It’s the middle of November. A few weeks ago I was tremendously busy reading essays for students sending off early applications with a November 1st deadline. Since then I’ve mostly been reading a slow-but-steady trickle of supplemental prompt responses. Most of them have been really great, and when I do see problems they tend to fall under a single category: mixing up past-centered and future-centered prompts. When you first approach the prompts and begin to decide how to respond, ask yourself if the prompt is asking you to look back or look forward.

Some common supplemental prompts ask you to look back on the near past. Prompts asking you to explain an extracurricular activity, explain a challenge or setback, explain a talent, or explain a work of art that is meaningful to you are all asking you to look back on where you have been and who you have been. Prompts asking you to explain the effects of Covid or other disasters also look back to the near past. They want to know what you have done and what you have thought about. It seems completely reasonable that they’d ask these types of questions.

The key for these past-centered prompts (and all short-response prompts) is to be clear and honest. For the long essay I advise people to write absolutely as much as they like and can, without regard for the word limit. It’s better to write 1200 words and then pare down to 650, I say, than to write every sentence with anxiety that you might go over the limit. For short responses, typically 150 to 300 words, I actually advise the opposite. Begin by trying to answer the question in a single sentence. Then add on to that to explain and give context. Obviously you revise and edit from there, but you'll ideally be near the word count when you start the editing. These are very short responses, and they will be read very quickly. Make it easy for the reader to see what it is you want to say. These responses are not the place for clever narratives and dialog.

When you do edit these responses, focus on verbs. Identify all your “to be” verbs and do what it takes to reduce that number by at least a third. The key to stronger writing, especially in short responses, is almost always in the verbs.

Where I see people go astray in these looking-back prompts is when they don’t think they have a strong answer to the question. They haven’t done a lot of sponsored extracurricular activities in school, or they don’t really have a favorite book character or work of art, or they didn’t really suffer in the pandemic like many others did. So they try to cover this up by writing about the future instead. They essentially say “I haven’t got an answer to your question, so I’m going to explain how I’ll be able to answer in the future once I get a response.” Avoid this instinct. Find an answer to the question. Dig deep. Spend time.

You may need to have conversations with friends or family members going over memories of the past. You may need to review synopses of books you read to remember which characters you may have connected with, even a little. (Don’t write about a book you haven’t read—that’s not going to go well.) You may need to spend time researching topics and using your imagination to put together a good answer. The time you spend doing this will be a good investment. It will make your response to the question stronger, and it’s a valuable exercise in solving problems.

If you don’t have many—or any—extracurriculars to talk about, it’s probably because you’re defining “extracurricular” too strictly. You were doing something with your time. If you didn’t participate in any after-school clubs or teams because you had too many responsibilities at home, say so. Talk about what you did to support your family. If you didn’t participate because you had a job, say so. If you didn’t participate because you were struggling with physical or mental health, say so. If you didn’t participate because you’d much rather be playing pick-up basketball (or skateboarding, or playing the guitar, or reading manga or….) say so. Don’t try to cover up the fact that you “did nothing,” but explain what it is that you actually did.

Other prompts ask you to look forward and anticipate the future. Typical forward-looking prompts include questions about your intended major, how you plan to make a difference at the college, what kind of extracurricular activities you hope to be a part of, and what your post-college plans are. With these answers, be as honest and positive as you can.

When I see students go off-track here, it’s often because their answers are too past-focused. They still want to talk about their accomplishments, and it gets in the way of talking about their future. I can understand the impulse: talking about what you’ve already done stands as evidence that you are realistic about your plans for the future. But don’t spend precious words rehashing the past! I won’t be rigid and say “do not mention the past in your responses to these prompts,” but I will say: don’t let a whole sentence be dedicated to the past. If you want to mention something you’ve already done, make it a small part of a forward-looking sentence.

And here’s the other thing about forward-looking prompts: you will rarely impress anyone by providing a course catalog number. For “what kind of things do you hope to do at our college?” questions, applicants really like to prove they’ve done their research by listing the catalog number of courses that look interesting. Ask yourself: how likely is it that the person reading your response—who is not a student or professor at the school, and is probably not even a graduate of the school—knows what “SOC6724” really means? It proves you’ve looked through the course catalog, sure, but it doesn’t prove you’ve been thoughtful about how you see yourself at the school. If you’re going to talk about specific courses or programs you hope to be a part of, follow these simple rules of thumb: as much as possible, talk about professors you’d like to meet, not courses you’d like to take; double-check to make sure that program or course you’re talking about is actually available to undergrad students and isn’t a graduate-level program; don’t overlap niche programs or honors programs in an unrealistic way.

Of course not all supplemental prompts ask you to look back or look forward. Some are completely different. But a surprising number of them do.

Probably the most typical supplemental question is some version of “why are you applying to our school?” For this prompt, you’re looking both back and forward. That’s a good way to approach this question: considering what all you’ve done and what all you hope to do, why is this school a good place for your transition? How can this school help you with that change, and how can you help them, in your small way, in their transition from what they’ve been to what they hope to be?

If you’ve already sent out applications with supplemental responses, I’m sure they were good. And I also hope the future ones will be even stronger.

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   How should you handle supplemental questions?

   Be careful re-using essays.

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