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How To Answer Harvard's 2023/24 Supplemental Essays: Tips & Insights

What's New in 2023/24

What are Harvard's Essay Prompts?

How to Answer Harvard's Essay Prompts

General Guidelines

Explore the changes in Harvard's supplemental essay prompts for 2023/24, understand the nuances of each question, and gain insights on crafting compelling responses with our detailed guide, complete with expert tips and links to successful Harvard essay examples.

Harvard's 2023/24 Supplemental Essay Updates: What's Changed?

Gaining admission to Harvard is no small feat, with acceptance rates sometimes plummeting as low as 3% . In such a competitive environment, every component of your application, especially your essay, becomes a crucial tool to stand out to admissions officers.

Every year, top-tier universities like Harvard fine-tune their application process to get a deeper understanding of their applicants. For the 2023/24 admissions cycle, Harvard University has made notable modifications to its supplemental essay questions .

Last year, applicants had a mix of required and optional prompts, with varying word limits, ranging from 50 to 150 words. These prompts touched on extracurricular activities, intellectual experiences, personal backgrounds, and more.

This year, Harvard has streamlined the process, requiring all applicants to answer five questions, each with a strict 200-word limit . The questions emphasize the importance of diversity, intellectual experiences, extracurricular activities, the utilization of a Harvard education, and personal insights for potential roommates.

This shift indicates a desire for more concise, focused responses from applicants, allowing the admissions committee to gain a clearer, more uniform understanding of each student's background, aspirations, and personality.

What Are Harvard’s Supplemental Essay Prompts for 2023/24?

For the 2023/24 application cycle, Harvard University has outlined specific supplemental essay prompts to understand applicants better in addition to the Common App or Coalition App questions. These questions delve into your experiences, intellectual pursuits, and personal insights. Students are required to answer each Harvard-specific question in under 200 words. Here's a breakdown of the prompts:

• Diversity and Contribution : Harvard values a diverse student body. Reflect on your life experiences and explain how they have shaped you and how you plan to contribute to Harvard. (200 words)
• Intellectual Experience : Discuss an intellectual experience that has had a significant impact on you. (200 words)
• Personal Shaping Experiences : Elaborate on extracurricular activities, employment, travel, or family responsibilities that have played a pivotal role in defining who you are. (200 words)
• Future Aspirations : Describe how you envision utilizing your Harvard education in the future. (200 words)
• Getting to Know You : List three things your future roommates should know about you. (200 words)

These prompts offer applicants a chance to showcase their personalities, aspirations, and experiences, providing a holistic view of their candidacy.

Looking for inspiration? Dive into these Harvard essay examples to see what successful applications look like!

How to Answer Harvard’s Supplemental Essay Questions?

This guide aims to help you craft a compelling response that showcases your unique journey and potential contributions to Harvard's diverse community.

As you begin planning responses to each individual prompt, be sure to consider what experiences, reflections, and qualities you want to showcase once you’ve responded to all the prompts:

• Ensure you won’t leave out any important experiences, reflections, and qualities you want Harvard to know about.
• Be sure you’ll avoid repeating the same experiences, reflections, or qualities in the other prompts.

Answering Prompt 1

Harvard values a diverse student body. reflect on your life experiences and explain how they have shaped you and how you plan to contribute to harvard., - 200 words or fewer, 1. understand the question.

Harvard is not merely asking for a list of experiences. They want to understand the depth of your experiences , how they've molded your character, and how you'll use that growth to contribute to the Harvard community.

Since Harvard is telling you they value diversity, consider emphasizing unique experiences or circumstances that highlight the most personal and profound aspects of your personality, values, and perspectives.

2. Reflect on Your Unique Experiences

Consider moments in your life that have had a significant impact on your worldview:

• Have you lived in multiple countries, exposing you to various cultures?
• Did you overcome challenges that forced you to view the world differently?
• Were there pivotal moments in your upbringing that shaped your identity?
• How did interactions with diverse individuals or groups influence your perspectives?

3. Dive Deep into Personal Growth

Discuss the evolution of your perspectives, values, or aspirations.

• How did these experiences challenge your beliefs or expand your understanding?
• What lessons did you derive, and how have they influenced your subsequent actions or decisions?
• What experiences or reflections shape your deepest beliefs and values? — or, shape some deep questions or doubts you wrestle with?

4. Connect to Harvard

Consider how your unique perspective will enrich Harvard's community .

• Will you introduce new viewpoints in classroom discussions or help teams work together more successfully?
• Will you contribute to or initiate student organizations or community projects?
• Will you exemplify certain traits that enhance a vibrant, curious, and inclusive learning environment?

5. Be Concise and Authentic

With a 200-word limit, precision is key. Ensure your narrative is genuine, making your essay resonate with the reader. Avoid generic statements; instead, provide specific examples that showcase your journey.

Harvard's first supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase the depth of your experiences and how they've shaped you . Reflecting on significant moments, emphasizing personal growth, and connecting your unique perspective to how you'll contribute to Harvard is essential. Remember to be concise, authentic, and ensure your essay is polished to perfection.

Answering Prompt 2

Discuss an intellectual experience that has had a significant impact on you..

This question aims to help you articulate the depth and significance of an intellectual experience and its profound impact on your academic and personal journey.

1. Define "Intellectual Experience"

Before diving in, understand that an intellectual experience isn't limited to classroom learning . It could be:

• A book that changed your perspective
• A conversation that challenged your beliefs
• An experience that triggered a profound insight or understanding
• Or even a personal project or research endeavor

2. Choose a Meaningful Experience

Reflect on experiences that genuinely transformed your thinking:

• Was there a particular course or project that ignited a passion?
• Did a specific book, article, or documentary challenge your pre-existing beliefs?
• Have you attended seminars, workshops, or lectures that introduced you to new ideas?

3. Delve into the "Why"

Discuss why this experience was transformative:

• What preconceptions or beliefs did it challenge?
• How did it expand or deepen your understanding of a particular subject or idea?
• Did it inspire further exploration or study into the topic?

4. Highlight Personal Growth

Describe how this intellectual experience influenced your academic and personal journey:

• Did it guide your academic pursuits or career aspirations?
• How did it shape your values, beliefs, or worldview?

5. Be Authentic and Reflective

Your genuine curiosity and passion should shine through. Avoid using jargon or overly complex language. Instead, focus on genuine reflection and personal growth .

Harvard's second supplemental essay seeks to understand your intellectual journey . It's an opportunity to showcase your curiosity, passion, and the transformative power of learning. By reflecting on a significant intellectual experience and its impact on you, you can demonstrate your academic depth, your own intellectual processes and aptitudes, and intellectual growth.

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Answering Prompt 3

Elaborate on extracurricular activities, employment, travel, or family responsibilities that have played a pivotal role in defining who you are..

This question is designed to help you articulate the significance of experiences outside the classroom and their profound impact on your personal journey.

1. Prioritize Depth Over Quantity

While you might have multiple experiences, focus on one or two that have had the most profound impact on you . This allows you to delve deeper and provide a more insightful reflection.

2. Choose a Defining Experience

Reflect on moments that genuinely shaped your character:

• Was there an extracurricular activity that taught you leadership, teamwork, or dedication?
• Did a job teach you responsibility, time management, or the value of hard work?
• Has travel exposed you to diverse cultures, broadening your perspectives?
• Were there family responsibilities that instilled in you a sense of maturity, empathy, or resilience?

3. Describe the Experience

Briefly set the scene. Whether it's the bustling environment of a part-time job, the challenges of a leadership role in a club, or the nuances of a family responsibility, paint a picture for the reader.

4. Reflect on the Impact

Discuss how this experience influenced your personal growth:

• What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
• What skills or values did you acquire or strengthen?
• How did this experience shape your aspirations, perspectives, or values?

5. Connect to the Present

Highlight how this experience continues to influence you:

• How do the lessons you learned guide your current decisions or actions?
• How has it influenced your academic interests or future aspirations?

Harvard's third supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase experiences outside the classroom that have significantly influenced your personal growth . Reflecting on these pivotal moments and their lasting impact can provide a holistic picture of your character, values, and aspirations.

Answering Prompt 4

Describe how you envision utilizing your harvard education in the future..

This question aims to help you articulate how a Harvard education aligns with your future goals and the impact you aim to make in your chosen field or community.

1. Reflect on Your Goals

Begin by identifying your long-term aspirations . Have a clear vision in mind, whether it's a specific career, a desire to address a global challenge, or a passion you wish to pursue further.

2. Highlight Harvard's Unique Offerings

Research specific programs, courses, or opportunities at Harvard that align with your goals. This could be a particular academic program, research opportunities, or extracurricular activities.

3. Draw a Connection

Discuss how these unique offerings will equip you with the skills, knowledge, or experiences needed to achieve your future aspirations . Make it evident that Harvard is the ideal place for you to realize these goals.

4. Go Beyond the Obvious

While Harvard's academic excellence is a given, delve into the broader Harvard experience. Consider the influence of its diverse community, its culture of innovation, or its commitment to leadership and service.

5. Discuss the Broader Impact

Expand on how you plan to use your Harvard education to make a difference . Whether it's in your community, in a particular field, or on a global scale, showcase your commitment to creating positive change.

6. Stay Authentic

Ensure your response is genuine and reflects your true aspirations. Admissions officers can discern genuine passion and commitment from generic responses.

Harvard's fourth supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase your forward-thinking approach and how you plan to leverage Harvard's resources to achieve your future goals. By drawing a clear connection between what Harvard offers and your aspirations, you demonstrate a purposeful approach to your education.

Answering Prompt 5

List three things your future roommates should know about you..

This question aims to help you present a genuine and well-rounded picture of yourself, offering insights into your personality, habits, and values.

1. Reflect on Your Personality

This prompt is an invitation to share more about your personal side. Think about the quirks, habits, or values that define you. What are the things that make you, well, you?

2. Balance Seriousness with Lightness

While one point could be a deep reflection of your values or beliefs, another could be a fun fact or a unique hobby. This mix gives a rounded picture of who you are.

3. Be Genuine

Avoid coming up with things you believe the admissions committee wants to hear. This is your chance to let your true self shine through.

4. Consider Your Daily Life

Think about your habits or routines, the music you listen to, or the books you read. These can offer insights into your personality and preferences.

5. Reflect on Past Living Experiences

Have you shared a space with someone before — roommate, sibling, family members, fellow campers?… Think about what made the experience harmonious. Were there particular habits, routines, or guiding principles you followed that were appreciated by those you were sharing space with?

Harvard's fifth supplemental essay is a chance to showcase your personality beyond academics and extracurriculars . By sharing genuine aspects of yourself related to day-to-day living and the many small ways you interact with those around you in more personal spaces, you give a glimpse into your life outside the classroom and what it might be like to share a living space with you.

5 Tips for the "Why This School?" Essay

General Guidelines for Crafting Stellar Harvard Supplemental Essays

1. Understand the Question: Before you start writing, ensure you fully understand what the prompt is asking. Break it down and consider its nuances. This will help you stay on track and address all aspects of the question.

2. Be Authentic: Harvard isn't just looking for high achievers; they're looking for genuine individuals. Your essay should reflect your true self, not what you think the admissions committee wants to hear.

3. Show, Don't Tell: Instead of just stating facts or beliefs, use anecdotes, experiences, or stories to convey your points. This makes your essay more engaging and paints a clearer picture of who you are.

4. Stay Within the Word Limit: While it might be tempting to write more, respect the word limits. It shows that you can convey your thoughts concisely and respect guidelines.

5. Proofread and Edit: Always review your essay multiple times for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Consider also asking a teacher, mentor, or friend to review it.

6. Connect to Harvard: While the prompts might not explicitly ask for it, subtly showing why your experiences, values, or aspirations align with Harvard's culture or offerings can be a plus.

7. Reflect on Growth: Colleges love to see personal growth. Reflect on how experiences have shaped you, lessons learned, and how you've evolved.

8. Avoid Repetition: Ensure that your supplemental essays present new information and don't repeat what's already in your Common App essay or other parts of your application.

9. Be Forward-Looking: While it's essential to reflect on past experiences, also touch on how these experiences prepare you for future endeavors, especially at Harvard.

10. Start Early: Give yourself ample time to brainstorm, draft, and revise. Starting early reduces stress and allows you to approach the essay with a clear mind.

Remember, the supplemental essays are an opportunity to showcase aspects of yourself that aren't evident in other parts of your application . Use them wisely to provide a holistic picture of yourself and why you'd be a great fit for Harvard.

Final Thoughts

The journey to Harvard is more than just academic prowess; it's about crafting a narrative that resonates deeply with the admissions committee. Your supplemental essays provide a unique window into your personality, aspirations, and the distinct perspectives you'll bring to the Harvard community.

Every Harvard aspirant has a story waiting to be told. This is your moment to share yours. Approach your essays with authenticity, introspection, and a genuine passion for your narrative.

If you're wondering whether your essay truly captures your essence or if it stands out from the multitude of applications, our essay review service is here to help. Our team of experts will meticulously review and provide feedback to refine your essay, ensuring it resonates with admissions officers. For further inspiration, delve into our ebook , which showcases essays from students who clinched spots at top universities. And if Harvard is your dream, these successful Harvard essay examples will provide invaluable insights.

For those just starting their college application journey, consider booking a free consultation with our seasoned college counselors. We're dedicated to guiding you in creating an application that significantly enhances your chances of donning the Crimson colors. Harvard is within reach, and we're here to help you every step of the way.

What Makes Crimson Different

Key Resources & Further Reading

• Everything you need to know about US Application Supplemental Essays
• Acing your College Application Essay: 5 Expert Tips to Make it Stand Out from the Rest
• How to Tackle Every Type of Supplemental Essay
• 2023-24 Common App Essay Prompts
• What are the Most Unusual US College Supplemental Essay Prompts?

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College Info , College Essays

Aiming for the world-renowned Harvard University? As part of the application to this prestigious Ivy League school, you'll be required to submit responses to five short answer questions.  

This is actually a big change! In years past, Harvard offered an optional supplemental essay opportunity that applicants could write to add extra flair to their application. This year, Harvard has opted to require responses to five short answer prompts and completely omitted the optional, supplemental Harvard essay prompt. 

But what should you write about for your Harvard essay short answers? What are the different Harvard essay prompts to choose from, and how should you answer them so you can give yourself your best shot at getting in?

In this guide, we give you advice for each Harvard essay prompt as well as tips on how to decide what to write. But before we look at the prompts, let's go over what Harvard actually requires in terms of essays.

Feature Image: Gregor Smith /Flickr

What Essays Do You Need to Submit to Harvard?

Those applying for admission to Harvard must submit an application through either the Common Application or the Coalition Application . For your Harvard application, you'll need to write a personal essay in response to one of the prompts provided by the Common App or Coalition App (depending on the system you're applying through).

This essay is required for all applicants and should typically be about 500-550 words long (and must be less than 650 words). To learn more about this essay, check out the current prompts for the Common App and Coalition App on their official websites.

In addition to this required essay, Harvard first-year applicants are required to submit 250 word (max) responses to five short answer questions . 

Here are the prompts for the five required 2023-2024 Harvard short answer questions :

Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?

Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you.

Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.

• How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?
• Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.

Now, you might be wondering: is Harvard offering an optional supplemental essay opportunity as part of this year’s application process? No. This year, Harvard is not accepting optional supplemental essays as part of the first-year admissions process . The optional supplemental essay has been offered in previous years, but not for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle. 

Now, here’s where things get a little tricky. The five short answer questions listed above are part of what’s called the Harvard first-year application supplement. But they aren’t the same thing as the supplemental essay from years past! And the important thing to remember is this: these short answer questions–and the entire Harvard supplement–are not optional. You’ll have to answer all five questions if you want to be considered as a candidate for admission!

The good news is that each short answer topic is very open ended, and they give you plenty of room to express who you are and how and why you’re the perfect fit for Harvard!

How to Write the Harvard Short Answers: Every Prompt Analyzed

In this section, we go through the five required Harvard supplement essay prompts and offer you tips on how to write effective, powerful short answers…in 200 words or less!

Prompt 1: Diversity

This first Harvard essay prompt is all about what you can bring to campus that will positively contribute to student diversity. Though we tend to think of race/ethnicity when using the word "diversity," you can actually interpret this word in a number of ways.

As a large and prestigious institution, Harvard strongly values students who have different and unique backgrounds and experiences, so it's important for them to admit students who embody these values as well.

This prompt is essentially a version of the diversity essay, which we talk about in more detail in our guide.

Here are some key types of diversity you can discuss (note that this is not an exhaustive list!):

• Your ethnicity or race
• A unique interest, passion, hobby, or skill you have
• Your family or socioeconomic background
• Your religion
• Your cultural group
• Your sex or gender/gender identity
• Your opinions or values
• Your sexual orientation

Tips for Answering This Prompt

• Choose a personal characteristic that's had a large impact on your identity. Don't talk about your family's religion if it's had little or no impact on how you see and define yourself. Instead, concentrate on the most significant experiences or skills in your life. If you play the theremin every day and have a passion for music because of it, this would be a great skill to write about in your essay.
• Be clear about how your unique characteristic has affected your life and growth. You don't just want to introduce the experience/skill and leave it at that. How has it molded you into the person you are today? How has it influenced your ambitions and goals? 
• Be sure to tie this characteristic back to the diversity at Harvard. Basically, how will your experience/skill/trait positively influence the Harvard student body? For example, if you come from a specific cultural group, how do you believe this will positively impact other students?

Prompt 2: Important Intellectual Experience

With this prompt, Harvard wants you to focus on an intellectual or learning experience that's had a big impact on you in terms of your personal growth, your academic/intellectual interests and passions, the field of study you want to pursue, etc.

This intellectual experience could be anything that's intellectually stimulating, such as an essay or book you read, a poem you analyzed, or a research project you conducted.

Note that this experience does not need to be limited to something you did for school —if you've done anything in your spare time or for an extracurricular activity that you think fits this prompt, feel free to write about that.

For example, you could write about how you found an old copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species at a garage sale, and how reading this prompted you to develop an interest in biology, which you now intend to major in and eventually make a career out of.

This is also an ideal prompt to highlight a particular interest or passion you have that differs from the academic field you want to study in college.

For instance, perhaps you're applying for admission as a computer science major, but you're also a huge fan of poetry and often take part in local poetry readings. Writing about a poem you recently read and analyzed could illuminate to the admissions committees a different, less prominent side of your personality and intellectual interests , ultimately showing that you're open minded and invested in gaining both new skills and experiences.

• Choose an experience that had a significant impact on you . Don't talk about how reading Romeo and Juliet in eighth grade made you realize how much you enjoyed writing plays if you were already writing plays way before then! Pinpoint an intellectual experience that was meaningful to you, and write about it honestly.
• Be specific about the intellectual experience you had and clearly relate it back to your strengths and interests . In other words, what kind of impact did this experience have on you? Your academic goals? Your future plans? For example, instead of writing about how a scientific paper on climate change made you think more deeply about the environment, you could talk about how this paper prompted you to form a recycling program at your school, take a class on marine biology, and so forth.

Prompt 3: Non-Academic Defining Experiences

This prompt is asking you to discuss experiences you've had that involved traveling, living, learning, and/or working in some capacity outside of the formal classroom. Most importantly, you’ll need to explain what kind of effect that experience has had on you.

Here are examples of experiences you could talk about for this essay:

• Any extracurricular activity you engage in, particularly a spike approach, if you’ve got one (learn more about creating your spike approach in our complete guide !)
• Living or traveling abroad
• Moving to a new place or living in multiple places
• Working a part-time job
• Working a temporary job or internship somewhere outside your own community
• Helping with finances, caregiving, or maintaining a family business (like a farm or lawn care business, for example)
• Choose a truly significant experience to talk about. Although your experience doesn't need to be life-changing, it should have had a noteworthy impact on you and who you've become. If, for example, you traveled to Mexico with your family but didn't really enjoy or learn much from the trip, it's better to avoid writing about this experience.
• Make sure to talk about how this travel/living/work experience has affected you. For example, say you spent a couple of summers in high school visiting relatives in South Africa. You could write about how these trips helped you develop a stronger sense of independence and self-sufficiency—traits which have made you more assertive, especially when it comes to leading group projects and giving speeches.
• Don't be afraid to get creative with this essay. For instance, if you lived in a country where you at first didn't understand the local language, you could open your Harvard essay with an anecdote, such as a conversation you overheard or a funny miscommunication.

Prompt 4: Harvard and Your Future

This Harvard essay prompt is pretty self-explanatory: it wants you to discuss how you intend to use your education at Harvard after you graduate—so in a future job or career, in grad school, in a particular research field, etc.

Basically, how will your college education help you achieve your future goals (whatever those may be)?

If you’re still undecided about the field(a) you want to study at Harvard, don’t panic! It’s okay to think outside the box for this prompt. 

Maybe you don’t know what you want to major in yet, but you do know that you share Harvard’s values and want to bring those values to the world after you graduate. Whether you’ll do that by joining the Peace Corps or heading back to your hometown to volunteer for a few months before starting your career, just be specific about how Harvard is the right school to put you on the path to your future! 

• Be careful when talking about your future goals. You don't want to come off too idealistic, but you also don't want to sound too broad or you'll come across unfocused and ambivalent. Try to strike a balance in how you discuss your future dreams so that they're both attainable and specific.
• Clearly connect your goals back to your current self and what you've accomplished up until this point. You want to make it clear that your goals are actually attainable, specifically with a Harvard education. If you say you hope to start your own interior design business after graduation but are planning to major in biology, you're only going to confuse the admissions committee!
• Emphasize any ways Harvard specifically will help you attain your academic goals. For example, is there a club you hope to join that could connect you with other students? Or is there a particular professor you want to work with? Don't just throw in names of clubs and people but specifically explain how these resources will help you reach your goals. In short, show Harvard that what they can offer you is exactly what you need to succeed.

Prompt 5: Your Future Goals

How you hope to use your college education

This Harvard essay prompt is pretty self-explanatory: it wants you to discuss how you intend to use your education at Harvard after you graduate —so in a future job or career, in grad school, in a particular research field, etc.

Should You Choose This Prompt?

If you have a pretty clear vision for your future goals during and after college, this is a perfect prompt to choose for your Harvard essay.

If, on the other hand, you're still undecided about the field(s) you want to study or how you intend to use your major, you might want to choose a different prompt that's less focused on your future and more concentrated on how past events and experiences have shaped you as a person.

Prompt 6: List of Books

A list of books you have read during the past twelve months

Of all Harvard essay prompts, this one is by far the most unique.

Here, you're asked to simply list the books you've read in the past year. This essay is more than just a list, though—it's a brief overview of where your intellectual interests lie. These books may include works of fiction or nonfiction, essays, collections of poetry, etc.

Have you read a lot of diverse and interesting books in the past year? Are you an avid reader who loves dissecting books and essays? Do you enjoy a creative approach to college essays? If you answered yes to these questions, then this prompt is a perfect fit for you.

Even if you haven't read a ton of books this past year, if you were especially intrigued by some or all of what you did read, you could certainly use this prompt for your essay.

• Instead of just listing the titles of books you've read, you might want to include a short sentence or two commenting on your reaction to the book, your analysis of it, why you enjoyed or didn't enjoy it, etc., after each title. Be sure to vary up your comments so that you're highlighting different aspects of your personality. Also, don't just regurgitate analyses you've read online or that your teacher has said—try to come up with your own thoughts and interpretations.
• Don't feel the need to stick to only the most "impressive" books you read. The Harvard admissions committee wants to see your personality, not that of a pretentious applicant who claims to have only read Jane Austen and Ernest Hemingway. Be honest: if you read Twilight in a day, why not make a short joke about how addictive it was?
• Go beyond a chronological list of books. It'll be far more interesting if you list the books you read in a more unique way. For example, you could organize titles by theme or in the order of how much you enjoyed them.

Prompt 7: Honesty

The Harvard College Honor code declares that we "hold honesty as the foundation of our community." As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty.

As you can see with this quotation, Harvard strongly values honesty and integrity. Therefore, if you go with this prompt, you're essentially telling Harvard that you, too, embody a powerful sense of morality and honesty.

• Was there a specific time in your life when you had to make a difficult choice to be honest about something with someone?
• Could this incident be considered morally ambiguous? In other words, was the "right thing to do" somewhat of a gray area?
• If you didn't make the "right" choice at the time, how did you come to terms with or learn from this decision? What were the consequences, and what did this experience teach you about your own morals and how you value honesty?
• Be wary of the topic you choose to write about. Don't discuss a situation in which you did something obviously unethical or, worse, illegal. These types of situations are very black and white and therefore don't pose much of a moral dilemma. Additionally, talking about such an experience might make you seem dishonest and immoral, which you absolutely do not want Harvard to think about you!
• Try to find a topic that isn't black and white. Choosing "gray" incidents will help emphasize why the choice was so difficult for you and also why it's affected you in this way. For example, say your friend calls you crying right before you have to leave to take the SAT. Do you skip the test to comfort your friend, or do you hang up and leave? This kind of situation does not have an evident "right" answer, making it an ideal one to use for this essay.
• You could also discuss a time when you did not make the "right" choice—and what you learned from that mistake. As long as you look closely at why you made the "wrong" choice and what this incident taught you about integrity, your essay will be interesting and relevant.

Prompt 8: Citizens and Citizen-Leaders

The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?

This prompt might sound a little vague, but all it wants to know is how you'll have a positive impact on both your classmates and on other people after graduation. Put simply, what kind of leader/citizen will you be at Harvard? After you graduate from college and enter the real world?

This prompt is similar to Prompt 5 in that it wants to know what kind of person you'll become after you leave college and how you'll positively influence society.

If you're a natural-born leader and have had at least a few significant experiences with leading or facilitating things such as club activities, field trips, volunteer efforts, and so on, then this Harvard essay prompt would be a great fit for you.

• Focus on a time when you led others and it resulted in a positive outcome. For instance, you could write about your position as team captain on your school's soccer team and how you would gather your teammates before each game to offer words of encouragement and advice on how to improve. You could then describe how your team began to perform better in games due to clearer communication and a stronger sense of sportsmanship. Make sure to answer the critical question: how did you lead and what ultimately made your leadership style successful?
• Discuss what kind of role your leadership skills will have at both Harvard and after you graduate. The prompt is asking about your classmates, so you must specifically address how your leadership skills will contribute to the lives of your peers. How will your past experiences with leading help you approach group projects, for example? Or clubs you join?
• Make sure to mention how you'll be a good citizen, too. By "citizen," Harvard essentially means a productive member of both the school and society in general. Basically, how have you contributed to the betterment of society? This is a good place to talk about experiences in which you played a crucial supporting role; for instance, maybe you helped out with a local volunteer initiative to feed the homeless, or maybe you joined a community project to build a new park in your town.

Prompt 9: Taking Time Off

Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do?

Here, you're being asked what you plan to do with your time if you decide to defer your admission to Harvard or take time off during college. For example, will you travel the world? Work a full-time job? Do an internship? Take care of a sick relative?

Obviously, Harvard doesn't want to read that all you're going to do is relax and play video games all day, so make sure to think carefully about what your actual plans are and, more importantly, how these plans will benefit you as a person and as a student.

Only choose this Harvard essay prompt if you're pretty certain you'll be taking time off from college at some point (either before or during) and you have a relatively concrete idea of what you want to do during that time.

• Be specific and honest about your plans. While many students like to take time off to travel the world, you don't just want to write, "I plan to backpack Europe and learn about cultures." Think critically about your desires: why do you want to do this and how will this experience help you grow as a person? Don't just reiterate what you think Harvard wants to hear—be transparent about why you feel you need this time off from school to accomplish this goal.
• Be clear about why you must do this at this particular time. In other words, why do you think this (i.e., before or during college) is the right time to do whatever it is you plan to do? Is it something you can (or must) do at this exact time, such as a one-time internship that won't be offered again?

Prompt 10: Diversity

Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

This final Harvard essay prompt is all about what you can bring to campus that will positively contribute to student diversity. Though we tend to think of race/ethnicity when using the word "diversity," you can actually interpret this word in a number of ways.

This prompt is essentially a version of the diversity essay , which we talk about in more detail in our guide.

The main question to ask yourself before choosing this prompt is this: do you have a unique background or interest you can write about?

If any of these topics stand out to you and you can easily come up with a specific characteristic or experience to discuss for your essay, then this is a solid prompt to consider answering.

• Be clear about how your unique characteristic has affected your life and growth. You don't just want to introduce the experience/skill and leave it at that. How has it molded you into the person you are today? How has it influenced your ambitions and goals?

A Real Harvard Essay Example

Our resident full SAT / ACT scorer and co-founder of PrepScholar, Allen Cheng , applied to, got into, and attended Harvard—and he's posted his own Harvard supplement essay for you to look at. You can read all about Allen's essay in his analysis of his successful Harvard application .

Allen describes his essay as "probably neutral to [his Harvard] application, not a strong net positive or net negative," so it's important to note that this Harvard essay example is not representative of exactly what you should do in your own Harvard supplement essay. Rather, we're showing it to you to give you a taste of how you could approach the Harvard essay and to demonstrate the kinds of simple mistakes you should avoid.

Writing a Memorable Harvard Essay: 3 Tips

To wrap up, here are three tips to keep in mind as you write your Harvard supplement essay.

#1: Use an Authentic Voice

Having a clear, unique, and authentic voice is the key to making yourself stand apart from other applicants in your Harvard application—and to ensuring you're leaving a long-lasting impression on the admissions committee.

Therefore, write your essay in the way that comes most naturally to you, and talk about the things that actually matter to you. For example, if you love puns, throwing one or two puns into your essay will emphasize your goofier, non-academic side.

Using your voice here is important because it humanizes your application. The essay is the only chance you get to show the admissions committee who you are and what you actually sound like, so don't pretend to be someone you're not!

The only thing to look out for is using too much slang or sounding too casual. In the end, this is still a college essay, so you don't want to come off sounding rude, disrespectful, or immature.

In addition, don't exaggerate any experiences or emotions. The Harvard admissions committee is pretty good at their job—they read thousands of applications each year!—so they'll definitely be able to tell if you're making a bigger deal out of something than you should be. Skip the hyperbole and stick to what you know.

Ultimately, your goal should be to strike a balance so that you're being true to yourself while also showcasing your intelligence and talents.

#2: Get Creative

Harvard is one of the most difficult schools to get into (it only has about a 4% acceptance rate! ), so you'll need to make sure your essay is really, really attention-grabbing. In short, get creative with it!

As you write your personal essay, recall the classic saying: show, don't tell. This means that you should rely more on description and imagery than on explanation.

For example, instead of writing, "I became more confident after participating in the debate club," you might write, "The next time I went onstage for a debate, my shoulders didn't shake as much; my lips didn't quiver; and my heart only beat 100 times instead of 120 times per minute."

Remember that your essay is a story about yourself, so make sure it's interesting to read and will ultimately be memorable to your readers.

#3: Edit and Proofread a Lot

My final tip is to polish your essay by editing and proofreading it a lot. This means you should look it over not once, not twice, but several times.

Here's the trick to editing it: once you've got a rough draft of your essay finished, put it away for a few days or a week or two. Don't look at it all during this time —you want to give yourself some distance so that you can look at your essay later with a fresh perspective.

After you've waited, read over your essay again, noting any mistakes in spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation. Take care to also note any awkward wording, unclear areas, or irrelevant ideas. Ask yourself: is there anything you should add? Delete? Expand?

Once you've done this step several times and have a (nearly) final draft ready to turn in, give your essay to someone you can trust, such as a teacher, parent, or mentor. Have them look it over and offer feedback on tone, voice, theme, style, etc. In addition, make sure that they check for any glaring grammatical or technical errors.

Once all of this is done, you'll have a well-written, polished Harvard essay ready to go— one that'll hopefully get you accepted!

What's Next?

If you've got questions about other parts of the Harvard application, check out our top guide to learn what you'll need to submit to get into the prestigious Ivy League school .

How tough is it to get into Harvard? To other selective universities ? For answers, read our expert guide on how to get into Harvard and the Ivy League , written by an actual Harvard alum!

What's the average SAT score of admitted Harvard applicants? The average ACT score? The average GPA? Learn all this and more by visiting our Harvard admissions requirements page .

Hannah received her MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California. From 2013 to 2015, she taught English in Japan via the JET Program. She is passionate about education, writing, and travel.

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How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays for 2023-2024

Harvard College needs no introduction—its name is synonymous with prestige in higher education. This alone can account for the extremely low acceptance rate, which was just 5.2% (out of 39,000 applicants) for the Class of 2021. But there is a way that applicants can improve their chances of getting into Harvard, and that is to write a stellar personal essay.

What are the Harvard Supplemental Essays?

When applying to Harvard, you are given the opportunity to include supplemental essays to showcase anything you feel was not adequately conveyed through your Common Application Essay . While Harvard’s admissions website indicates that including this essay is “optional,” almost all advisors will strongly encourage you to submit as much information about yourself as you can. Perhaps the fact that over 85% of the Harvard Class of 2019 wrote a supplemental essay might convince you just how important it can be.

Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompts for the 2023-2024 School Year

Each year, applicants find themselves struggling with exactly what they should put in their essays to impress the admissions committee. The Harvard supplemental essay prompts for 2023-2024 are no different. But because Harvard seeks students who are independent, creative, and self-motivated, this open-ended quality makes perfect sense. This essay is essentially a blank canvas on which you can paint some fascinating aspects about yourself in vivid color.

Here are the Prompts for the Harvard Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

Activity essays like this one allow you to say everything you couldn’t fit on your Common App activity list. Make sure to pick an activity that has meaning and one which you haven’t already written about. It’s usually a good strategy to pick something that you’ve been doing for a long time, where you can showcase key qualities like commitment, perseverance, and leadership. If you prefer to write about a job or hobby you just got started on, however, you can still write a compelling essay about why you started, what made you interested in it, and what you have learned in your journal thus far. You should contribute additional context to what the Harvard admissions officers know about you, and you only have a small space to do it in, so use it wisely.

Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere. (150 words)

This prompt is pretty easy to understand. Harvard is asking you to list any of your intellectual activities that you have not already included in your application materials. Did you try to build a computer game or app in the last few months? Maybe you interned somewhere that made you interested in a certain industry or line of work. Or perhaps you took an online Chinese course to get ready for an extended trip to China over the summer. Harvard wants to understand what you are getting up to, so let them know and don’t spare any important and exciting details!

You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics (No word limit; max file size is 2000 KB) .

• An unusual circumstance in your life
• Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities
• What you would want your future college roommate to know about you?
• An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science, or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you
• How you hope to use your college education
• A list of books you have read during the past twelve months
• The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty. 
• The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission? 
• Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do? 
• Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development, or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates. 

As you can see, applicants have a LOT of choices in terms of the direction they take when writing their Harvard supplemental essay. Read on for tips on how to approach ANY of these prompts in a meaningful and productive way to get the most out of this important essay and impress the admissions officers.

How Long Should the Harvard Supplemental Essays Be?

Although Harvard gives no explicit word or character limit for the supplemental essay, most accepted students will write between 500 and 700 words (or about a page when written in Times New Roman 12-point font). This doesn’t provide you a lot of room to ruminate at length on your experiences or to write about multiple topics. Therefore, you need to focus on one aspect of yourself (or what the prompt is asking you to write about) and drive it home. But don’t worry about getting it right on your first draft—write as freely as you can and work on re-drafting and revising your essay once all of the important elements have come to the surface. The more time you spend on the essay, the more polished and powerful it will be. Visit Harvard’s admissions website for comprehensive guidelines on writing this essay.

Paint a Picture of Yourself as a Unique Student and Graduate Candidate

When looking over the prompts, consider which one will allow you to write about an aspect of yourself that you didn’t portray in other essays you have submitted. Do not choose the same event, experience, passion, ability, interest, or talent that you used for the Common Application. For instance, if in the Common App Essay you wrote about your love of reading and described some of the books you have read, do NOT choose the Harvard essay about “A List Of Books You Have Read During The Past Twelve Months.” Similarly, if you already wrote about your experience backpacking around Asia last year, choose a different Harvard prompt than “Traveling Or Living Experiences In Other Countries.” No matter how profound or life-changing your experience was, writing about the exact same topic or experience is redundant and will not add to the depth of character you need to convey.

Zooming out, not only should you choose a separate  topic  for your supplemental essay, you should consider choosing an entirely different  perspective  as well. If your Common App Essay is about a past experience, choose the Harvard essay that asks about your future plans. If the first essay is about your impressive abilities, focus the second on how you overcame a challenge or deficit. If in the Common App Essay you have discussed your love of organic chemistry, write in the Harvard essay about your weekly volunteering at the local homeless shelter. In other words, deepen the picture you present of yourself.  Show how you live (and flourish) in many dimensions!

When writing a Harvard essay, applicants must also  stand out from the crowd . Do not think of it as a chance to merely remind the admissions committee about what you have accomplished, to list more details about your stellar academic record, or to brag about some outstanding marker on your resume. You have to dig deeper and WOW them in order for you to stand out in their minds.

Present Yourself Sincerely to Harvard Admissions Officials

Remember to always SHOW your sincerity, your attitude, and your excellence in your admissions essays—do not merely TELL about it. You can achieve this by focusing on actions, using lots of verbs, and by including a great number of  details  and examples as you describe your experiences. If playing the piano profoundly affected your sense of what “work” means to you, do not merely write, “Practicing all the time made me realize how working hard pays off.” Show this correlation between effort and understanding of work via anecdotes and details.

Here is what  showing  looks like (versus telling ):

“Three hours of straight practice a day in our windowless basement, six days a week perched upon a hard wooden bench, aching fingers on the keys, nothing between myself and Chopin but willpower and concentration, the haunting sounds of the hammer on the strings my instant reward for uncountable days and years of effort—all of this flashed through my mind on Jun 19, 2019, as I took the stage for my first Tanglewood recital.”

A detailed anecdote full of action makes it much easier for a reader to accept your assertion that playing piano profoundly affected your life. Readers can trust the feelings and positions you explicitly state only once you have proved them with examples and details.

Show How You Fit Into Harvard’s Unique Culture and Mission

When approaching this essay, it is important to understand that Harvard places special importance on the development of passions and community involvement over pure academic excellence. They also are deeply committed to diversity of experiences and views, and this means that they value curiosity in their students: intellectual, philosophical, social, etc. These values are included in their mission statement, which is “to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society” via “exposure to new ideas, new ways of understanding, and new ways of knowing,” which is designed to set students on a “journey of intellectual transformation.”

With these institutional objectives in mind, you should focus on how you can best illustrate your curiosity, and your potential for growth and greatness, in your essay. Do this by conveying your passion and showing how your passion drives your potential to contribute to worthwhile advances in society. One way to accomplish this in the essay is to choose a prompt that emphasizes your ambitions or even your plans to use your education. Consider responding to a prompt that explicitly mentions Harvard, or to one that asks “how you hope to use your college education” and become a “citizen-leader.” These provide a great opportunity to showcase those personal attributes that fit the mold of the desired Harvard student.

Explain Why You Deserve to Attend Harvard College

Another aspect to keep in mind is that Harvard is interested in enrolling people who are genuinely  good , in addition to being intelligent, talented, or ambitious. The final line of their mission statement reads: “From this we hope that students will begin to fashion their lives by gaining a sense of what they want to do with their gifts and talents, assessing their values and interests, and learning how they can best serve the world.” The last phrase indicates a person who demonstrates true concern about the world in which they live.

Thus showing strong regard for other people or animals or expressing a sense of duty and honor is a definite plus for the Harvard admissions committee. This is another perspective from which you might portray yourself in your essay—the hardworking, dutiful, kind, compassionate citizen-leader that they want and  deserve  to have, and the one that wants to be part of a like-minded community. But only focus on this aspect of yourself if you can do so authentically and honestly. The worst thing possible would be to lie or come off as disingenuous to the admissions committee. So just be yourself, your whole self, and nothing but yourself.

And before submitting your essay, be sure to get English editing and proofreading services from Wordvice–the best admissions editing service in the business. We offer supplemental essay editing services , as well as a host of revision services for admissions documents, including cover letter editing , personal statement editing , CV editing , and recommendation letter editing .

And try the new free AI Text Editor at Wordvice AI, which features a suite of revision tools including an AI Proofreading Tool and AI Paraphrasing Tool , among others. Best of luck writing this important admissions essay!

The Admissions Strategist

How to write the harvard university supplemental essays 2020-2021: the elite guide.

Harvard University is one of the most recognizable names in American education, and it has an acceptance rate that hovers around 5% . It’s prestigious, selective, and difficult to get into.

Of course, that means that every portion of your application is important, including the Harvard Supplement.

In this article, we’ll give you all the necessary info on the Harvard Supplement, plus tips on how to complete it successfully!

Harvard Supplement Overview

The Harvard Supplement consists of an optional essay and two required questions. The required questions carry a word limit of 150 words each.

So do you actually need to write that optional essay?

Technically, no. But we highly recommend that you write it anyway. When applying to a selective school like Harvard, you should take any chance you can get to share more information about yourself and further impress admissions officers.

You may also notice that the optional essay has no word limit. This doesn’t mean that you should opt to write a quick paragraph or, on the other hand, a five-page essay.

Instead, we recommend writing around 500-700 words.

Harvard Supplemental Essay Guidelines

As you answer these questions and write your essay, keep in mind that you should offer information that can’t be found anywhere else in your application.

Click above to watch a video on Harvard Supplemental Essays.

This means that your essay should be substantially different from the essay you wrote for the Common App .

• So, if you’ve already mentioned that you’re the captain of the soccer team numerous times, write an essay that’s completely unrelated to soccer.

Instead of showing that you’re one dimensional or too well-rounded (yes, that’s a thing), use the essay to provide a new angle to your college application narrative.

• If you were captain of the soccer team, write about another activity or project that demonstrates your leadership skills, go-getter attitude, and work ethic.

Provide new information , let your authentic voice shine through, and demonstrate why you would be such a great addition to Harvard University.

Harvard Supplemental Essay 1

First, let’s take a look at the required questions you’ll encounter on the supplement.

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (150 words)

This is a pretty standard application question. Choose to discuss an extracurricular activity or work experience that you haven’t elaborated on elsewhere in your application.

You only have 150 words, so you might not have the space to talk extensively about all of your job responsibilities or everything you did as part of this extracurricular activity. Instead, choose to focus on a few key points.

Try to include information that highlights qualities about you, such as leadership, problem-solving, teamwork, etc.

Above all, show action and results.  Use action verbs and numbers to tell a brief story of how you engaged your team or community and procured results. Results comprise of many things:

• Winning an FRC competition
• Raising group engagement by 15%
• Boosting enrollees by a thin margin
• Organizing a community drive to raise $200

You’ll want to choose an activity that is meaningful to you and that illustrates important aspects of your character.

Get personalized advice!

Harvard supplemental essay 1 examples.

I’m assembling a packet for a new baby when a woman in labor is pushed in on a wheelchair. “Oh god,” the charge nurse mumbles. All the delivery rooms are occupied. “We have to put her in the triage room,” she announces to the doctor. While I run to get the door for a visitor, another nurse hurriedly hands me a lab sample to deliver as she rushes to her next patient. Smiling, I walk down the hall with plastic bag in hand. I like the stress on busy days like this as much as I enjoy the relaxed days where nurses can finally sit down. The physical and mental strength of a labor and delivery nurse will always be something I respect after working as a family birth center volunteer at the Methodist Hospital. It would be an honor to work as a doctor alongside these professionals one day. 

At my internship, I got my first taste of machine learning. I was initially hesitant about the field’s practicality — considering my Chromebook would take almost 20 minutes to load one Google Doc, teaching a computer to think seemed like a drastic step. However, after training neural networks to detect carcinoma or sarcoma on a meager set of 400 images and generating fake X-rays realistic enough to trick a radiologist, my skepticism has transformed into awe. During each epoch, while considering the inner workings of dense and convolution layers, I often find myself wondering about machine learning’s future ramifications on the world at large. Will it replace humans? To what extent can it be used in humanitarian applications? Maybe the ways in which we see this technology driving the world are a bit too crazy; at the same time, maybe they’re not crazy enough.

Harvard Supplemental Essay 2

Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere. (150 words)

Harvard looks for students who are intellectually curious and passionate about learning. This question is asking you how you pursue learning outside of school.

Note that this question isn’t asking you to write in-depth about one intellectual activity. Here, you should list all intellectual activities that you’ve pursued outside of those required for school.

This can include:

• Books you’ve read in order to learn more about a particular topic.
• Educational summer camps you’ve attended (and haven’t mentioned elsewhere).
• Voluntary job shadowing
• Research into a particular job, etc
• Forming and testing your own thesis

Examples include:

• Earning a Google Ads certificate
• Working to hone and leverage your professional transferable skills
• Learning a language through an online course or program
• Testing the effects of nicotine on microscopic organisms
• Building a game or app

These are all items you can list for this question. And remember, Harvard wants to hear about activities that you haven’t mentioned anywhere else in the application!

Harvard Supplemental Essay 2 Examples

As a mathletes member, I collaborated with my team of 15 members to solve challenging math problems under time restrictions to practice for regional math competitions. Using existing mathematical concepts to break down and solve abstract riddles unlike those taught in class was very engaging to me. I have also been a karate student for five years, and a jiujitsu student for four. These sports are not only physically demanding but promote a great deal of discipline in strengthening focus, strategy, and an understanding of body mechanics. In karate, we are expected to memorize katas, or long routines of technique that simulate fighting, as well as daily run-throughs of basic techniques to develop muscle memory. In jiujitsu, we continuously learn new charts of technique to expand our repertoire of defense mechanisms in different situations. Much like in wrestling, we must continually strategize against our opponent in order to win.

Outside of academia, I indulge in the unwavering freedom to create. While you can often find me writing equations to solve for the zeros of a quadratic, I also craft screenplays about fake bacon-flavored cure-alls and a lacrosse bench-warmer turned soccer star (due to a gruesome arm injury). For years, my friends and I have enjoyed listening to podcasts; now, we create our own, introducing each episode with zany bits of copyright-free music and providing commentary on everything from the Dodgers to the latest Assassin’s Creed game. When a novel conceptualization dawns upon me, I take a break from being a questioning historian, astute mathematician, and analyst of rhetoric and transform myself into a set director, podcast host, and game developer. During these moments of self-determination, I create – not merely for a grade, but to fashion something I am proud of and enjoy watching, listening to, or playing.

The Primary Harvard Supplemental Essay

Now let’s get to the essay (the one you should definitely write, even though it’s called “optional”).

For the Harvard Supplement, you’re choosing only  one  of the options listed below as the topic for your essay.

No matter which topic you choose, remember the following:

• Try to keep your essay around 500-700 words.
• Talk about information that hasn’t been mentioned in other parts of your application.
• Always show; don’t tell. Use vivid details and specific examples to support your points.
• Write in your own authentic voice.
• Help admissions officers get to know you and how you will contribute to the school culture.
• Revise, edit, and let several others peer review your essay before submitting.

So, without further ado, here’s a quick list of your topic options:

Unusual circumstances in your life

Travel or living experiences in other countries

What you would want your future college roommate to know about you

An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you

How you hope to use your college education

A list of books you have read in the past 12 months

The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty.

The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?

Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do? Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

Below, we’ll dive into specific tips for each of these options.

Unusual Circumstances in Your Life Essay

Yes, this prompt does contain the word “unusual,” but you don’t have to write about something that’s extremely rare.

The goal here is to write about something that not everyone has experienced , focusing particularly on how these circumstances have influenced or shaped you as an individual. Be specific about how these events have changed you or helped you grow, and include examples or anecdotes to illustrate these points.

The essay doesn’t have to focus on a hardship or something sad.

• Maybe you grew up with eight siblings, or your family spent a year traveling the country in an RV.
• Perhaps your family fled a war-torn country
• Did you endure a significant sickness that added a disability to your life?

You can write about anything slightly unusual that has happened to you, as long as it’s something that has made an impact on you and your life. Even if you write an essay about a sad or hurtful experience, try to end on a positive note.

If you want to write this essay but are having trouble thinking or selecting a topic, think of these questions:

• Which story or event in my life lead to undue hardship?
• Name a time you struggled and had to reflect on your character to solve the problem.
• What significant personality or values change have I undergone, and what sparked it?

The stories and anecdotes that you think of are good ones to either write about or further explore.

This essay should ultimately reflect your strength, optimism, and ability to grow from adversity.

Travel or Living Experiences in Other Countries

You should only choose this topic if you’ve traveled or lived somewhere that has truly impacted or changed you. As with all of these options, the goal is to relate the topic back to you , and how it has impacted your personal growth.

• Don’t simply talk about where you’ve been and what you’ve seen; talk about how these experiences affected you.
• You’ll also want to avoid clichés.
• Don’t speak in general terms about how traveling the world has opened your mind and expanded your horizons, or about how traveling to less fortunate countries has made you more appreciative.

Instead, you’ll want to talk about a particular experience and how it has specifically impacted you.

• In what ways are you more open now?
• What have you learned about culture, food, people, architecture, the environment, etc.?
• How has that influenced you, your decisions, or your future career path?

If you can’t think of something specific, then this probably isn’t the right topic for you.

Most important, if you can’t think of an experience that has changed your character or contributed to your growth, skip it. Don’t risk writing a one-dimensional essay that provides no insight into your personality.

If you do choose this topic, make sure that you’re accurate and fair in your representation of other cultures.

Future Roommate Essay

If you choose this topic, try to avoid generic information about yourself. This is a topic that many people will address with similar information, so try to come up with something about yourself that’s a little quirky or different.

Maybe you want your roommate to know not only some of your key characteristics or personality traits, but also some stories about where they originated. This is also an appropriate place to use some humor, like mentioning an unusual fear or interesting quirk.

Don’t try to present yourself as too perfect, but also be sure that you don’t only focus on negative aspects of your character. A balanced, honest portrayal of yourself will work best.

Remember that although you’re writing about a roommate, you’re still addressing the admissions committee! For this reason, don’t write too informally or use slang.

Intellectual Experience Essay

This is a pretty broad essay topic, and you can take it in several different directions.

However you approach the topic, don’t forget to focus on your own intellectual growth.

• How has your experience influenced your academic interests and development as a learner and scholar?
• Describe the way it has changed how you learn or problem-solve.
•  How has it affected your career goals?

You may choose to write an “origin story” of how you became interested in your field or career of choice.

• Maybe you did a project in school that made you realize you wanted to be a marine biologist, or you went on a field trip that influenced your career choice.
• Perhaps a simulation you participated in at a summer camp on international diplomacy made you want to study international relations.

Alternatively, you could focus on an intellectual experience that took you outside of your comfort zone. Perhaps this experience helped you discover a new interest, and taught you not to limit yourself academically.

A foolproof way of writing this essay would be to begin with an extended anecdote or story – likely a flashback – that serves as a cold hook . You can begin with a:

• Proclamation
• Seemingly random detail

Then you can extrapolate the hook and connect it the rest of your story.

Remember to be specific and connect the essay to your growth as a person and student. Writing a dazzling cold hook and supporting it with cogent narration is useless if you don’t show how you grew from the experience.

Try to spend 30-40% of your essay demonstrating how you grew from this intellectual journey.

Using Your College Education

The execution of this essay is straightforward. Make this essay specific to Harvard.

• How will attending Harvard affect you throughout your life?
• What will you do with the experiences and knowledge that you gain at Harvard?

You may want to do some research if you choose to write this essay.

• What concentration will you pursue at Harvard? (Remember, Harvard has “concentrations” instead of “majors.”)
• Research the program, and come up with some specifics about what you will learn from this program and how you will put it to use after graduation.

In other words, this is another permutation of the conventional “ Why This College ” essay.

Don’t say something general about Harvard’s prestige or that you know they have “good programs” or “renowned professors” – Harvard’s admissions officers know it’s one of the best universities in the world.

It’s also important not to make your essay about financial gain.

You should also get specific about your plans after graduation.

• Instead of just saying you want to be a doctor, what kind of doctor do you want to be?
• What problems in the field do you see that you would like to address after earning a Harvard education?

In short, you should talk in-depth about what you would like to do or achieve (for yourself and for society) after college, and how Harvard, in particular, can help you do so.

If you’re having trouble picking one or two ideas, stick to ones that convey an ambitious, problem-solving version of yourself.

A List of Books

Although the prompt mentions a list, you should also provide commentary on the books you’ve read. You don’t have to go in depth for each one, but choose at least a few titles to talk about at length.

• You can include an original analysis (not one from SparkNotes or elsewhere on the Internet), a reflection on how this book has influenced you or your mindset, a lesson you’ve learned from a book on your list, etc.

This is a fun and unique topic if you’re a prolific reader.

But remember, if you’ve already mentioned your passion for reading and some of the titles you’ve read over the last year, you may want to choose a different topic (unless you have something completely new to add).

Irrespective of the literary works you choose, you  must show growth . To quickly find your growth points, create a list of the books you read. Next to the title, write what you learned.

This will help you create a narrative and outline for your essay. Your list should look like this:

•   Only the Paranoid Survive  by Andrew Grove: Aspiring business leaders need to constantly check their blind spots and competition. Therefore, I am a work in progress and want to develop as a future business leader.
• Team of Rivals  by Doris Kearns Goodwin: Collaboration is the bedrock of success. I’m learning how to ask for help.
• Shoe Dog  by Phil Knight: Never give up on your dreams. If you have an idea, then chase it.
• After Tamerlane  by John Darwin: History is messy and full of nuances that I, one day, hope to learn.

Integrity & Honesty Essay

Harvard values students with honesty and integrity.

If you choose this essay, you’ll need to tell a story about a time when you had a difficult choice to make. In the end, of course, this will be a time when you chose to act with honesty and integrity, even if this was the more difficult path.

• Pick an engaging story that not every student can tell.
• For instance, you probably don’t want to write about a time a teacher mistakenly gave you a higher grade than you deserved and you told her the truth.

It’s okay to write about a time when you initially lied or chose the wrong path, but later corrected it and learned a valuable lesson.

• However, make sure you don’t write about something illegal.
• You’ll also want to avoid anything related to plagiarism or cheating.

Essentially, you’ll present your dilemma, analyze how you reasoned through it, and reflect on what you learned about honesty and integrity. It’s easy to fall into clichéd writing for this topic, so be sure to avoid that trap.

Citizen-Leader Essay

This topic is typically viewed as one of the more challenging options, but it can be a good choice if you have a passion for leadership.

• You might want to start by talking about leadership experiences you’ve had in the past.
• Be sure to select experiences in which your leadership has actually made a contribution to your community or school.

Talk about your leadership style and what you did, as well as how it benefited others.

Make sure you then connect these leadership skills to how you’ll continue to be an effective leader in the future.

• You may want to mention a specific area in which you plan to lead or make a change after graduating from Harvard.

Don’t forget to mention the fact that you’re a good citizen as well. This might include times you weren’t in a leadership position, but worked with others to achieve an important purpose.

You may also discuss how you plan to be a good citizen in the future.

Deferring or Taking Time Off Essay

Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do?

This is another advanced essay. You don’t get brownie points from admissions officers for choosing this option, even if your essay is sub-par.

We suggest you select this prompt only if you are entirely comfortable with it and/or you can’t relate to the other prompts.

Whether it’s something you missed out on or a goal you want to accomplish soon, make sure to write about a topic that demonstrates initiative and action on your part.

Instead of getting bogged down in the details, describe what you’d like to do and why. Get to the heart of your choice. Then, give an action plan or explanation of what you’d do.

“Topic of Your Choice” Essay

Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

Of course, if none of these prompts appeal to you, you can write on a topic of your choice.

While this essay doesn’t outright state “topic of your choice,” it’s broad enough that you could write about almost anything intellectually stimulating or personally interesting about yourself.

• Just make sure your topic directly relates to something you can bring and positively contribute to the Harvard campus.

If you’ve written a really strong essay for another school, you can use it here (with some Harvard-specific adjustments).

If you decide to go this route, make sure you choose a topic that says something important about you.

Make sure that you’re descriptive, specific, and reflective. And again, be sure it’s something you haven’t already talked about in your application.

Writing on a topic of your choice is the best option if there’s something you want to talk about that doesn’t fit any of the other prompts.

Harvard Supplemental Essay 3 Examples

My grandmother likes to tell the story of three-year-old me in the grocery cart, screaming in Vietnamese the names of passing vegetables, much to the amusement of shoppers. Back then, Vietnamese was enough. In kindergarten, I faced my first language obstacle. At the toilet, I couldn’t undo my double-ring belt. How embarrassing would it be to interrupt the teacher in the middle of class and silently point to it, hoping she would get the message? I chose to sit on the toilet and cry. That was the first day I peed my pants in class but the last time language would ever come between me and going to the bathroom. I made learning English my mission. I remember begging my parents every summer for a workbook to prepare for the next school year. I loved working in those books because I could see myself improving at writing conventions and expanding my vocabulary. In third grade, I became obsessed with reading through the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Boxcar Children series, making a routine visit to the public library every weekend for a new stack of books. Reading became my gateway into the English language, as well as American culture. By high school, I had finished so many workbooks and novels that the library had become my second home. Through learning English, I recognized the disparities between Western and Eastern culture. I began to understand the endless awe and reverence my grandparents had for the United States, being veterans and nurses who worked alongside Americans in the Vietnam War. My grandparents are the most patriotic people I know, despite having immigrated here in their senior years. Through my family, I’ve seen the extent to which people are willing to let go of their culture to integrate into this one. Knowing English at first was a sign of success, and still is. My parents never let me forget that because I was born here, I have opportunities that they never had in Vietnam. The better I am at English, the better I can connect with the world and take advantage of my opportunities. While language was a path to success, it is also the path I take to explore cultures and human connection. While volunteering in the hospital, when I ask a lost elderly couple if they speak Vietnamese, their eyes light up in relief. When a Spanish-speaking woman hurriedly calls her daughter over to translate, I tell them in Spanish not to worry, empathizing with the child who has the same role I once did. Language doesn’t just communicate information. It has been a tool for insight that connects me to people, from Vietnam veterans in a fast food restaurant to Mexican immigrants that my friend calls “mom and dad.” I would love to continue my exploration of language at Harvard by taking more language classes, participating in cultural clubs, and perhaps studying abroad to become more fluent in Spanish. I’m also considering learning French in my free time, as a homage to my ethnic linkage to French culture. Throughout my schooling, I’ve taught my parents a lot of English, and I still teach them new words every so often. When I make the occasional error, I jokingly but affectionately blame it on English being my second language. 

An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you.

In my experience, High School Musical and Mean Girls are spot-on when it comes to teen conversations; during my first three years of high school, most of the discussions my friends and I had revolved around who was dating whom, criticism of the atrocious basketball coach, and spoilers of the latest Stranger Things season. While I enjoyed these chats, as my entrepreneurial fervor grew, I found myself feeling disjointed from my peers and looking for a community that would nurture my startup fever. When she noticed my budding interest, the head of a local incubator invited me to apply for their accelerator program. I initially felt unsure, but I gave it a shot, and as time went on, I felt as if I were transported to Ancient Athens during every Monday session. As a program meant to help individuals jumpstart and accelerate their businesses, the incubator prompted participants to think Socratically. We questioned and debated every preconceived notion regarding startups: how to conduct proper market research, when and why to shut down, and even whether a humanitarian venture could also be a profitable one. Our oratories were not dull, 10-minute long PowerPoints followed by the occasional golf clap; they were action-packed, 60-second elevator pitches accompanied by a barrage of inquiries and suggestions about statistical logos and story-telling pathos. Through numerous congregations within the polis, I gave a fellow participant the conviction to pursue his business of educating students on the college recruiting process, emphasizing how all of my friends loved athletics and wanted to go D1.  In return, he helped me see that the biggest problem with teens wasn’t always finding opportunities; it was being ready and professional enough to capture them. Despite channeling Alexander the Great’s cutthroat competitiveness at the beginning, our group personified Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates in the end, as we considered each other’s ventures and employed our own ethos to help one another. We didn’t all have to be our own Homers — our Iliad and Odyssey were the cumulative success of all of our companies, forged by the collaborative intertwining of our stories.

Conclusion: Writing the Harvard Supplemental Essays

The Harvard Supplement gives you another opportunity to showcase your personality, intellect, and potential to contribute at Harvard University.

You’ll answer two required questions with a 150-word limit, as well as an optional essay. The optional essay has no limit, but it’s best to write around 500-700 words. You’re given nine topic options, one of which is “a topic of your choice.”

No matter what you write, be sure that your essay is specific and descriptive. It should reveal information about you and your personal growth, and it should show Harvard University why you would be a great addition to their campus.

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Harvard University Essay Examples (And Why They Worked)

The following essay examples were written by several different authors who were admitted to Harvard University and are intended to provide examples of successful Harvard University application essays. All names have been redacted for anonymity. Please note that Bullseye Admissions has shared these essays with admissions officers at Harvard University in order to deter potential plagiarism.

For more help with your Harvard supplemental essays, check out our 2020-2021 Harvard University Essay Guide ! For more guidance on personal essays and the college application process in general, sign up for a monthly plan to work with an admissions coach 1-on-1.

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

Feet moving, eyes up, every shot back, chants the silent mantra in my head. The ball becomes a beacon of neon green as I dart forward and backward, shuffling from corner to far corner of the court, determined not to let a single point escape me. With bated breath, I swing my racquet upwards and outwards and it catches the ball just in time to propel it, spinning, over the net. My heart soars as my grinning teammates cheer from the sidelines.

While I greatly value the endurance, tenacity, and persistence that I have developed while playing tennis throughout the last four years, I will always most cherish the bonds that I have created and maintained each year with my team.

Why this Harvard essay worked: From an ex-admissions officer

When responding to short essays or supplements, it can be difficult to know which info to include or omit. In this essay, the writer wastes no time and immediately captivates the reader. Not only are the descriptions vivid and compelling, but the second portion highlights what the writer gained from this activity. As an admissions officer, I learned about the student’s level of commitment, leadership abilities, resiliency, ability to cooperate with others, and writing abilities in 150 words.

I founded Teen Court at [High School Name Redacted] with my older brother in 2016. Teen Court is a unique collaboration with the Los Angeles Superior Court and Probation Department, trying real first-time juvenile offenders from all over Los Angeles in a courtroom setting with teen jurors. Teen Court’s foundational principle is restorative justice: we seek to rehabilitate at-risk minors rather than simply punish them. My work provides my peers the opportunity to learn about the justice system. I put in over fifty hours just as Secretary logging court attendance, and now as President, I mentor Teen Court attendees. My goal is to improve their empathy and courage in public speaking, and to expand their world view. People routinely tell me their experience with Teen Court has inspired them to explore law, and I know the effort I devoted bringing this club to [High School Name Redacted] was well worth it.

This writer discussed a passion project with a long-lasting impact. As admissions officers, we realize that post-secondary education will likely change the trajectory of your life. We hope that your education will also inspire you to change the trajectory of someone else’s life as well. This writer developed an organization that will have far-reaching impacts for both the juvenile offenders and the attendees. They saw the need for this service and initiated a program to improve their community.

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Books Read During the Last Twelve Months

Reading Frankenstein in ninth grade changed my relationship to classic literature. In Frankenstein , I found characters and issues that resonate in a modern context, and I began to explore the literary canon outside of the classroom. During tenth grade, I picked up Jane Eyre and fell in love with the novel’s non-traditional heroine whose agency and cleverness far surpassed anything that I would have imagined coming from the 19th century. I have read the books listed below in the past year.

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus *
• Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger *
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt ♰
• Mongo Beti, Mission Terminée * (in French)
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening
• Arthur Conan-Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
• Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-enquête * (in French)
• Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry *
• Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane *
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying *
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• E. M. Forster, Maurice
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
• Eliza Haywood, The City Jilt ♰
• Homer, The Iliad
• Christopher Isherwood, All The Conspirators
• Christopher Isherwood, A Meeting by the River
• Christopher Isherwood, Sally Bowles
• Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
• Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
• Franz Kafka, The Trial
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies *
• Morrissey, Autobiography
• Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy *
• Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
• Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, Herland
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
• Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
• Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
• Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies
• Mary Renault, The King Must Die
• Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes * (in French)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet *
• Mary Shelley, The Last Man
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead *
• Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
• Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
• Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
• Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Fiction ♰
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman ♰
• Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and Other Stories
• * indicates assigned reading
• ♰ indicates independent study reading

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: What would you want your future college roommate to know about you? (No word limit)

Hi Roomie!!!!

You probably have noticed that I put four exclamation points. Yes, I am that excited to meet you, roomie!

Also, I don’t believe in the Rule of Three. It’s completely unfair that three is always the most commonly used number. Am I biased in my feelings because four is my favorite number? Perhaps. However, you have to admit that our reason for the Rule of Three is kinda arbitrary. The Rule of Three states that a trio of events is more effective and satisfying than any other numbers. Still, the human psyche is easily manipulated through socially constructed perceptions such as beauty standards and gender roles. Is having three of everything actually influential or is it only influential because society says so? Hmm, it’s interesting to think about it, isn’t it?

But if you’re an avid follower of the Rule of three, don’t worry, I won’t judge. In fact, if there’s one thing I can promise you I will never do, it’s being judgmental. Life is too short to go around judging people. Besides, judgments are always based on socially constructed beliefs. With so many backgrounds present on campus, it really would be unfair if we start going around judging people based on our own limited beliefs. My personal philosophy is “Mind your own business and let people be,” So, if you have a quirk that you’re worrying is too “weird” and are afraid your roommate might be too judgy, rest assured, I won’t be.

In fact, thanks to my non-judginess, I am an excellent listener. If you ever need to rant with someone about stressful classes, harsh gradings, or the new ridiculous plot twists of your favorite TV show (*cough* Riverdale), I am always available.

Now, I know what you are thinking. A non-judgmental and open-minded roommate? This sounds too good to be true. This girl’s probably a secret villain waiting to hear all my deepest and darkest secrets and blackmail me with them!

Well, I promise you. I am not a secret villain. I am just someone who knows how important it is to be listened to and understood.

I grew up under the communist regime of Vietnam, where freedom of speech and thought was heavily suppressed. Since childhood, I was taught to keep my opinion to myself, especially if it is contradictory to the government’s. No matter how strongly I felt about an issue, I could never voice my true opinion nor do anything about it. Or else, my family and I would face oppression from the Vietnamese government.

After immigrating to America, I have made it my mission to fight for human rights and justice. Back in Vietnam, I have let fear keep me from doing the right thing. Now, in the land of freedom, I won’t use that excuse anymore. I can finally be myself and fight for what I believe in. However, I can still remember how suffocating it was to keep my beliefs bottled up and to be silenced. Trust me, a conversation may not seem much, but it can do wonders. So, if you ever need a listener, know that I am right here.

See, I just shared with you a deep secret of mine. What secret villain would do that?

See ya soon!!!!!

[Name redacted] : )

P/S: I really love writing postscripts. So, I hope you won’t find it weird when I always end my emails, letters, and even texts with a P/S. Bye for real this time!!!!!

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Unusual circumstances in your life

I would like the Harvard Admissions Committee to know that my life circumstances are far from typical. I was born at twenty-four weeks gestation, which eighteen years ago was on the cusp of viability. Even if I was born today, under those same circumstances, my prospects for leading a normal life would be grim. Eighteen years ago, those odds were worse, and I was given a less than 5% chance of survival without suffering major cognitive and physical deficits.

The first six months of my life were spent in a large neonatal ICU in Canada. I spent most of that time in an incubator, kept breathing by a ventilator. When I was finally discharged home, it was with a feeding tube and oxygen, and it would be several more months before I was able to survive without the extra tubes connected to me. At the age of two, I was still unable to walk. I engaged in every conventional and non-conventional therapy available to me, including physical and speech therapy, massage therapy, gymnastics, and several nutritional plans, to try to remedy this. Slowly, I began to make progress in what would be a long and arduous journey towards recovery.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of repeated, often unsuccessful attempts to grip a large-diameter crayon since I was unable to hold a regular pencil. I would attempt to scrawl out letters on a page to form words, fueled by either determination or outright stubbornness, persevering until I improved. I spent countless hours trying to control my gait, eventually learning to walk normally and proving the doctors wrong about their diagnoses. I also had to learn how to swallow without aspirating because the frequent intubations I had experienced as an infant left me with a uncoordinated swallow reflex. Perhaps most prominently, I remember becoming very winded as I tried to keep up with my elementary school peers on the playground and the frustration I experienced when I failed.

Little by little, my body’s tolerance for physical exertion grew, and my coordination improved. I enrolled in martial arts to learn how to keep my balance and to develop muscle coordination and an awareness of where my limbs were at any given time. I also became immersed in competition among my elementary school peers to determine which one of us could become the most accomplished on the recorder. For each piece of music played correctly, a “belt” was awarded in the form of a brightly colored piece of yarn tied around the bottom of our recorders- meant as symbols of our achievement. Despite the challenges I had in generating and controlling enough air, I practiced relentlessly, often going in before school or during my lunch hour to obtain the next increasingly difficult musical piece. By the time the competition concluded, I had broken the school record of how far an elementary school child could advance; in doing so, my love of instrumental music and my appreciation for the value of hard work and determination was born.

Throughout my middle and high school years, I have succeeded at the very highest level both academically and musically. I was even able to find a sport that I excelled at and would later be able to use as an avenue for helping others, volunteering as an assistant coach once I entered high school. I have mentored dozens of my high school peers in developing trumpet skills, teaching them how to control one’s breathing during musical phrases and how to develop effective fingering techniques in order to perform challenging passages. I believe that my positive attitude and hard work has allowed for not only my own success, but for the growth and success of my peers as well.

My scholastic and musical achievements, as well as my leadership abilities and potential to succeed at the highest level will hopefully be readily apparent to the committee when you review my application. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the behind-the-scenes character traits that have made these possible. I believe that I can conquer any challenge put in front of me. My past achievements provide testimony to my work ethic, aptitudes and grit, and are predictive of my future potential.

Thank you for your consideration.

In this essay, the writer highlighted their resilience. At some point, we will all endure challenges and struggles, but it is how we redeem ourselves that matters. This writer highlighted their initial struggles, their dedication and commitment, and the ways in which they’ve used those challenges as inspiration and motivation to persevere and also to encourage others to do the same.

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you.

I want to be a part of something amazing, and I believe I can. The first line of the chorus springs into my mind instantaneously as my fingers experiment with chords on the piano. In this moment, as I compose the protagonist’s solo number, I speak from my heart. I envision the stage and set, the actors, the orchestra, even the audience. Growing increasingly excited, I promptly begin to create recordings so I can release the music from the confines of my imagination and share it with any willing ears.

My brother [name redacted] and I are in the process of writing a full-length, two-act musical comprised of original scenes, songs, characters. I began creating the show not only because I love to write music and entertain my friends and family, but also with the hope that I might change the way my peers view society. Through Joan, the protagonist of my musical, I want to communicate how I feel about the world.

The story centers around Joan, a high schooler, and her connection to the pilot Amelia Earhart. Ever since I saw a theatrical rendition of Amelia Earhart’s life in fifth grade, she has fascinated me as an extraordinary feminist and a challenger of society’s beliefs and standards. As I began researching and writing for the show, I perused through biographies and clicked through countless youtube documentaries about the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, astounded by her bravery and ability to overcome a troubled childhood and achieve her dream. In my musical, as Amelia transcends 20th century norms, changing the way that people regard women and flight, Joan strives to convince her peers and superiors that the worth of one’s life spans not from material success and grades, but from self-love and passion.

As I compose, the essence of each character and the mood of each scene steer the flow of each song. To me, it seems as though everything falls into place at once – as I pluck a melody out of the air, the lyrics come to me naturally as if the two have been paired all along. As I listen to the newly born principal line, I hear the tremolo of strings underscoring and the blaring of a brass section that may someday audibly punctuate each musical phrase.

The project is certainly one of the most daunting tasks I’ve ever undertaken – we’ve been working on it for almost a year, and hope to be done by January – but, fueled by my passion for creating music and writing, it is also one of the most enjoyable. I dream that it may be performed one day and that it may influence society to appreciate the success that enthusiasm for one’s relationships and work can bring.

These essay examples were compiled by the advising team at Bullseye Admissions. If you want to get help writing your Harvard University application essays from Bullseye Admissions advisors , register with Bullseye today .

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Harvard University 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 1

You Have: 

Harvard University 2023-24 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: Five essays of 200 words or fewer

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Diversity , Activity , Oddball

Harvard is asking 2023-24 applicants to pen five short essays in response to the following prompts:

Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. how will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to harvard* (200 words).

Admissions wants to know what has made you into the person you are today and how those experiences will affect the way you engage with and contribute to the Harvard community. So, tell a story about an experience that has shaped you and connect the lessons you learned to the ways in which you will contribute to diversity on campus next fall. Start by thinking about the kinds of experiences you’ve had in the communities you’ve been a part of thus far. Then, once you’ve identified the life experience(s) that have shaped you, think ahead to how those will impact your time at Harvard. Admissions wants to know what your area of influence will look like on campus—whether that be applying the leadership skills you developed in your community theater troupe to the drama productions at Farkas Hall, celebrating intersectional identities with other members of the queer Jewish community with BAGELS , or connecting and networking with your peers through Harvard Black Students Association . Whatever you write about, make sure your response to this prompt shows that you have put some serious thought into the things that have shaped you and how you will apply those lessons and experiences to your time at Harvard next fall. 

Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you.* (200 words)

It’s no surprise that Harvard is hoping to invite students to campus who are excited about learning, so take this opportunity to geek out about an awesome learning experience you had recently. Maybe you find marine life to be absolutely fascinating, so you’ve been reading up on the most dangerous creatures in the deep dark sea (and their preferred prey, of course). Perhaps you had the opportunity to take a class or seminar with a thought leader you really admire or you went on a reading retreat that expanded your horizons. Whatever it may be, this is the perfect opportunity to show admissions your passion for pursuing knowledge and reflect on the impact it had on you.

Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.* (200 words)

Next up is a fun twist on the classic activity essay, which asks you to expand on an extracurricular endeavor that has shaped who you are. Our advice is to focus on one or two activities that have made the biggest impact on you. Although we usually urge students to write about items that haven’t appeared elsewhere on their application, the activity essay is an exception since it specifically asks you to address an item on your resume. The trick here is to  pick something with meat! Maybe your trip to visit your extended family members in Thailand opened your eyes to how limited your world had been in your small Midwestern town. Perhaps four years of debate club have nurtured your communication skills and ability to speak up for yourself. Whatever activity you choose to write about, be sure to pick one that has been fundamental to your understanding of who you are.

How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?* (200 words)

Admissions already knows a bit about what makes you you; now they want to know why Harvard is the obvious next step in the trajectory of your life. Take some time to meditate on what you hope your life will look like after Harvard—we’re talking ten, twenty years in the future. Once you have an idea of what you hope for that person to be like or do on an average day, invite admissions into your vision and show them how a Harvard education is a pivotal step (or three) on the ladder of success to get there. Regardless of your vision, your response should cite programs, activities, and organizations that Harvard offers. Anyone can say they hope to become a renowned doctor or an attorney for the people, but not everyone is going to do their homework to show admissions that they’ve thought through exactly how they want to get there. Of course, admissions isn’t going to hold you to your blueprint, but they do want to see that you’ve given not only your decision to apply to Harvard some serious thought, but your life post-graduation as well.

Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.* (200 words)

With this prompt, admissions is hoping to see a different side of you, perhaps one that is less intellectual (unless that’s just who you are, in which case, rock on with your nerdy self) and a little more casual. Start by making a list. Write down everything that comes to mind. You can edit and revise later—no idea is too silly to jot down! Maybe you think your roommates should know that you just can’t not sing while in the shower (we’re talking Celine Dion, Adele, Whitney Houston) or that you make the meanest plate of rice and beans in your pressure cooker (and you love to share). Once you’ve narrowed your list down to three (3) things, see if you can weave together a narrative that gives admissions a little taste of what it would be like to hang out in the dorms with you. How do you connect with your peers? What most excites you about residential life? What are the quirks that make you you ? By the time admissions puts down your application, they should feel like your personality is jumping off the page.

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How to Write Harvard's Essays (with Real 2023 Harvard Essay Examples)

Kate Sliunkova

AdmitYogi, Stanford MBA & MA in Education

16 min read

Getting into Harvard University is a dream come true for many high school students. But, the application process doesn't end with the Common Application - you'll also need to write supplemental essays. While it may seem daunting at first, writing these Harvard supplementals can be made easier by understanding what admissions officers are looking for and having examples of successful essays to draw inspiration from.

In this article, we’ll provide some tips on how to craft an effective Harvard supplemental essay and showcase real examples from 2023 applicants who were admitted into the university. With these helpful resources in hand, you’ll have all you need to start writing your own supplementals!

Harvard's Essay Prompts

Harvard applicants will have to write three essays in total. While two of these essays are technically optional, they are highly encouraged; students who don't complete those essays are put at a massive disadvantage during application season.

Prompt #1 (Optional, but Highly Recommended): Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere. (150 words)

Prompt #2: Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

Prompt #3 (Optional, but Highly Recommended): You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics:

• Unusual circumstances in your life
• Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities
• What you would want your future college roommate to know about you
• An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you
• How you hope to use your college education
• A list of books you have read during the past twelve months
• The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty.
• The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?
• Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do?
• Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

Writing Harvard's Essays:

Harvard's additional intellectual activities essay.

Harvard's Prompt #1: "Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere."

Our advice for approaching Harvard's essay prompt asking applicants to list additional intellectual activities outside of their schoolwork is to first understand what "intellectual activities" consist of. Intellectual activities may include but are not limited to hobbies, academic projects, research, or any other activity that's helped you learn something valuable or new.

When structuring your response, make sure to keep it organized. Start by briefly introducing the activity, explaining what it is and how you became involved with it. Focus on the skills that you gained from this activity and how they have helped you develop into a well-rounded individual. Be specific when mentioning the activity or intellectual pursuit, and relate it back to your talents, abilities, or interests. Make sure to highlight how it has impacted your academic performance and personal growth.

Suitable intellectual activities to mention can include but are not limited to, volunteering, research projects, personal interests, internships within a specific field, or pursuing a particular subject on your own outside of a traditional academic setting.

Lastly, make sure to avoid cliches or generic statements that don't add anything new to your story. Rather, use concrete examples and showcase your uniqueness in your writing style. Here's an excellent example of this from Victor, who got into Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, and UPenn. You can read all of his essays, stats, and awards here!

Leisure Reading: Silent Spring—Rachel Carson; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—Douglas Adams; The Old Man and the Sea—Ernest Hemingway; Blood Meridian, The Road—Cormac McCarthy; Die Welt von Gestern—Stefan Zweig; Cicero—Anthony Everret.

Independent research: Used GIS mapping and Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System to analyze traffic collision data in my city.

Books: The Death and Life of Great American Cities—Jane Jacobs; The Color of Law—Richard Rothstein.

Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance—Andonia E. Lugo.

Historical research areas from hours perusing Wikipedia, YouTube, and scholarly articles: 19th Century Urbanism and the Sanitation Revolution; Implications of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the British betrayal of the Hashemites; Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas’ nationalization of Mexican oil and foundation of PEMEX; Mercantilism and how it stunted Iberian colonies’ development post-independence; Fall of the Roman Republic; Norman Conquest of England; The Trial of Charles I.

Harvard's Extracurricular Essay:

Harvard's Prompt #2: "Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences."

To start, when choosing which activity or experience to write about, think about something that you are passionate about and have put in significant effort into. It should also be something that has had a meaningful impact on your life and that you can speak about in depth. This will make the essay more engaging and interesting for the reader.

Next, your essay should have a clear structure. Start by introducing the topic and providing concrete examples of what you did in this activity or experience. Explain any challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Lastly, discuss what you learned from the experience and how it has shaped you as a person.

When writing the essay, it's important to make it personal and reflective of who you are as an individual. Use specific stories to illustrate your points instead of generalizing your experiences. Avoid using cliches or generic phrases that don't add anything new to your story. Strive to make your essay unique and authentic in your writing style. Here's a great example from Gabby W, who got into Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Yale. Y ou can read all of her essays and extracurriculars here.

I discovered Haven for Hope, a community rehab and homeless shelter, through GirlUp, an initiative by the UN Foundation centered around empowering women and developing leadership. In my first year, I became one of four tutors who visited the teenage girls at Haven for Hope weekly. We developed real bonds and strived to be consistent role models for these girls.

During my junior year, as one of five board members, my role in actively supporting the community grew significantly. Our chapter membership grew to 100+ students, and I managed the funds raised to donate 1200+ menstrual products for Haven for Hope women, stock neighboring Title I schools with feminine hygiene products, and hold a baby diaper drive for the Battered Women and Children’s Shelter.

My involvement with GirlUp developed into a profoundly fulfilling fight for female empowerment and equity, a battle I know will continue as I venture into STEM professions.

Harvard's Additional Essay:

Harvard's Prompt #3: "You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics."

We suggest approaching the additional essay prompt with intention and thoughtfulness. This essay is an opportunity to showcase something new about yourself that you haven't already discussed in other parts of your application. Think of it almost like a second personal statement (so stick around 500 words). You're giving the admissions department another look into who you are as a person!

To start, identify what you want to convey about yourself through this essay. It should go beyond your resume or achievements and showcase your personality, interests, values, or worldview. For instance, you could discuss a formative experience that influenced your personal growth or reflect on a specific value that guides your actions.

Once you've identified your topic, make sure you provide plenty of vivid details and specific examples to illustrate your insights. Use descriptive language to help the readers visualize what you're describing in your essay. For example, if you're discussing your favorite hobby, you might describe a particular moment when you discovered your passion for it or the sense of fulfillment you get when you engage with it.

As you write your essay, remember to use an appropriate tone that reflects your personality. You want to come across as authentic and relatable while still demonstrating your unique perspective. It might help to read your essay out loud to ensure that your voice and tone are consistent with your personality.

Don't be afraid to take risks and be vulnerable in your writing. Discussing difficult experiences or challenges can help showcase your resilience and growth mindset. However, you want to avoid oversharing or writing about sensitive topics in a way that could be perceived negatively. Here's an awesome example from Sarah, who was admitted to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, UPenn, Johns Hopkins, and Brown! You can see all of her essays, awards, stats, and more here! Sarah answered the prompt "Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates."

As the other kids prepared to present their 3D-printed towers to students and parents, Nathan fretted, brow furrowed and arms crossed, deeply anxious about the prospect of speaking in front of the large audience. I was in my third year as an assistant teacher for a middle school weekend STEM class when I met Nathan, a student on the autism spectrum.

While the other students worked in pairs, Nathan adamantly insisted he work alone. I was happy to support Nathan as he designed a miniature CAD model of the Big Ben, but he was now tasked with presenting alone, without a partner, unlike the rest of the students. Though he struggled socially and shuddered at the thought of reaching out to his classmates, the other students failed to make an effort to reach out to him. I was perplexed as to why the other kids felt content in excluding Nathan, but as I honestly admitted to myself, I had been no better at their age.

Nathan displayed behaviors reminiscent of those of my older brother Stevie, who has severe autism. Stevie is the most affectionate brother, constantly projecting an infectious smile that has the enchanting power to put me at ease; yet so many people unwittingly deprive him of the fair chance to live a life free from prejudice—including my younger self.

When I was my students’ age, I felt a disgraceful degree of shame upon going into public with Stevie, embarrassed by his random loud outbursts and the disparaging stares we would receive from almost every stranger. However, growing up alongside Stevie, I sometimes observed genuine kindness that made me re-examine my outlook. I began to recognize that autism doesn’t make Stevie disabled; it’s how society accommodates his differences that dictates whether he’s disabled or not. Perceiving the barriers perpetuated by a world not inherently designed for people like Stevie, I felt progressively empowered to try to make life more accommodating for others.

I calmly assured Nathan that he would not need to present in person; instead, I recorded a video of his individual presentation to send to his parents, which alleviated his fears. In the subsequent classes, I put significant effort into connecting Nathan with the other students. I typically spent a majority of each class working with Nathan, trying to support him in any way I could.

I’m eternally grateful that Stevie has helped me become more compassionate and understanding of those around me, whether it’s Nathan or simply a random stranger I encounter in public. Beyond the interactions I share with others, Stevie has also shaped my aspirations for the future. I am drawn in large part to technological innovation because it provides the avenue through which I can continue to better the lives of differently-abled people. I plan to innovate efficient assistive technology, such as AI-powered robotic assistants, to aid those whom society often overlooks. I’m proud that I can serve as an advocate for acceptance and help those who need it most. As I endeavor to provide meaningful assistance to these individuals, I hope I can inspire others to act in a similar manner.

Here's another incredible example of Harvard's optional essay from Dev, who got into Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. You can read his entire college application here! Dev answered the prompt "What you would want your future college roommate to know about you."

Dear future roommate,

I’m going to apologize in advance.

Sorry for always asking you and subsequently dragging you with me to satisfy my chocolate peanut butter cup and black raspberry chocolate chunk cravings. My friends and I have tried a new ice cream place twice a month for the last year, and I can’t stop my streak now (the best flavor so far has been banana cream pie, if you were wondering). I’m not afraid to admit my ice cream obsession and bring you along for the ride. It will be worth it, I promise!

Sorry for yelling at my laptop or the TV on select Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays. I always look forward to my Cleveland Browns finding some way to shock me or leave me in shock. But, they’re my unpredictable team, and I think you’ll find that I’m one of the most loyal people you’ll meet – whether it’s about a sports team or relationships.

Sorry for making you stand… rrrright there against the sun and keep four fingers in your pocket with your thumb out. I’ve been a hobbyist photographer for a few years now, and I will give you the Instagram-worthy photos you’ve been wanting. Still, it won’t come without a bit of precision and creativity, which I think is reflected in my personality. You would probably see that best in my closet.

Speaking of my closet, I'm sorry for all of the Amazon packages I’ll be dragging into the dorm. I am constantly refining my wardrobe, buying new sweaters, jeans, and shoes that I definitely do not need. I like to look “put-together,” however, and if I ask you for your honest opinion, feel free to tell me if this cable-knit patchwork Marino wool sweater looks like a bunch of chocolate bars strung together. Part of my put-together attitude is washing my clothes at least once a week, so, thankfully, one less worry for you is that I won’t smell.

Sorry for dropping every responsibility I have at exactly 10:00 PM during the week (and 6:00 PM on the weekend) because the New York Times just released its latest mini crossword. Don’t worry too much, though, as I won’t be separated from reality for too long – my average time is now below 25 seconds. I’ve been competing against my family and friends on the mini-leaderboard for a while, and I usually get the fastest time. Feel free to add yourself to my leaderboard and play along!

Sorry for sending you a new song that I think is really, really good when Spotify releases my Discover Weekly on Mondays. I may overplay it for the next week and then squirm if I ever hear its intro again, but I love listening to music with other people, so join me in ruining a song faster than you can sing the chorus to The Champs’ classic song, “ Tequila.” I’d love to hear your music too. My taste is very diverse, so as long as we dance around death metal and psychedelic rock, I know we’ll be able to jam out easily.

Sorry for the exorbitant number of dad jokes I’m going to make. That’s it.

I’m not sorry for the ways that these quirks will bring us together; I can’t wait to be the friend that will stick by your side no matter what. I’ll be there to help you if you’re struggling in class, missing home, or conflicted about your love life. Whether you want to talk about the universe’s biggest questions or if pineapple belongs on pizza, just pick up a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half-Baked, grab two spoons, and we can sit for hours figuring it all out together.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, writing standout essays for Harvard University requires time, dedication, and careful planning. It's important to choose topics that highlight your unique experiences, personality, and skills, as well as to demonstrate your passion, curiosity, and resilience. Feedback from trusted sources, such as academic advisors or writing tutors, can be invaluable in refining your essays and ensuring their quality. Another helpful resource for writing strong essays is reading examples of successful college essays. Reading these essays can offer inspiration, ideas, and insights on what works and what doesn't, ultimately helping you write more compelling essays. That's why we highly recommend checking out our platform which offers thousands of successful college essays written by real students that you can read through and learn from. With the right approach, dedication, and guidance, you can craft essays that will stand out in your application to Harvard University.

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For students who need a visa to study in the United States, this question is of critical importance: we begin to prepare the forms that qualify you for a visa immediately after acceptance. Any delay in this process can jeopardize your chances of arriving in Cambridge in time to begin the fall semester.

U.S. Social Security Number

Your U.S. Social Security number is kept strictly confidential and is used solely to match up your admissions and financial aid data if you are applying for aid.

U.S. Armed Forces Status

The applications of veterans are most welcome and your service is a positive factor in our admissions process. We’re proud to help veterans continue their education by participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program and Service to School’s VetLink program. Learn more about applying as a veteran here .

Application Fee Waiver

The application fee covers a very small portion of the administrative costs of processing applications. However, if the fee presents a hardship for you or your family, it will be waived. Each applicant applying with a fee waiver should select an option for a need-based fee waiver. Do not let the application fee stand in the way of applying! 

How to Request an Application Fee Waiver

Do not let the admissions application fee prevent you from applying! In the spirit of our  honor code , if the admissions application fee presents a hardship for you or your family, the fee will be waived. Please follow the steps below to request a fee waiver:

Common Application

• Confirm that you meet at least one of the indicators of economic need and then select “Yes” to the prompt “You are eligible for application fee waivers if you meet one or more of the following criteria."
• Complete the fee waiver signature.

Coalition Application

• Confirm that you meet at least one of the indicators of economic need listed in the Fee Waiver section of your Profile.
• If you do not meet one of the indicators of economic need, you may enter the Harvard-specific fee waiver code on the payment page: JH3S5Q2LX9

Transfer Applicants

• Please send an email to  [email protected]  to request a transfer application fee waiver.

In the family section, you'll share information about your household, your parents, and any siblings. Most colleges collect this information for demographic purposes. Even if you're an adult or an emancipated minor, you'll need to fill out this section.

Unknown Parent

Answer the questions as honestly and fully as you can, but don’t worry if you and your parent/guardian do not know all of the details about your family.

Family Information

Part of an admissions officer’s job in reading your application is to understand your background and how these circumstances have affected your upbringing, the opportunities available to you, academic preparation, and other factors relevant to the college admissions process.

Family life is an important factor in helping us to learn more about the circumstances and conditions in which you were raised, and how you have made the most of the opportunities provided by your family. We want to understand where you’re coming from, not only in school, but at home as well.

Parent Education

Parents almost always have a significant effect on students’ lives. Information about parents may indicate challenges you have faced – and overcome. In your essay you might elaborate on your family experiences in a wide variety of ways that can illuminate your character and personal qualities, including the positive aspects of your family life.

In the Education section is where you will share information about your current school or coursework, academic honors, and future education plans. Here are some tips on commonly asked questions.

Interruption in Education

It is not uncommon for students to change schools or take time off during high school. While this information will most likely appear on your transcript, hearing directly from you about any interruption in schooling will help us to fill in any gaps.

We always defer to the secondary school report for information about grades. If yours is not provided by the counselor or school, we will take into consideration what is self-reported, making sure to confirm with your school officials.

Current or Most Recent Year Courses

Please list the courses you are currently taking and/or are planning on taking before you graduate. If your schedule changes after you have submitted your application, please keep us updated by submitting additional materials in the Applicant Portal.

Honors & Level(s) of Recognition

This is a place to highlight any achievements or awards you have received. If you receive any significant honors or awards after submitting the application, you may notify us by submitting additional materials in the Applicant Portal and we will include this information with your application materials.

Future Plans & Career Interest

You do not need to have a ten year plan, but getting a sense of what kinds of professions you have considered gives us insight into your current plans. Don’t fret about it: put a few ideas down and move on with your application.

Since there are some students who do have a developed career interest already established while they are in high school, this question provides an opportunity to indicate such a plan.

The Testing section is where you'll enter your self-reported scores for any standardized tests that you've taken and wish to report to colleges. However, remember that if you self-report your SAT or ACT test scores and you are admitted and choose to enroll at Harvard, you'll be required to submit your official score reports from the College Board or ACT. View more information on our standardized testing requirements on our Application Requirements page.

Tests Taken

Test scores.

We have always looked at the best scores applicants choose to submit. If you haven’t yet taken the tests, please indicate which tests you are taking and when.

The TOEFL is not required for Harvard, but if you are taking it for another college, you may elect to submit it as part of your Harvard application. Your score can be one more piece of evidence regarding your English language proficiency, so you may choose to submit it if you feel it provides additional helpful information. 

AP/IB Tests

These exam scores are additional pieces of academic information which can help us as we think about your preparation and potential for college level work. Sometimes AP or IB scores can demonstrate a wide range of academic accomplishments.

If you have the opportunity to take AP and IB exams, the results may also be helpful for academic placement, should you be accepted and choose to enroll at Harvard. 

The activities section gives you the opportunity to tell schools more about who you are and activities you're involved with outside the classroom. You'll have the opportunity to list up to ten activities, but that doesn't mean you need to enter all ten.

How we use extracurricular activities and work experience in the admissions process

We are much more interested in the quality of students’ activities than their quantity so do not feel you need to fill in the entire grid! Contributions students make to the well-being of their secondary schools, communities and families are of great interest to us. So indicate for us the time you spend and the nature of the contribution to extracurricular activities, the local community, work experiences and help provided to your family. Activities you undertake need not be exotic but rather might show a commitment to excellence regardless of the activity. Such a commitment can apply to any activity in your life and may reflect underlying character and personal qualities.

For example, a student can gain a great deal from helping his or her family with babysitting or other household responsibilities or working in a restaurant to help with family or personal expenses. Such experiences are important “extracurricular” activities and can be detailed in the extracurricular section and discussed in essays.

Some students list only activities they feel will appear significant to the admissions office, while others endeavor to list every single thing they have ever done. Neither approach is right for everyone. Rather, you should think about the activities (in-school, at home, or elsewhere) that you care most about and devote most of your time doing, and list those.

We realize that extracurricular and athletic opportunities are either unavailable or limited at many high schools. We also know that limited economic resources in many families can affect a student’s chances for participation on the school teams, travel teams, or even prevent participation at all due to the costs of the equipment or the logistical requirements of some sports and activities. You should not feel that your chances for admission to college are hindered by the lack of extracurricular opportunities. Rather, our admissions committee will look at the various kinds of opportunities you have had in your lifetime and try to assess how well you have taken advantage of those opportunities.

For additional thoughts on extracurricular activities, please refer to this 2009 article in the New York Times:  Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean, Part 3 .

Positions held, honors won, letters earned, or employer

In this section, please describe the activity and your level of participation. Please note that your description should be concise, or it may be cut off by the Common Application.

Participation Grade Level

The grades during which you have participated are important because they help us to understand the depth of your involvement in that activity and your changing interests over time. Not all extracurricular activities must be a four-year commitment for our applicants.

Approximate Time Spent

We are interested to know how you manage your time and to understand how you balance your life outside of the classroom. Some students dedicate their time to one or two activities, while others spread their time among many.

When did you participate

We know that students are often active both during the school year and the summer – working, babysitting siblings, enrolling in courses, traveling, playing sports, holding internships, etc. Distinguishing school-year activities from summer activities helps us understand how you have spent your time and taken advantage of opportunities available to you.

Plans to participate in college?

Harvard is a residential institution, and our students are actively engaged in college life. This section helps us to understand how you might contribute at Harvard. Some students who were involved in several activities during high school choose to narrow their focus in college and/or to try new activities not previously available.

What if there's not enough space?

Filling out the grid is an act of prioritization: your responses tell us what activities or work experiences are most meaningful to you. And there’s quite a bit of space there, too; almost everyone should be able to convey the breadth and depth of out-of-class commitments on the application. Conversely, please do not feel a need to fill every line!

The first section is the personal essay. Harvard requires the submission of the personal essay with your application. We also offer an opportunity to add any additional information.

Personal Essay

The Common Application essay topics are broad. Please note that Coalition essay questions may differ. While this might seem daunting at first, look at it as an opportunity to write about something you care about, rather than what you think the Admissions Committee wants to hear. The point of the personal statement is for you to have the chance to share whatever you would like with us. Remember, your topic does not have to be exotic to be compelling.

Essay topics include:

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Additional Information

Do not feel obligated to fill this space, but some students have used this opportunity to tell us about challenging circumstances in their lives such as illness or other difficulties that may have affected their grades. Any information that can tell us more about the person behind the test scores and grades can be helpful.

Harvard Questions

Each college or university that is a member of the Common Application and/or the Coalition Application - Powered by Scoir has an opportunity to ask applicants a series of school-specific questions separate from the common part of the application. The Harvard supplement contains a series of questions that help us learn more about your academic, extracurricular, and personal interests. You application is not considered complete until you submit the supplement. 

General: Applying for Financial Aid

Harvard has a need-blind admissions process and applying for aid is never detrimental to your admissions decision. We ask this question because we want to be able to calculate your financial need in advance of our April notification date so that we can send your admission letter and financial aid offer at the same time. One thing to note – not all institutions have such policies.

General: Submitting Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials (art slides, music recordings, research papers, etc.) help when they reveal unusual talent. You absolutely do not have to include anything supplementary to gain acceptance to Harvard, and the vast majority of admitted students do not submit supplementary materials with their applications. You can submit art and media files through Slideroom  and any documents or articles directly in the Applicant Portal with an uploader tool.

Academics: Fields of Study

When you select from the full list of Harvard's academic concentrations, you give us a sense of the direction you may choose when it comes time for you to choose a concentration at Harvard in your sophomore year.

While we realize that this question is quite similar to the one asked on the Common Application, our own format allows us to fit this information into data fields that Harvard has been collecting for many years. While we know students might well change their minds once they are in college, it is helpful for us to get a sense of their current interests and those academic areas in which they have already spent time and effort.

We do not admit students into specific academic programs, and we have no quotas or targets for academic fields.

Academics: Future Plans

As a liberal arts institution with fifty academic concentrations and more than 450 extracurricular organizations, we expect and encourage our students to explore new opportunities. We understand that as you answer these questions, you may not be entirely sure of your plans, but this information helps us to understand how you might use Harvard.

One of the principal ways students meet and educate each other during college is through extracurricular activities. Your answer to this question gives us a better sense of the interests you might bring to college and how definite your academic, vocational, extracurricular or athletic interests might be. This information helps us understand better how you might use Harvard. Of course, one of the best things about a liberal arts education is that plans may change. There is no “right” answer to these questions.

If you have applied to Harvard before, we want to include your previous application with your current one. We also want to have a record of any other involvement at Harvard you may have had, including the Summer School and the Extension School and associated transcripts. This information adds to the context of your present application. It can be helpful for us to note changes in your application—perhaps areas where you have strengthened the academic and/or extracurricular aspects of your candidacy.

Writing Supplement

The supplement includes five required short-answer questions, each with a 200 word limit. We want to ensure that every student has the same opportunity to reflect on and share how their life experiences and academic and extracurricular activities shaped them, how they will engage with others at Harvard, and their aspirations for the future. Our continued focus is on considering the whole student in the admissions process and how they have interacted with the world.

Required Short Answer Questions

Each question has a 200 word limit. 

• Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?
• Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. 
• Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.
• How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?
• Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. 

Related Guides

Here you'll find information on tracking your application and interviews.

Financial Aid Fact Sheet

Get the facts about Harvard College's revolutionary financial aid program.

Guide to Preparing for College

Find information about selecting high school courses that best prepare you for liberal arts colleges with high academic demographic such as Harvard.

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MBA Admissions Consulting | MPP & MPA Admissions Consulting | Harvard Application Advice

Tips for Writing the Optional Essay for Harvard Kennedy School

posted on September 17, 2014

Anyone who has any kind of blemish or red flag in their application should write the optional essay. Here are some occasions when you should consider writing the optional essay: you have a GPA below 3.6 you have a GMAT / GRE score below the 75th percentile you took time off of work or school you are noticeably older or younger than most applicants to your target schools you don’t have a letter of recommendation from your direct supervisor and you think it will look suspect you don’t have much quantitative work experience and you’re applying to a top MBA or MPA / MPP program you were put on probation or received some other kind of disciplinary sanction in college Why should I write the optional essay?

While business schools have interviews, most policy schools do not include an interview in the selection process. Therefore, your written application is all they have to go off of in deciding whether or not to give you a spot in the incoming class. I think of the optional essay as your seat at the table when your application gets put in the “maybe” pile and comes up for further discussion by the committee. A skeptic on the committee says, “Look at how low her college GPA is,” but your optional essay pipes up and says, “True, I have a low GPA in college, but I was an award-winning athlete, an officer of my student government, and I was working to support myself through college. I’ve financially planned well for graduate school, so now I’ll be able to fully focus on my studies rather than juggling too many commitments.” Without the optional essay, AdCom members are left to draw their own conclusions about why certain red flags in your application popped up—and whether or not those red flags are bad enough to sink your application.

How long should the optional essay be?

This is stating the obvious, but the optional essay should definitely be within the word limit . Additionally, you should try to get your key message across in as few words as possible . Since this is an additional essay, you don’t want to create more work for the AdCom than necessary.

When should I write the optional essay?

I recommend that my clients  write the optional essay first. It allows them to get every worry, doubt, and fear out and on paper so that they can move forward with their other essays with a renewed confidence and clarity about why they  do  have a shot at getting into their dream school.

What should I write in the optional essay?

Since Harvard Kennedy School is the #1 school my clients apply to, let’s use the 2014-2015 Harvard Kennedy School Optional Essay as a case study of how to write an optional essay. You can apply this same essay structure for any graduate school optional essay —whether it’s MBA, MPH, MSW, M. Ed, or something else. The Prompt: (applicable to all HKS degree programs)

(Optional) If you have any concerns about your prior academic background, or if you believe the Admissions Committee may have concerns, please give a brief explanation of your performance in college, or your standardized test scores (750 word limit).

• Directly state the areas of your application you believe may be of concern to the admissions committee.

Then, for each trouble area of your candidacy, follow this structure:

• Restate the trouble area. e.g. My undergraduate GPA is 3.1.
• Tell them why this problem occurred. Don’t point fingers or try to put blame on others. Dispassionately explain what happened and take personal responsibility. Be sure to be diplomatic and tactful in your response. For example, don’t write “I was partying too much my freshman year of college,” because that’s troubling to AdComs and no one wants to hear that. Instead, you can get the same point across by saying something like, “I was still maturing and adjusting to the multiple demands of college.”
• Tell them what you learned from this experience. What did you learn about yourself as a leader, student, and/or member of a community?
• Tell them what you have done since then to remedy this problem.  This is where you show that you are a proactive problem-solver.
• Tell them what you will do if this problem seems to be a threat during your time at Harvard. What resources on- and off-campus will you use to make sure you continue to excel academically, personally, and professionally during your time at Harvard?

Lastly, end your optional essay with an optimistic and confident statement of your enthusiasm for the program and your gratitude for their consideration. Voila! You have an optional essay worth reading. Now you can move on to writing the essays that are  required  for you to get into your dream school.

Reader Interactions

October 15, 2014 at 3:55 am

Hi Kaneisha, Thanks for all this information! I’m a bit confused about whether to write the optional essay or not: my GPA (3.8) and GRE scores (160+) are both fine. However, I will only be 22 years old at the time of application. Since the AdCom has explicitly told applicants to address *academic* background concerns, I’m not sure if I should write the essay, since my concern is non-academic, and there isn’t much I can do to remedy it (aside from growing older!) What do you think?

October 15, 2014 at 10:21 am

Hi Ann, you are welcome and thanks for commenting! If you are concerned that the Adcom will think you are “too young,” I would still advise you to write the optional essay. The way to think of it is as an academic concern is that they may be concerned that, due to your young age, you will be less prepared to participate in classroom discussion. You can use your optional essay to assure the committee of your maturity, your preparedness for a rigorous Masters program, as well as your enthusiasm to learn from people of all ages and backgrounds. Voila! Best of luck with your application, and I so appreciate you reaching out via the comment thread with this great question, so that others can learn from your question as well!

November 6, 2015 at 1:30 am

MPP program this year requires all the subsections in IELTS to be above 7. However, my writing section is 6.5. MY overall IELTS score is 7.5. However, my writing part in GMAT has been 5 out of 6 in my twice exams. How should I explain this in the optional essay? My major is English and do not attend any maths courses, but I have economic background as my second major. Also, I got 170 in GRE maths section. How should I make up this section? Thanks for your reply.

October 16, 2016 at 3:41 am

Hi, my concern is that I’m 22 years old and my GPA is mediocre – 3.52. I was wondering if I should explain these because age is something I cannot change and GPA is not spectacular, but also not horrible. I’m concerned that if I do decide to write about this (and I did have some financial problem in my family during my college years, which led me to work), AdCom will take the essay as an excuse, not an explanation.

January 9, 2017 at 3:21 pm

Hi Jamie, I don’t think you need to address your age in your optional essay. Your GPA is good. If you have C’s in a few classes, I would use the optional essay to explain those, but I don’t think your actual GPA is something you need to explain. Best of luck!

February 3, 2017 at 5:17 am

Hi Kaneisha, I am a foreign student. My GPA is 3.9, IELTS 7.5. I have 3-years of work experience. However, I underestimated the complexity of GRE or maybe underestimated my abilities and prepared only about 1.5 month. So my total score is only 302 (math and verbal), writing is 3.5. I do not have time to retake it because deadline is very soon. However, when I wrote to my dream school they said that I can be accepted even with low GRE scores, if other parts of application are strong. Does it worth to write an optional essay about my regret related to insufficient preparing for GRE or what I can write as alternative?

December 21, 2017 at 9:12 am

Thank you for such an informative article. Everyone knows that academic writing is a little bit difficult and time-consuming deal. But it is important to gain some abilities and knowledge about every type of that. For real, writing the optional essay could be a great way to gain one more additional chance, it is so beneficial. Is there something that must be also concerned while writing this type of essay? The fact is, there are so many points in the list “what should I write in the optional essay” and the capacity needed isn’t so big. So, articles like yours are always really necessary for students.

April 17, 2018 at 11:04 am

Hi Hayden! Thanks for commenting. We’re glad you found it informative and wish you the best of luck on your applications!

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February 12, 2024

Harvard Medical School Secondary Application Essay Tips and Deadlines [2023-2024]

The website of Harvard Medical School (HMS) is a treasure trove of information for applicants. Is HMS right for you? It could be if you are, as the school says , “self-motivated, visionary in …[your] ambition, and compassionate in …[your] approach to the art of healing.” HMS highlights the importance of diversity in its Mission Statement, as a critical component of campus culture, and as a factor in promoting excellence in medicine. As you approach your secondary application, aligning your answers with HMS’s community values will offer you the opportunity to highlight work you have done in global outreach, community engagement, social justice, teamwork, and academic discovery.  

Harvard Medical School 2023-2024 Secondary Application Essay Questions

Harvard secondary essay #1.

If you have already graduated, briefly summarize your activities since graduation.  (4000 characters maximum)

This essay is strictly for students who have already graduated from an undergraduate institution. Explain any work you have done in the interim, as well as any volunteer activities and MCAT plans, in whatever order you choose. Provide details about the level of your responsibilities, what you are learning, the impact you’re having on the community you are working with, and/or how the experience is influencing your life goals as a future physician. Provide clear and succinct summaries that  demonstrate HMS’s core commitments , as presented on the school’s website. If you are a reapplicant, highlight activities that might rectify any weakness in your earlier AMCAS application. Your answers should convey your engagement with the work that you’re doing, revealing what’s rich in opportunity, growth, and learning. Think about and convey why the work is, or has been, a wise way to use your time during the gap year.

Harvard Secondary Essay #2

If there is an important aspect of your personal background or identity not addressed elsewhere in the application that may illuminate how you could contribute to the medical school and that you would like to share with the Committee, we invite you to do so here. Examples might include significant challenges in access to education, unusual socioeconomic factors, or other aspects of your personal or family background to place your prior academic achievements in context or provide further information about your motivation for a career in medicine or the perspectives you might bring to the medical school community. Many applicants will not need to answer this question. (4000 characters)

This prompt is open-ended on purpose. As you write, keep the part of the prompt that says, “how you could contribute to the medical school” at the forefront of your mind. The admissions committee is providing you with an opportunity to share something unique about yourself. For example, were you raised by a relative? Were you raised by a single mom? Does someone in your family have a disability? Are you a person of color? Did your race or ethnicity influence what opportunities you had access to? Were you raised in a non-English-speaking household? Did you attend a diverse public school? Did any of these circumstances affect your educational opportunities or progress? Take care to ensure that the story you tell is not already shared in a different part of your application.

The words “important” and “significant” are key here. As the prompt itself notes, “Many applicants will not need to answer this question.” If you do not have an aspect of your background or identity you feel could genuinely be deemed “important” or “significant,” do not respond to this prompt. 

Harvard Secondary Essay #3 (Optional)

The Committee on Admissions understands that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted applicants in various ways. If you wish to inform the Committee as to how these events have affected you and have not already done so elsewhere in your application, please use this space to do so. (This is an optional essay; the Committee on Admissions will make no judgment based on your decision to provide a statement or not.)

If you were personally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, describe your – and, if relevant, your family’s — experience here. If you or a family member contracted the virus, this prompt gives you an opportunity to explain, as a future doctor, how you learned something from the experience of being a patient or related to a patient. (Generally, when someone becomes seriously sick, their whole family — and sometimes, their entire community — is afflicted.) Chances are, you had an experience that has helped you understand compassion, empathy, or sympathy on a deeper level. How was that a valuable experience for you as a future doctor?

If you were affected professionally or educationally, you might have chronicled this in your activities. What might not be evident on the activities list, though, is that even though COVID-19 might have curtailed your scribe work or delayed your taking of the MCAT, the disruption engendered other volunteer opportunities. If so, how did you help? And by helping, what did you learn about or from a vulnerable community (or those in need) by seeking and doing a selfless act to be of assistance to others during this time?

Harvard Secondary Essay #4

The interview season for the 2023-2024 cycle will be held virtually and is anticipated to run from mid-September through January 2024. Please indicate any significant (three or more weeks) restriction on your availability for interviews during this period. If none, please leave this section blank. (1000 characters)

Simply answer this question by providing the information requested.

Hopefully, the next step in the med school application process for you will be your HMS interview. And the best way to prepare for your interview is to practice, practice, practice with a med school admissions expert who understands the system and who will give you feedback and guidance throughout the process. Schedule a 30-minute free consultation with an Accepted consultant today.

Harvard Secondary Essay #5

ESSAY FOR APPLICATIONS TO THE HARVARD-MIT DIVISION OF HEALTH SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY (HST) Instructions: The HST MD program draws on the combined resources of Harvard and MIT to provide a distinct preclinical education tailored to preparing students for careers as transformative physicians who will shape the future practice of medicine. Our students come from the full spectrum of disciplines including biological, physical, engineering and social sciences. HST classes are small, commonly include graduate students and have an emphasis on quantitative and analytic approaches. The unique HST pre-clinical curriculum prepares students well for the HMS clinical education while also emphasizing disease mechanisms and preparing students to solve critical unmet needs in medicine and healthcare (ranging from novel diagnostics and therapeutics to applications of ‘big data’ and systems engineering). Please focus on how your interests, experiences and aspirations have prepared you for HST (rather than identifying specific HST faculty or research opportunities).  (4000 characters)

Innovations in medicine abound across academic disciplines. In particular, Harvard is interested in sophisticated medical technology and data application systems that solve unmet health care needs. What experience or education in technology or engineering have you had? How does this tie into medical innovation? How has your experience with or education in technology or engineering prepared you to “fit” this hybrid program? What is the intersection of technology (or engineering or social sciences) and medicine for which you are a good fit? What research or experience do you have with this interdisciplinary intersection? Tell Harvard about that research/experience and its potential influence on health care in the future.

Take particular notice of the second parenthetical comment in the prompt: “rather than identifying specific HST faculty or research opportunities.” Avoid, at all costs, writing what the program can do for you . Rather,  how are you a good fit  for the HST MD track? How are you uniquely suited to thrive and succeed with this hybrid opportunity? Your answer should convey your knowledge of the program’s mission and a thorough understanding of the relevance of your hybrid expertise to healthcare innovation and improving healthcare outcomes.

Applying to Harvard Medical School? Here are some stats :

Harvard Medical School average MCAT score: 520.59

Harvard Medical School average GPA: 3.9

Harvard Medical School applications for the Class of 2027: 6,986

Harvard Medical School class size, Class of 2027: 164

Has this blog post helped you feel more confident about approaching your Harvard Medical School application? We hope so. It’s our mission to help smart, talented applicants like you gain acceptance to your dream school. With so much at stake, why not hire a consultant whose expertise and personalized guidance can help you take the next step on your journey to becoming a doctor? We have several flexible consulting options — click here to get started today !

Harvard Medical School application timeline 2023-2024

Source: HMS website

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with Harvard Medical School directly to verify its essay questions, instructions, and deadlines.***

As the former assistant dean of student affairs and career development at the William Beaumont School of Medicine, Dr. Valerie Wherely worked directly with the dean of the School of Medicine, the associate dean of student affairs, the associate dean of clinical curriculum, and the assistant dean of admissions, as well as with Year 4 students on both residency application reviews/critiques and mock interview preparation.

Dr. Mary Mahoney, PhD, is the medical humanities director at Elmira College and has more than 20 years of experience as an advisor and essay reviewer for med school applicants. She is a tenured English professor with an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in literature and writing from the University of Houston. For the past 20 years, Mary has served as a grad school advisor and essay reviewer for med school applicants. Want Mary to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

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• Do’s and Don’ts of Medical School Recommendation Letters
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast for Med School Applicants

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Inside the Black Box

Optional Statements: An Opportunity, But Optional

Considering whether to write an optional statement? If you complete your personal statement and still feel that you have more to share, an optional statement provides you with an opportunity to do so. Here is our advice to determine whether submitting an optional statement is the right choice for your application.

First, let’s be clear about one important distinction between a personal statement and an optional statement.  A personal statement is required. An optional statement, as the name suggests, is not. Nevertheless, an optional statement may provide an opportunity for you to help us understand how you will contribute to the diversity of perspectives, experiences, and pathways in the student body at Harvard Law School.

Many prospective students wonder whether an optional statement is secretly required to put forth a strong application to Harvard Law School, or assume that it is in their best interest to maximize every opportunity to submit materials to us.

Nope—the optional statement is definitely optional, and should only be submitted when all the other components of your application are not sufficient to provide a full picture of you as an applicant and potential member of the HLS community.

Think carefully about whether and how you use this optional component. There are times when an application is actually weakened by an optional statement due to a lack of cohesion or relevance to the rest of the file.

If you submit an optional statement, ensure that it provides us a fuller understanding of how your individual path informs and is informed by your decision to pursue a legal education. The optional statement should not be an extension of your resume or personal statement, but instead a reflection on the unique perspectives and insights that you will bring to our classrooms and community. Think of the word diversity in its broadest sense: background, experience, identities, ideological/political viewpoints, traditions of faith, skills, passions, aspirations, and more.

Optional statements work best when they bring something new to the application—something we haven’t already learned from reading the other components of your file. Remember that we will have just read your resume and personal statement a few minutes prior, so repetition of the same information and material is not necessary.

In short: optional statements provide an opportunity, but you must think carefully about whether submission of an optional statement will enhance your application.

Whether or not you choose to submit an optional statement, we are excited to get to know you in your own words.

Filed in: Inside the Black Box

Contact the J.D. Admissions Office

Website: hls.harvard.edu/jdadmissions

Email: [email protected]

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Harvard Supplement's Optional Essay

<p>Well, I’m writing the essay now, but just want to make sure:</p>

<p>1, Can anyone give adivce on the word limit? Not exact figures, but just to have a sense on the length that’s ok for the admission officers.</p>

<p>2, I’m not confined to their “possible” topics, right? But I just wonder… to what extent should I try to write under those topics? Will writing a topic that isn’t on their list be seen as bad? </p>

<p>Thanks for your time.</p>

<p>PS: Is it really “optional”? I mean, throwing away a chance to show yourself when applying to Harvard isn’t the best idea?..</p>

<p>Yes, it is really optional; students get accepted to Harvard with and without writing the optional essay. That being said, supplemental college essays should be less than 500 words.</p>

<p>Not more than 2 double spaced, normal font pages is what our counselor advises.</p>

<p>Hmm… at the last count, it’s 519 words. And two more paragraphs from finishing.</p>

<p>I wrote it like a Common Application essay, with a story and a discussion… hard to do it short I guess.</p>

<p>It isn’t as though they’ll reject you if it’s longer as long as it’s good.</p>

<p>Mine was a single-spaced, single-page, roughly 500-word essay, and I appended an additional page to serve as a resum</p>

<p>^</p>

<p>Couldn’t you have uploaded the resum</p>

<p>^ Submitted it early by accident, so I just tacked it on there.</p>

<p>There is none. Mine was about 270 words; the above posts indicate that successful applications had different supplemental essay lengths. Make it as long as you feel is necessary.</p>

<p>No, you’re not. I, for one, don’t recall following any of their advice. My “essay,” if it can even be called such, was a diary entry from when I was angsting in a typical preteen fashion. </p>

<p>Despite what you may believe, it is optional.</p>

<p>Mine was about 750 words.</p>

<p>Of course not :)! I wrote about making a dress… I would think most people come up with their own topics. Let’s face it, the topics given on the app were just plain boring:P.</p>

<p>I think I’d generally suggest keeping it under 500 unless you have a really good reason not to. The story could be a little different if your common app essay is particularly short. The topics that they give you are NOT the only ones you can choose. I did a totally off-the-wall, nebulous, artsy-fartsy essay - and I didn’t have any fabulous qualifications, so I’m pretty sure that’s what got me in. My advice: Don’t even read the “suggested topics.” Pretend they’re not there. Good luck.</p>

<p>Common Application: 283 words. Supplement: 270-ish words.</p>

<p>There’s no hard and fast rule. Just do you.</p>

<p>Submitting a strong additional essay can only help your chances, so I would encourage you to complete it as long as you have something meaningful to say.</p>

<p>Don’t fret about the word count while you write. I took a 723 page essay and sliced it down to a lean 499, and to be honest reading it now I think it is much more effective in the shorter version. You would be surprised how many words can be excised from something like this! Don’t worry about length until you’re done, then work on it from there.</p>

<p>:eek:</p>

<p>You mean 723 words …right?</p>

<p>lol… yes. Words. :)</p>

<p>Slackers. My optional essay was 723 pages.</p>

<p>^ wait, seriously?</p>

<p>Hmm, I’m surprised this thread floated up. </p>

<p>Anyway, I found that there was a similar thread last year; it dealt with the issue more completely there, so anyone looking at this thread may also want to give it a look. You can find it in the “Similar Threads” section at the very bottom - the one with 72 replies. In case it’s not there:</p>

<p><a href=“ http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/839058-harvard-optional-essay.html[/url] ”> http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/839058-harvard-optional-essay.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt ;

<p>By the way, I changed my essay into a booklist after reading the said thread - about 70 books, categorized by subjects and authors, with a short comment about 200 words on each category. 1896 words.</p>

<p>Nope. Pretty sure prosciutto is not.</p>

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Harvard and Caltech Will Require Test Scores for Admission

The universities are the latest highly selective schools to end their policies that made submitting SAT or ACT scores optional.

By Anemona Hartocollis and Stephanie Saul

Harvard will reinstate standardized testing as a requirement of admission, the university announced Thursday, becoming the latest in a series of highly competitive universities to reverse their test-optional policies.

Students applying to enter Harvard in fall 2025 and beyond will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, though the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university had previously said it was going to keep its test-optional policy through the entering class of fall 2026.

Within hours of Harvard’s announcement, Caltech, a science and engineering institute, also said it was reinstating its testing requirements for students applying for admission in fall 2025.

The schools had been among nearly 2,000 colleges across the country that dropped test score requirements over the last few years, a trend that escalated during the pandemic when it was harder for students to get to test sites.

Dropping test score requirements was widely viewed as a tool to help diversify admissions, by encouraging poor and underrepresented students who had potential but did not score well on the tests to apply. But supporters of the tests have said without scores, it became harder to identify promising students who outperformed in their environments.

In explaining its decision to accelerate the return to testing, Harvard cited a study by Opportunity Insights , which found that test scores were a better predictor of academic success in college than high school grades and that they can help admissions officers identify highly talented students from low income groups who might otherwise had gone unnoticed.

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said in a statement announcing the move.

“In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” she added.

Caltech, in Pasadena, Calif., said that reinstating testing requirements reaffirmed the school’s “commitment as a community of scientists and engineers to using all relevant data in its decision-making processes.”

Harvard and Caltech join a growing number of schools, notable for their selectivity, that have since reversed their policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown, Purdue and the University of Texas at Austin.

For Harvard, the move comes at a time of transition, and perhaps a return to more conservative policies.

Last June, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, raising fears that with the demise of affirmative action, those schools would become less diverse.

And in January, Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned under pressure from critics who said she had not acted strongly enough to combat antisemitism on campus after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, and under mounting accusations of plagiarism in her academic work, which she stood by.

The provost, Alan Garber, was named interim president, while the dean of the law school, John Manning, became interim provost, the university’s second-highest administrative position. Mr. Manning is considered a strong potential candidate to replace Dr. Gay. His background stands out for his conservative associations, having clerked for the former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

In the current climate on campus, a return to test scores could be seen as a return to tradition. It also may address concerns of many parents that the college admissions process, especially in elite institutions, is inscrutable and disconnected from merit.

Applications to Harvard were down by 5 percent this year, while those at many of its peer universities went up, suggesting that the recent turmoil may have dented its reputation. But it still received a staggering number of undergraduate applications — 54,008 — and admitted only 3.6 percent. Requiring test scores could make sorting through applications more manageable.

Critics of standardized tests have long raised concerns that the tests helped fuel inequality because some wealthier students raised their scores through high-priced tutoring. But recent studies have found that test scores help predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success, and that test scores are more reliable than high school grades, partly because of grade inflation in recent years .

But Robert Schaeffer, director of public education at FairTest, an organization that opposes standardized testing, said Thursday that the Opportunity Insights analysis had been criticized by other researchers. “Those scholars say that when you eliminate the role of wealth, test scores are not better than high school G.P.A.,” he said, adding that it is not clear whether that pattern is true among the admissions pool at super selective colleges such as Harvard.

Mr. Schaeffer said that at least 1,850 universities remain test optional, including Michigan, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and Syracuse, which have recently extended their policies. “The vast majority of colleges will not require test scores.” An exception, he said, could be the University of North Carolina system, which is considering a plan to require tests, but only for those students with a G.P.A. below 2.8.

Acknowledging the concerns of critics, Harvard said that it would reassess the new policy regularly. The school said that test scores would be considered along with other information about an applicant’s experience, skills, talents, contributions to communities and references. They will also be looked at in the context of how other students are doing at the same high school.

“Admissions officers understand that not all students attend well-resourced schools, and those who come from modest economic backgrounds or first-generation college families may have had fewer opportunities to prepare for standardized tests,” William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid, said in a statement.

Harvard said that in the interest of selecting a diverse student body, it has enhanced financial aid and stepped up recruitment of underserved students by joining a consortium of 30 public and private universities that recruits students from rural communities.

An earlier version of this article misstated Robert Schaeffer’s position. He is the director of public education at FairTest, not the director.

How we handle corrections

Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education. More about Anemona Hartocollis

Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul

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Harvard announces return to required testing

Leading researchers cite strong evidence that testing expands opportunity

Students applying to Harvard College for fall 2025 admission will be required to submit standardized test scores, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced on Thursday. This new policy will be applied to the Class of 2029 admissions cycle and will be formally assessed at regular intervals.

For the Class of 2029 admissions cycle, Harvard will require submission of scores for the SAT or ACT. In exceptional cases in which applicants are unable to access SAT or ACT testing, other eligible tests will be accepted.

In a message to the FAS community on Thursday, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra foregrounded “a number of factors” that underscored the decision.

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” she said. “Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

In research published last year, Harvard Professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming and co-author John N. Friedman used data from more than 400 institutions and about 3.5 million undergrads per year to better understand socioeconomic diversity and admissions. Standardized tests emerged as an important tool to identify promising students at less-well-resourced high schools, particularly when paired with other academic credentials.

“Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources,” said Chetty, the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics and director of Opportunity Insights . “But the data reveal that other measures — recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays — are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

Deming, the Kennedy School’s Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy and a professor of education and economics at the Ed School, pointed to access as a key issue.

“The virtue of standardized tests is their universality,” he said. “Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay. But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT. While some barriers do exist, the widespread availability of the test provides, in my view, the fairest admissions policy for disadvantaged applicants.”

In June 2020, as the pandemic severely limited access to standardized testing, Harvard began a test-optional policy under which students could apply to the College without submitting scores. The admissions cycle for the Class of 2028 was the fourth for which students were able to apply without submitting test scores. However, admissions has welcomed applicants to submit test scores, and the majority of those who matriculated during the past four years did so.

“Test scores can provide important information about a student’s application,” said William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid. “However, they representonly one factor among many as our admissions committee considers the whole person in making its decisions. Admissions officers understand that not all students attend well-resourced schools, and those who come from modest economic backgrounds or first-generation college families may have had fewer opportunities to prepare for standardized tests.”

In recent years, nonprofits such as Khan Academy have offered robust test-prep tools at no charge. In her message, Hoekstra said that access to testing should never prevent a student from applying to Harvard, and included information for those who may not be able to access the SAT or ACT, as well as tools such as Schoolhouse.world and other sources for no-cost tutoring and no-cost test preparation.

“We recognize that in parts of the United States there may be fewer students than in the past taking SAT or ACT for their state universities — and international applicants can also face barriers to testing,” said Joy St. John, director of admissions. “We hope that promising students faced with such challenges will still apply, using alternative forms of testing.”

Said Hoekstra: “Fundamentally, we know that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students, and to give Harvard the opportunity to support their development as thinkers and leaders who will contribute to shaping our world.”

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Updated April 11, 2024, at 3:25 p.m.

Harvard College will reinstate its standardized testing requirement in admissions beginning with the Class of 2029, a surprise reversal that could leave some students scrambling to take SAT or ACT tests ahead of application deadlines in the fall.

The decision comes in the face of Harvard’s previous commitments to remain test-optional through the admitted Class of 2030, a policy that was first instituted during the pandemic.

Harvard had faced mounting criticism from both academics and admissions experts for continuing its test-optional policies, even as its peer institutions returned to requiring standardized tests . In recent weeks, Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown have announced returns to required testing.

All applicants to the Class of 2029 — due to apply in the fall and winter of 2024 — will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, barring specific cases in which they may be unable to access such exams, according to the College’s announcement. In such cases, scores from exams such as Advanced Placement or the International Baccalaureate will be accepted as substitutes.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in a statement that “standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond.”

“More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” she added. “With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students.”

The majority of undergraduates entering Harvard in the past four years have submitted standardized test scores, according to the release, which did not specify an exact percentage.

Harvard officials have recently hedged on whether the College would reinstate its testing requirement. In early March, Hoekstra told The Crimson that Harvard was “in the midst of analyzing” its policy .

Harvard College Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said in an interview in late March that the College had “nothing new to report” on whether its testing policy through the admitted Class of 2030 would be changing.

In its press release, Harvard referenced a study from Harvard-affiliated initiative Opportunity Insights, led by Brown University economist John N. Friedman ’02 and Harvard economists Raj Chetty ’00 and David J. Deming, which found that SAT scores are a particularly strong predictor of college success – much more so than a student’s high school grade point average.

Some experts also said that a return to requiring standardized test scores could help universities like Harvard increase the racial and socioeconomic diversity of its student body.

Deming, a finalist to serve as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote in a statement that the requirement of standardized test scores provides the “fairest admissions policy for disadvantaged applicants.”

“Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay. But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT,” Deming wrote.

When Yale and Dartmouth reinstated their testing policies, both institutions referenced the predictive power of standardized testing as a key incentive for its return as a mandatory component of the admissions process.

Still, the College’s announcement — made exactly two weeks after it released admissions decisions for the incoming Class of 2028 — has exposed it to criticism.

The Generational African American Students Association, a student organization at Harvard, posted a statement on Instagram Thursday afternoon blasting the College’s return to required testing.

The policy change “strikes at the very heart of the progress made toward achieving true equal opportunity within higher education institutions such as Harvard,” the group wrote.

“This decision also compounds the challenges already faced by low-income and minority students in the wake of affirmative action being overruled,” they added.

A College spokesperson declined to comment on the criticism of the policy reversal.

Harvard’s reversal of its commitment to stay test-optional through the next two admissions cycles came with little warning to applicants for the Class of 2029, who have six sittings of the ACT and the SAT left before Harvard’s regular decision application deadline on Jan. 1 — and even fewer before its early action deadline of Nov. 1.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves or on Threads @elyse.goncalves .

—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached [email protected] . Follow him on X @matanjosephy .

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How to Write the Harvard University Supplemental Essays 2017-2018

We’ve updated this post for 2018-2019!

From its historic campus to its prestigious alumni, Harvard has built a reputation that speaks for itself. Founded in 1636, Harvard boasts one of the lowest university acceptance rates in the world, second only to Stanford. Last year, Harvard College (the undergraduate school) drew over 39,000 applicants; of that number, just around 5.2% were accepted to join the Class of 2021.

Given these stats, it’s no wonder that Harvard emphasizes its application supplement in the admissions process. After asking students to input their extracurricular activities and recommendation letters, Harvard’s application concludes with a supplement essay. Because Harvard’s prompt is so open-ended, students every year struggle with what to write to put their application over the edge of acceptance.

Luckily, you have come to the right place. Here is CollegeVine’s comprehensive guide on how to tackle the Harvard University supplemental essay for the 2017-18 cycle.

Want to learn what Harvard University will actually cost you based on your income? And how long your application to the school should take? Here’s what every student considering Harvard University needs to know.

Harvard University Application Essay Prompts

Prompts for harvard’s 2017-18 application supplement, you may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. you may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics:, > unusual circumstances in your life, > travel or living experiences in other countries, > what you would want your future college roommate to know about you, > an intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you, > how you hope to use your college education, > a list of books you have read during the past twelve months, > the harvard college honor code declares that we ‘hold honesty as the foundation of our community.’ as you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty., > the mission of harvard college is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. what would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission, > you may write on a topic of your choice., please note: if you do not intend to provide a response to this optional question, you do not need to submit the writing supplement. if you encounter any problems submitting your application, please upload a document that says ‘not applicable’ and hit submit..

Before You Begin Writing

First: is the harvard essay optional.

Each year, students are confused by Harvard’s assertion that its essay is optional. To clear the air, at CollegeVine, we advise our students to take every opportunity available to showcase themselves on their applications. In fact, after surveying over 200 members of the Harvard Class of 2017, we discovered that ~86% of accepted students opted to write the optional essay. Read more about why you should write the optional Harvard supplement essay .

Tips for Your Harvard Application

Right away, you may have noticed that the Harvard essay doesn’t have a specific word count. While in theory that means you could submit a 57-page dissertation as your Harvard supplement, in practice what we’ve seen is that most successful Harvard essays tend to be anywhere from 500-700 words. A good guideline to follow is that your essay should be about a page long when written in 12-point Times New Roman font, single-spaced.

If you are writing this essay completely from scratch for Harvard, an important guideline to use in framing your essay is that it should substantially differ from your Common App essay in terms of content (obviously), personality traits developed, and even style/tone. This essay is supposed to add something completely new to your app — a totally different angle — so it’s best to go for a full 180, or an essay that adds shock factor.

For example, if your application is heavily themed around research and your Common App essay describes your obsession with biology research and how it has shaped who you’ve become today, then a supplemental essay about how you give haircuts to help raise money for charity can be an unexpected way to develop your personality outside of academic/professional environments. The essay would use your passion as an organizing tool to reflect on your interesting experiences in pursuing an unusual hobby, as well as highlighting your involvement in your community in a very unique way.

Another example of a 180 is one in which your Activities List is full of leadership positions (perhaps you are heavily involved in MUN or debate), but your essay illuminates your insecurities with getting up in front of a room full of people or managing others — this can be a candid way to humanize yourself for readers. Ultimately, the goal is to add unexpected depth to an application that otherwise “makes sense.” If your app makes too much sense, it will be harder to remember than if your app raises eyebrows and causes adcoms to say, “Huh, that’s pretty cool.”

In short, for the majority of students writing the optional essay is a highly, highly recommended way to distinguish yourself. To give admissions officers a well-rounded, authentic picture of you, use this essay to highlight new attributes about yourself, different from those highlighted in your Common Application Essay. This helps readers better picture you on their campus, which is always a plus.

For any school-specific prompt, you must make sure the essay accomplishes three key points:

• Says something about you – The point of this essay is to work in conjunction with the rest of your application to paint a more complete picture of you as a candidate. Stories of growth, maturation, and lessons learned can distinguish you in a genuine way from other applicants in the eyes of admissions officers.
• “Shows not tells” – If you choose to write about a topic, for example, how cooking has had an impact on your life, be sure to remove any doubt of your sincerity. Use real examples!
• Demonstrates fit – Harvard will actively seek students that not only meet qualifications but contribute to the school’s culture. Demonstrate why you would differentiate and enhance Harvard’s campus by taking the time in your essay to link your personal experiences and qualities to Harvard’s community.

A bit about Harvard’s culture: Harvard encourages an environment of diverse thought and a global outlook. Among the biggest priorities of Harvard College is to build future leaders and innovators that will change the world. Harvard encourages its students to be well-rounded and driven, ready to take on a rapidly changing globe.

Ask yourself: What types of internship opportunities, research projects, curriculum styles, and activities within Harvard interest me? If you don’t have a prospective concentration yet (remember, Harvard students have “concentrations” and not “majors”), you should still explore your potential interests when researching the university. If the research points you gather align with your essay topic, feel free to mention them, and, more importantly, demonstrate why they fit you!

Harvard’s Cultural Quirks

A few key points to think about when writing this essay (considering it’s for Harvard). First, the school tends to value community involvement/passion development over pure academic success. Second, you want to try to convey some sort of curiosity to Harvard — whether that curiosity is academic, intellectual, extracurricular, or philosophical. Harvard students, for the most part, are really passionate about something; you want to convey how you will also contribute to that pool. Finally, the university specifically looks for genuinely good people. Expressing a sense of citizenship or regard for humanity in the essay is a strong plus for the Harvard adcom.

Writing the Essays

Unusual circumstances in your life..

Although the prompt mentions the word “unusual,” your circumstances do not have to be one of a kind. As long as your essay shows who you are and the ways in which your unusual circumstances have influenced you , then you will be on your way to answering this prompt effectively. The second part — “the ways in which your circumstances have influenced you” — in particular is key; while taking the time to explain your unique circumstances is important to beget a full understanding of what happened, it is even more critical that you link your experience to who you have become today.

For this prompt, be specific in terms of how your experience changed your outlook. For example, if you choose to write about how you moved 13 times over the past 17 years, don’t just plainly state that changing residencies repeatedly throughout high school changed many aspects of your life. Express and focus on what specifically shifted in your relationships, perspective, and family life as a result of your nomadic lifestyle, and share anecdotes to show what changed. Details are key — the more you can include, the more your essay will come to life.

It is important to note that the goal of this essay should not be to gain sympathy in the form of an acceptance letter. While you are definitely allowed to tell a sad story in your essay, the main takeaway from your writing should be your personal strengths and qualities. Even if the story is sad, allow your essay to end on a note of optimism or advancement.

Prompt #2:  Travel or living experiences in other countries.

This prompt is aimed at students whose travels have had a significant impact on their personal lives and growth. If you haven’t had a significant experience abroad (or none at all), we recommend that you choose another prompt. On the other hand, the existence of this prompt points to Harvard’s emphasis on diversity of background, experience, and perspective when admitting its newest class. If you have an experience to fit this niche, it might be a good idea to write to this prompt.

If you’re writing to this prompt, instead of glossing over an area’s landmarks, dive deeper into the the nature of the place. Sure, you can mention Rome’s Colosseum, but unless it was the focal point of your personal growth and change in the travel, try to dive deeper into the culture.

Be sure to make your story personal rather than a simple itinerary. Make sure to elaborate on how the places impacted you. Ask yourself: H ow did Spanish architecture shape your understanding of their culture, and what does it say about your own? How did your backpacking trip through the nature of Brazil impact your beliefs about humankind’s place in the world, and how did you change as a result? How do the hunting and dietary practices you experienced in India shape how you feel about what you consume today?

Be sure to be accurate in your depictions of other cultures and the impacts they have had on your life and outlook. These topics show travel to be a desire for deeper meaning rather than just being able to say, “I have been there.”

A great idea, especially if you’ve lived in two different countries, is to compare and contrast the two cultures and how you have lived in both. For example, if you have lived half of your life in rural England and the other half in Los Angeles, elaborate on how interpersonal relations, manners, and even daily life differs between the two places. More importantly, be sure to also highlight how these cultures have both shaped you (perhaps the fast-paced lifestyle of Southern California inspired you to be more daring and discover new passions).

While travel and exploring new places is fun, always make sure this essay relays back to you and your growth. Maybe another country’s hospitality caused you to bring more kindness home. Perhaps a travel experience made you see flaws in your own hometown or nation, and you resolved to be a force for good. As always, be sure to show and not tell.

Prompt #3:  What you would want your future college roommate to know about you.

This prompt runs the risk of producing some very similar essays. Most people like generic things like chocolate and sleep, so try to focus on things more personal. Adopting a unique style (perhaps a letter to your roommate*, or even talking about yourself in the third person), using stories to talk about yourself (where do your core traits originate from?), and even injecting a bit of humor (perhaps you have an irrational fear or an odd quirk) could all help make your essay unique and peak the reader’s interest.

It’s important to remember that while the prompt asks you to talk about yourself as a roommate, that does not give you a pass to be informal or use slang.

Lastly, making yourself sound like the perfect human being does not sound impressive — it sounds disingenuous. On the other hand, if you focus mostly on your negative qualities, so will the admissions officer. It’s certainly okay to admit some flaws, but just use your best judgment and remember that you are still trying to portray yourself to an admissions committee!

* Note that this format is risky, since Harvard may think that you simply re-purposed a Stanford essay.

Prompt #4:  An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you.

This prompt is perfect for you to display your intellectual prowess. If a specific experience led you to choose your desired concentration, this is an excellent place to write about it if you haven’t already. Admissions officers love to see that you are committed to your interests and passionate about your future field. For example, if you decided to concentrate in a STEM field after being a research assistant in a neuroscience lab, this prompt is a great place to elucidate your experience.

Another route you may take is to describe an intellectual experience outside of your comfort zone. For example, if your English teacher required you to write a lengthy paper about a topic far outside of your typical engineering realm, and as a result you discovered a passion for medieval English literature, revealing this juxtaposition of seemingly separate interests by highlighting the depths to which you explored this new topic can cause the admissions officer to do a double take (in a good way!). As long as you show how you think and how your experience shaped your intellectual development, there are little boundaries.

Whatever the experience you choose may be, make sure that you can trace an impact from it. Harvard cares about growth and advancement, and so these themes must be central to your essay. How did your experience mature your interests or intellectual development? How did writing that paper change how you problem-solve? How does that research project affect your future aspirations? These are important questions you must answer by taking your reader on an exploratory journey through your writing.

Prompt #5:  How you hope to use your college education.

This is a fairly generic question you may need to answer more than once during your experience with the college application process, so it is good to have a firm grasp on your response anyway. Harvard anticipates investing their time and effort into you, and they want to know what they will receive in return. By asking this question, they are really asking you what kind of person you plan to be after graduation, as you will be representing the school during not only your brief years of study, but also for a lifetime.

Never imply that your degree from Harvard or any prestigious institution is worthwhile because of future financial gain. Saying that you want to attend Harvard because their graduates earn more money on average is a pretty poor strategy, even if you try to make the case that building up your wealth first will allow you to make larger changes in society. The same goes for prestige. These are horrible ways to convince admissions officers of your interest.

Even though this essay should focus on how attending Harvard will affect you throughout your life, it is important to be able to mention specific things about the university that will facilitate your success. Go beyond name dropping programs or activities, and deepen your understanding of how an education at Harvard will be beneficial to your personal growth. Then, reflect how that growth will translate into real-world success.

For example, if you want to pursue a Government concentration while at Harvard, do some research on their program. Discussing how the Institute of Politics will help mold you as a debater and a student of the social sciences is far more effective than simply saying that you know they have a good program. Then, go further. Talk about how the skills and lessons you will learn from the Institute of Politics and the Government Program will help you use your degree to the fullest. Specificity is key here!

It is important to not only know specifics about the school but about your field as well. Any student can write about their passion for law, but only you can write about why you want to be a civil rights attorney. Talk about how you want to expand voting rights or change the immigration system in your career. Don’t just say that you want to be a doctor. Rather, talk about what problems in cardiology you are passionate about (and why), and link your pursuit of fixing those problems to your degree.

Prompt #6:  A list of books you have read during the past twelve months.

This prompt is perhaps the most intimidating of them all due to its simplicity. However, it is doable — CollegeVine students are accepted every year having chosen this essay prompt.

At first glance, a simple list of books seems very impersonal, and it deprives your ability to use your own voice and tell stories about your own life and experiences. However, if you are an avid reader, this could be a good prompt to address.

Keep in mind, though, that your Harvard supplement should highlight aspects of your profile not covered very much in the rest of your application. This means that if you discussed your love for reading (and named books you’ve read recently) earlier in your application, doing so again in this essay might seem repetitive.

For this prompt, Harvard asks for a list, but it does not prohibit any commentary on the books you have read. If you have some sort of original (not taken from the Internet!) analysis or personal reflections on the book, feel free to include them. If a book had an abnormally profound impact on you, talk about it and how it changed you as a person. In fact, unless your list is exceptionally interesting because of how unique and different your book choices are (i.e., it contains a ton of acclaimed authors from various genres and disciplines), you would be better served by diving deeper into a select few texts you have read.

Finally, keep in mind the message you are trying to relay throughout your application. If you claim to have a passion for Greek Classics in your Common Application Essay, but haven’t read any of them in the last year, the admissions officer might question your sincerity.

Prompt #7:  The Harvard College Honor code declares that we ‘hold honesty as the foundation of our community.’ As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty.

T his prompt reveals Harvard’s penchant for students that exemplify honesty and integrity as core traits. Here is a chance to showcase your softer qualities of compassion and self-reflection.

Throughout life, we have all encountered instances where we have a choice between honesty and dishonesty. For this essay, though, you must make sure that your experience is uncommon enough to draw in your reader. For example, if your teacher once gave you extra points on a test due to a calculation error and you brought it to their attention, this essay is not for you. If you led a team of reporters at your school newspaper to pressure your school administration into releasing salary data, you may have come to the right place.

It is okay to talk about an instance in which you lied, so long as you show steps you made to rectify the lie and improve your integrity. The point of this essay is not to make you preach about the importance of honesty, but rather to force you to show a more complete understanding of the concept and its importance. If it took a lie to make you grasp the concept of honesty, be honest about it and tell the story. The most effective answers to this prompt will detail situations where the choices presented to the author are morally ambiguous. The subsequent analysis of how the author reasoned through the situation are what make this essay come to life.

Just make sure to be wary of the lie you choose to write about. Don’t write about committing a crime or anything in a legally grey area. Don’t talk about cheating on a test or falsifying some sort of academic record. Colleges take these offenses extremely seriously, and academic integrity violations almost always end in expulsion. On the other hand, if you told a lie to spare someone’s feelings or to make a good impression on a group of new friends and ended up being hurt more severely in the long run, that is fair game.

Last but not least, go beyond the story. We talk a lot about “show not tell” at CollegeVine, and here it is no different. Rather than explicitly discussing the concept of honesty on a literal level, use a compelling story as a vehicle to prove your point. Avoid clichés such as “the truth will set you free,” or “it is harder to remember lies,” as these will make you sound less sincere. Showcase that you share Harvard’s value of honesty in your story and your reflection on it.

Prompt #8:  The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?

This prompt should tell you that Harvard holds leaders in high regard. Here, they test your self-knowledge as to where and how you can help fit society’s needs. In a similar way to Prompt 5, they are trying to see the type of graduate you will become.

If leadership has been central to your life experiences, be sure to make note of those roles here. Be picky when deciding what roles to highlight, though! Make sure the group you led has something to show for your leadership (whether that thing be tangible or intangible).

For example, if you helped a club on campus better the culture of its membership, talk about how your leadership contributed to that. If you helped a diverse set of teammates come together for a common goal, discuss what aspects of your citizenship helped bring everyone together. Your goal here is in two parts: create an assessment for your personal leadership skills, and address how your community or society has benefited from it (more than simply pointing to trophies or awards, this is intended to show how society itself can change because of you.)

Make sure you showcase your leadership style, and how you believe it was effective. More importantly, make sure to show why you think it will be effective in the future. Remember, this essay should relay back to you as a graduate of Harvard!

One strategy could be to build up your leadership skills, then direct them to a specific area where you feel inspired to change society. If you choose this route, be specific in terms of the needs you can fill. Ask yourself: What qualities of a leader does a good lawyer need to have? How does citizenship help you be a good engineer? Most importantly: How do those necessities in those positions lead back to who you are?

Remember to answer the other aspect of the question. Besides being a good citizen-leader, how will you be a good citizen? Admissions officers want you to discuss how you would be an important part of something greater than yourself. You could use an example of something you did as a part of an extracurricular activity of which you were not the president or the de facto leader. For example, if you built an app for a conference your town was hosting, helped organize logistics for a school recital, or even volunteered at a food bank throughout high school, this prompt would fit your experiences well.

Harvard finds it very important that the citizens of their learning community come from diverse backgrounds, allowing students to learn from one another. Think about how you can add to this environment of diversity, or discuss your experience in a diverse environment in relation to your citizenship within it. Essays about discrimination or inequality in your community, and your development as a citizen-leader as a result, could fit well to this prompt.

Prompt #9:  You may write on a topic of your choice.

Students should use this prompt to highlight aspects of themselves that other prompts cannot cover. Using this prompt will in no way be weighed differently than the others. Harvard’s admissions committee simply wants you to have the freedom to discuss whatever you want in their supplement. Instead of looking at the previous prompts as your only options, consider them mere suggestions. If you have written a really strong essay for another school, you can simply recycle that essay here.

When tackling this essay, keep in mind our advice before you begin writing.

As always, when choosing a topic and writing your essay, make sure it:

• Says something about you,
• “Shows not tells,” and
• Demonstrates fit.

In Conclusion

Harvard’s supplemental essay gives an opportunity for you to showcase a fuller picture of yourself. With no word limit and myriad options to choose from, the possibilities of your creativity are endless!

Remember: You are convincing the admissions committee to accept your candidacy. The quality of your essay can greatly strengthen that argument. Making sure that your essay says something about you, “shows not tells,” and demonstrates fit will go a long way.

Happy writing!

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

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Harvard and Caltech will require test scores for admission again

The colleges join other selective universities that have recently made similar decisions in the wake of new research.

Harvard College will require applicants to submit standardized test scores once again, becoming the latest highly selective school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic .

The California Institute of Technology also announced Thursday that, effective immediately, SAT or ACT scores will be required of applicants for undergraduate admission.

Harvard’s undergraduate school had previously said it would remain test-optional through the 2025-2026 application cycle. But on Thursday, it said students applying to the college for fall 2025 admission — hoping to join the graduating class of 2029 — will now have to submit standardized test scores as part of their admissions package.

Dartmouth College , Yale and Brown universities announced similar changes in recent weeks, after officials cited data suggesting that SAT and ACT scores were the best predictors of students’ academic performance at their schools — and that making the tests optional could further disadvantage applicants from more challenging backgrounds.

At Caltech, the highly selective private university in California, applicants’ scores weren’t visible to the admissions office under the moratorium imposed during the pandemic. But an increasing number of applicants had been taking the tests each year, according to university officials. More than 95 percent of the most recently enrolled class took the standardized exam.

Caltech officials said Thursday the decision reaffirms Caltech’s “commitment as a community of scientists and engineers to using all relevant data in its decision-making processes.”

Standardized tests have been debated for decades, with critics saying they added a roadblock for disadvantaged students, among other concerns. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down testing sites across the country, many colleges made the tests optional, and then continued to provide flexibility as they studied the issue.

The changes are another pivot in an unusually tumultuous time for selective college admissions amid fallout from last year’s Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action , and a disastrous rollout of a new federal financial aid form.

Standardized tests are just one part of a package of information applicants send, including grades, essays and recommendation letters. But millions of students study for, take and retake the tests in hopes of optimizing their scores.

Most students who enrolled at Harvard during the test-optional years had submitted test scores with their applications even though they weren’t required, according to the school.

Still, the shift could come as a surprise for some applicants who hadn’t planned to take a test.

In announcing its decision Thursday, university officials cited research by Harvard professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming, and co-author John N. Friedman of Brown University, who used data from hundreds of universities and more than 3 million undergraduate students per year to explore socioeconomic diversity and admissions.

“Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources,” Chetty said in a statement Thursday. “But the data reveal that other measures — recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays — are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

In “exceptional cases” when applicants are unable to take the SAT or ACT, the school will accept certain other scores, including AP and IB tests. The policy will be formally assessed at regular intervals, school officials said.

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra said the tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information predictive of success in college and beyond.

“Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores,” Hoekstra said in a statement, “they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

Other highly selective schools remain test-optional, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, which announced last month that it would not require the scores for the 2024-25 application cycle. The University of California system is test-blind — schools don’t consider the scores as a factor in admissions.

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University News | 4.11.2024

Harvard College Reinstitutes Mandatory Testing

Applicants for the class of 2029 must submit scores..

Harvard announced today that the College will reinstitute mandatory submission of standardized test scores for applicants. | PHOTOGRAPH BY UNSPLASH

Harvard announced today that the College will reinstitute mandatory submission of standardized test scores for applicants, beginning with students applying for fall 2025 admission (the class of 2029). Until today’s decision, the College had a test-optional policy in place for applicants through the class of 2030. The announcement follows similar decisions by Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown to require standardized testing beginning with the class of 2029.

Test-optional policies were widely adopted during the pandemic, when it was difficult to sit for standardized tests, and many remained in place even as the threat of illness faded. The tests were thought to disadvantage lower-income students and those from under-resourced high schools. But a working paper coauthored in 2023 by Ackman professor of public economics Raj Chetty, Black professor of political economy and professor of education and economics David Deming, and John Friedman, a professor of economics at Brown, found standardized tests are a useful means of identifying promising students at less well-resourced high schools. In a statement, Chetty said “Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources. But the data reveal that other measures—recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays—are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

As previously reported , MIT, which reinstituted a testing requirement last year—citing SAT math scores as measures of an applicant’s ability to handle a highly quantitative curriculum—recently reported enrolling its most diverse class. (In late March, Emi Nietfeld ’15 had argued in favor of mandatory standardized testing from the perspective of a disadvantaged applicant in this New York Times essay , “How the SAT Changed My Life.”)

In today’s announcement, Harvard said it will require submission of SAT or ACT scores, but that other eligible tests , such as AP exams and International Baccalaureate scores, will be accepted in exceptional cases. (Yale had previously announced a similar “test-flexible” policy, allowing applicants to submit scores from that range of exams.) “Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond” said Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra in an email to students and colleagues. “Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short,” she continued, “more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.” Added Deming, “The virtue of standardized tests is their universality. Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay. But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT. While some barriers do exist, the widespread availability of the test provides, in my view, the fairest admissions policy for disadvantaged applicants.”

Although Harvard and other institutions can no longer consider race in admissions (following a 2023 Supreme Court decision ), the College continues to weigh all of an applicant’s qualities, in a holistic process that considers the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. Dean of admissions and financial aid William Fitzsimmons noted that “Test scores can provide important information about a student’s application. However, they represent only one factor among many as our admissions committee considers the whole person in making its decisions. Admission officers understand that not all students attend well-resourced schools, and those who come from modest economic backgrounds or first-generation college families may have had fewer opportunities to prepare for standardized tests.”

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Harvard again requiring standardized test scores for those seeking admission

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University announced Thursday that it is reinstituting standardized tests as a requirement for admission beginning with the class of 2029, joining other colleges that are again mandating tests for those hoping to enter the schools.

In June 2020, Harvard began a temporary test-optional policy under which students could apply to the college without submitting scores. The change was adopted as access to standardized testing during the pandemic became limited.

Other schools like Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and MIT are also again requiring standardized tests for those seeking admission.

Harvard had initially said it was going to maintain its test-optional policy through the entering class of the fall of 2026.

Under the change announced Thursday, students applying to Harvard for fall 2025 admission will be required to submit standardized test scores from the SAT or ACT exams to satisfy the testing component of the application.

In what the school called “exceptional cases” when applicants are unable to access SAT or ACT testing, other eligible tests will be accepted, including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams.

School officials said test scores are weighed along with information about an applicant’s experiences, skills, talents, and contributions to their communities, as well as their academic qualifications in relation to the norms of their high school, and personal recommendations.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra said in a news release that standardized tests are a means for all students — regardless of background or life experience — to provide information that is predictive of success in college,

“In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range,” Hoekstra said.

The school said that all along it welcomed those seeking admission to submit test scores if they had them. Most of those accepted into the college during the past four years submitted test scores, according to the school.

The school also pointed to research that they said found that standardized tests are a valuable tool to identify promising students at less well-resourced high schools, particularly when paired with other academic credentials.

The Associated Press