of Patients with Lumbar Osteochondrosis: A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Study. Nutrients . 2024; 16(16):2695. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162695

Laky, Brenda, Daniel Huemer, Martin Eigenschink, Benedikt Sagl, Rainer Thell, Karl-Heinz Wagner, Werner Anderl, and Philipp R. Heuberer. 2024. "A Dietary Supplement in the Management of Patients with Lumbar Osteochondrosis: A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Study" Nutrients 16, no. 16: 2695. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16162695

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Ithaca College 2024-25 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Early Decision: Nov 1

Early Action: Dec 1

Regular Decision Deadline: Feb 1

Ithaca College 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanation

The Requirements: 1 essay of 200 words

Supplemental Essay Type: Why

We’re committed to supporting you in energizing your learning experiences so you can go further than you imagine. Please tell us why you selected-and how you see yourself growing in-this specific academic program. (minimum of 10 words, max of 200 words)*

To nail this question, set aside an hour or so to get cozy with the Ithaca College website and read up on the school’s academic offerings. Doing as much research as you can before sitting down to write your essay will allow you to tell a cohesive story about yourself while also ensuring that your essay isn’t redundant. Pour all of your academic focus into your answer to this question. What do you love about your chosen major and/or minor? If you’re interested in the Cinema and Photography program, can you describe the unique opportunities you’ll find at Ithaca? What resources are available to undergrads and how will they help you further develop your skills? The more detail you include, the more admissions will get to learn about you.

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COMMENTS

The Ultimate Guide to Supplemental College Application Essays (Examples
We recommend using this resource alongside our College Supplemental Essay Premium Example Hub, which includes a sample essay in response to every prompt required by the top universities and BS/MD programs in the United States.. Part 1: Introduction Part 2: From outlining to writing. The 600-word essay. The 500-word essay. The 150-250-word or other very short essay
Learn How to Write Great Supplemental College Essays
This is a must read for anybody writing the Stanford roommate essay: included is an example essay, a detailed breakdown, helpful tips along the way, and a section on how to revise your essay too. Write supplemental essays for hundreds of the most competitive colleges. Follow our step-by-step guides and read our supplemental essay examples that ...
How Important Are Supplemental Essays for College?
In addition to the story that you're telling, you also want your supplemental essays to demonstrate your skills. Your essays should be grammatically sound and well-structured, demonstrating your mastery of the English language. There's a fine line between telling your story and showing your story. If you tell your story, the admissions ...
Don't Sweat the Supp Stuff: Advice for Crafting Your Supplemental Essay
The supplemental essay portion of the application is specific to each school. Each institution has intentionally crafted a question (or multiple) to help determine whether a student might be a good match. We look for individuals who share Hopkins' institutional values but will also bring unique experiences and perspectives to the community.
How to Write Supplemental Essays that Will Impress Admissions Officers
The Common App personal statement, for example, is maximum 650 words. Supplemental essays, on the other hand, typically range from 100 to 400 words (although occasionally some will be longer). When added together, you'll likely be writing at least a couple thousand words for your college applications. Research.
Everything You Need To Know About The Supplemental Essays
A supplemental essay is an additional written response required by many colleges and universities as part of the application process, in addition to the Coalition App or Common App essay. Generally, colleges will have their own prompts that applicants answer to create multiple short essays. These essays are submitted in addition to the main ...
Common App Essay vs Supplement: Which Carries More Weight?
The short answer is that both are crucial components of your application, as they play different roles in creating a comprehensive picture of who you are. For most schools, the Common App essay is a chance to see your personality and values at a high level. It's the only essay every college you apply to through the Common App will see, which is ...
How to Write the Most Common Supplemental College Essays: A Complete
This can be cut down to: The way you schedule your classes is ideal because…. Most times phrases such as "I think," "I believe," "it seems," and other similar wording is not necessary and simply takes up extra space. Use your judgement, but generally, these phrases get the boot. Keep an eye out for the word "that.".
How to Write a Supplemental Essay for College Applications
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 ...
What is a Supplemental Essay + Guides from College Essay Guy
What is a supplemental essay? 🤔. As College Essay Guy explains, supplemental essays are "additional pieces of writing required by many highly-selective universities." These essays are different from your personal statement and focus on a prompt that is specific to that college.
Your Definitive Guide to Supplemental College Application Essays
Updated: Aug 07, 2024. 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.
Succeeding With Your College Supplemental Essays ...
Some supplemental essays are relatively short. Some of them have prompts where they only give you 35 words to respond, or 200 characters, which is much shorter compared to the personal statement. In asking for short essays, colleges just want specificity. They just want creative, unique answers different from what other students have written.
How to Write Every Type of Supplemental Essay
You'll typically find prompts for supplements hiding in different nooks and crannies of the Common App, usually under "Writing Supplement" but sometimes under "Questions→ Writing" or "Questions → Activities.". Supplements often take time, research, and multiple drafts- they matter greatly, so as always, start early and seek ...
Common App and Supplemental Essay Tips
In the 2023-2024 college application season, there are seven common app essay prompts to choose from. In addition, many schools require supplemental essays. On the Accepted blog, our college admissions experts break down and analyze supplemental essay questions from all the top colleges and universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the ...
Unlocking the Hidden Power of Supplemental Essays
As mentioned, supplemental essays are also called school-specific essays. That's because they're exactly that — you write each essay with a particular school in mind. Compared to personal statements, supplementals are usually shorter , although it's not uncommon for some colleges to set the maximum word count to 650 or sometimes more.
2024-25 Supplemental Essay Guide
Yale University 2024-25 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide. What do the 2024-25 supplemental essay prompts really mean, and how should you approach them? CEA's experts are here to break them all down.
How to Write the NYU Supplemental Essay 2024-2025
The essay must be 250 words or fewer, and in your response, you can answer multiple of the questions posed, or just one. Students do not need to write an essay response for this prompt in order to apply to NYU. Although the NYU supplemental essay is optional, we still recommend that you at least attempt to write the essay.
How to Write the Columbia University Supplemental Essays: Examples
Step #1: Imagine a mini-movie of the moments that led you to your interest and create a simple, bullet point outline. Step #2: Put your moments (aka the "scenes" of your mini-movie) in chronological order, as it'll help you see how your interests developed. It also makes it easier to write transitions.
How to Write the Brown University Supplemental Essays: Examples + Guide
How to write each supplemental essay prompt for Brown. Prompt #1: "Why us" essay. Prompt #2: "Community contribution" essay. Prompt #3: "What brings you joy" essay. Prompt #4: Short answer question. Prompt #5: Extracurricular activity essay. Prompt #6: "Create your own class" essay. Prompt #7: Short answer "Why us" essay. PLME Program Prompt #1 ...
Personal Statement vs Supplemental Essay
This post will be short and sweet. College applications require two essays, the personal statement and the supplemental essay (otherwise known as the college specific essay). Today we explore if there is a difference. The answer is a resounding yes! We beg you, please do not, under any circumstances, use the same essay for both components.
Supplemental Essay Writing Style vs Personal Essay?
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. Let's replace the "essay question" and "short answer" analogy we hear from students a lot with an interview analogy.
2024-25 American University Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide
American University 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanations The Requirements: 1 essay of 250 words. Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why. American University students identify as changemakers and describe themselves as passionate. Describe a belief, hobby, idea, issue, or topic about which you're excited. (250 words)
How to Write the Stanford Supplemental Essay
Well, most colleges will have anywhere from 1-4 supplemental essay prompts you'll need to answer in addition to the Common App essay. Stanford is sitting comfortably with eight supplemental essay prompts, with a combined possible 1000 words. On top of that, Stanford has the lowest acceptance rate of any college in the US at 4.3%.
2024-25 Lehigh University Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide
The Requirements: 1 essay of 200 words; 1 essay of 300 words. Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why, Diversity. How did you first learn about Lehigh University and what motivated you to apply? (200 words) The first part of this question should not be rushed through. Really think back and try to pinpoint the moment that Lehigh appeared on your radar.
2024-25 Elon University Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide
Elon University 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanations. The Requirements: Five short answers; one essay of 150 words, one essay of 200 words, one brief essay of 75 words, one list. Supplemental Essay Type(s): Oddball, Short Answer. THINK FAST Answers to these questions are meant to be brief. Be engaging and thoughtful. Most importantly ...
How to Write the University of Virginia Supplemental Essays
How to write each supplemental essay prompt for UVA. Prompt #1: "Connections" essay. Prompt #2: "Community contribution" essay. The University of Virginia (UVA) is a popular choice for students who want it all—and that means you'll have to make the most of your supplemental essays to set yourself apart. The challenge: distinguishing ...
Opinion
Guest Essay. The Christian Case Against Trump. Aug. 2, 2024. Credit... Allison Dinner/Associated Press. Share full article. 868. By Eliza Griswold. Ms. Griswold is the author of ...
A Dietary Supplement in the Management of Patients with Lumbar ...
Various nutritional supplements are available over the counter, yet few have been investigated in randomized controlled trials. The rationale for using the specific mix of nutritional substances including collagen type II, hyaluronic acid, n-acetyl-glucosamine, bamboo extract, L-lysine, and vitamin C is the assumption that combining naturally occurring ingredients of the intervertebral disc ...
How to Write the Vassar College Supplemental Essay: Examples + Guide
how to write Vassar Supplemental Essay Prompt Option #1. At Vassar, we aim to foster an inclusive community through our philosophy of engaged pluralism. Engaged pluralism is rooted in "the conviction that collaborating across differences is necessary for social transformation and critical for the well-being of any community and its members.".
Ithaca College 2024-25 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide
Ithaca College 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanation. The Requirements: 1 essay of 200 words. Supplemental Essay Type: Why. We're committed to supporting you in energizing your learning experiences so you can go further than you imagine. Please tell us why you selected-and how you see yourself growing in-this specific academic program.