Write Superior Common Application Supplemental Essays

The best way to impress the college admissions board is to write impressive supplemental essays. What should your supplementals accomplish? What should you write about? How should you get started? View this short video to learn how to write superior supplemental essays that will get you ACCEPTED:

Video Transcript

You’ve written your Common App essay and here come the supplemental essays. What do they want now? You need to write supplementals for almost every school you are applying to and you’re really not sure how to go about it or what to say. You DO know that the competition for every seat at your target schools is intense. You also have your regular homework and extracurriculars, in addition to tons of these supplementals to write. You may just be feeling a little overwhelmed and nervous because you certainly don’t want to let those supplemental essays prevent you from attending the dream schools that you’re working so hard to get into.

Applying to college is exciting. You’re about to leave home. And it’s also stressful, time-consuming, and nerve-wracking. And of course there is the fear of getting rejected…

We know how tough it can be. Our college admissions consultants have worked in admissions at elite colleges and universities and advised successful applicants to elite colleges like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Yale, Columbia, CalTech, MIT, and many, many others. Following our advice led one clients’ father to write us in December: “We were lucky to get Marie to help us! Christmas came early for us this year and Stanford’s acceptance is the best gift we ever received! :)”

Let me give you the same kind of advice that the happy Stanford student received to help you write superior supplementals.

Goals of a Supplemental Essay

Here are the 3 overriding goals for your supplemental essays:

Complement your personal statement.
Answer the question you are responding to.
Show fit with the particular program you are targeting with this essay.

Showing Fit in Your Supplemental Essays

The last of my 3 points is probably the most difficult so I’m going to focus on that one. How do you show fit? There are 2 key elements to showing fit:

Understand the school.
a. Look at school’s mission statement, About section, and if stated, the school’s criteria.

b. Talk to current students and recent alumni.

c. If you can, visit the school.
Examine your life for experiences and stories that reveal the qualities this school values and will allow you to answer the question effectively.
a. Those are the experiences (as long as they weren’t already used in the PS) that will allow you to tell your story and show fit. Choose 1-2 experiences depending on the question and allowed length for your essay.

b. Provide a succinct analysis of the anecdote reflecting how the example answers the question.

For in-depth and school specific advice, here’s what I’d like you to do:

Go to accepted.com/ivy.
Download our guide to the Common App essays, supplemental essays for the Ivy Leagues, plus bonus advice for the supplemental essays at schools like NYU and U of Michigan.
Write superior supplemental essays that show you belong at your target programs.

Taking these 3 steps will help you go from stressed and anxious to confident that you are submitting engaging, compelling supplemental essays that show fit and lead to acceptance at your dream schools.

Do you need help writing Common Application or secondary college application essays? Work one-on-one with a college admissions expert to create superior essays that show you as your very best. Wow those adcom readers and get accepted to top schools when you take advantage of Accepted’s College Application Personal Statement Services.