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Supplemental Essay Advice & Resources

  • Supplemental Essays
Trevor H. Rusert

Not all U.S. universities require additional supplemental essays on their applications. It’s important to find out if they are required and plan ahead. For Common Application schools, you can click on the name of the school from the Dashboard and review the “Questions” tab or see if there is a separate “Writing Supplement” tab. Sometimes there is no Writing Supplement tab, but you will find additional essays in the “Questions” tab so be sure to check both.

Many universities will ask something like “Why have you applied to our university and what do you want to study?” Remember that at many universities it is OK to be undecided. However, many highly selective universities will have more challenging supplemental essay questions that will require a lot of thought and multiple drafts.

It is important to plan ahead. We encourage students to map out all of the possible supplemental essays on a dry-erase or cork board. Then follow these steps:

  1. Create a row for each college (starting with your ED/EA schools).

  2. Across each row, list all of the possible supplemental essay questions and indicate if it is required or one of several options.

  3. Do this for every college.

  4. From there, begin to look for patterns. If you eventually apply to ten or more universities, it might require twenty or more essays. However, if you identify similar prompts in advance, you might only need to write a few supplemental essays (making slight edits to match the university-specific prompts).

  5. Using this method, students can often save a significant amount of time and effort.

Finally, here are some additional resources that may help: