Guide to the Why School Admissions Essays Sarah O’Neill Chester County PA

 Sarah O’Neill Chester County Coatesville Supreme Editing

Why do you want to attend our college?

This is the most common type of supplemental essay prompt, and it usually takes extra time and research to answer compared to other kinds of supplements.

Example Prompts

Which aspects of the Tufts undergraduate experience prompt your application? In short, ‘Why Tufts?’ –Tufts University

Why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspect(s) that you find unique and compelling about Columbia.
–Columbia University

What They’re Actually Asking

● Why is our school a better option than the other schools?
● What do you want to study (if the “why major” question is not an additional essay), and why do you want to study it here?
● Have you done your research on our school?
● How are you a good fit for our school’s culture and values?
● How will you take advantage of our school’s unique resources?

Example Essay

Did you know that Louisiana is home to 40% of the wetlands in the continental United States — and is suffering 80% of the wetland losses? Growing up, my time volunteering with wetlands cleanup in my home state of Alaska made me feel a deep responsibility to my planet, and gave me an abiding love of the natural sciences. At Tulane, I want to pursue a major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as a first step in my future
career as a conservationist. I don’t want to just learn about conservation in the classroom — I also want to learn from conservationists who are fighting erosion, invasive species, and wetland loss in the field. Not only does Tulane have several professors who specialize in wetlands ecology and conservation, but Tulane also has a reputation for supporting
undergraduates with independent research projects. I would be particularly interested in pursuing an independent study with Professor Jordan Karubian, because of his lab’s research focus on Gulf Coast ecology and his service learning course on animal behavior at the Audubon Zoo.
Community service contributed enormously to my early scientific education, and one of the biggest draws of Tulane is its service requirement. I like that Tulane is so dedicated to
providing all of its students with opportunities to contribute to their community in ways that match with students’ academic interests. I’ve also applied for Tulane’s Community Service Fellowship, and if I’m successful, I would jump at the chance to join a cohort of other students who are deeply dedicated to community advocacy. I also want to double-major or minor in Studio Art. I want to advance my existing skills as an illustrator, but also make use of the art department’s resources — especially its
beautiful glassblowing studio! — to work with artistic media that have always fascinated me, but that were inaccessible in my hometown. I would also like to take advantage of Tulane’s generous support of student organizations to establish a plein air sketching club for fellow
student artists and naturalists. Aside from Tulane’s academics, I want to join Tulane for its larger New Orleans community. Tulane provides its students with a variety of opportunities to attend local events, museums and shows through Tulane Tickets, and I would take every chance I could
to experience the culture of the city. I’m also an active hiker and cyclist, and there are some incredible nature preserves and hiking spots in the area that I would love to visit in the year-round warm weather.
I don’t want to spend my college years in a bubble — I’m the kind of student who is deeply involved with her community, and who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty for science. I want to spend my time in college with like-minded students and dedicated professors, and I think Tulane is the perfect place for me to learn and grow.

Researching 101

A good Why essay starts with a few hours of research on a school’s website.
When you’re researching, imagine that you’ve already been accepted to this college, and you’re just starting your first semester. What classes will you take? What clubs will you join? Which professors do you want to talk to? Think about the specific details.

You cannot skip the research. The admissions reader will notice. And you will notice. Even if it didn’t make a difference to your essay (and it definitely makes a difference) it’s important for you to know more about the education you might be paying thousands of dollars for!
In fact, every year, I have a few students who do the research for a Why essay and realize the school they’re applying to is a bad fit. Better that you realize this before you write the essay… and not after you’ve already moved into the freshman dorms.

When researching, use this guide alongside the Why Essay Scavenger Hunt
document: in the Scavenger Hunt document, you’ll find useful advice and search terms that will help you find the information you’re looking for.
College websites are huge, complex, and usually organized in a confusing way. When you’re preparing to write your first Why essay, set aside a few hours just to browse the website.

Researching: Majors

You’ll usually be able to easily find a list of the school’s majors/minors or departments under the Academics tab of the school’s main menu.
When looking at a major, it’s a good idea to not only read about it on the major’s web page, but also to take a look at the major’s degree requirements. What classes do you actually have to take in order to get this degree?

Here’s one example of a major’s degree requirements.
If your major is undecided, you should still take a look through the list of majors your school offers, and find a couple majors you think might be interesting. Narrow it down to three options that you might want to go with. In your essay, you can say, “I’m undecided, but I am currently interested in exploring these subjects…”

Researching: Courses

To find some courses you might want to take at a college, take a look at its course catalog. This is the website, or the section of a school’s website, where students of the college search for the courses they want to take each semester.

Each course also has a unique number (1202, 2010B, 0755). Each college has its own system, but in general, the higher the number, the more advanced (and specific) the class. 100 or 101 course codes are where you find classes like “Introduction to Physics”: 800 classes tend to be more like “Extragalactic Astronomy and High-Energy Astrophysics.”

When you’re searching for courses to discuss in your Why essay, look for these more advanced classes, not the 100-level courses.
You can’t say, “I can only take Introduction to Biology at UC Santa Barbara,” because every college will offer Introduction to Biology. But you can say, “UC Santa Barbara is one of the few colleges that offers Advanced Biostatistics as an undergraduate-level course.”

Researching: Values

You’ll almost always find a college’s values on the “About Me” section of its website. Most colleges are going to say the same things, worded in slightly different ways:

● We’re innovative and creative.
● We care about diversity.
● We give back to our local community.
● We want to find solutions to the big problems in the world.
● We’re interdisciplinary.*
* You will see this word a lot in your college research. It means “relating to
multiple fields of knowledge.” For example, if I created a robot that painted
pictures, I would be combining science and art: it would be an interdisciplinary project.

It’s great to talk about all this in your Why essay. However, sometimes you’ll find something that is genuinely unique to the college. Look closely for values that are put into practice in some unique way.
For example, every school will say that it’s invested in giving back to the community. But Tulane University takes it a step further: several of their classes involve a significant element of community service, and you have to take at least one of those “service learning” classes in order to graduate!

Another great example of a unique value is Caltech’s commitment to their Honor Code. This Honor Code is one sentence long:
“No member of the Caltech Community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the community.” Caltech takes this code really seriously. It applies to everyone on campus, and if a student violates the code they are judged by a committee of their peers. However, because everyone is trusted to follow the Honor Code, it means that Caltech students are trusted with many responsibilities that are rare at other universities: for example, take-home tests at Caltech are very common, because students are trusted not to cheat.

Other examples of these unique values include Columbia University’s Core Curriculum, Brown University’s Open Curriculum, and Boston College’s emphasis on a Jesuit education.

Researching: Campus Culture

What is it actually like to live on campus? How do current students talk about their college experience? First of all, The Princeton Review interviews students in order to learn more about their
opinions of their school. Type in your school of choice into “Find Your School” and you’ll get a great general idea of what it’s like to go there. Here’s one example of a Princeton Review write-up of a school.

Second, do not discount the power of YouTube. Make sure to pay attention to sources here. Universities will have official YouTube channels with lots of promotional material, which can be useful, but the real goldmine is independently produced student vlogs. Videos like “Pros and Cons of UCLA,” “Why I Chose Johns Hopkins” and “A Day in the
Life of a Harvard Student” are your best friends here. Not only are student vlogs likely to present you with lots of useful details that universities might not mention, but student vloggers are usually willing to talk about the downsides of their college experience. A college website will never, ever mention that its student body is not very diverse… but a student vlogger will. Even though it might be a downer to find criticism of your dream school, it’s better if you know about the negatives before you apply. Obviously, though, don’t mention those negatives in your Why essay.

Researching: Labs and Professors

If you have a specific idea of what you want to learn in college, it can be smart to research specific professors. Let’s say I’m a student who’s interested in learning about child psychology at Duke. First, I google “Duke psychology” to get to the psychology department’s website. This brings me to an “About” page, but there are several interesting tabs: “Undergraduate,” “About Us” and “Courses” are great ways to learn about the department, but I’m going to focus on “People” and “Research”. What Should I Write About?
Don’t just tell the college things that they already know. Duke has a good biology department. It also has a center where you can study
lemurs. The admissions readers know that Duke has a lemur research center. They want to know why you care about that. Are you going to visit this lemur center? For fun? For research? For class? Why are you interested in this facility?

I’m an animal enthusiast who loves learning about natural history and animal biology. As a biology major at Duke, I plan to get involved in field research projects at the Duke Lemur Center, studying the effects of hibernation on different lemur species.

Much better!

Check your spelling and capitalization.
Obviously you should be doing this no matter what, but you should be extra careful about names of courses, programs, and people. Spell and capitalize these things exactly as they’re spelled and capitalized on the website.
Also, do not misspell the name of the college!!!

Why essay: After I found the cure for cancer and found evidence of life on other planets, I knew that my next great adventure would be college. I can’t wait to start the next chapter of my life at John Hopkins University!
Admissions reader: [enormous sigh] “You mean Johns Hopkins?”

This especially applies if you’re adapting a Why essay you already wrote to a new school.

Why essay: I love Cornell. Cornell’s living-learning communities and its
first-class physics education make it a dream come true for a future
astrophysicist like me. That’s why Stanford is my first-choice university!
The Cornell admissions reader: “Well, at least I don’t have to read the rest of this application.”

Don’t plagiarize.
I cannot stress this enough: do not copy phrases directly from the school’s website. It’s easy to tell when students are doing this, and colleges take plagiarism very
seriously.

Don’t talk about rankings.

I’m applying to Princeton because the U.S. News and World Report ranked it #1 on its “Best Colleges” list.” Sure, colleges know that you’re probably paying attention to rankings. But a “Why” essay is like a first date: it’s where you sit down at a nice cafe and tell the college everything you like about its personality. Mentioning a college’s overall ranking is like saying,
“Just so you know, I only date girls who my friend Todd thinks are attractive.” Not a great idea, right?

Colleges would rather see that you’re actually doing your own research on their school. Princeton doesn’t care what your friend Todd (or your friend, The U.S. News and World Report) thinks. They care what you think.

For more help, email Sarah O’Neill Chester County Supreme Editing

Saraoneil3232@yahoo.com