Though short in length, the Northwestern supplemental essays are not necessarily easier to write than the longer Common App personal statement. In fact, compared to the personal statement, supplemental essays often require more research and attention to detail. The Northwestern supplemental essays also offer a fair amount of choice, so you’ll want to give yourself time to make the best selection.
In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the process of writing the Northwestern supplemental essays, offering tips and suggestions to help you stand out to admissions.
Northwestern Supplemental Essays 2024-2025
For 2024-25 first year applicants, multiple supplemental essays are recommended, but only one of the Northwestern supplemental essays is required:
- 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? (300 words or less)
Now, beneath the required supplemental is a list of additional prompts with the following instructions:
“We encourage you to answer at least one and no more than two of the following questions.”
In general, if a highly selective school says something is “optional” or “encouraged,” consider it required. Additionally, if they’re giving you the option to choose one or two prompts, you can be sure that many of your fellow applicants will choose two, and you should do the same.
Here is the full list of Northwestern Supplemental Essays you can choose from for your second and third essay (again, we recommend writing three):
- Painting “The Rock” is a tradition at Northwestern that invites all forms of expression—students promote campus events or extracurricular groups, support social or activist causes, show their Wildcat spirit (what we call “Purple Pride”), celebrate their culture, and more. What would you paint on The Rock, and why? (200 words or less)
- Northwestern fosters a distinctively interdisciplinary culture. We believe discovery and innovation thrive at the intersection of diverse ideas, perspectives, and academic interests. Within this setting, if you could dream up an undergraduate class, research project, or creative effort (a start-up, a design prototype, a performance, etc.), what would it be? Who might be some ideal classmates or collaborators?(200 words or less)
- Community and belonging matter at Northwestern. Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.(200 words or less)
- Northwestern’s location is special: on the shore of Lake Michigan, steps from downtown Evanston, just a few miles from Chicago. What aspects of our location are most compelling to you, and why? (200 words or less)
- Northwestern is a place where people with diverse backgrounds from all over the world can study, live, and talk with one another. This range of experiences and viewpoints immeasurably enriches learning. How might your individual background contribute to this diversity of perspectives in Northwestern’s classrooms and around our campus? (200 words or less)
What’s the Goal of the Northwestern Supplemental Essays?
Have you thought about why colleges ask for supplemental essays in the first place? Probably, if you’re like most people, the application process is just something you want to get through. You’re not spending too much time trying to assess the underlying logic animating this process. But the aforementioned question is worth answering because it will help you write a much better essay.
Something you’ll notice about the Northwestern Supplemental Essays (and basically all Supplementals) is that they focus on how you’ll relate to or interact with some aspect of the school. That might be the academic ethos, the campus culture, the locale of the school, or any number of specific features–but the heart of the question remains the same. Why?
The truth is that competitive colleges know their reputation. They know what they offer you, and they know what benefit you get from being able to list them on your resume or eventual C.V.
Application materials like your GPA, test scores, and teacher recommendations already give the school what it needs to assess your academic ability. What they don’t know is whether or not you’re passionate about them specifically. Northwestern wants students who are genuinely in love with the school because those are the students who will be the most active on campus and who will, down the line, be the most generous with their time and financial resources as alumni.
The supplementals are your opportunity to demonstrate your passion for the school itself. That is also why supplementals require research. You won’t be able to convince an admissions reader of your passion for Northwestern if you cannot make specific and concrete connections between yourself and the school. When you research, you’re looking for this quality of connection.
Choosing Your Prompts
One of your Northwestern Supplemental Essays is chosen for you, but two are left up to you. You may be wondering if some prompts are, for any reason, better choices than the others?
Thankfully, none of these prompts is more valued than the rest. However, when choosing your two prompts, consider whether there are any that touch on aspects of Northwestern that you are already familiar with. That could save you research time. Additionally, consider what you’re most comfortable writing about.
Timeline for Northwestern Supplemental Essays
At the earliest, you will be able to submit your application on November 1st, which means you ideally want to start on your Northwestern Supplemental Essays in July or August. Keep in mind that because these essays require research, if you wait until the fall to start writing, you may be juggling research demands with school work.
Writing your Northwestern Supplemental Essays
While it is important to research before writing your essays, it’s a good idea to examine the prompts before you start researching – that way, you know what you are looking for. An easy approach is to take each prompt and convert its key questions and information into bullet points that isolate the specifics you need to answer the prompt fully.
Prompt 1
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? (300 words or less)
This is the first of the Northwestern supplemental essays, and it’s a pretty dense block of text. It’s useful to paraphrase this as something visually simpler before you start writing. Any visual will work, but bullets and sub-bullets are the simplest:
- What aspects of your background shape how you see yourself engaging in Northwestern’s community?
- How will your background impact the ways you will interact with communities at Northwestern?
You may have some idea of how you’ll interact with and contribute to communities at Northwestern. But, again, you still want to engage in research prior to writing your essay so that your response shows insight and passion.
When researching for this prompt, you’ll want to think about whether you’re going to primarily belong to academic, extracurricular, cultural, political, social, or other communities at Northwestern. Once you’ve identified the relevant communities you can learn more about them on the Northwestern website, YouTube channels, or any other social media.
Since background can include any experience or any identity that you may have, you have many options for this prompt. As a quick example, being a woman in a male dominated field or a male in a female dominated field would impact how you engage with your peers. Or, hypothetically, the experience of taking care of elderly family members might have given you strong opinions on the politics of healthcare.
Once you have selected the aspect of your background you want to focus on, make sure you find a way to connect in specific, concrete terms to Northwestern. If you’ve had experience with physical or mental disability, perhaps you’re going to ensure that every project you do in a Northwestern computer engineering program or club is concerned with accessibility and accommodations. In which case, make that clear.
Prompt 2
We encourage you to answer at least one and no more than two of the following questions. Please respond in fewer than 200 words per question.
For practice, let’s take each prompt and distill it into the simpler bullet points. You don’t need to use the ones written here, but it’ll give you a sense of how to do it.
Painting “The Rock” is a tradition at Northwestern that invites all forms of expression—students promote campus events or extracurricular groups, support social or activist causes, show their Wildcat spirit (what we call “Purple Pride”), celebrate their culture, and more. What would you paint on The Rock, and why?
- What would you paint on The Rock?
- Why?
Northwestern fosters a distinctively interdisciplinary culture. We believe discovery and innovation thrive at the intersection of diverse ideas, perspectives, and academic interests. Within this setting, if you could dream up an undergraduate class, research project, or creative effort (a start-up, a design prototype, a performance, etc.), what would it be? Who might be some ideal classmates or collaborators?
- In an interdisciplinary culture setting:
- What is an imaginary class, research project, or creative effort you’d create?
- Who would be ideal classmates or collaborators?
- (Implied: say why those individuals would be ideal)
Community and belonging matter at Northwestern. Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.
- Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.
- (Implied: describe why that group and what that connection looks like)
Northwestern’s location is special: on the shore of Lake Michigan, steps from downtown Evanston, just a few miles from Chicago. What aspects of our location are most compelling to you, and why?
- What aspects of our location are most compelling to you?
- Why?
Northwestern is a place where people with diverse backgrounds from all over the world can study, live, and talk with one another. This range of experiences and viewpoints immeasurably enriches learning. How might your individual background contribute to this diversity of perspectives in Northwestern’s classrooms and around our campus?
- In the context of diversity:
- What’s a perspective drawn from your background?
- How will that perspective contribute to the classroom?
- How will that perspective contribute to the campus?
Simplifying prompts into bullet points or another visual scheme might seem like an unnecessary step. What does it really add?
At HelloCollege, we see dozens upon dozens of student essays in a season, and one of the biggest mistakes we see with supplementals is only partially answering the question. It happens frequently with questions that include an explicit or implied “why?” For example, let’s look again at one of the prompts above:
Northwestern’s location is special: on the shore of Lake Michigan, steps from downtown Evanston, just a few miles from Chicago. What aspects of our location are most compelling to you, and why?
This prompt is so short, it might not seem worth breaking down into bullet points. But many students produce paragraph that lists a dozen “compelling” features of the local area but completely forget to say “why” those features are “compelling.”
Breaking the prompts into smaller bullet points by cutting out the fluff and paraphrasing gives you a blueprint of what to write. It helps ensure that you don’t miss any parts of the prompt. It also gives you a way to check your work. Once your first draft is done, you can check it against the bullet points to make sure you answered every part of the question. This small step will ensure you avoid the biggest mistake when writing your Northwestern Supplemental Essays.
Prompt Selection Strategy
You may be wondering if some prompts are, for any reason, better choices than the others?
Thankfully, none of these prompts is more valued than the rest. But keep in mind that admissions will read all of your essays. Between your personal statement and the Northwestern supplemental essays, you have the option to produce a well-rounded picture of your identity. Or, you could, without realizing it, say the same thing about yourself again and again. We would definitely recommend the well rounded picture over too much repetition.
Think about what you wrote in your Personal Statement. Then consider the aspects of your identity and background that you wrote about in the required supplemental essay. Based on that, we’d recommend choosing prompts that allow you to describe new aspects about yourself.
If you’ve already showcased one identity, pick another one. If you’ve talked about academics, consider discussing your creativity (or vice versa). If you’ve discussed the robotics club, focus on another organization. With so many prompt options, you should see a path for expressing multiple aspects of who you are.
How to Research
Once your prompts are broken down into bullet points or some other easy-to-read scheme, what you need to research should be clear.
In terms of sources for research, your first stop should be the Northwestern website. That said, internally navigating the website is sometimes unwieldy (college sites aren’t always the best designs). In this case, Google is a useful shortcut.
Searching for some version of “XYZ Northwestern University” will typically bring up official material that you can use as a resource. You can do this even for checking on hypothetical questions. For example, maybe you want to know if there is a STEM club for women at Northwestern (and there is!). In this case, you can Google “Women in STEM club Northwestern.”
In addition to reading on the official website, you can also look at the university’s YouTube channel or any other profiles it has on video sources.
Specificity and Northwestern Supplemental Essays
As a final note, we should revisit “specificity.”
Take a look at this prompt:
Community and belonging matter at Northwestern. Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.
Here’s an example of what not to do:
“At Northwestern, there are numerous clubs and organizations where I can make an impact. I think joining any of the clubs would be amazing because Northwestern is such a great school.”
Compare this to what you should do:
“Given my volunteer experience with the Ronald McDonald House, I look forward to providing pro-bono consulting services for medical non-profits through the Northwestern Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations (SCNO).”
The difference between these two is specificity. Doing your research will allow you to speak with specificity about Northwestern, which will go a long way towards demonstrating your passion for the school.
Conclusion
The Northwestern supplemental essays provide a distinct challenge compared to the Personal Statement. However, if you start early, choose prompts that complement each other, and do your research, you can move through one of the trickiest parts of the essay writing process with confidence.
And if you need a second set of eyes to make sure no bullet points were missed, consider reaching out to HelloCollege – we have an excellent team of essay coaches excited to help you write the best essay you can. To learn more about our essay services and the benefits of one-on-one time with an expert essay coach, contact us for a free consultation today.
