A ONE Institute
Apr 17, 2024
Tips on Supplement Essay
The content I will post today is about what you must know before writing an essay, and strategies for Ivy League essays.
In the process of preparing a college application, the essays you need to write are the main essay of the Common App and the Supplement Essay that each college has. I will take some time to explain the things you must know before writing these essays. Common App Main essay 7 topics The main essay topic of the Common App has 7 topics.
The 7 topics are as follows:
Topic about me, my roots
What I learned from failure
What stimulated me (what I’m interested in)
Happiness, gratitude from others
Understanding of me or others
What immerses me (interests)
Write as you wish
Today, I will discuss the Supplement Essay topics of the top 20 universities, not the main essay. We at A-One Institute would like to share our deep thoughts on these topics, and we hope you find it very helpful. In the Supplement Essay, most schools ask common questions.
Curiosity: What curiosity does the student have?
Community: What influence did the student receive and give in the community? What influence will they have in the future?
Hardship, Trouble: How did they overcome when they had difficulties?
Satisfaction, Gratitude: What am I thankful for, and satisfied with?
Why this College? So why did you end up applying to our school?
*Curiosity
Interest If you go into the sub-items in Curiosity, Interest, you can divide the question into three major parts.
• Intellectual curiosity Talk about the college program that supports intellectual curiosity. Schools like Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Upenn, Caltech, Duke, Brown, Cornell, Rice, UC, etc. are asking this.
• Non-academic things They are asking what other interests you have besides academic ones.
• Expressing myself? So, talk about yourself that originated from the field you are interested in. When writing an essay on these topics, I will show you how more than 90% of students approach it. Most students do not have much experience researching specific majors and end up writing based on what comes up when they search for programs. For example, if you are interested in Food and want to write an essay with a related major as your goal, you will read the major description on the college website or google it and then write your essay. You can assume that this is the approach of almost all students. Because it’s related to Food, stories about the war in Russia and Ukraine, the largest wheat-exporting countries, come up, and most students can’t help but develop in a similar way. This is the reality.
*Community
In the Supplement Essay, there is always a topic about Community In detail, it asks the student what influence they received and gave in the community they belong to. And it asks further about how they will live using the help they received in the future. There are many things related to the community in daily life, but it is a topic that inevitably leaves a question about how to write to leave a strong impression. In fact, to give a meaningful answer to curiosity and community, you need a certain amount of time. You need at least 1-2 years. You can think of it as advice that applies to lower grades in high school rather than upper grades preparing for college. If you find the specific major you want to study early and plan what activities to do accordingly, it will be easier to write a meaningful essay as curiosity and community are connected. After choosing a specific major, check if there is a club related to that major in the high school where the student is enrolled, or if there are any organizations outside, and find an organization where you can do activities regardless of non-profit/profit organizations, and it is good to do volunteer work related to it. It would be very good if there is a continuous activity that tries to connect with each other by creating a large group that combines various organizations while doing activities at the school club or organization meeting unit for at least 1-2 years. This is a case of our student.
At the beginning of 10th grade, they created a club related to Food and named the club Food Task Force, They thought about how to connect and act with food-related organizations that can be found outside the school, and did volunteer work that helps the community until the moment they wrote the application. They worked hard and continuously for more than 1-2 years to carry out activities that express their curiosity, In the process of connecting various organizations in that activity, there must have been difficulties, and they overcame them, and these processes accumulate as their own experience.
By their own experience, there is nothing stronger than what comes from experience. The essay is ultimately writing, and there is nothing stronger than what comes from your own experience. Students who sublimated what came from experience into writing had good results. We get a lot of questions about EC activities, but the method is not difficult. Find a specific major related to intellectual curiosity and do activities that match it. If you have to apply this time and there is no continuous activity related to the specific major, You may have to do it the way 90% of students do, but it’s also a way to approach it a bit boldly. You were interested in this part, that part, and you ended up applying because this major at this school is necessary to strengthen some part of you. This can also be a method.
*Hardship, Trouble & Satisfaction, Gratitude
In the past, there was a topic in the Supplement Essay about what the applicant did well, outstanding things, but these days it has disappeared and instead, they ask a lot about “things I was grateful for, things I was grateful for from others or organizations”. It’s good to think about the Hardship, Trouble topic, Satisfaction, and gratitude topic together. However, you need to fundamentally approach these topics. Why did the school ask? Why do they ask these questions and ask the applicants? I think there are three main reasons.
To determine whether it’s a hastily made difficulty, a real difficulty, or a fact
Are they looking at the incident logically and objectively? Evaluate judgment when looking at something!
After handling it, did it have a positive effect on the applicant’s life and how can the applicant recover when they go to college? I think these are the reasons.
If you visualize the process, proper problem recognition Cognition Whether the cause of the problem Cause is Internal or External when solving Resolution, did you get help from the External or did you solve it from the Internal part? It’s to understand the logical structure of methodological and emotional parts. So, in the end, they want to see Resilience, and they judge that if they go through a lot of difficulties, it will increase and the experience will be applied in a constructive direction in the future.
In the end, the topics that come out in the Supplement Essay must be based on facts.
• Experience!
• Clear logical structure!
• Impact on the future! These things must be clearly revealed in the essay.
Today, we talked about the Supplement Essay required by Top-tier universities. Please keep in mind that an essay filled with rich experience gives a moving story, and I will finish today’s posting here.
If you need help with the College Essay, the main essay of the Common App, or the Supplement Essay of the university, please contact us at A-One Institute and we will let you know in detail.
Thank you.