If you’re one of the 55,000+ students applying to Stanford this year, your essays need to stand out. Stanford’s 2024–2025 application requires a combination of short answer and supplemental essay responses. For your Stanford application, you’ll need to write a total of five short answers of 50 words each plus three essays of 100–250 words. Read on to learn how to approach your Stanford supplemental essays.
What are Supplemental Essays?
Many competitive colleges require applicants to submit school-specific supplemental essays in addition to your Common App personal statement when applying. As one of the most competitive schools in the nation, with an acceptance rate of less than 4%, Stanford is no exception.
For general tips and more information about supplemental essays, read our Ultimate Guide to Writing Supplemental Essays. After you have a strong understanding of how to approach supplemental essays, continue reading below to learn how to approach your Stanford supplemental essays specifically.
Stanford Supplemental Essays 2024–2025
For the 2024–2025 school year, Stanford requires three essays with a minimum of 100 words and maximum of 250 words, plus responses of 50 words or less to five short answer questions. There are no prompt options in the Stanford application. In other words, you need to respond to each and every question.
All of Stanford’s short answer and essay prompts are provided below, along with advice for things to keep in mind as you plan and write your responses.
Stanford Supplemental Essay Prompts
For the main Stanford supplemental essays, you need to write responses that are at least 100 words but no more than 250 words long to all three of these prompts.
- The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning. (100–250 words)
- Virtually all of Stanford’s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate—and us—get to know you better. (100–250 words)
- Please describe what aspects of your life experiences, interests and character would help you make a distinctive contribution as an undergraduate to Stanford University. (100–250 words)
Stanford Short Answer Questions
For Stanford’s short answers, you need to respond to all five of these questions in no more than 50 words.
- What is the most significant challenge that society faces today? (50 words)
- How did you spend your last two summers? (50 words)
- What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed? (50 words)
- Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities, a job you hold, or responsibilities you have for your family. (50 words)
- List five things that are important to you. (50 words)
Writing the Stanford Supplemental Essays
The Stanford supplemental essays are a chance for you to tell admissions officers things about yourself that are not reflected elsewhere in your application. It’s important to be genuine in your responses and try to showcase different parts of yourself that you feel will enhance their campus community if you get accepted. Think of these essays as a way for admissions officers to get to know who you are as a classmate (prompt 1), future roommate (prompt 2), and friend (prompt 3).
Stanford Supplemental Essay 1
The first supplemental essay that you need to write is about your intellectual curiosity:
- The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning. (100-250 words)
To respond to this prompt, write about a relatively recent experience that happened during high school where you genuinely felt your love of learning. Begin your essay by describing that moment to grab the reader’s attention in a narrative way. Building upon your description of that experience, add some details to your essay about why you find that topic or subject fascinating and what other steps you have taken to pursue your passion for learning.
Stanford Supplemental Essay 2
- Virtually all of Stanford’s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate—and us—get to know you better. (100-250 words)
This essay is designed to be a casual letter that is personalized and authentic. Include playful details like what music your roommate will hear you listening to or if you have any eccentric study habits they should know about like taping posters with mathematical formulas to memorize on the ceiling above your bed. Provide insights into your quirky personality and how you genuinely interact with others. This will probably be one of the most enjoyable essays you will write for all of your college applications—embrace it!
Stanford Supplemental Essay 3
- Please describe what aspects of your life experiences, interests and character would help you make a distinctive contribution as an undergraduate to Stanford University. (100-250 words)
The point of this essay is to make clear connections between your past experiences and your future contributions to the Stanford community. The goal with this essay is to show admissions officers that you will be a valuable asset to their campus community. Think about the contributions you have made to your current communities and fast forward to life as a Stanford student to paint a picture of how you will build upon these experiences. To pick a theme for your essay, think about how your interests, activities, hobbies, and values guide and inform your actions.
Writing the Stanford Short Answers
Similar to the longer supplemental essays, the Stanford short answers are an opportunity to show unique elements of your background and personality. Limiting your responses to only 50 words means that you need to write answers that are clear and concise. Do not waste precious words restating the question. Instead, just jump in with your response. Also, try your best to vary the different aspects of yourself that you highlight across all of your answers, just like you should do for the Stanford supplemental essays.
Stanford Short Answer 1
- What is the most significant challenge that society faces today? (50 words)
An ideal response to this question will go into detail about one specific issue, propose a solution, and connect it to your own experience. Even though this question is asking about a topic that does not necessarily relate to you directly, it is your job to clearly connect your answer to your own perspective and experience.
It may seem obvious, but make sure that you only mention one issue in your response to this question. There is simply not enough space to address multiple issues, and you want to ensure that you are doing your due diligence by directly answering the question.
Stanford Short Answer 2
- How did you spend your last two summers? (50 words)
To avoid a listlike response, focus on a theme that you can highlight to bring select summer activities together. Think about what you did over the past two summers that was most meaningful to you and share what you did and why it was meaningful. Adding a bit of reflection to your response will bring it to the next level and create a sophisticated layer of meaning to your summer activities.
Stanford Short Answer 3
- What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed? (50 words)
Questions like these can be challenging because it can be easy to become overwhelmed with seemingly infinite possibilities. Do not try to force a response to try to make yourself sound smart. Instead, think about how your unique interests and values connect to history. A creative answer is ideal for this question, but do not get lost going down rabbit holes about historical moments that have no connection to who you are and what you are passionate about.
Stanford Short Answer 4
- Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities, a job you hold, or responsibilities you have for your family. (50 words)
Pick one of the three activity areas mentioned in the prompt and elaborate on your relevant actions. While most students will pick an extracurricular activity to feature in their response, do not overlook the other two options, especially the last one. Talking about family responsibilities is a guaranteed way to add a personal element to your application and has a lower likelihood of showing up in other parts of your application. If you do go the extracurricular activity or job route for this question, make sure that you did not already focus on it in your other Stanford supplemental essays or short answers.
Whatever you decide to elaborate on for this question, be sure to pack your response full of rich details and feature your actions to show that you are a doer and do not sit back on the sidelines.
Stanford Short Answer 5
- List five things that are important to you. (50 words)
The format of this short answer question is different from the other four, as it asks for a list. Use a numbered or bulleted list to highlight different things that are important to you. Aim for variety across the five things that you decide to include in your list, spanning multiple areas of your life.
The difficulty in this prompt is how vague it is. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by too many possibilities, take this as an invitation to think creatively and outside of the box. You are welcome to include anything that is important to you, no matter how big or small it is. To help you brainstorm some possibilities, consider including people, objects, values, and places that hold a special importance to you.
Conclusion
Your Stanford supplemental essays enable you to add personal elements and details to your college application to show admissions officers that you are a good fit. With a combination of three 100 to 250 word supplemental essays and five 50 word short answer responses spanning different topics and formats, you have numerous opportunities to make your application stand out. If you want feedback on your ideas or drafts from our team of college essay experts, contact us for a consultation.
