College Supplements: Avoid These 5 Pitfalls

Johns Hopkins University Writing Supplement

As the author B.J. Neblett once said, “We are the sum total of our experiences.”

Whether you have teamed up with fellow classmates to sell locally sourced gift bundles, started a club to break down language barriers, spent countless hours building scenery for your school’s annual musical, designed an app to teach kids math, or created a personal needs pantry for your peers, your experiences matter.

Those unique experiences have influenced and shaped who you are at this point in your life. Whether you are reading these tips to share with your high school senior or you are the college applicant seeking to put your best self forward, the supplemental essay portion is the perfect opportunity for the admissions committee to understand who you are and what it's like to see the world from your perspective.

However, there is one catch. Unlike your personal statement, supplemental essay questions require answers that range from one hashtag to as many as 500 words. These essay prompts can be more difficult to tackle, because the responses must be interesting yet not too clever, forced, or (worst of all) arrogant. Let's be honest: it’s really difficult to say something insightful, genuine, and unique in just 50 words.

But there are steps you can take to help you stay focused and get the most out of your supplemental essay. No matter what phase of brainstorming, writing, revision, or evaluation you're in right now, take some time to consider these five missteps that I commonly see with my clients.

1. Do Your Research To Avoid Superficial Responses: Go at Least 3 Clicks into a College’s Website

The most common supplemental essay prompt is some version of “Why do you want to go to our school?” The most common mistake I see in initial drafts from students is that the response is too generic.  

Quite honestly, even if you read, visit, and talk to students, it can still be difficult to get a real sense of a college’s unique culture and offerings. 

But you still don’t have to write a generic response.

My best tip for offering a sincere and attention-grabbing answer is to dig deep on the university website. Make sure you go no fewer than three clicks beyond the main admissions, academic department, or extracurricular club web pages. From the home page, pick a club, academic department, or another aspect of college that resonates with your interests, then click on the link. Spend time on this page to find a detail that is specific to that school.

For example, a remark about a university offering a great Political Science program is just too broad. But sharing your desire to take a particular course or to do research with a specific professor on a specific topic in the Political Science department will highlight that you value its unique characteristics.

Moreover, exploring the college’s website provides you with the added benefit of gaining a better understanding of the school. What you learn may endear you more to the institution — or it can help you realize that you are better suited for a different campus.

2. Avoid the One-Perspective Reply: Connect Ideas

A University of Texas team reviewed thousands of college application essays to determine if they could predict academic success based on candidate submissions. Professor David Beaver concluded that “Even when a college sets an essay title that seems to be asking for the applicants’ personal story, it’s a safe bet that the admissions officers (whether consciously or not) are looking for people who can put their own history in a broader context." The study showed that writings that categorized things alongside connecting concepts and ideas predicted the most academic success.

Here’s one student’s excellent example of how to demonstrate interdisciplinary interests:

Wesleyan Prompt: Wesleyan University President Michael Roth believes a liberal arts education is a pragmatic choice in these times. In what way do you see a liberal arts education having practical value?  (250 words)

Response:

My interests have never been confined to one subject.  With my classes and hobbies, I’ve traveled through centuries and countries, learning lessons from El Greco, Alan Turing, René Descartes, Simone de Beauvoir, Dostoevsky, and Archimedes – leaders in art, computer science, philosophy, women’s rights, literature, and physics. A liberal arts education provides a unique opportunity to blend and pursue wide-ranging interests, which help us develop flexibility and critical thinking skills that are valuable not only in computer science – my intended major – but in any future endeavor.  Philosophy classes help you hone analytical skills, which I’ll apply to create technological solutions to social problems. Fine arts classes broaden my creative horizons which will allow me to develop innovative and visually compelling results.  Exploring fictional characters through literature gives us insight into common experiences and emotions which will help me think more about the human side of technology and the user experience. Perhaps after taking psychology classes, I’ll even combine my newly acquired knowledge with my coding skills to create social robots.

In our rapidly changing global economy, career changes are more and more common. A liberal arts education allows students to gain deep knowledge across a variety of fields and develop widely applicable skills, increasing flexibility during times of change. If that’s not practical, then I don’t know what is.     

Notice that this answer is personal and gets at the student's intended major and interests while also imagining how their studies could affect and be affected by the world at large. That's the balance you want to strike in your supplemental essay.

Note: Wesleyan University has since eliminated its supplemental writing requirement.

3. Answer the Question

With a limited word count, supplemental essays don’t provide the luxury for applicants to provide every detail in a long narrative. The three ingredients of a winning response include a sentence that clearly addresses the question, evidence that supports its conclusion, and a bit of self-observation.

Take a look at one student's first draft of a response to a Dartmouth College prompt:

Dartmouth Prompt While arguing a Dartmouth-related case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1818, Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, uttered this memorable line: “It is, Sir…a small college. And yet, there are those who love it!” As you seek admission to the Class of 2022, what aspects of the College’s program, community, or campus environment attract your interest?

First Draft Response:

I was fortunate to grow up in Hanover since I was three years old. One of the first things my father scheduled following our move was to sign me up for swimming lessons after witnessing a near-drowning accident involving my uncle. For five years I relished coming to the alumni gym for these fun-filled classes taught by Dartmouth swim team. I experienced first-hand the sense of community Dartmouth instills in their students who willingly connected with the neighborhood kids to make them better swimmers. This is the community I grew up with and one that I wish to belong.

The problem here is that the student doesn't get to the main point—the strong sense of community at Dartmouth—until the second-last sentence. Too many precious words are wasted getting to those swimming lessons. There's too much talk here about swimming and not enough about Dartmouth. This essay should convey a firmer grasp of what the Dartmouth community is really like—with specifics.

Now see how it reads after shifting the focus to the Dartmouth community and what that means.

Revised Response:

Having grown up in the Upper Valley, I’ve been fortunate to experience small pieces of Dartmouth’s ethos of community service and education. As a child, I relished fun-filled swim classes taught by the Dartmouth swim team members who graciously gave their time, even though they had rigorous academic and practice schedules. And when Professor Sacerdote came to our high school class to discuss the economic state of American households, he greatly enriched my experience in Contemporary American History. I envision no better way to return what I received from the Dartmouth community than by becoming a member of it.

This response is still quite personal, but the examples of community at Dartmouth are more specific and go beyond those swimming lessons. This answers the question much better!

4. Show Admissions the Love Without The Hyperbole

Although every college admissions committee believes that their institution has world-class facilities, top-notch faculty, esteemed researchers, and groundbreaking course offerings, it's important for students to express enthusiasm for the school without crossing the line into hyperbole. The best rule of thumb is to avoid using the words always, never, and only when describing your excitement for the school.

It's very common to see something like this, for example:

At no other school are there as many different opportunities, resources, and courses available to someone with so many interests.

That simply isn't true. Lots of colleges have those things, so it's best to be more specific. Take a look at this student response:

Yale Prompt: Why does Yale appeal to you? (100 words of fewer)

Read a one of our student’s full set of Yale supplements.

Response:

Yale is like a giant version of my own brain. This may seem a weird analogy at first, but it is very true: my brain, like Yale, has neurons and depth in many different areas, from language processing (Portuguese, Python, and everything in between) to memory (all those Yalie traditions) to creativity (Yale courses like "Noise," "What's It's Like to Be a Thing," and "Digital Storyworlds.").

This answer is creative without being too clever, and it doesn't rely on hyperbole to get the job done.

While it's easy to go overboard for your dream school, don't fall into the trap of writing a "meh" response about your safety school. You should be able to find at least some reason to be excited about every school you apply to.

And let's be honest. These days, you never know if your safety school will turn out to be the best choice because it's closer to home or offers you a nice merit scholarship. With a pandemic out there, it's smart to show the love to every school you apply to, because if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that you never know what will happen!

For example, consider this student's sentence in a supplemental essay:

Boston University is not just an academically sound school; its presence internationally means BU is the perfect place to pursue a language major.

In this case, the student underplayed the praise, basically saying that this college was academically “meh” by using the word "sound."  I’m pretty sure the folks at Boston University think their school is better than that, but the word choice wasn't the best. Changing the word "sound" to "excellent" threads the needle nicely: It offers praise where it is due, without using those hyperbolic words such as "the best" or "amazing."   

5. Don’t Put Us to Sleep: Avoid the Boring Explanation

College application readers evaluate thousands of supplemental essays. After a while, many of these answers start to sound the same. To avoid having your essay tossed into the "snooze" pile, your essay must do two things: it must reveal something about you that the reader wouldn’t otherwise know and it should show some depth and/or creative thinking.

Here's an example of a really wonderful response to an Amherst College supplemental essay that keeps the reader's interest throughout:

Amherst Prompt: Translation is the art of bridging cultures. It's about interpreting the essence of a text, transporting its rhythms and becoming intimate with its meaning… Translation, however, doesn't only occur across languages: mentally putting any idea into words is an act of translation; so is composing a symphony, doing business in the global market, understanding the roots of terrorism. No citizen, especially today, can exist in isolation—that is, untranslated. (300 words)

Response:

For a long time, changing words and alphabets to make texts accessible was the only definition of translation for me. However, as I became more proficient with English, and began reading my favorite books – such as Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” – in both Japanese and English, I realized that translation is much more than simply changing language. Even minute differences in words altered the meaning and tone of the story and shifted my feelings about it. When I read “On the Road” in Japanese, I appreciated the novel’s free-spirited and adventurous tone. I felt the boldness and uniqueness of Kerouac in the way he gives us a snapshot of the American bohemian “beat” lifestyle, the longing of the Beat Generation to be constantly in motion. But, I was left unsatisfied because I suspected that this novel had much more to offer.  So, I re-read it in English. This time, I felt that I was reading the book in a parallel universe; Kerouac’s novel had a different beauty and sadness in the language it was originally composed in. I could feel the bebop jazz’s energy, the “melody” expressed through Kerouac’s language, yielding a new experience of the book.

Similarly, because I exist in different languages and cultures, I am continually translating not only my words, but also my feelings and ideas. For me, college will “translate” into more than a place to study and live; it’ll give me the opportunity to convey my identity to people with diverse backgrounds and to form lifelong friends in the process. Participating in First-Year Experience (FYE) in particular will help me form these strong connections with my peers. Academically, I’ll be practicing translation constantly as well. In my computer science classes, I’ll be translating ideas into code to create reliable, meaningful, and user-friendly programs.

This essay goes well beyond a dull answer to the prompt with clear personal examples and gives insight into this student's unique experience of the world. For bonus points, it also mentions a specific college offering (the FYE). 

Reach Out for Help

Are you experiencing writer’s block on your supplemental essays? Do you need an extra pair of eyes to review what you have already written? We work with students to incorporate the correct tone in their responses and help manage the timeline of their submissions. To learn more, get in touch!

And I encourage you to read our post on tips for writing your main Common App Personal essay here.