TAYLOR PIVA: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Katie. It is a pleasure to be with you all on this Tuesday evening. My name is Taylor Piva. I am program director here at Prepory. I have been with Prepory for the last five years, but prior to that, I have worked at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon and University of Chicago. My background is largely in the writing space. I have a master’s degree in rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon, and I have worked in writing centers, worked with students on their writing for the majority of the last twelve years. So I feel very equipped to have this conversation with you all today.

We’re going to really be focusing on supplemental essays. So there are two parts of the writing components for applications. There’s the personal statement, which we’ll touch on very briefly, and then there are supplemental essays, which are going to be the focus of our conversation this evening. We’re going to think about what are these prompts actually asking? What are admissions officers really looking to see in those? How to write a “why this school” essay, which is the most common prompt that we see, how to write authentically. And then we’re gonna take a look at some of the prompts for schools that have particularly demanding requirements so that we can understand what strategies there might be for those and really understand the process as a whole. We’re gonna continue to talk a lot about how Prepory navigates this process with our students. And then as Katie said at the end, we will definitely have some time for questions. So make sure that you are including those in the Q&A portion, submitting those to us. We’ll be happy to answer those.

So just a quick overview to situate us in the college applications and what you are submitting when you are applying to college. College applications are going to include the high school transcripts, so these are all of those grades that students are receiving over the four years of high school. That also is going to indicate the rigor of those courses. Have students taken AP classes? Are they in the IB system? Standardized test scores are also going to be included. As I just mentioned, those advanced courses are part of that. But in addition to that, there are, of course, the SAT, ACT. Those scores are part of the application process for many schools, but not all. There’s the extracurricular profile. This is going to be the activities list as well as any honors and awards students have received over the four years of high school. There are letters of recommendation that are submitted on the behalf of students. These are often from teachers but can also be from community members, mentors, any supervisors if they’ve been in any formal position, so on and so forth. The personal statement, as I mentioned earlier, supplemental essays, which will be our focus today, and then interviews.

Just a quick summary of these two components, these writing components, and how they differ. The personal statement is a longer essay. It’s 650 words, and it is sent to every school. Most students are applying via the Common Application, or called the Common App. And so in that, you are submitting the personal statement to all the schools on your list. It is not meant to be specific to any one institution, and it’s really meant to present a narrative on growth. It’s really meant to show how has a student changed over largely high school, ninth through twelfth grade, what is their personality, how are they a unique applicant. This is a space to really show something that is not included anywhere else on that application. And it is, as I said, that longer piece, so we have a little bit more space to dive in.

Supplemental essays, on the other hand, are specific to each school, and we’ll take a look later on, as I mentioned, at some specific prompts, so that you can take a look at the different questions that are being asked and how they sort of speak to these institutions. These are typically shorter. They are anywhere between 150 to 300 words on average, and these are often really specific to a student’s academic interests, why they want to attend a specific college, and a more in-depth description of a specific activity, as well as some more nuanced ones that we’ll take a look at later.

Just a little bit more on supplemental essays to do a deeper dive here. The reason why we have supplemental essays is because schools do not control the personal statement. So those personal statement prompts are set by the Common Application, and schools don’t get a say in what those are and how they function. So this is the opportunity that schools have to ask their own questions, to have a little bit more control in this process. The whole point of them is really to get to know each student. There are a lot of ways in which a student might have similarities to their peers and to other students who are applying. There’s a lot of overlap in what courses are offered at schools. There’s some overlap in what extracurriculars a student might be involved in. The essays are a chance to really highlight what is unique about the specific student, what is specific about their experience in high school, their experience in life in the world around them. It’s also a really important opportunity to show—do you understand the culture of the school that you are applying to? Are you a good fit for them, and are they a good fit for you? Schools are really interested in making sure that the students they are accepting to their institutions are going to contribute to their community and really uphold the values that they have established. So we’re really trying to make sure that we’re demonstrating that fit throughout these essays, and that’s something that we’ll talk a little bit more on as we go through.

You can also think about supplemental essays as a chance to advocate for why you should be accepted. There is a little bit of persuasion that is happening in these essays. You can think about the personal statement as a lot more reflection and demonstrating, as I said, that growth. These are a little bit more persuasive. You wanna show that you’ve done your research, which will show a little later what a well-researched supplemental essay looks like.

The last thing that I wanna note here is that some schools will say that they have optional supplemental essays, meaning that you can respond to them if you would like, but there is no formal requirement to do so. I recommend, and Prepory’s strategy is to treat all optional materials as required. This is an opportunity to say something about yourself, to show something new about your application, and it makes the most sense to optimize and really maximize those opportunities as much as possible—as long as it is not a “is there anything else we need to know” extenuating circumstances question. Those are the ones that tend to be much more truly optional. Everything else, we really recommend you treat as required regardless of whether or not the school says so.

So now I wanna talk to you a little bit more about what are the prompts actually asking. So we can always look at, of course, the language that is being used in these prompts, but what is it that they are actually looking for when they are reading the responses? So what we’re going to see here are the four most common types of supplemental essays. The way that these are worded varies by school, but these are sort of the general categories that we’ll see. And those are “why this school,” “why this major,” “describe an activity or community you belong to,” and then “talk about a challenge.”

So for “why this school,” they are really looking for, again, that fit with the community itself. Are you able to contribute something specific to this community, or is what you’re looking for something that is available at any college across the United States or otherwise? What is it that you bring to the table that nobody else does? Are you aware of the cultural surroundings that our school has, and are you going to mesh well with them?

For “why this major,” are you able to clearly articulate those interests and goals? Have you demonstrated that over time? Are you able to speak to where those interests come from and what you hope to do in the future? So it’s a lot of thinking about the past, present, and future as you are interested in a potential area of interest.

For the activity or community you belong to, this is really speaking again to those goals, those values. What are you doing with your time outside of the classroom? What’s important to you as a human being?

And then for the challenge, they’re really trying to understand a little bit of emotional maturity. How do you process difficulties? Are you able to reflect on them? Can you speak to how you’ve grown? Are you able to maybe take accountability for different situations and reflect upon them accordingly?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I’d love to jump in and ask a question here.

TAYLOR PIVA: Please.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: We do have a question. So we’re answering this one live. It’s from an anonymous attendee, actually, about supplemental essays that have really limited space. So I know there are some mixed essays out there. So this attendee is asking about writing in complete sentences versus writing in bullets or a kind of active verb, résumé-like style. I know it’s a bit of a structural question, but I know across a few of these sorts of topics, sometimes some schools have a list format.

TAYLOR PIVA: Yeah. This is a great question. I think for the maximizing of space, a lot of times, it is best to either continue the sentence. This is often the case. University of Maryland comes to mind. They start a sentence with their prompts, and the way that I have advised students to complete those supplemental essays is to simply continue the sentence so that they are maximizing that space. Columbia asks specifically for lists, so that would be a great space to truly follow that structure. For the most part, those very short—you know, 100 words, sometimes there’s character limits. Those are even smaller opportunities. For those, I would really focus on phrases, bullet points if possible, or continuing the sentence where it makes the most sense, by and large.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: One more. This is so helpful. One more I think it’s really helpful to answer right here. This is from Indira, and this is connected to “why the school.” Right? So are we interested in really niche aspects of the schools or programs offered, you know, to fold that into the essays themselves for that supplemental essay question to show you really did your research and know the school well?

TAYLOR PIVA: Yeah. That’s a great question. We are going to talk a little bit about that in more detail as we go on, so this is a nice little preview. But yes, you do want to be specific. The caveat there, though, is there’s a bit of strategy—you don’t wanna do this super deep dive and get super granular in a way that doesn’t actually connect to your application. One example that might be helpful here is to think about maybe a specific tradition or event that a school might host that is very representative of their culture. But if it is a tradition that really speaks to maybe a part of the student bio that isn’t represented demographically or in their academic interest—maybe it’s more for STEM students and your student is applying as a humanities major—demonstrating that you know that that exists doesn’t necessarily show that this is the right school for you because you wouldn’t necessarily participate in that event. So we wanna make sure that it is relevant and connected. To that end, though, making sure that it is specific and showing that you have done that research certainly is helpful.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Thank you so much. Absolutely.

TAYLOR PIVA: So to that end, I think it is also helpful to understand how these are being read, both in terms of what is being looked for and what the sort of checkboxes are, if you will, but also the reality and the logistics. So the reality is that readers are spending 3 to 5 minutes per application, which I realize does not feel like that long of an amount of time, and it’s not. For those of you who are here when we started our presentation today, we waited five minutes to start. That is the time that potentially a reader is spending to review these applications. And this is also why it’s so important to follow the instructions of an application.

So clearly, you want to make sure that things are streamlined as much as possible. They are looking for these big checkboxes for academics. Do you have the grades? Do you have advanced coursework? Great. Check. How are your extracurriculars? Are we seeing some leadership? Are we seeing research? Are we seeing involvement in the community? Check. And then we get to your essays. Are you showing this demonstrated growth? Are you answering the questions that are being asked? Which may sound silly, but I see a lot of students who misread a prompt and don’t actually give the admissions officers what they’re looking for in terms of content. They’re not maximizing the word count, and then, of course, actually giving these strong responses that we’re talking about.

The other piece here is that admissions officers may read up to 100 applications per day, and they’re doing that day after day. So you really want to stand out as an applicant. You can go too far in the other direction. We don’t wanna be quirky for the sake of being quirky, but you do wanna have a strong voice. You wanna select your topics strategically so that you are making sure that you come across as a unique and individualized applicant, and that you’re hopefully standing out to these admissions officers as they’re reading.

And then as we were saying, with how specific to be in those “why this school” and potentially “why this major” essays, we also wanna make sure that we’re not giving generic praise. One mistake that I do see students make is that they will say, “You know, I want to go to this school because it ranks number six based on US News and World Report.” Well, admissions officers already know where their school ranks. They don’t need that information given to them in the essay, and it doesn’t come across as a reason why your student actually wants to go there. And so really making sure that that is intentional, that we’re being strategic and relating all of these things back to the student themselves in their application, not just reading what we can off of the top news that we find.

And then what they’re assessing is intellectual curiosity. Are you able to articulate your interest? Do you come across as somebody who is genuinely curious about the problems that you want to solve? This is particularly relevant when it comes to engineering or computer science. What are the types of problems that you want to think about long term? Are you thinking about a niche area in these academic interests, and are you able to articulate that?

Are you self-aware? I keep hammering this point about growth and accountability and reflective thinking. This is super important, and it’s part of the reason why we encourage students to start thinking about this process early. The style of writing that you see in applications is so different than what you will do in the classroom, and it’s a lot because of this self-awareness piece, that reflective writing that doesn’t show up in many other places.

Thinking about contribution, as I mentioned earlier—what are you going to give to this community? What is it that you can speak to? What is it that you are going to be able to help others experience that other applicants can’t? What is that unique factor, but how are you giving something to that new community?

Are you coming across as authentic? You know, do you sound like a robot? Are you coming across as just another applicant, or are you a unique individual? And then, again, that fit piece—not only should this school be a good fit for you, but you should be a good fit for that school.

And just a little bit more here, splitting it up into dos and don’ts. So do be specific and intentional. We really want to make sure that we’re thinking of how all of these things are related to one another and making sure that they are strategic. Show, don’t tell to the extent that you can. What this means is that we don’t want just a list of experiences that you’ve had. We don’t want a list of “here’s the bullet point list of why I want to go to this school.” We wanna be able to have a little bit of narrative and be able to say, “There’s this opportunity to do research, and it connects to what I’ve already been doing and what I hope to do in the future.” We’re telling a story. And to that end, right, connecting those details. We’re creating that arc of “here’s what I’ve already done. This is what I hope to do in college, and that will allow me to do this in the future.” And so really making sure that we have that forward momentum.

What we don’t want to do is summarize the résumé or activities list. You really wanna maximize each section of the application. So your academics are already included in your transcript. Your extracurriculars are included in your activities list. We don’t need to repeat every detail of that in your supplemental essays. What we do wanna do is take the opportunity to do a deeper dive to show that connection to the forward piece, but we don’t need to summarize all of those details. It’s already there.

We want to be specific. You don’t want a “why this school” essay that doesn’t actually say anything about the school that you’re applying to. If I read your essay and it could be for NYU and Georgia Tech and Yale, we didn’t do it correctly. So we really wanna make sure that they’re specific.

And then as we talked about a little bit earlier, these vary in their word count and the limit that you have there. They are short. And a common mistake is to try to cover way too much in not enough space. Less is more, and that can be hard to strike that balance. We have a lot we want to say, but less is more because we can give that detail. We can connect those dots, and it shows the maturity of picking and choosing what we are sharing with admissions officers.

We’re gonna dive a little bit more into detail for “why this school.” It is the most common supplemental essay type, and so I wanna make sure that students are really equipped to do this well. As we were speaking earlier, the goal is to be as specific as possible. We wanna make sure that we’re offering some level of detail that is beyond rankings, beyond sort of those bare minimums. And so how to do that would be—you can attend virtual or in-person events if it’s a school that is maybe more accessible. These sometimes offer some nuggets of information that can be really helpful to incorporate, whether it’s about a specific program or a club on campus or a tradition that they have, and so forth. You can read what students are actually saying about the school. This is a really helpful way to get a sense of what is the actual culture that exists at this school, and again, some of the ways in which students are involved on campus. To that end, you could even connect with current students or alumni. This happens a lot with students who reach out to admissions offices, and they simply just ask to be put into contact with a current student. Sometimes that can be a student who is studying a related subject matter that you’re interested in, or is from your geographic area so that they can speak to—especially if you’re looking to maybe move across the country for school—wanting to know what that experience is like. This is a really helpful way to not only learn more about the school for the sake of your essays, but also maybe gain some helpful information overall as well.

You certainly want to research the academic programs and faculty. You wanna know what majors are being offered. Some schools have pretty niche majors or more interdisciplinary majors, and so you want to make sure that you’re thinking of all these different options and you know the differences between them across different schools. But there also may be some nuggets of information there that you can incorporate in these essays in terms of why you want to study that major, what offerings they have, and then also campus resources. Are there different research labs available? Are there things that are very unique to these schools that really draw you to that campus? So these are some of the things that you might be looking for to then incorporate into the essay itself.

Earlier, we talked about wanting to make sure you’re well researched and what that looks like. So here we have some examples for you all, so we can sort of compare and contrast. We’ve got surface level being, for Northwestern, we might just say, “Northwestern has a great journalism program.” What I would love to see in that essay instead would be, “Northwestern’s Medill quarter-in-residence model where I’d report on-site in DC aligns with my goal of covering policy as it’s made, not after.” So what we’re doing here is we’re showing that we know that there’s this quarter-in-residence model where you’re reporting on-site, right, in DC. We’re naming that specific feature, and then we are also connecting it to a specific goal for this student. We’re making sure that we are acknowledging how it relates to their academic interest and what they benefit from that. So we’re not just simply stating that that model exists.

Similarly, if we’re speaking about sort of campus culture or the student body, we could say that “Yale has a diverse student body,” or we could say that “the Bass Connections project on urban water equity speaks directly to the independent research I’ve been doing in my city’s underserved neighborhoods.” We might continue that by talking about the way in which the diverse student body at Yale represents or is connected to this research. Maybe you’ve talked to a current student to be able to do that.

And then this last example for well researched is really thinking about a specific lab. So, “This behavioral economics lab is working on questions I’ve wrestled with since reading Kahneman sophomore year. I’d love to join that research.” So again, really thinking about what you have already done, what could you do at college, and why? How do these pieces connect?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Alrighty. I’m gonna jump in here for a little bit and give Taylor a break and a chance to look at the questions, which we do have another one that we plan to answer live there. So you can take a look while I walk through here, and also, please keep them coming. I’ve really been enjoying these, and including our team members backstage who have been answering your questions as well. Just so thorough and specific. So really excited to continue digging into these with all of you.

So what we have here is testimonials directly from Prepory students. Students who join Prepory before eleventh grade—so for those of you who are underclassmen in the audience—are 45% more likely to be admitted to highly selective schools. One of the things that this connects to in terms of supplemental essays and the writing process that we’ve been talking about right here is the research that Taylor was just talking about in terms of “why this school.” I talk with eighth grade families, ninth grade families about this all the time. The more that you are getting a nuanced perspective about the schools that you are interested in early on, it is going to be so much easier to write that essay when you ultimately have to do it because you will have been engaging with material that the school is putting out there—meeting your local rep, whether it’s visiting the campus, joining a webinar like this that a school is hosting, asking to be connected to a student, whatever it is. Right? And the longer timeline you can give yourself to get that perspective, not only are you gonna build a stronger college list, but you’re also going to have a much easier time when it comes to this supplemental essay writing process.

You can see how essential Prepory’s guidance and how personalized it is in terms of the reviews that we are seeing here. Dig into a little bit more about what writing support looks like at Prepory. So we do have layered guidance in terms of not only a one-on-one coach that you’d be working with directly in our service, but also a writing specialist team where you can escalate your essays for additional rounds of review and feedback. What we wanna emphasize here is that you are going to need to go through several rounds of review to really get your essay to where it needs to be. Right? And this is because some of these topics are really tricky. You don’t have a lot of space. And year over year, we see a lot of common topics. Right? We talked about this also when we did a recent webinar about the personal statement that Taylor and I hosted together as well, and you’ll see topics come around again and again, and really making sure that if you are working inside that topic, right, that you are giving a really fresh perspective on that. It really takes that admissions office experience or reading hundreds and hundreds of these essays to know what is actually going to stand out in this process.

And more than that, when you’re working with a firm like Prepory where we are supporting numerous students every cycle, we even know exactly what students are frequently writing about right now. So that is something—we have some questions about AI in here that we’re going to answer. But that is one that a person can tell you, and AI is always looking at stored data or background data. Right? So we know what students are writing about this cycle because we’re talking to them. And so that is really one important piece of this process.

Just to take you a little bit further here, I wanna show you what that comprehensive guidance looks like from our writing specialist team. So here you have an essay and the writing specialist diving in on every single component, not just around the structure, but also around how the argument is building. So how much of the essay is story is a really frequent thing that we are talking about and addressing. You only have so much space, and we need to get to those reflection components as well. So this is a really important piece that we’re helping students navigate. It’s not just how you tell your story and how do we bring that out, you know, how many adjectives can you use, right, but also how do you bridge that gap to the rest of your narrative. We’re also not thinking in isolation. Right? We’re thinking about your application profile narrative across all of those components like Taylor mentioned. So that is a really important piece of what outside support can give you with this narrative component.

TAYLOR PIVA: Before we continue on, I’ll answer a couple of questions that have come through. You guys are asking really great questions, so thank you so much. Keep them coming.

For one of these questions, you have asked, is it better to pick activities for the supplementals that are asking about an activity or community—is it better to pick something that relates to your major versus maybe something that does not? Part of this is one of the things we haven’t talked about but is important—there may be multiple supplemental essays for a school. And so you also want to look at what other questions am I being asked. If they have asked you “why this major” as well as a community essay, then you probably don’t need to talk about anything with your major in your community essay because it’s already going to be covered elsewhere. So it’s a lot of thinking, what else am I being asked? If that’s not a factor, a lot of times it really comes down to what is the strongest activity. Have you shown leadership in a major-aligned activity? Have you been really involved in community service, and that’s the most compelling? There is some strategy there, and it may depend on the values of the school as well.

For the UC system, this is another great question. The UC system has its own application process. They have four personal insight questions that you respond to for any school within the UC system, and you submit one application to all. It’s similar to the personal statement that it does go to any of those schools. For those, I would recommend not including any school-specific information. You’re focusing more on your profile rather than that external fit. So you’re really thinking of your experiences, your academic interests, things like that rather than—they’re not asking you for a “why this school.”

There are a couple of questions, as Katie said, about really trying to stand out and that authenticity, especially with the increase of AI. I think our next section is going to speak to that very well. So hopefully that answers those questions.

For those of you who maybe are just discovering what you’re interested in, but you’re close to the application process—that is okay. A lot of our students do realize sort of later in high school what they’re actually interested in, or they’ve shifted those focus areas over time. It is best to be authentic in that way. So if you can tell the story of how you got interested in those areas and be able to show your demonstrated interest in them thus far, really making sure that it’s clear—maybe you got interested in it late, but you’ve done everything possible to show that interest since then. That’s sort of the key here.

And then in terms of the specifics of should you name people that you met on campus if you went to a school and maybe did an on-site visit—I wouldn’t name people specifically. What I would focus on is what is it about that conversation that you learned that really solidified that that school is the right fit for you? So rather than name-dropping, whether or not they’re students, alumni, or staff members, faculty, really thinking of what did you gain from that conversation either in terms of content about the school, the cultural fit, so on and so forth.

I’ll pause there from answering some of your specific questions for now because I think some will be answered as we proceed. But please continue to ask them in our chat, and we will answer them as we keep going.

But we’re gonna talk a little bit about how to sound authentic in these essays. How do you write with an authentic voice? This is both in terms of wanting to make sure—in the day and age of AI and the rise of it—making sure that we sound like human beings, but also that you are able to present yourself authentically and that you are able to represent your interests as they are as a human and an individual.

So one of the things that I recommend is being able to talk things out. Again, this is one of the values, I think, of working with a coach because you can have them be your—they can—you can dictate, and they can write things down for you. But if you are doing this independently, you can also use a voice recording and things like that. But really understanding what is the language that I use when I speak about things, and how do I represent my ideas in this way.

To that end, you want to use your real vocabulary. As I said, this is a different genre than academic essays where maybe you would want to pull out the thesaurus, or, you know, for those of you who are the students applying, synonyms.com perhaps. You want to make sure that you are just using your vocabulary as much as possible. Your essay should pass what we call a coffee shop test. If I were talking to you at a coffee shop, would this sound like you, your essay? So if your essay sounds dramatically different, then we probably need to adjust your tone and vocabulary.

Another strategy is to draft quickly and then edit slowly. So get all of the ideas down on paper, again, making sure that it sounds like yourself. Don’t edit yourself as you go, and then you can revise and curate as you go through. But you wanna avoid that censoring of ideas as much as possible.

In order to also be authentic and make sure that you are relying on these details, you want to give evidence. And this is both evidence in terms of the school for the case of “why this major,” but also your own experiences. You know, why do you have this belief? Why do you want to do these things? Why is this school a good fit for you? Being able to show those reasons very clearly. You want to make sure that that passion is coming through because admissions officers at the end of the day don’t have any other information about you except for what you are providing in your applications.

So just some examples here on how you can talk about these three key areas—activities, interests, goals. For activities, you wanna go beyond simply what you did. Really thinking about why did you do these things? Why did you continue to do them? What are the motivations? What has changed based on this activity? Have you grown as a person? Has there been an impact in your community, whether that’s local? It could be regional or larger than that. As I mentioned earlier, less is more. We don’t need to name every single accomplishment that you’ve had. You really want to make sure that it’s curated for the purpose of the supplemental essay.

And then another thing that I think is sometimes surprising is that you can show leadership not only through a position. So a lot of times questions will ask, “Tell us about a leadership experience,” and students feel like they are limited to talking about formal officer positions. You know, “I was president of biology club.” But you can talk about leadership in different ways as well. Maybe you mentored a student in an informal capacity, or you led an event that ended up being really impactful either for you personally or the community, but that was as a general member, for example. So you can show leadership in a variety of ways.

For your interests, you wanna show sometimes that people fall down rabbit holes all the time. You know? If you—I have a colleague who loves Wikipedia, and they just keep clicking. They see where they go. That is something that you can demonstrate here both in terms of personality, but also where is that intellectual curiosity that we talked about earlier. How does your brain work? What are the perspectives that you have? How do you approach learning, and how does that connect to the passions that you’re trying to demonstrate? Show the process. Right? Again, that thinking—what are the steps that you had to take to get to an end result?

And then lean into the unexpected. I think this goes to some of the questions that I saw in the chat about being able to show yourself authentically and stand out as an applicant. You can lean into some of the things that are a little bit more quirky or wouldn’t be necessarily expected for your academic interests. An example I like to use is that it’s very common for engineering students to have an interest in LEGOs. That is a pretty common experience. But if you have a chance to talk about your interest in gardening and thinking about the design of that outdoor space and how things are connected in different ways, you may be able to show a different side of that perspective while still relating it to an engineering mindset, but you’re not coming across as writing another LEGO essay, for example.

And then lastly, thinking about goals. As I mentioned earlier, we want that forward momentum. So what have you done up to this point? How does the school connect to that? What are they going to be able to offer you that supports those goals thus far? And then where do you wanna go from here? You’re not set in stone here. Right? What you say in these supplemental essays, nobody’s going to check in with you and say, “Have you accomplished those goals? You said you wanted to do research in XYZ. Have you done it?” But you want to be able to show, “I have this interest. I want to do these things. I’m curious about these areas, and this is how the school is going to allow me to pursue that.”

And then we’re going to—as I mentioned—we’re gonna talk about some specific supplemental essays because I’d like to show you not only the volume and how that varies for some of these schools, but also the types of questions that you might get asked and how those vary as well, not only by school, but within one set.

So here’s a selection of schools. These are all competitive schools, but in different ways. So we have a couple of Ivies and then top 50 schools, top 20 schools. University of Chicago is one that I really like to highlight with students and parents because they are very much looking for a specific vibe for their essays. They are very much into the cultural fit for applicants. So they are going to have three to five essays, and then they always have an uncommon prompt that changes. These do tend to be longer essays, which is also something I want to emphasize. As Katie mentioned earlier, those essays can really add up. University of Chicago tends to have 600-word supplemental essays, so you can imagine that it’s a lot of writing for University of Chicago. You really wanna make sure that you’re interested in applying there, and you’re ready to demonstrate that. They’re really looking for that intellectual play. Are you curious? Are you flexible in your thinking? Can you be a little creative even when thinking about academics? You really want to demonstrate that. And if it makes you uncomfortable when you’re responding to those, it really is a question of, is this the right culture for me moving forward?

MIT is very different than that. They have five short essays. They’re much more refined in the length, and they really want to have you think about problem solving, often in a more structural way. Creativity is great, but they’re not looking for the same quirkiness that University of Chicago is.

Yale is much more interested in community. They are also interested in this intellectualism. Obviously, all of these schools want a degree of intellectual thinking, but in different capacities. Yale’s really, really interested in the community aspect. How are you going to engage with your peers, with the world around you? And they’re doing that through more standard-length essays, but multiple of them.

Stanford is really looking for this personality piece. From the beginning, we talked about some of those short-answer responses. This is going to be one of those schools that has some of those short takes, they call them. Those can certainly fill in the blank a little bit more clearly, but they want that sort of rapid-fire, first-thing-that-comes-to-mind. Obviously, you are curating a little bit more, but they want that personality. They wanna really see you come through on the page in that way.

And then lastly, Georgetown. I like to use as an example because they are really curating based on what school within Georgetown University you’re applying to. So if you’re interested in business, you are getting a separate essay than if you’re applying as an engineering major, as a bio major, as a humanities student. So they’re really looking to make sure that you can align with the academic culture of those individual schools and that you have a clear sense of direction.

So again, all of these schools have a lot of commonalities in that sort of intellectual pursuit, but you can see the differences in the way culture plays a role, what they’re looking for in an applicant, and what that says about the schools themselves.

So I just wanna go through a couple of key takeaways, and then I know we’ve got a lot of questions that are coming through, and we’ll answer a bunch of those live here. But in terms of these key takeaways, what I would love for you all to leave here remembering is that every supplemental essay is asking the same underlying questions regardless of what the actual prompt says. And those two questions are, do you belong here, and why you? Why should we accept you into this school? That is the argument that you are making.

Remember, we’re being persuasive. You are also being specific. This could be about your own experience. It could be about the school itself depending on the question, but really wanting to make sure that we are not giving generic responses. We’re being authentic. We should feel like we’re getting to know you off the page, and then we want to make sure that you’re doing genuine research. Again, this could be through on-site visits. It could be through looking at their website in detail, connecting with current students or alumni, but making sure that you are really getting to know the school. This is going to help your essays, but also make sure that these schools are the right fit for you so that you’re spending your time intentionally.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Amazing. Thank you so much, Taylor. I really like this aspect of kind of really starting to dig in on what’s going to help your individual story stand out. We get so many students who have questions. Like, I saw one in the chat about, “I’m just really not sure. I’m not really sure who I am, where I am.” This is really normal. I promise. There is something unique and specific that you can say about your life, your pathway that will stand out to admissions committees, and this is exactly what we’re here to do and here to help with.

So digging into this right here—how can Prepory help you get admitted to the schools on your dream list? We come at this from every single angle. The core of our program is hour-long one-on-one advising sessions. The cadence of those is really defined based on grade level and where you are in your process. We wanna make sure that there’s layered support. So we talked about our writing specialist team. We also do a committee review process, annual profile review for underclassmen. So we wanna make sure that there’s also these comprehensive moments where applications get reviewed, and this is something that we have been talking about here and there as we talk about essays—how does this fit into your broader narrative? Right? How are you drawing on the activities in your activity list? Not recapping that résumé, but how are we gonna tell a story that actually fits across every piece and layer? And that is what that committee review process is really for.

So I’d love to have a conversation with you—me or a member of my team—talking through your goals in this process, going through how Prepory support works, and how we can really impact your admissions outcomes through that narrative building, whether it is from eighth grade or you are a rising senior right now diving into this process. We’re gonna answer a few more questions here, though, in the meantime.

So I think Taylor’s been looking around in our questions that are coming through here. I know it’s 8:55, so if you have to jump off, absolutely, please still book a consultation with us. We’ll have the QR code up on the screen here for you, and stick around if you want to stand by for the answers to a few more questions. Thanks so much for being here.

TAYLOR PIVA: I know that I think we just answered in chat as well, but I saw a question about Penn’s “thank you note” essay, which I do love that prompt. I wanted to answer this live as well for those of you who also might be interested in applying to Penn. They ask you to write a very short thank you note. I think it’s 150 to 200 words to somebody who you have not previously expressed this gratitude toward, and then they recommend that you do give that thank you note to the person afterward, which I think is very sweet.

But who is best to write that to? And the answer is it does really depend. This is super student-specific. I do recommend that it is somebody that the student actually knows, and it should be really personalized to that. I’ve seen students thank teachers or mentors. I have seen them thank family members in different capacities. A lot of times, some of the nice ones that I’ve read or sweet ones have been to siblings. That can be a very nice essay. I’ve seen one that was written to a student’s bus driver that they had every year of high school. So I think really thinking of just, like, who—what are those small moments that maybe you’ve maybe taken for granted, but also just haven’t had a chance to formally thank before—I think is really sweet.

Another question from Scott: with the awards section, which obviously wasn’t our focus today, but I think is helpful again because all of these components speak to one another—would things like winning an award with your student’s high school chamber group count or winning personal competitive scholarships in music? Absolutely. And that is regardless of whatever your student is looking to study. Let’s say your student is interested in business and not pursuing music at the collegiate level. Even with that said, having those awards or honors in music could certainly be a really great part of that profile to show that she’s not only been involved in various ways, but she’s been able to compete or receive accolades in some capacity. So absolutely, it would be great to see.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: So helpful. I know we have—we do have someone who also has a raised hand. So if that’s you, you’re still with us—it’s been up for a little while there. If you do have a question that you wanna put in the chat for us, we’d be happy to answer that. But so I hope that maybe you did already go another route and put that in there. But if not, letting you know, you can still ask us a question here with the few minutes that we have.

Okay. And then a couple more questions here. Oh, this is really exciting. Yes, we have absolutely supported students who are interested in a vet pathway. Yeah, very cool. Definitely book a consultation with us. We’d be happy to talk more about that with you. I have talked to quite a few students interested in that pathway really recently.

Okay. Fantastic. And then a question sort of about junior year summer. I really like this question. So it’s about volunteering in a lab. And then this person went on to say, “I’m not really doing research. I’m just seeing what goes on in the lab and helping out here and there.” What’s kind of a reframing you might put around that or how you might help a student add depth?

TAYLOR PIVA: Yeah. I mean, I think really focusing on what was gained from that—maybe not from a skills perspective if things weren’t as hands on—but did it change the direction of what the student might wanna do in the future? Did it—because it shifted focus—or “I learned about this piece of technology, and now I have so many more questions about it. I hope to be able to maybe engage with this technology at this school because they have it.” Could be a great connection to use. It also could be that, just based on that lab experience, they’ve learned maybe just more about the content of that subject area. So even if things are not hands on in the sense that you’re able to speak to, “I did XYZ”—you know, “I got to learn how to do stitches,” for example. That tends not to be something that you get to do as a high school student, but you may be able to say, “I learned about these different strategies or these different options, and I’m really interested to see how I could apply that to different research moving forward.”

KATIE WILLINGHAM: That’s so great. Actually, this attendee replied and said, “I kinda connected with that answer,” so that’s so great. Thank you to the person who pointed out that we don’t have our QR code up on the screen. If you can just hit next, Taylor, it’ll pull that up for you. I know that the link is also in the chat. For those of you who haven’t seen that, it is in the chat for you also. But if you wanna scan the QR code here, it is here for you now. So thank you to the person who pointed that out. And really looking forward to having another conversation with you.

Do we help seniors? Absolutely, yes.

TAYLOR PIVA: Yes. Yes.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: We have another raised hand, so please put your question in the chat if you have a question. Is there a program for rising seniors? Absolutely, yes. Is rising senior summer too late to demonstrate leadership? There are so many ways to demonstrate leadership. In fact, we have an entire webinar about demonstrating leadership and all of the different ways that you can do that. So definitely recommend checking that out and having a conversation with us. You can really get creative with the ways that you demonstrate leadership. Okay. Let’s see. I’m looking through here to see if there’s something else that we wanted to answer. We answered this.

TAYLOR PIVA: I think here’s a good one, Katie. “As a former admissions officer, do you recommend that students reach out to the admissions officer for their region to demonstrate interest?” This is a great question. I think that this can be a great strategy. There are a couple of nuances that I want to offer. One, not every school values demonstrated interest in the same way. And so it is not necessarily going to give you a leg up in the application process to demonstrate that interest by attending events, going on a campus tour, reaching out to an admissions officer. So if you’re doing it just for that reason, it may not have the same weight from school to school.

However, I do think that this is a great opportunity if you have specific questions that you can ask to find out more about the school, understand a specific program or an offering, understand options for you if there’s something that you’re looking for and you’re trying to understand how that might be something you pursue. So to the extent that you can ask a specific question, I think this is a great opportunity to reach out and gain more information, and it doesn’t hurt your application to have them remember your name as they’re going through applications.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Thank you so much for that one. I wanna answer one just about our services here about, you know, what if you sign up with Prepory, how fast can you get started? Love this question. First of all, very first thing that you do is have an initial consultation with our enrollment team to really understand your needs in this process and where you are. And then from there, depending on the program, you’ll have an orientation session or just dive in directly with your coach, and that’s defined by the program and pathway where you are in your process. So happy to talk more about that with you in an initial consultation with our team, and I hope we get the chance to talk with each other.

It is 9:03 here, so Taylor, if you have one more question that you would like to answer before we head out—thank you all so much again for being here. Please scan the QR code. We’d love to talk further with you, and thank you for joining us for this wonderful conversation about supplemental essays.

TAYLOR PIVA: Absolutely. I think the last question is about Michigan State or University of Michigan. I see there’s a trend here in a geographic area. Do they look for certain essays? The answer is, I think, yes. If I’m understanding your question correctly, do they have school-specific supplemental essays? They do. And if you mean, are they looking for specific things in their essays, which might have been the question—University of Michigan in particular is really wanting to understand that community component that we touched on a bit earlier. How have you really taken advantage of opportunities to involve yourself with members of your community? How have you been impacted by that and then impacted others? And then they do really want to see a “why this college” essay. Have you done your research? Are you a good fit for their school based on your interest and how that connects to what they offer? So that’s specifically for the University of Michigan, which I am quite familiar with from working with students.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Thank you so much, Taylor. Thank you to everyone. It’s been so great to have you here. I do wanna note that in the chat, our back-end team here with us tonight is sharing that we’ve had some technical difficulties with our booking form. So if you wait a moment and refresh the page if you’re having any issues, or please give us a call. But we would love to talk with you. We’re happy to get you on the calendar. So really looking forward to meeting with some of you in the coming weeks. Have a great rest of your night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us.