Or if you know what department, sport, or activity you're interested in, you can ask the admissions office to put you in touch with a student who is involved with that particular interest.
This something should not be shallow and non-specific. Want to live in a city? Every city has more than one college in it. Find a way to explain why this specific college in this specific city calls to you. Like pretty architecture? Many schools are beautiful, so dwell on why this particular place feels unlike any other. Like good weather, beach, skiing, or some other geographical attribute? There are many schools located near these places, and they know that people enjoy sunbathing. Either build a deeper connection or skip these as reasons.
The "why this college" essay is best thought of as a back and forth between you and the college. This means that your essay will really be answering two separate, albeit related, questions:
Throughout this process of articulating your answers to the questions above, you will also benefit in a couple of key ways:
The College's Own Materials
Every "why this college" essay is going to answer both the "why us" and the "why you" parts of the back-and-forth equation. But depending on which way your target school has worded its prompt, you'll lean more heavily on that part. This is why I'm going to split this brainstorming into two parts—to go with the "why us" and "why you" types of questions.
Students write about the hot issues of the day, which means that the articles will be about the best and worst things on campus. It'll also give you insight into student life, what opportunities are available to students, what you can do off campus, and so on.
- Visiting campuses in person or virtually to interact with current students and faculty
- Posing questions to your college interviewer or to reps at college fairs
- Reading the college's own materials, such as its brochures, official website, alumni magazine, campus newspaper, and/or social media
- Looking at other websites that talk about the school
Why are you drawn to the area(s) of study you indicated earlier in this application? (You may share with us a skill or concept that you found challenging and rewarding to learn, or any experiences beyond coursework that may have broadened your interest.)
Tons of colleges require a supplemental essay that essentially asks, “Why do you want to major in what you want to major in?”
1. It’s worth spending some time on these essays to make sure your answer complements your personal statement. What do I mean? If your personal statement is all about business and your “Why Major” college essay is all about dance, admissions readers might be like, “Whaaaat?” So make sure they make sense together. Also,
Fun fact: Two of the essay examples on this page were written by students who weren’t totally certain of their major. But you won’t be able to guess which ones they are.
What does a “Why this College Major” essay look like?
Being the school “tampon fairy” (restocking school bathrooms with tampons and condoms)
Hook: Connect number of stars to number of connections in brain (and maybe mention cortical dysplasia)
The example below establishes in the first paragraph a thematic thread: storytelling. The second paragraph then explains how her particular major would take her storytelling to the next level. Take a look:
As you can see, these prompts are basically asking why you want to attend the school in question. Northwestern spells it out even further, and specifically asks how you’ll use their resources to achieve your goals. Both prompts have word counts that are much shorter than that of the Common App, which is typical of supplemental essays. These two word counts are pretty representative, and you can expect the “Why this college” essay length to be 100-400 words on average. That’s not a lot of space for a pretty important question, so it’s especially vital to use the word count wisely.
CAS’s undergraduate research program would allow me to work with a mentor, such as Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb or Dr. Robert M.G. Reinhart related to their research on neurological disorders. With them, I can advance the work I have already completed related to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In a summer class at our local university, my partner and I extracted data from fMRI and PET studies and inputted them into a coding program. We then created an indicator map, which we imported into another software program, AFNI, to display significant activity in the brain regions affected by DID. Seeing the representation of our data thrilled me because I knew it could eventually help people who live with DID. I want to experience that feeling again. Successfully analyzing these fMRI and PET studies and learning to code drives me to pursue more research opportunities, and this desire motivates me to study at a university that offers research opportunities to undergraduates. BU’s interdisciplinary approach to psychology and support for independent undergraduate undergraduate research will optimally prepare me for a career as a neurological researcher.
If you want an example of a complete essay, here’s this real student response for Boston University’s “Why this college” prompt.
What TO write: As a potential Applied Mathematics major, I hope to gain the tools to model political behavior. I’m especially interested in elections, and am looking forward to taking the course “Mathematics of Social Choice,” as the centerpiece of Social Choice Theory is voting. I would also love to take “Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos,” because it will teach me to use differential equations to predict chaotic behavior.
Does your Common App essay actually stand out?
Prompt: How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying (650 words).
Another thing that this example gets wrong is that it doesn’t describe the student’s goals or interests at all. It’s important to not only talk about why you picked the school, but also how exactly those aspects will help you grow.
Your essay can be the difference between an acceptance and rejection — it allows you to stand out from the rest of applicants with similar profiles. Get a free peer review or review other students’ essays right now to understand the strength of your essay.
Did you notice how easy it would be to adapt the “Why Tufts” essay for another school? Switch out “18” in “18 related departments and programs,” change the names of the Chinese professor and University, name two different interesting courses and cut the “mother’s alma mater” line and voila—suddenly this is an essay for another school.
I call this the “firehose” approach because it packs 14 reasons into 196 words. The author offers the reader a sense that he has clearly done his research and knows how he might make use of the school’s offerings, which is the goal of the solid, basic “Why this College” essay.
Take real and virtual tours. It’s hard to really know a campus without seeing it. And if you can, do it. But if you can’t visit in person, check out:
Why shouldn’t you do this? Because that's what many other students are writing about and you don’t want to blend in. Take a hint from Emory University, whose “Why us?” prompt used to read:
Approach #1: The Basic, Solid ‘Why this College’ Essay That Includes a Bunch of Reasons
The more interesting your questions are, the more interesting the answers will be, and the more you’ll show why you are interested in this college.
That’s it. Research high and low, search the deepest depths of Google (or better yet: ask someone who attends the school) and find a syllabus for a class you may take at that school.
Miscellaneous extracurriculars paragraph (2-3 things to demonstrate social/non-academic fit)
Important: There is no “best” approach and students are accepted to wonderful schools each year with each of these strategies.
Imagine that you will not have any other opportunity to interact with the reader beyond your conclusion. Imagine that you are leaving, and you will never be back. You have managed to create a positive impression when you wrote a perfect introduction and body of your paper. However, this impression must be lasting. This is what your conclusion is here for. Besides, a brilliant and memorable conclusion can have more effects on the reader than the most impressive introduction.
As you are figuring out the words to be conclude into your essay, do not lose the grip of your theme. You must know what your college essay is about. You must let others know it, as well. Some of the most popular themes in college admission essays include:
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It may well happen that you did not discuss any conflicts in your paper. You did not describe any tragic events, and you did not evaluate the strategies that you used to overcome difficulties. Thus, you entire essay may look and sound positive, but you still need to be careful about the tone that you use in the conclusion. A positive tone used in the body of your paper does not save you from the responsibility to use the same positive tone in your conclusion. Do not forget that you must tell your readers how your admission to college will contribute to this college and the entire community.
Now let us see what will make your college essay conclusion better.
A perfect conclusion of an essay will never contain any stock phrases. You may want to impress the reader. However, the effect can be quite the opposite. Stock phrases come into play when writers have nothing else to write or say in their papers. These include: