Guide to ‘Solve a Problem’ College Admissions Essays By Sarah O’Neill Chester County Sarah O'Neill Sarah O'Neill
Solve a problem that you see in the world.
The “solve a problem” essay is an essay that asks you to come up with a solution to a significant issue.
Example Prompts
Students at Boston College are encouraged to consider critical questions as they pursue lives of meaning and purpose. What is a question that matters to you and how do you hope Boston College will help you answer it? –Boston College
Describe an engineering problem that impacts your local community. This could be your school, neighborhood, town, region, or a group you identify with. Describe one to three things you might do as an engineer to solve the problem. –Cornell College of Engineering
If you could change anything in the world, what would it be? Explain why and how you would change it. –University of Pittsburgh
What They’re Actually Asking
● What are your values?
● Do you think deeply about big issues?
● Are you a smart researcher? Do you have a complex understanding of the
problem you want to solve?
Example Essay
Growing up in a Montessori environment, I hadn’t ever experienced midterms, finals, or even any standardized testing until high school. While walking through the hallways, especially around midterms and finals, I noticed the apprehensiveness in my peers. People no longer greeted each other. I was in total culture shock. But because of my leadership position, I knew I could do something about it.
At my school, I’m an elected representative of Arts League, an organization that advocates for and provides resources to my school’s artistic community. However, in the last few years, its offerings have expanded beyond funding clubs, exhibiting student work, and running events. As a freshman representative, I designed a new program for Arts League: official drawing and coloring sessions to destress around exam weeks.
The program was so much of a success that we needed to expand into another classroom because the room was so packed at our first official meeting. In fact, some students loved the sessions so much that I received requests to run them outside of exam season. Once a week after school, I would gather in an empty classroom with a dozen other students, spending time talking about stressors in our lives while coloring and doodling.
Leading these sessions are what I look forward to most after a long,
challenging week. If I could change anything in the world, I would institute accessible art therapy programs in countries with high or rising crime and mental illness rates. Many dismiss art, but it enriches everyday life and provides stress relief. Not only can the arts alleviate depression and anxiety, but it allows people to use their creativity to develop a sense of
identity, self-worth, and discipline, which can reduce crime and other destructive behaviors. Because of this, I want to strengthen my local community by organizing neighborhood mural projects. Not only would this encourage community members to be involved and uplifted, but it would also revitalize my town’s image and make it a safer
place.
Art therapy also creates new jobs for people with arts degrees who want to become leaders within their communities. With the help of the recently reduced stigma around mental health awareness, I want to make a lasting mark at Pitt by establishing an art therapy center for students to ease the severity of poor mental health symptoms.
What Should I Write About?
Pick a specific, ambitious, and solvable problem.
Non-specific: I would make the Earth a better place to live. Pick a specific cause — ideally a cause that is relevant and important to you in some
way.
Non-ambitious: I would make my school cafeteria serve free hot dogs on
Fridays.
Though some “solve a problem” prompts really are asking for students to solve small or community-based problems (see Cornell College of Engineering’s prompt under “Example Prompts”), most are asking you to tackle big issues.
Unsolvable: I would institute world peace.
Finally, readers aren’t looking for you to wave a magic wand: they’re interested in seeing how you would realistically approach a big issue, so pick an issue that you think is actually solvable — or, in the case of really big issues like global warming or racism, an issue that a determined group of people could positively impact within their lifetime.
Do your research.
Did you know that providing homeless individuals with apartments is proven to be cheaper than leaving a country’s homeless population to fend for themselves? This essay isn’t a research paper, and you don’t need to cite your sources — but it can be a good idea to put some actual facts or figures in your essay to introduce or strengthen your argument. Seriously think about the realism of your proposed solution.
I would solve cyberbullying by making it a legal requirement for everyone to use their real name on the internet.
Make sure your proposed solution to the problem is fully considered, and put some thought into the possible consequences of the idea (positive and negative.) It’s a good idea to do some research here — how have other people attempted to solve this problem? Did those solutions fail? Did they work, and if so, how and why? Talk about why this issue matters to you.
Why is this problem important? Has it had a personal impact on your life, or the lives of your loved ones? Why is it so important to solve? Let us know!
Consider problems you’re already solving.
…In fact, I’ve already begun my journey of tackling racism in my community. I helped organize a local protest against anti-Black racism in the capital of my state…
If there’s a problem in the world that you’re already involved in fixing — through activism, community action, advocacy or something else — that could be a great candidate for the subject of your essay. If you’re already doing things to solve this problem, mention what you’ve done in your essay!
Brainstorming
homelessness
global warming
racism
lack of accessible mental health treatment
censorship in schools
2. Pick one of those problems to tackle in your essay. Especially keep an eye out for problems that are personally important to you, problems that have
impacted you and problems that you’re already working on solving.
3. Why is this problem important to you?
- I had a friend in high school who struggled with homelessness
- I’m a very data-driven person, and I’ve read many studies on the subject:
there are several proven methods for decreasing homelessness rates
- I believe that safe housing should be a universal human right
4. What are some possible solutions to this problem? What have people already done to tackle this problem, and how did that turn out? Do some research!
homelessness
- “housing-first” solutions, providing housing to the homeless with no
preconditions — in Finland this has been instituted with a high success rate
- career counseling and job training opportunities
- improved options for education
Example Outline
Part 1: Introduce the problem you want to solve. This student did a great job introducing this problem by mentioning an interesting and personally relevant event. Naples, Florida: a quiet retirement community where the average income towers 65% higher than the rest of the US, and which just happens to be adjacent to Florida’s most protected lands. These fragments of the Everglades house dozens of endangered species, serve as a natural water purification system, and protect the mainland during storm surges. Yet, despite its beneficial impact on the surroundings and the balance it provides, city council members continue to abandon conservation efforts in the name of capitalism. Recently, community wildlife activists, including myself, have been advocating for the passing of new fishing pier restrictions, which would curb fishing-gear-related injuries to pelicans and other shore birds. The proposal requests funding for additional patrols to enforce the new rules. Developing the budget for this should not have been a problem due to the high concentration of wealthy people in the area, but the restrictions did not pass through city council. I later discovered that the people who fund and maintain the Naples Pier just happen to be avid fishers.
Part 2: Why is this problem important to solve? Why is it important and relevant to you,
specifically? I want to change this view of politics that asserts that if change does not directly and immediately affect people, it doesn’t need to happen. In my opinion, motivation for change should be focused on the long-term betterment of the United States in all different ways, from humanitarian and legislative issues to environmental ones.
Part 3: What steps would you take to solve this problem? Don’t just talk about what you
can do right now with your current resources: you should also dream big and imagine
what you could do with support from others in the future. The question I want to answer at Boston College is: “How can I make large-scale environmental change a reality?”
At Boston College, surrounded by thinkers, researchers, and policymakers, I will learn to mobilize the public and advocate for conservation on a global scale. For a long time, the global conversation on “green living” has
been about putting the onus of change on individual consumers to tweak their daily routines in order to protect the planet — not on expanding recycling facilities, taxing land usage for destructive farming practices, or establishing laws against wastewater dumping. By bringing trusted environmental scientists into politics, and informing the public of the need to create large-scale political changes, our
society can put pressure on politicians to act upon that need. At Boston College, I want to learn from changemakers — so that one day, I can educate politicians that saving the world means more than simply turning the water off while they brush their teeth.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Sarah O’Neill Chester County Teacher Editor Supreme Editing Coatesville
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