It goes by many names: the college essay, the admissions essay, the personal essay, the personal statement, or most recently, the Common App personal statement. By whatever name, it’s the essay high school juniors and seniors write when applying to college.
In this blog post, however, we will focus on a far less famous but no less integral piece of writing: supplemental essays. Whether you’re looking to highlight an extracurricular activity, explain a personal challenge, or explain your enthusiasm for a particular school, this guide will equip you with the strategies you need to enhance your college applications. Let’s explore how to write supplemental essays.
What are Supplemental Essays?
Supplemental essays are additional, college-specific writing prompts that allow applicants to showcase additional qualities, values, experiences, goals, and motivations for applying to the school.
As ubiquitous as the personal statement is, supplemental essays are only slightly less widespread. The function, at its most basic, is in the name: supplemental essays act as supplements to your personal statement. You’re not going to be able to convey everything about yourself in a single, 650-word personal essay, and so the supplemental essays provide schools with a way of learning additional information about you.
Now, to be clear, not everyone will need to learn how to write supplemental essays. Some schools do not require them (and for a partial list, check out Colleges Without Supplemental Essays 2024-2025). But most competitive colleges and universities do, and—yes—they require supplemental essays in addition to the Common App personal statement. If the schools you’re applying to are considered competitive, you can ordinarily expect 1–5 supplemental essays. If you’re also applying to honors programs or elite programs within a college or university (such as the Wharton School at UPenn), you can expect special supplemental essay requirements in addition to the general requirements.
If your schools require them, learning how to write supplemental essays is non-negotiable (or it should be). Although shorter than the personal statement, these are not throwaway essays. Quite often, the supplemental essays request information that admissions officers will use to distinguish between candidates who may have similarities elsewhere in their application packet. In that sense, supplementals can be decisive.
Another note on taking these essays seriously: although they are often shorter than the personal statement, they typically require much more research. They might also prompt you for information that you’ve never had to think about before. So, don’t underestimate the time a 250-word essay might take.
The Purpose of Supplemental Essays
Knowing the “why” behind supplemental essays provides really powerful context that should guide you in writing them. I mentioned earlier that the basic function is to provide supplemental information. But, again, that’s just the basic function.
Some of the most common supplemental essays are:
- Why Major? – Why do you want to study this major, and—often as an implied question—why study it here?
- Why School? – Why do you want to attend this school?
- Community – What will you bring to our community of students?
There are many other supplemental prompts out there besides these three. And there are some that are almost purely informational (e.g. “What brings you joy?”), but something you’ll notice about the bulk of supplemental essays 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 is that?
The truth is that competitive colleges know their reputation. They know what they offer you, and they know what benefits 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. Colleges and universities, especially prestigious ones, want students who are genuinely in love with the school because those are the students who will be the most active on campus, the most committed in the classroom, and who will, down the line, be the most generous with their time and financial resources as alumni. That is what your supplementals need to demonstrate.
This is also why supplementals often require research. You won’t be able to convince an admissions reader of your passion for, say, Northwestern or the University of Michigan if you cannot make specific and concrete connections between yourself and the school.
When you research, you’re looking for things you connect with that you can reference in your writing. If you keep all this in mind, writing supplemental essays will be much easier, and you won’t miss an important opportunity to demonstrate your passion for the school.
Preventing Overlap while Writing Supplemental Essays
There are good reasons to identify all the schools you’re planning to apply to early. One of these reasons is so that you can identify how many essays each school is going to ask you to write. Before you start writing, consider the topics you’re planning to discuss in each essay. This is particularly important for schools that require more than two essays, such as a personal statement and two supplemental essays.
One of the non-obvious aspects of writing supplemental essays is that they exist in an ecosystem or, if you like, as part of a mosaic with each other and with your personal statement. For the most part, the information contained in each essay should be non-overlapping. Each essay—personal statement and supplementals—should add up to provide an overall image of who you are. That only works if you’re picking different aspects of yourself to write about in each essay.
But because this is writing about a person rather than about a mere collection of parts, it’s often not fully possible for there to be zero overlap. There is a bit of nuance and a bit of fuzziness here, and that is okay.
For example, if your personal statement includes references to your love of the natural world, is it a problem if your “Why Major?” essay is about Biology? Nope! It is (dare I say) perfectly natural for both essays to indicate your love of the natural world. But they should include different stories, different examples, and probably different degrees of focus.
Whereas the personal statement might describe a love of nature in a general way, and only briefly mention biology courses, a “Why Major” about biology might include a single general sentence on this love of nature, followed by 100 to 200 words on specific feelings about and experiences with biology coursework.
When writing supplemental essays, some conceptual or informational overlap with each other and the personal statement is okay and may even be unavoidable, but the majority of each essay should contain information that isn’t captured in the other essays. Do your best to provide a varied portrait of yourself.
Creating a Timeline for Writing Supplemental Essays
In most cases, you should aim to start writing essays 3–4 months before application deadlines. It’s the simplest rule of thumb that will serve you well in nearly all situations.
In general, the personal statement is your longest essay, and the one almost all schools require. It makes sense to start writing the personal statement first before moving onto writing supplemental essays. But once you’ve put two to three weeks into the personal statement, it’s time to start working on supplemental essays, too.
The exact timeline for when to start and when to finish writing supplemental essays is somewhat dependent on where you are applying to and whether you’ll be applying for early or regular decision. But, again, rather than trying to calculate exactly how long you can put it off, it’s easiest to just give yourself 2–3 months to complete supplemental essays, ideally over the summer before school and other commitments start drawing on your time.
I recommend compiling your list of schools in May or June so that you can look at their required supplemental essays several months before deadlines. If you’re doing this at the end of spring/start of summer, keep in mind that schools often do not make their supplemental essays “official” until August as they have the option to change essay topics from year to year (but they usually don’t). So, you can reference supplementals from the previous year for a good idea of what’s to come.
With that early start, you’ll have time to plan what aspects of yourself you’ll use for each essay at each school. Additionally, you’ll find out early if you have any multi-step supplements to write. For example, one of the UPenn supplementals asks you to write a thank you note for the first half of the essay, then deliver it to the person you are thanking, and then reflect on their response during the second half of the essay. This is one of the more involved supplemental examples to be sure, but it illustrates the point: looking at what is required at each school in late spring/early summer will give you the time you need no matter the demand.
Lastly, for those who want an early start but are very concerned about writing a supplemental essay only to have the school switch prompts in August (unlikely, but possible), you could opt to focus on forms of supplemental essays that you can be sure will come up at multiple schools. “Why Major?”, “Why Second Major?”, “Why School?”, and “Community” essays are extremely common. If, hypothetically, you write a “Why Major?” essay for one school, but they drop the requirement in August, you can be positive that the same “Why Major?” can be recycled for a different school.
How to Write Supplemental Essays
Strategize
In contrast to your personal statement, supplemental essays allow significantly less creative freedom. Your goal is to identify every question, both explicit and implicit, in the prompt, and then provide that information fully in the word count given.
Some supplemental prompts are single sentences. Others are dense paragraphs. Before you start writing, and even before you start researching (which comes before writing), dissect your prompt and then create some sort of blueprint that will direct your research and also serve as a rubric for checking your draft.
Let’s look at a straightforward “Why Major?” essay from Purdue:
Briefly discuss your reasons for pursuing the major you have selected.
There are a number of ways to respond to this prompt, but let’s list out some ideas that will allow us to get to 250 words without redundancy:
- Name your major.
- Describe an experience that inspired you to pursue this major.
- Describe an experience that confirmed you would enjoy this major.
- Describe experiences you would like to have related to this major (e.g. types of learning experiences).
- Describe the things you would like to accomplish with this major.
When a prompt is very brief, it falls on you to think about what avenues there are for answering the question. Try to develop talking points that allow you to use concrete examples and anecdotes, particularly one that allow you to connect your feelings, beliefs, and insights to specific experiences that you’ve had or would like to have.
In other cases, the prompt will be more detailed. Consider this one from University of Michigan:
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?
In this instance, we need to break this text up so that we can make sure we answer all parts of the question. When breaking up a block of prompt text, feel free to paraphrase if that is helpful.
- Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School [you are applying to]?
- How would that curriculum support your interests?
The above illustrates that “breaking up” a dense prompt can also be thought of as identifying each request for information and then listing it out.
Once you have your prompts dissected, rather than start writing, the first move is usually going to be a combination of self-reflection and research. The bullet points should direct you towards what you need to reflect on (e.g. why do you want that major) and also tell you what to look for when researching the school (e.g. how does the school teach that major).
Also, be sure to save these bullets for later when research ends and the writing process actually starts. Re-read them before you write and check your finished drafts against these bullet points to make sure you didn’t lose sight of the questions being asked.
Research
As discussed earlier, supplementals are one way that admissions officers gauge your passion for the school. It is very hard to show passion for a school that you don’t know much about, and that is where research comes in.
Take a look at this prompt from UPenn:
How will you explore community at Penn? Consider how Penn will help shape your perspective, and how your experiences and perspective will help shape Penn.
We will again convert its important information and “asks” into bullet points:
- How will you explore community at Penn?
- How will Penn help shape your perspective?
- How will your experiences and perspective help shape Penn?
Depending on how you count, UPenn is a nearly 275 year old institution, and learning its entire history would be a monumental task. Fortunately, you don’t need to know everything about it. Once you’ve dissected the supplemental essay prompt, it’s pretty clear that there’s only certain information that you need to research.
For example, researching the following strands would give you everything you need to produce specific concrete answers to the prompt questions:
- Campus life (what every student is likely to experience)
- Major/Program (what students in your major/program experience)
- Sports/Clubs/etc. (focus on those you intend to participate in)
- Personal Identity (what students with your identities have access to)
The university website will have a ton of information for each of these. You can supplement the website research with tours (either virtual or in-person), YouTube videos, and contacting admissions directly.
The goal of this research, whether for this supplemental or any other, is to find information that relates to the prompt and also genuinely excites or interests you. Keep the search going until you find something that excites you.
When you begin writing about your research, it’s important to be specific and go beyond broad descriptions. For example, note this example of a broad sentence that lacks detail and specificity to any one college:
“At UPenn, there are numerous clubs and organizations where I can make an impact…”
Compare this example that demonstrates research and is unique to Penn:
“In 2023, the Penn Lens Club put together a photo exhibit that featured one of my favorite objects to examine in portrait…”
For a deeper dive, visit our blog post on the Why This College? supplemental essay.
General Tips for Writing Supplemental Essays
With the prompt dissected and the research complete, the focus is to get to writing. Although there are variations in supplemental essay prompts, it is possible to provide guidelines for all of them. Below are the five things you should make sure you do when writing supplemental essays:
- Answer the Whole Prompt. Many supplementals are looking for specific things. Make sure you answer everything the prompt is asking!
- Be Direct. Most supplementals ask you to concisely provide facts and information instead of demonstrating your creativity. Use a direct approach: start your essay by answering the prompt.
- Be Specific. Use concrete, specific details to support your answer to the prompt. This is difficult on a limited word count but will set you apart.
- Do your Research. To provide specifics, learn as much as you can about the school, such as particular classes or programs that would be a good fit for you.
- Be Genuine; Be Enthusiastic! Selective and highly selective colleges aren’t just looking for academically strong students; they want students who are genuinely interested in attending their school. Let your passion and enthusiasm shine through!
To provide a stellar response to the supplemental essays, you need to make sure your essays follow all five of these guidelines.
Recycling/Reusing Supplemental Essays
As you make your way through your list of supplemental essays, you will notice that certain prompts come up multiple times. If four schools all ask you “Why Major,” you can certainly use the same essay for multiple schools. But…there are things to watch out for.
First, remember that schools often ask for school specificity. So, before you reuse a supplemental essay, read the prompt carefully to decided if you need to research for another school. Each college will have other teaching styles, learning opportunities, professors, clubs, etc. You might need to edit your already-written supplementals to reflect the specifics of every school.
Next, prompts with the same title can have slightly different wording. One “Why Major?” might focus only on your school years, whereas another “Why Major” might specifically ask for your career goals. So, even when a supplemental essay has the same prompt title, you still need to dissect the prompt for each school.
In many cases, you can use 80–90 percent of one supplemental essay for multiple schools. But you will still need to be thoughtful. Copying and pasting an essay that contains references to the wrong school or that doesn’t answer the specific prompt shows carelessness and a lack of enthusiasm for the school. Avoid making such a mistake at all costs.
For a full breakdown of when and how to use the same essay for multiple schools, check out our blog post, Can You Reuse Essays?
Conclusion
To put it all together, compile a list of your supplementals 3–4 months before your due dates; arrange your topics so that each school is getting a varied portrait of who you are (i.e. minimize essay content overlap); start the dissecting/researching/writing process 3–4 months before due dates; follow the five guidelines for good supplementals; reuse/recycle material thoughtfully. And that’s it!
When writing any college essay, a great way to ensure success is to get feedback. Having someone else review, edit, and offer suggestions on your writing is the best way to level-up each draft and get noticed by admissions. To learn more about the essay services at HelloCollege, including one-on-one time with an expert essay coach, contact us about a free consultation today.
