Boston College, or BC, stands out as a highly desirable institution, blending the intellectual rigor of a top-tier private university with a distinctive Jesuit, Catholic identity just outside one of America’s foundational cities, Boston, Massachusetts. Its beautiful, collegiate Gothic campus is postcard-worthy, and its academics, particularly the Carroll School of Management and Lynch School of Education and Human Development, stand out among the crowd.
Given its strong academics, vibrant community, and beautiful setting, BC remains selective, with its class of 2029 boasting a 13.9% acceptance rate. This means that all aspects of your college application must stand out among the crowd, and a great way to ensure this is through careful consideration of its writing supplement, or supplemental essays.
Your supplemental essays are a crucial opportunity to showcase what makes you a unique fit for the BC community. This guide will break down the current Boston College supplemental essays provide analysis and strategies for tackling each one, and give you insight into how to read between the lines of each prompt.
What are Supplemental Essays?
Supplemental essays are shorter essays that are required by a given school in addition to the personal statement, usually via the Common Application. They are school-specific and will range from common prompts asking about school preference or major preference to more philosophical prompts that showcase reflection and growth by a student. Word lengths can range from just a few words to over 500, and these are the difference-makers in showing fit for a school.
Supplemental Essays vs Personal Statement
The personal statement in a college application is a long essay that stays the same, no matter what school you apply to. Typically 500 words, it is meant to showcase who you are and tell a story that showcases personal growth or interest in the context of a long essay.
Supplemental essays, meanwhile, are more focused on each school’s priorities, from major, to why the school itself is appealing, to shorter essays that provide further opportunity to showcase student reflection and understanding of themselves in the context of attending that specific school. As such, when you’re writing a supplemental essay, it is imperative to fully read the prompt: they often pose multiple questions that must be answered fully. It’s not easy to strike this balance, but that’s what this guide is for!
To learn more about supplemental essays and the role they play in the college admissions process, check out our ultimate guide to writing supplemental essays.
Boston College Supplemental Essays
Here are the Boston College supplemental essays for the admissions cycle (class of 2030):
We would like to get a better sense of you. Please respond to one of the first four prompts below (400 word limit). Students applying to the Human Centered Engineering major should respond to Prompt #5 instead.
1. Strong communities are sustained by traditions. Boston College’s annual calendar is marked with both long-standing and newer traditions that help shape our community. Tell us about a meaningful tradition in your family or community. Why is it important to you, and how does it bring people together or strengthen the bonds of those who participate?
2. The late BC theology professor, Father Michael Himes, argued that a university is not a place to which you go, but instead, a “rigorous and sustained conversation about the great questions of human existence, among the widest possible circle of the best possible conversation partners.” Who has been your most meaningful conversation partner, and what profound questions have you considered together?
3. In her July 2009 Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned viewers against assigning people a “single story” through assumptions about their nationality, appearance, or background. Discuss a time when someone defined you by a single story. What challenges did this present and how did you overcome them?
4. Boston College’s Jesuit mission highlights “the three Be’s”: be attentive, be reflective, be loving – core to Jesuit education (see A Pocket Guide to Jesuit Education). If you could add a fourth “Be,” what would it be and why? How would this new value support your personal development and enrich the BC community?
5. Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) Applicants only: One goal of a Jesuit education is to prepare students to serve the Common Good. Human-Centered Engineering at Boston College integrates technical knowledge, creativity, and a humanistic perspective to address societal challenges and opportunities. What societal problems are important to you and how will you use your HCE education to solve them?
Step-by-Step: How to Write the Boston College Supplemental Essays
The first step to writing the Boston College supplemental essays is to choose one of these prompts, which we’ll analyze below. Read through each one, and see if an answer to any prompt immediately leaps to mind—this is a great way to start your essay!
Community Traditions
1. Strong communities are sustained by traditions. Boston College’s annual calendar is marked with both long-standing and newer traditions that help shape our community. Tell us about a meaningful tradition in your family or community. Why is it important to you, and how does it bring people together or strengthen the bonds of those who participate?
Goal: Showcase community ties, understanding of relationships, and how it is important
This prompt fundamentally wants to see you reflect on your current community and your relationship to it through a particular tradition. It’s important to give ample space to understanding how you relate to your community and considering how it exemplifies your values. This is a great opportunity to showcase family heritage, communal ties (defining community can look like a team, a church, a cultural heritage—that’s up to you), and cherished traditions. You might consider a family gathering, team meal, or collective act of community service; just make sure you underscore its meaning to you!
Intellectual Development
2. The late BC theology professor, Father Michael Himes, argued that a university is not a place to which you go, but instead, a “rigorous and sustained conversation about the great questions of human existence, among the widest possible circle of the best possible conversation partners.” Who has been your most meaningful conversation partner, and what profound questions have you considered together?
Goal: Tell a story of intellectual growth through a mentor/conversation partner
This is a prompt that asks you to show intellectual rigor and curiosity through the lens of a specific conversation partner. Who has been most meaningful to your growth? It could be a teacher, family member, coach, pastor, or even good friend. They key is to show how their influence formed your intellectual outlook. Remember that there are two parts to this prompt: naming your conversation partner, and illustrating the conversations you’ve had that address profound questions.
Pushing Back Against Labels
3. In her July 2009 Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned viewers against assigning people a “single story” through assumptions about their nationality, appearance, or background. Discuss a time when someone defined you by a single story. What challenges did this present and how did you overcome them?
Goal: Showcase how you navigate specific labels, meditate on your relationship to identity factors (queerness, ethnicity, religion, etc)
This prompt is ideal for people who might come from marginalized groups, either ethnic or pertaining to religion, sexuality, or otherwise. If that sounds like you, consider your relationship to this label. The prompt asks for a specific instance in which you were reduced to a single story. It’s important to name this instance and also illustrate how you navigated these moments, whether through conversation, behavior, or personal boundaries. Like the other prompts so far, this asks for a specific moment or example and then ample reflection on its effects, so be sure to spend time writing and reflecting on your internal reactions to these moments.
Personal Values and College Citizenship
4. Boston College’s Jesuit mission highlights “the three Be’s”: be attentive, be reflective, be loving – core to Jesuit education (see A Pocket Guide to Jesuit Education). If you could add a fourth “Be,” what would it be and why? How would this new value support your personal development and enrich the BC community?
Goal: Showcase a personal value that helps define identity and how you’d bring it to campus
This prompt is a bit more open ended and a great opportunity to showcase a personal value and how it relates to both you AND Boston College. Think of a story or personal example that really illustrates this value in action for you, and then spend time considering how you would exemplify it on campus.
Human-Centered Engineering only: Defining and Addressing Societal Problems
5. Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) Applicants only: One goal of a Jesuit education is to prepare students to serve the Common Good. Human-Centered Engineering at Boston College integrates technical knowledge, creativity, and a humanistic perspective to address societal challenges and opportunities. What societal problems are important to you and how will you use your HCE education to solve them?
Goal: Showcase fit for the HCE program through analysis of a societal problem and how the program will help you solve it
This prompt is asking two questions: 1) what societal problems are important to you? and 2) how will your HCE education help you solve them? First you must define a problem—what issues do you care most deeply about? Climate change, wealth inequality, racial prejudice? Then, consider how your education will solve them, and be specific about aspects of this education. What is it about the HCE program that really appeals to you, and how can you connect it to your broader goals of bettering society?
Helpful Brainstorm Techniques
Here are some top brainstorming techniques for writing the Boston College supplemental essays:
- Asking family, peers, teachers to describe you and your value system
- Free association with values, mentors, ideas, or societal problems
- Freewriting key identity traits
- Find illustrative stories–400 words is a lot of space to articulate narrative
It’s always better to show, not tell, and most of these prompts require it. Want more brainstorming inspiration? Check out our guide here.
Conclusion: Get writing!
Boston College is a selective school, but its supplemental essays are thought-provoking and require quite a lot of reflection. Have parents, teachers, or even peers edit your essays to make sure they are as polished as possible. And if you’d like some extra help from our expert team of essay coaches, reach out today for your FREE 45-minutes consultation.
