Writing Requirements

Exercise 1: Identifying your Essay “Buckets”

Scan over the answers in Column C of your Application Requirements Tracker. Reading through the essay requirements of each school, you are likely to find a lot of repetition in the questions that you are asked. Common “categories” of essay questions may include: 

• Diversity & Community: These prompts ask you to reflect on a unique life experience or your perspective as a member of a certain community 

• Extracurriculars & Responsibilities: These prompts give you the opportunity to describe an extracurricular activity, hobby, or interest that you are passionate about. You can also discuss important family or community responsibilities here. 

• Academic Interests: These questions ask you to reflect on your current academic interests, intended major/area of study, and future professional aspirations

• Leadership: These essays might ask you to reflect on a time when you were challenged, disagreed with a peer or teacher, led by example, or demonstrated an additional positive attribute (such as resilience or persistence).  

• Attributes: Schools will often ask you to write a list of words that describe you or your favorite media (books, movies, songs, podcasts, etc). 

• Why X School: These prompts ask you to reflect on specific aspects of the school’s curriculum or community.

• Optional Essay: Write about anything you want! 

Now you try! Find a way to group your supplemental essay requirements into “buckets” such that you can use the same or similar essay for multiple questions. Under each bucket, list the application question, school, and word count. 

Here are examples of ways to categorize required essay questions from Common App schools in the 2024-25 admission cycle: 

Diversity & Community:

• Tufts: How have the environments or experiences of your upbringing – your family, home, neighborhood, or community – shaped the person you are today? (250 words)

• Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard? (150 words) 

Extracurriculars & Responsibilities:

• Brown: What is your most meaningful extracurricular commitment, and what would you like us to know about it? (100 words)

• Harvard: Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are (150 words).

Academic Interests:

• Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might pursue them at Brown. (200-250 words)

• Northwestern: We want to be sure we’re considering your application in the context of your personal experiences: What aspects of your background (your identity, your school setting, your community, your household, etc.) have most shaped how you see yourself engaging in Northwestern’s community, be it academically, extracurricularly, culturally, politically, socially, or otherwise? (100-300 words)

Leadership: 

• Harvard: Describe a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with this person? What did you learn from this experience? (150 words) 

• Columbia: In college/university, students are often challenged in ways that they could not predict or anticipate. It is important to us, therefore, to understand an applicant’s ability to navigate through adversity. Please describe a barrier or obstacle you have faced and discuss the personal qualities, skills or insights you have developed as a result. (150 words or fewer)

Attributes:

• Brown: What three words best describe you? (3 words)

• Columbia: List a selection of texts, resources and outlets that have contributed to your intellectual development outside of academic courses, including but not limited to books, journals, websites, podcasts, essays, plays, presentations, videos, museums and other content that you enjoy.  (100 words or fewer) 

Why X School:

• Columbia: Why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspect(s) that you find unique and compelling about Columbia (150 words).

• UMichigan: Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate college or school (including preferred admission and dual degree programs) to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests (100-500 words)?

After completing this exercise, you will find that you can save time by writing one essay per bucket. Then, you can edit the essay to accommodate the specific length requirements of each school! I recommend that you create a new document for every “bucket” of essays you need to write.  Then, copy and paste all of the essay questions and the word count in this bucket into the document. That way, when you begin to write a supplemental essay, you will know ahead of time that you need 100-word, 150-word, and 250-word versions. 

You may also notice that some schools ask for essays that cannot be duplicated. Each Academic Interests or Why X School essay will need to be tailored to the particular programs and departments of each school. But you’ll quickly find that once you write one, you will have developed language that can be quickly applied to similar contexts! Additionally, there are some schools that will ask you for unique questions. The University of Chicago is notorious for asking students very creative questions that cannot be easily replicated. You will need to devote additional time to preparing the applications for these schools.

Exercise 2: Identifying Possible Topics for your Personal Essay

While supplemental essays will often ask guided questions on a specific topic, the Personal Essay (to be distributed to all Common App schools) is open-ended. That means you can write on any topic you want! 

Your Personal Essay can be thought of as the “Thesis Statement” of your application. When reading it, the admission officer should get a good sense of “who is this person?” You can write about your experience on your school’s soccer team, your religious community, a summer job, taking care of a younger sibling, and beyond. I wrote about the capstone project that I completed in AP World History which shaped my academic interests.

A good rule of thumb is to reflect on an experience that gets at the essence of who you are. If you are funny, be funny! If you are creative, write in a creative style. If you like to reflect on the state of the world, be philosophical! Write in whatever style feels authentic and natural to you! 

Admissions officers also want to know that you will be a good roommate, a conscientious student, and an active member of their student community. You can also think of the Personal Essay as a way to highlight an experience in which you demonstrated a positive attribute. Examples may include reflecting on a time when you: practiced resilience in the face of a challenge; persisted through a difficult academic subject; made a mistake and learned an important lesson; helped support a community, friend, or colleague through a difficult time; or tried to correct an injustice.  

Your essay should be between 250 and 650 words. We recommend that you aim to write an essay that is 500-650 words to give yourself adequate space to express yourself.  

Just remember: Later in your writing process, you will likely need to write shorter essays on topics like your favorite extracurricular activity, a particular academic interest, or a meaningful aspect of your identity. If you choose to write about any of these subjects in your personal essay, make sure that you can write an additional essay about another extracurricular, another academic interest, or another community that you are part of. More on that later!

Here are some questions that the Common App asks you to reflect on when writing your Personal Essay. You will need to choose one of the following when filling out your Common App.  

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. 
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? 
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? 
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Now you try! Write down a couple of ideas that you have for your personal essay. A couple of words or 1 sentence should suffice. There is no need to start drafting the essay now. We are simply in the brainstorming phase. 

Exercise 3: Identifying Possible Topics for your Supplemental Essays

Admission committees know that students are more than just their standardized test scores and GPAs. Each school’s essay requirements are the admission committee’s way of getting to know you a little better. Think of your writing requirements as a puzzle, where each application component reveals a small part of who you are. Your supplements should complement the Personal Essay by revealing different aspects of who you are, what you are passionate about, and what you want to do in the future. 

The challenge now is figuring out how to categorize and relay your experiences in a way that makes sense to an admissions officer. If you are looking for inspiration, take a look at the Wellness Wheel Diagram, which describes seven aspects of human identity. Each spoke of the wheel might conjure an experience or activity which can be translated to a different supplemental essay question!  

Emotional: Describe an experience when you exhibited leadership or overcame a challenge.

Spiritual: Describe a religious community or your spiritual journey.

Physical: Describe your experience playing a sport or doing something fun.

Environmental: Where do you call home and what does home mean to you? 

Social: What is a social movement that you care deeply about? Describe a community or organization that you have contributed to in a meaningful way.

Financial/Occupational: Describe your work experience or other responsibilities; Describe a systemic challenge (such as financial hardship) you have experienced.

Intellectual: Describe a time when your position was challenged and you changed your opinion; describe an academic interest and how it evolved over time. 

Now you try! For every “bucket” of essay questions you have, write down 2 relevant experiences that might make good essays. Alternatively, you may want to jot down 1-2 relevant experiences for each part of the Wellness Wheel, then apply them to the supplemental options. A few words or one sentence will suffice at this stage!  

Exercise 4: Drafting your Essays

It is time to take a step back and ask yourself “What do I want the admissions officers to know about me?” and “What combination of experiences will articulate that?” Only you can answer this question, and your answer will likely evolve during the writing process. If you are still unsure, it may be helpful to talk with a teacher or family member about what you have come up with during your brainstorming exercise and ask them for their feedback on some of the options you have generated. Keep in mind the vision of a puzzle board: you want to identify categories of experiences which, taken together, give the reader a good idea of who you are and why you would be a good member of an academic community. 

You do not need to know the subject of every essay before putting pen to paper. It is likely that you have identified some experiences that you want to be part of your application. You might not know what essay bucket these will fall under or whether this experience will turn into your personal essay or a supplement. 

Our best advice at this point: just start writing! 

A couple of reminders:

• Do not worry about word count or finding the perfect language. By the time these essays are finalized, you will have completed many many drafts and your essays will be polished to perfection. Your task now is to get ideas on paper and let your ideas evolve naturally over time. 
• You can start with the Personal Essay or a supplemental essay, whatever feels most manageable to you! 
• I recommend drafting in a Word Document or Google Docs – NOT in the Common App! Copy and paste the applicable essay prompt or prompts so that you know your word requirements. When you are writing, make sure to answer the prompts!!
• Start by writing an essay that is as long or longer than the maximum word count for the longest essay requirement in this bucket. You can always edit the word count down after the first draft is finished!
• When you have completed a draft or a part of a draft, feel free to share it with your Le Repaire mentor to give feedback! Your Le Repaire mentor should be providing you with several rounds of feedback on every essay before it is finalized.