On this page
Many colleges ask a version of the same supplemental question: why do you want to attend, or why this major here? Lengths vary, often from about 100 to 400 words, and the question can look easy. It is the supplement readers most often find generic.
The test is simple. If you could swap in another college's name and the essay would still make sense, it is not specific enough.
What readers are really asking
Two things: do you know what makes this college different, and how would you specifically use it? Prestige, rankings, location and weather are not answers. Neither is praise of the college that its own website already makes.
Research that pays off
- Specific courses, programs, research opportunities or requirements in your intended area.
- How the curriculum is structured: core requirements, open curriculum, majors you can combine.
- Student organizations, traditions or community practices you would actually join.
- Conversations with current students, visits or information sessions, if they told you something you could not read online.
A structure that works
- 1Start with you: a specific interest, question or goal, in one or two sentences.
- 2Connect it to two or three specific things at this college, and say what you would do with each.
- 3Show what you would bring: how you would take part, not only what you would take.
- 4Keep it in proportion. In a short answer, two well-developed connections beat a list of ten.
Lines to cut
- Rankings, prestige and "world-class faculty".
- The weather, the city, or the campus being beautiful, unless it is genuinely connected to what you would do.
- Lists of program names without saying why each matters to you.
- Restating the college's mission statement back to it.
Questions
A score out of 100, a note on every sentence, the paragraph costing you most and a 10-point draft check, in 5–10 minutes. We never write a word of your essay.
Check my essay →