princeton diversity essay

Center for Career Development

Diversity Statements

The purpose of this guide is to provide a foundation for thinking about your own diversity statement(s). This guide is general and does not provide discipline- or position-specific guidance. The Center for Career Development offers one-on-one appointments to review and discuss your diversity statement. We also encourage you to reach out to recent faculty hires in your department or discipline to discuss their diversity statements as they are most likely to have good examples of what committees may find compelling.

What is a diversity statement and what is its purpose?

In recent years, many colleges and universities started prioritizing diversifying their faculty, staff and student bodies. Institutions are interested in hiring faculty with lived experiences, competencies, or insights that can foster an inclusive environment. Your diversity statement is the first way a committee will assess your ability to navigate these topics. A diversity statement outlines how a candidate will contribute to an institution's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It's an opportunity for you to highlight the ways you would advance an institution's DEI work. It's also a chance for you to discuss your understanding of the varied experiences of people from minoritized and/or underrepresented groups. You can also outline your lived experiences or your experiences meeting the needs of a diverse group during your graduate training and beyond. It is also appropriate to outline a vision of how you, as a faculty member, would make contributions to DEI in the future. Your statement will likely have at least some of these elements:

A statement of your perspective or values: Articulate your understanding of DEI within higher education
Personal examples or experience: Provide evidence of your commitment to DEI by describing what you've done in the past
Future plans: Explain what you will do as a faculty member to advance DEI

What topics might I cover?

Diversity statements vary widely in terms of what people choose to highlight depending on their own identities, experiences and backgrounds. You should include content that you think addresses how you have approached diversity in the past or may approach it in your new position. The following list is intended to serve as a starting point and is not exhaustive.

As with any piece of writing, it's helpful for a reader if you provide a framework. To orient your reader, you may want to discuss difficulties people from certain backgrounds face in your field.

You may also want to discuss your lived experiences navigating some of those very difficulties. However, for legal, personal or political reasons, you may choose not to include information about your identity. Either approach is fine.

If you are conducting research that focuses on people of diverse backgrounds or that offers theoretical or practical insights into underserved groups, be sure to highlight that in your diversity statement. It should also appear in your research statement.

You could also discuss ways you are going to support students of diverse backgrounds who may work with you as research assistants or thesis students.

If you have teaching experience, you may consider discussing how you incorporate DEI in your courses. For example, you could discuss inclusive teaching practices or how you have approached teaching diverse groups.

Mentorship is another form of teaching, so if you have experience working with students from minoritized or under-represented backgrounds, you can also highlight that.

It is also acceptable to generate ideas about how you would approach teaching as a new faculty member through the lens of DEI. Topics you include in your diversity statement related to teaching should complement what you talk about in your teaching statement.

If you hold positions within your department, on campus, or your professional associations related to DEI, you can discuss how those will shape your approach as a faculty member.

You can also discuss any outreach you may do in the community, especially related to marginalized groups.

Getting started

Writing a diversity statement is like writing other academic job materials (e.g., teaching or research statements). Because of that, many of the steps for a successful diversity statement are similar to other documents.

It may seem obvious, but ask yourself, “What do I mean by DEI? What does the institution mean?” These questions are critical to writing a coherent statement.

Using the topics listed above , you can also ask yourself more specific questions related to your ideas about diversity. Beck (2018) provides a useful list of questions you may want to consider as writing prompts.

Consider your audience

As with most writing, you are creating your diversity statement for someone to read. Keep this audience in mind as you craft your document.

Your statement will be read by a committee of faculty members, but the exact composition will vary depending on the type of institution you're applying to. Consider what faculty will want to or expect to see in your statement ( see topics above ).

Select your examples

Diversity statements are typically only about a page long. You may have a range of experiences you would like to discuss or cover. Be thoughtful about which examples you choose.

Each example you choose should highlight a competency, perspective, or experience you have that demonstrates your commitment to DEI.

The Writing Center , Center for Career Development, Gender and Sexuality Resource Center and your faculty mentor(s) are good resources to discuss your examples.

Revise and refine

As with all writing, your first draft of your diversity statement won't be your last or your best.

Have trusted advisers, mentors, and/or friends read over your statement to help make sure you're articulating your points as clearly as possible.

Should I tailor my diversity statement?

Once you have a general draft you feel comfortable with, you should make sure to research a specific institution or department's programs, efforts and policies related to DEI. When possible, align your statement with what is already happening to demonstrate that you've done your research. This will also allow you to provide more specific evidence about why you are the best candidate for their open position.

Example diversity statement

This statement was used by a candidate during a faculty job search as a fifth-year Ph.D. student. He received a faculty offer at a small liberal arts college in a psychology department.

My commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion stems from my own experiences as an undergraduate at Princeton University. As a lower-income queer student from a single-parent household, I felt out of place at Princeton to begin with. Coming from a public high school in Kentucky, I was terrified of falling behind academically.

Because of this fear, I was reluctant to try new fields, and I actively avoided asking for help from staff and faculty. During my first two years of college, I rarely felt that my professors were creating environments where my experiences were understood or valued. At my lowest, I considered transferring.

Eventually, though, I found my footing on campus through my work as a Residential College Adviser. In this role, I had the opportunity to advise a diverse group of first-year undergraduates. I was able to see the struggles that all of my advisees faced on campus, some of which overlapped with my own.

I became acutely aware of the need for universities to acknowledge the unique adversity facing each of its students. In addition, as an advisor I learned how critical it is to make it clear to students that you value the unique perspectives they each bring. These lessons are foundational to how I mentor and teach, and I will continue to emphasize equitable and inclusive treatment of students as a faculty member.

As a PhD student, I have taken on several roles related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. I was elected by my peers to serve as the liaison between graduate students and faculty in my department. This role involved collecting anecdotes and experiences from PhD students about a range of issues including microaggressions, advisor conflict, and financial strain.

In one extreme case, several PhD students in my department did not receive a paycheck one month. In response, I drafted a letter based on students' accounts of this financial hardship and sent it to the dean of my academic college. Eventually, the issue was resolved. I enjoyed using my position to support students. I think it is especially important that those with institutional influence or privilege use that status to enact change and advocate for those without the same level of access to power.

I also served on my department's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) committee. On the EDI committee, I contributed to discussions about how to promote equity and diversity in our department. I suggested that the department host a training from a member of the university's LGBTQIA center focusing on supporting queer students.

This training was well-attended and well-received by members of my department. In all of my past roles, my goal has always been to improve the experiences of people of all backgrounds. I am very interested in pursuing similar opportunities when possible at X university or college.

My goal as an instructor and mentor is to increase accessibility and promote inclusivity. In my teaching, I strive to highlight the importance of students' unique experiences and of diversity more broadly. In my Psychology of Language course, for example, I often talked openly with students about homogeneity in psycholinguistic research both in terms of who conducts studies and which samples are recruited.

I also dedicated an entire class session to talking about DEI. I assigned a recent paper about how the field could become more equitable. My students seemed to appreciate my approach. In my course evaluations, students rated whether I created an “inclusive classroom” at a 4.78 out of 5, higher than both my department and college's averages.

In my work as a writing tutor in the university's Writing Studio, I often encounter issues of equity and inclusion. In one case, for example, a student wrote a moving essay that focused on their gender identity and disability. This student was hesitant to divulge such personal information in an academic application. To belay their fears, I talked with the student about the fact that their unique experiences informed who they were and what they were hoping to do.

The student was passionate about promoting queer and marginalized voices, and they eventually chose to include information about their own identity. I am eager to continue working with students from diverse backgrounds at X college/university. I am passionate about ensuring that people from all backgrounds are able to thrive, especially in their academic endeavors.

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Unpacking the Princeton Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

August 24, 2023

Princeton has consistently held that coveted number one spot in the US News Ranking of Best National Universities for the last few years. Of course, your grades, test scores and extracurricular activities are extremely important but do not underestimate the power of well-written supplemental essays. To help guide you through the Princeton supplemental essays 2023-2024 , I have outlined each of the prompts, ways to strategize your answers to them, and additional tips for your responses.

Prompts for the Princeton Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

While none of the questions explicitly ask why you want to attend Princeton (because let’s face it, almost everybody wants to attend Princeton), they do help the school gauge your areas of interest, your academic and extracurricular strengths, and the ways through which you’d contribute to the campus community. Let’s take a closer look at each of the Princeton prompts and some strategies to approach them.

For A.B. Degree Applicants or Those Who are Undecided:

As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. what academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at princeton suit your particular interests (please respond in about 250 words.).

This is the closest the university gets to a “why Princeton” essay. Admissions officers don’t just want to know why you’re applying to Princeton generally; they expect you to go into specific detail about Princeton’s academic offerings. You can talk about multiple interests across the humanities, arts, natural sciences, and social sciences.

Notice that this type of essay should mainly cover academics. Princeton’s clubs and student organizations may make it an alluring place for you, but the question explicitly asks about your choice of study. Look through the college website and think about what you can write that won’t be common in other students’ essays. Is there an English professor whose writing resonates with you? Would a particular psychology or sociology class perfectly fit in with your 10-year plan? Remember that admissions officers are trying to figure out how you’d make the most of your experience on the Princeton campus. So, write elaborately about how you would take advantage of the curriculum and give them a sense of the ways in which you’d make a valuable addition to the classroom.

For B.S.E Degree Applicants:

Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at princeton. include any of your experiences in, or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the university suit your particular interests. (please respond in about 250 words.).

This essay is required if you’ve indicated Bachelor of Science in Engineering as a possible degree on your application, and with good reason. Princeton wants to know whether you are genuinely interested in the field of engineering, and specifically in the Princeton School of Engineering’s offerings. This is a much more standard supplemental essay prompt than the one before. Most engineering programs will require a similar essay, so don’t write a response that could be substituted for an application to any other school. Your answer must be as specific as possible to Princeton’s engineering offerings.

Don’t go overboard with all the reasons you’re interested in studying engineering. Focus on one or two of your most impactful activities and experiences, such as working in an engineering lab over the summer or building a robot at school. Again, you must be specific! Shallow motivations won’t win over Princeton’s admissions officers. If you want to excel with this question, you need to research concrete examples of what appeals to you. For example, you could talk about how working with the Princeton Engineering Education for Kids student organization combines your love for engineering and working with children.

Admissions officers are looking for students who are passionate about their major, involved community leaders, and truly interested in Princeton. This essay is a great chance to show that you check all of the boxes.

1. Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 500 words or fewer.)

Princeton wants to know how students will engage in classroom discussions and conversations during meals and or in hallways. The difficult topic you address isn’t limited to academics—it could be about sports, books, music, movies, television, or politics (although I would tread the latter department carefully). You could have been on the more generally agreed-upon side of a common debate, or you may have held a controversial view. The important part isn’t what happened, so focus instead on the latter parts of the question. Dedicate most of your essay to discussing what insight you gained from the conversation, how you’ve acted since, and how you would bring this knowledge to Princeton.

Be careful while answering this prompt, especially if your viewpoint on the topic can be seen as controversial. With a topic like this, it’s easy to get carried away with your writing, especially if you have a lot of feelings on the matter. You only have 250 words at hand, so remember that your goal here is to talk about why this anecdote stands out to you and how it has shaped you. Allow admissions officers to learn more about you, and make sure you haven’t written anything that can offend or harm any individual or group of people.

2. Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

This prompt is geared towards understanding students' involvement in community engagement and service. If you're passionate about community work and have dedicated yourself to improving your community, this is the place to expand on it. Write about any initiatives or work you have done to positively impact your community, or if you have demonstrated your passion for service and have been recognized for it. For example, if you received a Girl Scout Gold Award, this is the place to include it.

Remember that Princeton is one of the most selective universities in the world. Simply writing about a service trip abroad, or single community service participation won't do. When you write about this topic, think about what you're genuinely passionate about when it comes to community involvement, and how you have conveyed sustained commitment towards it.

More About You

Please respond to each question in 50 words or fewer. there are no right or wrong answers. be yourself.

What is a new skill you would like to learn in college?
What brings you joy?
What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?

These questions might throw you off a little. After all, how can you figure out what Princeton is even looking for? Don’t panic. You definitely don’t have to come up with responses that you believe are super deep and intellectual. Don’t mention that your favorite song is a jazz or classical piece if you think these sound impressive even though you don't actually like them. As cheesy as it sounds, the question states that you should be yourself. Admissions officers want to get to know you.

You don’t have to force yourself to be extra witty, but if you can come up with fun or clever answers to questions that allow for it, such as, “what brings you joy,” that’s great! But let it come to you naturally. Admissions officers have had years of experience reading answers to questions like these. They know if you’re trying to guess what you think they want to hear. At the same time, think about what other applicants would say. Avoid super common answers so that you can stand out as memorable. Your answers should be unique to you and your tastes.

Additional Tips for Writing the Princeton Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

Be authentic . Every step in your application should be genuine . Don’t write about topics or issues that you believe a Princeton admissions officer might want to see. In fact, those answers might just end up being too cliché and not work against you instead. Admissions officers will appreciate it much more if they can feel organic passion and commitment for the things that you’ve described.
Don’t repeat your personal statement or your activities list. The goal is to provide further information on who you are and what you’re all about. There’s no point in repeating what you’ve said on the rest of your application because admissions officers want each component to add something new. Princeton has even specified on the longer essay prompt that you must not repeat your personal statement. If you can’t follow these instructions, your application is basically on its way to the reject pile. You don’t want to lose before your essays have even been read!

The Princeton supplemental essays 2023-2024 might be difficult because unless you’re applying to the School of Engineering, you don’t get a chance to elaborate on why you believe Princeton is the right school for you. However, there are ways you can convey to admissions officers that you’re a great fit for the school by bringing out characteristics that the school values and highlighting them in your essays. Don’t underestimate the difference powerful supplements can make. If you're seeking expert advice on how to effectively strategize your supplemental essays, sign up for a free consultation today with one of our college admissions experts.

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How to write the Princeton supplemental essays (2023-2024)

Bonus Material: PrepMaven’s 50+ Real Supplemental Essays for Ivy+ Schools

Last year, Princeton admitted just 5.6% of applicants, meaning that if you want a shot at an admission for the 2023-2024 cycle, your application has to be just about perfect.

One element of the Princeton application that many students struggle with is the Princeton writing supplement. It’s tricky to know exactly how to approach these supplemental essays: what can you write to stand out from the thousands of other applicants? What exactly are Princeton admissions officers looking for?

Fortunately, at PrepMaven, we’ve helped thousands of students craft compelling college application essays. It doesn’t hurt that many of our expert tutors have been admitted to Princeton themselves, and so they know exactly what works.

In this guide, we’ll break down the 2023-2024 Princeton writing supplement, explaining exactly what you need to do to maximize your chances at a Princeton acceptance.

As you read on, check out our free resource linked below: it contains real, successful examples of supplemental essays written for Princeton and other top schools.

Download 50+ Real Supplemental Essays for Ivy+ Schools

Jump to section:

Princeton 2023-2024 supplemental essay prompts
How to write Princeton’s first essay
How to write Princeton’s second essay
How to write Princeton’s third essay

Princeton’s 2023-2024 short answer questions

Princeton’s 2023-2024 supplemental essays .

This year, Princeton has three fairly intensive supplemental essays and three short answer questions.

The supplemental essays are as follows:

For A.B. Degree Applicants or Those Who Are Undecided As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.) For B.S.E Degree Applicants Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at Princeton. Include any of your experiences in or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the University suit your particular interests. (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.) Your Voice (all applicants) Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 500 words or fewer.) Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

The first thing to notice is that these essays all fall into well-known categories of the college essay.

The first prompt, which will vary slightly depending on whether you’re applying to the engineering school or not, is simply a “Why Major?” essay, which asks you to explain your academic interests.

What’s the key to a successful “Why Major?” essay for Princeton? We’ve written a comprehensive guide on this essay type here that covers all the ins and outs of what schools really want when they ask this question.

The second prompt is one you’re likely to see from just about any school, and is a version of a Community/Diversity prompt.

The third prompt is a classic Service essay prompt, which you can also think of as an Extracurricular essay with a slightly more specific focus.

Read on below for break-downs of each of these prompts!

How to write Princeton’s first essay: “Why this major?”

The key to answering this supplemental prompt about your intended area of study is to answer three key questions:

What specifically are you interested in?
Why , using specific details from your life, are you interested in that subject?
How , using the specific resources available at Princeton, will you pursue that subject?

Now, if you’ve read our guide on how to write Why Major essays, then you likely already know that you should have a basic template you reuse anytime a school asks you this question. If you’ve already written a Why Major essay for another school, you should be able to save a lot of time by reusing the basic structure of that essay, and simply replacing the school-specific portions.

If you don’t already have a template, here’s what it should look like:

Start with a brief anecdote from your life or academic question that interests you.

The anecdote should show where your interest comes from, the moment you realized you wished to pursue this subject, or simply dramatize an important learning experience related to your chosen field of study.

You can use this portion of the template for any school that asks a Why Major supplemental.

Use that anecdote to launch into a discussion of why the subject matter interests you/why you want to pursue it as a major.

Do you want to study biology? Explain what about it fascinates you: what are the burning questions you hope to answer? What about the process of research or lab work speaks to you? Is there a practical purpose you hope to achieve through your study?

More of a humanities person who wants to study art history? The same rules apply: what about art history captivates you? Where does this passion come from? Why is it something you’d dedicate your life (or at least 4 years) to exploring?

Whatever your major, the rules of the game are basically identical: convincingly convey your passion for a particular subject to the admissions officers at Princeton, and they’ll be far more likely to see you as someone who will seriously pursue your interests–which is, of course, what they’re looking for.

As with the anecdote, you can reuse this portion of the essay for any school with a similar prompt.

Explain how you’ll use specific resources at Princeton to pursue your academic interests.

This is the school-specific portion of the essay, which you’ll have to modify for every school you apply to. And the first step here is research: identify specific, unique offerings of Princeton University that you hope to take advantage of.

Your best friend here will be the departmental website of the program/major to which you’re applying. Invest time in exploring that website: you’ll find all the information you need about curriculum, research, and work opportunities there.

Then, you’ll take this specific information and focus on 1-2 key points at the end of the essay, favoring depth over breadth. Don’t just rattle off the first 10 things you see on the website: pick just a couple and spend a few sentences on each, explaining how the particular resource aligns with your academic interests and goals.

Why do it this way? Well, the goal here is to:

Show Princeton you’ve done your research
Convince the Princeton admissions committee that you really do think they’re a great fit for you.

By picking just a few specifics and connecting them with your own interests and story, you’ll be able to do both of these things without coming off as inauthentic.

Some great things to focus on would be:

Research programs
Work/internship/coop opportunities
Unique curricular offerings
Unusual minors or specializations
Service learning opportunities
Thesis/honors opportunities

While you’re doing all this, there are a few things you should avoid writing in the Princeton Why Major essay. Some of the Don’ts we list below are just too cliche; others are actually red flags for college admissions committees.

Don’t:

Reference money as a primary reason for your major choice.
It’s fine to be undecided! But even then you should discuss what kinds of things interest you and why.
Randomly Princeton name-drop professors or classes just because you came across them on the website.
Forget to include a specific story, question, or hook to get the reader interested.

And that’s it! Do all of the above, and you’ll have the first of Princeton supplemental essays locked down tight–plus, you’ll have a great template for any other schools that ask the same question.

Ready to get started? A great resource to begin with is our collection of real, successful supplemental essays. For stellar examples of the “Why Major” essay, check out the last supplemental essay for Princeton, as well as the first sample essay for UPenn.

How to write Princeton’s second essay: Diversity/community

Here’s the second supplemental prompt:

Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 500 words or fewer.)

If you haven’t already, you’ll soon come to recognize this essay prompt, as well as the language of “lived experience,” which will come up more and more often. The Oxford dictionary has a pretty straightforward definition here , but all that “lived experience” really means is your first-hand experience of the world, as opposed to things you may have read, heard, or learned.

At heart, this kind of prompt is asking you to discuss how–based on specific elements of your life–you view your role as a potential member of Princeton’s diverse community. We call this the Diversity/community essay, because those are really always two sides of the same coin.

With the Princeton Diversity/community essay, there are 2 basic options for structuring your response:

Discuss community through the lens of your identity.
Discuss community through the lens of other events/activities/pursuits in your life.

Which path you take will actually be easy to decide:

If your identity (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, etc.) has significantly influenced your worldview or experiences, go with option 1.

In other words, if you know you have something meaningful to say about how your identity has shaped you, that should structure your response. This might mean writing an essay about how discrimination or systemic biases have affected you or your family; it could just as well, however, mean writing about specific experiences you’ve cherished as a member of a particular culture.

A few great examples from recent essays we’ve worked on:

An essay that focuses on a student’s biracial background and how she learned to use others’ ignorant/racist comments as opportunities for starting difficult conversations.
An essay exploring how a first-generation immigrant served as a translator for his parents.
An essay from a young woman exploring how she navigated the contradictions between her feminist views and the emphasis on tradition within her religion.

If your identity has not significantly experienced how you view the world, go with option 2.

If you don’t feel particularly connected to a specific identity, or if you can’t think of specific ways that your identity has affected you, you should instead focus on other elements of your life that have shaped your view of community.

Think about what you want out of a community: then, think about what aspect of your life (an extracurricular, a hobby, a social circle) has shaped that desire. Tell that story. It may sound a bit tough to thread that needle, but it really isn’t so bad: here are a few really successful topics from recent students in response to this kind of prompt:

An essay about how a student’s participation in yearly music recitals with strangers shaped how he views community as a place for everyone to share their gifts/talents.
An essay from an avid hiker about how his experiences maintaining hiking trails taught him to think of community as a shared, daily effort in the service of others.
An essay from a student who moved countries multiple times reflecting on what in each place contributed to creating a cohesive community.

All the examples are different, but share one thing in common: using your personal experiences to reflect on your role in a diverse community.

For successful examples of Diversity/community essays, check out the first Princeton essay and the first three UMich essays in the free collection below!

How to write Princeton’s third essay: Service

Princeton’s third supplemental essay is an essay on the topic of service and community engagement–another fairly standard kind of supplemental essay you’re almost certain to see pop up again!

Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

You’ll notice the word count here is much shorter than that of Princeton’s second supplemental essay, so you’re really just going to have enough time to tell a short story and then reflect on why/how service matters in your life.

This essay can be quite difficult if you haven’t directly engaged in service-oriented work. If you have, then your job is a lot easier: as with the other essays, tell the story of the service you’ve done, then reflect on the lesson you learned. Ideally, work in a brief discussion of how you plan to continue this kind of service at Princeton.

If you don’t have anything that’s directly related to service, you might want to interpret the prompt more broadly: formally or informally, how has your life been affected by service? Have you or your family benefited from someone else’s service? Have you had obligations or responsibility to family or loved ones? Do you feel strongly about a particular social issue?

Any and all of those would work. For now, though, we recommend taking a look at a real response to this prompt below, which helped get one of our star tutors into Princeton.

Over the pandemic, I tutored two middle school boys. Now, I love kids, but middle schoolers are not my number one favorites. They are often dismissive of authority and it’s very hard to hold their attention for longer than two minutes. So working with them on Zoom for an hour became my new challenge. I tried many tactics. When fun warm-ups, writing prompts, and Zoom games all failed, I was officially stumped. I couldn’t understand why they found me so uninteresting. I decided to pay closer attention to the passions they mentioned. Instead of imposing my own ideas, I listened to what they had to say. It turned out Lucian loved running. Getting him to read was like pulling teeth, but I found a Jason Reynolds book called Ghost, part of a series about a track team. We would spend ten or fifteen minutes at the beginning of each session reading it aloud to each other, and while he seemed to be engaged, I couldn’t tell exactly how much he was enjoying it. But when we finally finished, he asked me shyly, “What did you say the next one was called?” Sajiah proved to be tougher to please. He wasn’t swayed by any books I suggested to him, no matter the topic. He often hummed or rapped while working, which I found to be endlessly annoying, until I started listening to the actual words. I Googled the lyrics and noticed that he particularly enjoyed Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. So we began a project investigating the origins of hip hop, and created a website as the final product. He loved finding out more about the music he listened to every day, and I loved seeing him so happy with his work. I don’t pretend I saved the world by helping these boys, but I am proud of the creative way I found projects and topics they genuinely enjoyed investigating. I hope to continue working with children as a form of civic engagement throughout college and beyond; if I can help students like Sajiah and Lucian, it’ll be well worth it.

There’s a few key things to notice with this essay.

First, it’s about a small, simple act of service. You don’t need to have started a non-profit or spent years volunteering: something as simple as tutoring two students can work perfectly well for this Princeton essay.

Second, it treats this act with the appropriate level of seriousness. If your act of service isn’t on a large scale, don’t try to make out as if it is: something as simple as “I don’t pretend I saved the world by helping these boys, but I am proud of the creative way I found projects and topics they genuinely enjoyed investigating” will feel much more honest and convincing.

Finally, this essay is a story. All the best essays are! Don’t just give us the broad strokes: really show us the details of whatever service work you’ve done. Once you’ve shown Princeton’s admissions officers that story, they’ll be far more likely to believe that you actually do take service seriously.

The third Princeton supplemental essay doesn’t have to be difficult: stay honest, stay direct, and tell your story.

To read other responses to this very prompt (and many other sample supplemental essays), download our collection below. And if you’d like the guidance of one of our expert tutors (some of whom wrote the very essays in that packet), just contact us .

In addition to the three essays above, Princeton asks you to respond to three short answer questions, each in a bite-size 50 words or fewer. The questions are below:

What is a new skill you would like to learn in college? What brings you joy? What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?

For these, the simplest advice is best: be yourself. Don’t overthink these! While the longer essays are quite important and will require multiple drafts and redrafts, you won’t need to put the same level of work into these short answer questions.

You should, however, use up the 50-word limit they give you. Don’t just give Princeton a one-word answer to these questions. Instead, use the opportunity to show them as much of your personality and character as you can within 50 words, ideally by explaining each of your answers.

So, for short answer prompt 1, don’t just say, “I want to learn public speaking skills.” Instead, elaborate on why : the explanation is always more interesting than the answer itself.

The same applies to the other questions: convey your passion, tell us an anecdote, or just show us how your mind works. These are low stakes, but still worth your careful time and attention–this is Princeton, after all.

If you’re applying to Princeton, the place to start is our comprehensive guide to the Princeton application for the 2023-2024 cycle , which you can find here. That guide doesn’t just cover what Princeton’s application requires of you: it uses the latest statistics and insights from our own Princeton undergraduate tutors to walk you through exactly what you’ll need to do to have a shot at Princeton.

Once you’re ready to start writing supplemental essays for Princeton and your other schools, we have two main pieces of advice.

First: read real, successful sample supplemental essays that helped get students into Princeton and other hyper-selective schools. Most people don’t really know what schools like Princeton actually want from the supplemental essays, and the best solution is to spend lots of time reviewing sample essays. We’ve collected dozens of these essays in the free resource below.

Second: get expert help. Whether you’re a brilliant writer or just an okay one, you’ll benefit tremendously from the advice of someone who’s already successfully navigated the college application process. Our college essay coaches aren’t just writing experts who can make your essay shine: they’re trained to know exactly what schools like Princeton expect to see .

Check out the free sample essays below, and, when you’re ready to start writing, contact us to get paired with a college essay expert.

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Contextualizing diversity at princeton.

Undergraduate students at Princeton represent a range of diverse backgrounds. Half of the students in the class of 2024 are women and 61% of domestic students (citizens and permanent residents) identify as people of color. Sixty-three percent of students enter Princeton from public schools and 20% come from low-income families. While 10% of students in the class of 2024 are children of alumni, 17% of the class are first-generation college students, according to the Princeton University Office of Admission .

For the 2023-2024 academic year, the total annual cost of attendance at Princeton University was $83,140 (Tuition, $59,710; Residential college fee, $11,400; Food, $7,980; Estimated miscellaneous expenses, $4,050). To accommodate our diverse student body, Princeton provides financial aid to 60% of their students with the average grant exceeding the cost of tuition. A full 82% of recent seniors graduated debt free. Further, the average debt of graduating seniors in 2023 was $9,000 (compared to $32,300 nationally for students attending private four-year colleges). Twenty-two percent of students in the class of 2025 are eligible for Federal Pell Grants, need-based grants to low-income students. Given the diversity of the Princeton student body, it is important to develop and use strategies that make all students, regardless of their background, feel welcome and fully able to learn.

Disability Inclusion

Disability access and inclusion on college campuses is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as amended by the Federal Rehabilitation Act, Section 504. Princeton also complies with the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination . In accordance with these laws, students at Princeton “may request academic accommodations; housing and dining accommodations; modifications to University policies, rules, and regulations; environmental adjustments such as the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation barriers; and auxiliary aids and services” ( Office of Disability Services ). The term “disability” may refer to “learning, physical, sensory, psychological, medical, and certain temporary disabilities” ( Inclusive Princeton ).

While Princeton’s Office for Disability Services (ODS) is charged with removing barriers to education caused by specific impairments, creating an inclusive environment, both physical and virtual, for students with disabilities also requires us to consider how disability is “a valuable form of human variation,” much like gender and race, with special “cultural diversity, situated knowledge, and a basis for relational ethics” that can shape the university campus more broadly (Hamraie 260).

Key Resources:

Dolmage, Jay Timothy. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education . University of Michigan, 2017.
Fox, Anne. “ How to Crip the Undergraduate Classroom: Lessons from Performance, Pedagogy, and Possibility .” Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability , vol. 23, no. 1, 2010, pp. 38-46.
Hamraie, Aimi. " Beyond Accommodation: Disability, Feminist Philosophy, and the Design of Everyday Academic Life ." philoSOPHIA, v ol. 6, no. 2, 2016, pp. 259-271.

Racial and Ethnic Identity

In response to the recent reckoning with racial injustice, President Eisgruber has called on us to confront racism and to bring our “scholarly and teaching resources to bear to create a more just and equal society,” encouraging us “to ask how we can more effectively fight racism—through our teaching and research, through our operations, and through our interactions and partnerships with those around us.” The work of confronting structural racism is broad in scope and includes renaming buildings , recognizing and confronting bias in hiring practices, offering resources for community building , fostering dialogue across the institution, and having a wide diversity of students on campus. Creating anti-racist classrooms is integral to this work and is essential for ensuring that all students in our community can learn effectively.

Structural racism is often described as behaviors and assumptions that seem normal, even as “ the very air we breathe, "or as a “banality” and so possibly difficult at first to recognize or identify. Indeed, there is a complex and long history of racial exclusion in American higher education but we can actively counteract this history by fostering inclusive teaching practices in our classrooms.

Ross, Lawrence. Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America's Campuses . St. Martin's Press, 2016.
Steele, Claude. Whistling Vivaldi: and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us . W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.
Thomas, James M. Diversity Regimes: Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities . Rutgers UP, 2020.

Gender and Sexual Identity

Although a few women at Princeton served as instructors and researchers, and enrolled as students in limited capacities, the first full class of undergraduate women was not admitted until 1969 (the Class of 1973), following a vote by the Board of Trustees to promote a "better balance of social and intellectual life" by admitting women. Princeton first reached “gender parity” in the student body in 2004 ( A brief history of women at Princeton, A brief history of admissions ).

Gender activists have long argued for the difference between sex and gender, and this distinction continues to be crucial as we acknowledge nonbinary gender identities: one’s gender identity may or may not be different from one’s sex assignment at birth, and likely influences one’s gender expression. Sexual identity (meaning attraction or lack of attraction to romantic partners) is different from gender identity (how one identifies with one gender or another). For further clarification and definitions see Princeton’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center’s Gender & Sexuality Educational Materials , such as “Understanding Gender,” “What is Gender?” , and “ The Language of Gender. ”

Important acronyms include: transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) students, LGBT and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer)--scholars and activists encourage educators to recognize the differences and distinctions in identities, and the serious risks that TGNC students face (especially those who are students of color).

Key Resources:

di Bartolo, Adriana. " Is There a Difference? The Impact of Campus Climate on Sexual Minority and Gender Minority Students' Levels of Outness ." 2013. Claremont Graduate University, PhD Dissertation.
Goldberg, Abbie E., Genny Beemyn, and JuliAnna Z. Smith. “What Is Needed, What Is Valued: Trans Students’ Perspectives on Trans-Inclusive Policies and Practices in Higher Education.” Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation , vol. 29, no. 1, 2019, pp. 27-67.
Levin, Rachel N. “ The Problem with Pronouns .” Inside Higher Ed , September 18, 2018.
Woodford, Michael R. and Alex Kulick. “Academic and Social Integration on Campus Among Sexual Minority Students: The Impacts of Psychological and Experiential Campus Climate.” American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 55, 2015, pp. 13–24.

Income Inequality

As Princeton and other universities expand their efforts to diversify their student bodies, they have turned their focus to first-generation college students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Resulting in large part from changes made in 1998 to financial aid policies , Princeton has seen a significant increase in the number of students from low income families: “ Although less than half of undergraduates were on financial aid throughout the 20th century, nearly two thirds of them were by 2010 .” To increase the diversity of their campuses, universities must make themselves accessible to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet the legacy of wealth at institutions of higher education doesn’t disappear when these students come to campus. In their book, Paying for the Party , Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton argue that “students from similar class backgrounds share financial, cultural, and social resources, as well as lived experiences, that shape their orientations to college and the agendas they can readily pursue” (10). For low income students on college campuses, the financial, cultural, and social orientations that shape the college experience are often so different from their own, that they experience “culture shock,” a lack of ownership over the college experience, and what Anthony Jack in calls Assimilation Blues, a “feeling of alienation that poor people feel in places that are supposed to provide a way out of poverty” (53).

Creating inclusive cultures for economically disadvantaged students on college campuses requires widespread cultural shifts and additional institutional support, and Princeton has taken significant steps to ease the transition to Princeton for low income and first generation students. In 2015, Princeton created the Scholars Institute Fellows Program to support first generation and low income students at Princeton. The program runs an intensive summer program for incoming freshmen (the Freshman Scholars Institute ) that introduces students to campus resources, creates robust communities and social supports, and introduces key skills in advance of the school year in addition to providing ongoing support. In addition to these institutional programs, there are several things faculty can do to decrease the barriers low income students experience in the classroom.

In his book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students , Anthony Jack gives several suggestions of things to keep in mind when striving to create an inclusive environment for low income students. He suggests that faculty introduce students to the resources on campus and encourage them to take advantage of these opportunities. College is not a “golden ticket” out of poverty, and making the most out of the experience is essential. “Too often we think about those youth who make it out of distressed communities and into college–especially elite colleges–as having already won” (189). However, it is critical to remember that leaving poverty can be an emotionally taxing experience for students. Being admitted to an elite college does not mean that students can or will take advantage of all the resources they have access to on campus. Jack also reminds faculty of the importance of encouraging students' feeling of belonging since feelings of exclusion may extend beyond the college setting. “If students believe that the college recruited them, promised them an academically challenging yet socially enriching experience, and then intentionally made them feel like outsiders when they arrived,” they may opt out of the very professions and post-graduate opportunities that can facilitate their upward mobility (192). Creating inclusive environments in the classroom can go a long way to communicate to low income students that elite opportunities are indeed for people “like them.”

Armstrong, Elizabeth A. and Laura T. Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard UP, 2013.
Jack, Anthony. The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students . Harvard UP, 2019.

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October 12, 2022

Tips for Answering the Princeton University Supplemental Essay Prompts [2022 – 2023]

Princeton University Supplemental Essay Tips

It will come as no surprise that Princeton University is among the top schools in the nation and is recognized globally for academic excellence. This Ivy League school is renowned as a major research university as well as an outstanding liberal arts college. In addition to the Common Application, Universal College Application or Coalition Application essay, Princeton also requires supplemental writing responses. These additional essays help the admissions committee to understand your particular strengths and potential contributions to the Princeton community comprehensively. Princeton prides itself on the diversity of talents, achievements, perspectives, and interests of its student body. At the same time, it is looking for a freshman class that shares the following qualities: “integrity, a deep interest in learning and a devotion to both academic and non-academic pursuits.” Think about how you can contribute to Princeton as well as how Princeton can support your aspirations.

The best way to begin is by doing your research. Spend time looking over the Princeton website, get to know what current undergraduates are saying about the school, familiarize yourself with the various majors, and imagine yourself there. If possible, visit the campus (virtually), allow yourself to get excited about this opportunity, and make every effort to gain a sense of why Princeton is the ideal academic environment for you!

Get a free consultation: Click here to schedule a call to find out how our admissions experts can help YOU get accepted to Princeton!

Located in a suburban setting, Princeton is primarily a residential campus with a strong liberal arts focus. Its residential college structure, freshman seminars, and preceptorial system support the tight-knit student community. These are hallmarks of an education at Princeton and demonstrate the university’s commitment to student-centered learning within the context of a diverse student body, faculty, and staff.

Remember to allow your writing to express your voice as you address the following Princeton supplemental questions; consider how your responses reveal your intellectual curiosity, passion for learning, and engagement with the world.

Princeton University supplemental application prompts

Princeton university short essay questions.

Briefly elaborate on an activity, organization, work experience, or hobby that has been particularly meaningful to you. (Please respond in about 150 words)

It’s very common for students to talk about their experiences in general terms, but you will stand out by telling real stories that will reveal (at least very briefly) not only what you did but what you learned as a result. For example, while earning leadership badges with the Girl Scouts, you could write about how you took on a leadership role by organizing a community tree-planting initiative or mental health awareness program. Explain why that role was meaningful to you. Or you may have needed to take on additional responsibility at a job that required a lot of creativity. If you have played guitar or have been writing poetry for several years, how have these hobbies shaped you? What do these experiences reveal about your character and values?

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Please respond to each question in an essay of 250 words or fewer.

1. At Princeton, we value diverse perspectives and the ability to have respectful dialogue about difficult issues. Share a time when you had a conversation with a person or a group of people about a difficult topic. What insight did you gain, and how would you incorporate that knowledge into your thinking in the future?

Here, you might want to emphasize two things: how this conversation influenced your thinking (e.g., your long-held beliefs were challenged and opened your eyes to a new perspective); and secondly, how the conversation remained respectful (e.g., you were tempted to raise your voice or walk out but did not). What will you do to ensure that you can continue having hard but respectful exchanges in the future? Finally, be sure to say something about why these hard conversations are nonetheless important– Princeton clearly wants its students to be having them! Read: 7 Simple Steps to Writing an Excellent Diversity Essay

2. Princeton has a longstanding commitment to service and civic engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals.

Think about your involvement thus far in service and civic engagement. What have you done to help others; to serve your country; to volunteer your time? Then , research what Princeton students do to stay civically engaged. Given your background, how would you contribute to those things already in place at Princeton? How might you add to or improve what already exists?

More About You

Please respond to each question in 50 words or fewer. There are no right or wrong answers. Be yourself!

Note: In this section, make sure to include both the “what” and the “why”– for example, “What brings me joy is X because of Y.” Your task is both to describe and to explain, to show logical and articulate thinking.

– What is a new skill you would like to learn in college? – What brings you joy? – What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?

Final thoughts on applying to Princeton

Each of these essay prompts ask you to share something personal about yourself, discuss how an experience impacted you, and explain how you make sense of your world . They ask you to articulate your values and provide insight into your thinking process. They want you to reveal how you evaluate information and make decisions. Select the themed essay topic that strikes a cord with you. Make sure to convey your enthusiasm for that subject and for Princeton.

Princeton has a highly competitive and impressive applicant pool. It received tens of thousands of undergraduate applications for the class of 2026. Only 1,500 were offered admission. Add to that average SAT scores above 1500, and average ACT scores around 33, and you get a better sense of the level of competition. However, keep in mind that Princeton is committed to a holistic approach to the admissions process. This means they use your essay responses to round out the picture of you as a prospective student. The supplemental essays are your chance to share valuable information about yourself and differentiate yourself from your peers. In your essays, you can demonstrate that you belong at Princeton!

If you’re applying to Princeton University, you already know you’re up against tight competition. Don’t be overwhelmed. Get the guidance of an experienced admissions specialist who will help you stand out from the highly competitive applicant pool so you can apply with confidence, and get accepted! Click here to get started!

Related Resources:

5 Fatal Flaws to Avoid in Your College Application Essays , a free guide
How to Project Professionalism, Positivity, and Confidence in Your Statement of Purpose
Different Dimensions of Diversity , a podcast episode

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Extracurriculars.

10 Stellar Princeton University Essay Examples

What’s covered:.

Essays 1-2: Why This Major
Essay 3: Extracurricular
Essay 4: Difficult Topic
Essays 5-7: Civic Engagement
Essays 8-10: Quotation and Values
Where to Get Your Essay Edited for Free

Princeton University is consistently ranked within the top three colleges in the nation, and is world-renowned for its quality of education. Admissions is extremely selective, with an acceptance rate dropping lower every year. Since most applicants will have a strong academic profile, writing interesting and engaging essays is essential to standing out.

In this post, we’ll share Princeton essay examples that real students have submitted to give you a better idea of what makes a strong essay. We will also explain what each essay did well and where they could improve.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized.

Read our Princeton essay breakdown to get a comprehensive overview of this year’s supplemental prompts.

Essay Example #1: Why This Major

Prompt: If you are interested in pursuing a B.S.E. (Bachelor of Science in Engineering) degree, please write a 300-500 word essay describing why you are interested in studying engineering, any experiences in or exposure to engineering you have had, and how you think the programs in engineering offered at Princeton suit your particular interests. (300-500 words)

In 7th grade, I was assigned a research project. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this project would end up sparking an interest which would guide me throughout the rest of my public school career. The project was simple: using Google and other resources, I had to find a potential career I’d be interested in pursuing later in life. Being a naive 7th grader, I had virtually no idea where to start. I knew I had a strong preference for STEM, but as to which area of STEM to pursue, I was clueless. After looking at a myriad of other careers, I finally came across aerospace engineering.

At first, I was intrigued by the name. I remember thinking that it sounded awesome, and I was compelled to learn more. Fast forward a few days and many hours of research, and aerospace engineering stole my heart. When I got to high school, I took all of the classes my school offered that would be beneficial for an aerospace engineer. AP Physics, Multivariable Calculus, PLTW engineering courses, and countless others made the list, and all the while my desire to become an aerospace engineer intensified. I joined numerous STEM clubs to nurture this interest, and in doing so I not only became a better engineer, but also a better person. I also began looking into outstanding aerospace colleges, and Princeton made the very top of my list.

When I look back on it now, I’m not surprised that aerospace engineering is what called to me in that project. In fact, I’ve been fascinated with planes and rockets since a very young age! I would often build models out of LEGOs, and there are numerous times I spent way too many hours playing Kerbal Space Program. When I discovered there was a career dedicated to those parts of my personality, it makes sense that I’d be drawn to it. I find it fascinating that just by using the arsenals of math and science, we can fabricate every tool needed to explore and catalog the cosmos. If that isn’t powerful, I don’t know what is.

Although aerospace engineering has been my main interest throughout high school, I’ve also felt a pull towards mechanical engineering and robotics. Princeton is unique in that it offers a joint major in mechanical AND aerospace engineering, which is something I haven’t seen at any other school. In addition, Princeton’s certificate program in Robotics and Intelligent Systems will allow me to pursue robotics in the context of aerospace engineering. In particular, if I am admitted to Princeton University, I would love to have the opportunity to conduct research in the Intelligent Robot Motion Lab. The IRoM-Lab’s focus on how robots function in complex environments safely and efficiently has me especially excited, and I’ve come up with a few ideas of my own to be pursued.

Engineering is the driving force behind progress in society, and I am willing to do everything I can to contribute to that progress.

What the Essay Did Well

This essay does a nice job of covering each aspect of the prompt. We learn why this student wants to study aerospace engineering, what steps they have taken to explore their interest in the subject, and how they will expand on their passion at Princeton. It’s important to make sure you touch on every part of the prompt, so going through each paragraph and finding where you address each question is a nice way to check when you are editing.

Another positive aspect of this essay is the open and conversational tone. It feels like the reader is having a casual discussion with this student about where their love for engineering came from and where they hope to go with it. Using phrases like “ f ast forward a few days, ” “ in fact, ” and “ awesome ” grounds the essay by being more informal. Although you’ve been told in school informality is a bad thing, in college essays it allows you to be more open and comfortable with the admissions officers reading your work and makes you seem more like a person, and less like an application.

Finally, this student did a good job of picking something about Princeton’s engineering program that is unique . Many students reference opportunities at a school that are widely available at other colleges as well, for example an aerospace engineering club. However, this student was very clear about why they are so attracted to Princeton’s program: “ Princeton is unique in that it offers a joint major in mechanical AND aerospace engineering, which is something I haven’t seen at any other school. ” This tells us that finding a joint program is something very important to this student and that they are applying to Princeton for more than the name and recognition—they genuinely value the unique offerings this school has!

What Could Be Improved

One thing this essay could work on is showing, not telling. They tell the reader “ aerospace engineering stole my heart ,” that joining STEM clubs made them a “ better engineer, but also a better person, ” and that they have “ felt a pull towards mechanical engineering and robotics, ” just to name a few.

What we don’t know is what about aerospace engineering stole their heart; was there a particular topic, a movie they watched, or some new revelation they had from studying it? What we don’t know is how they became a better person by joining STEM clubs; did they engineer a useful tool that became implemented in their school or community? What we don’t know is what about mechanical engineering and robotics excites them; was there a specific experience that influenced them or do certain emotions overtake them when they construct a robot.

If the essay used more active language and relied more heavily on placing the reader in stories, rather than recounting their takeaways from 17 years of experience, we would have answers to those questions posed above. It can sometimes feel like you need to summarize your life experiences to make everything fit in a college essay, but we promise that if you take the time to focus on individual anecdotes and the impact they had on you, your reader will take away so much more than if you gave them a rushed summary.

Table of contents

Essay Example #2: Why This Major

Prompt: As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your interests? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer)

The twang of the strings as the delicately strung horsehair bow grazes the steel strings, the enraptured sensation of my hand cramping as I write, and the feeling of connection as my hands dig deep into the damp earth as I nurture my plants. As an academic and most importantly a teen my interests are bilateral. My need for stimulation and innate inquisitive nature are reflected in my academic interests as well.

As I learned about the intricacies of cell biology and genetics I was enthralled. My love for understanding how the world and humans work from a scientific lens stem from my love for humanity. When I learned about CAS 9 CRISPR and the future of science I felt I had stumbled onto my passion. Furthermore, familiarizing myself with scientific ethicality, I knew this field was for me.

Princeton recognizes the importance of academics, and the humanities as do I. At Princeton I will take “Scientific Integrity in the Practice of Molecular Biology” where I will explore the conflict between innovation and morality. I can see myself appreciating the wonderful art around Princeton’s campus as I walk to my classes. I look forward to the exchange of knowledge at Princeternship where I will be able to spend time with well-versed individuals to further my knowledge.

Princeton’s acknowledgment of the arts and humanities align with mine and I am sure yearning for the arts will grow alongside my intellect; gaining enough knowledge to potentially change the world with CRISPR.

There are three important things that all students should do in their “Why This Major?” Essay : share how their academic interest developed, describe their reasoning and goals, and explain their school choice. While this student’s presentation needs improvement, they at least attempt to meet each of these requirements.

One good thing that this student does (that many students forget) is referencing the specific resources at Princeton — the class “Scientific Integrity in the Practice of Molecular Biology” and the resource of Princeternships.

What Could Be Improved

While this student attempts to satisfy the three requirements of a “Why This Major?” Essay , they have room to improve.

The first requirement is sharing how your academic interest developed. This student writes:

This would be more compelling if it was anchored by a story or anecdote. For example, they could begin with:

“You know how the Sorcerer’s Stone was awesome, but became super dangerous in the wrong hands?” I looked around and everyone was on the edge of their seats. “That’s CRISPR.”

I first learned about the revolutionary genome technology in my AP Biology class, and I must admit, I didn’t get it. Mrs. Gertry said it was powerful, but she didn’t say how. To make matters worse, when I stayed after class to ask how, she said “Honestly kid, I don’t fully get it myself. I just know the experts say that we are on a precipice of DNA advancement, and that’s exciting.”

Since that day, my excitement has steadily developed. It develops as I read The Scientific American blog under the covers each night. It develops as I walk to the UCLA research lab on Friday afternoons. And it will continue to develop until one day I become the expert that Mrs. Gertry told me about.

Relatedly, the current start to this essay — “The twang of the strings as the delicately strung horsehair bow grazes the steel strings, the enraptured sensation of my hand cramping as I write, and the feeling of connection as my hands dig deep into the damp earth as I nurture my plants” — is confusing, grammatically incorrect, and does not advance the student’s response to the question they are asked. This paragraph should be cut altogether.

The second requirement is describing your reasoning and goals. This student tells us that they want to “change the world with CRISPR.” Though this is more specific than simply changing the world, it is not specific enough. The student should outline more specific, tangible goals like:

Advancing treatment techniques for neurodegenerative patients
Improving early identification of viruses like COVID-19
Creating CRISPR-modified foods that are better for the human body and the environment
Developing an economically-viable procedure for biodiesel production

The third requirement is explaining your school choice. While this student references a few Princeton-specific resources, they also write “Princeton recognizes the importance of academics, and the humanities as do I” and “I can see myself appreciating the wonderful art around Princeton’s campus as I walk to my classes.” Every college is interested in academics and humanities and every college has art on campus. These superfluous comments take words away from topics that need more exploration.

Finally, this essay could use editing. Grammatical errors interrupt the flow and confuse the reader. For example, the first sentence we read is not actually a sentence, but rather a series of clauses, and there are multiple instances where the student is missing offsetting commas.

To avoid this issue, have friends, family, teachers, and peers read your essays before submitting them to your top schools. Spelling and grammar errors can make a student seem unmotivated, which is the last thing you want in college admissions.

Essay Example #3: Extracurricular Essay

Prompt: Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences that was particularly meaningful to you. (150 words)

Soft melodies float in the air, feathery sounds of consonance and dissonance create a cloud of harmonies I fall into each night. Born into a family of musicians, I began practicing the piano at four years old. Thirteen years later, I still look forward to sitting at the piano day after day, embarking on adventures to transform a monochrome score into a piece of art with color and dimension.

Although I relish the thrill of piano competitions and performances, the intellectual challenge that accompanies learning a piano piece in its entirety is an unmatchable experience. In light of the multitasking that musicians must master, the piano has first taught me discipline, that creating anything meaningful requires practice, patience, and persistence. But in the end, the many hours, days, and weeks practicing the piano are rewarded when I can share an emotional experience with others not by speaking, but through the movement of hands that make a piece come alive.

This essay starts on a euphoric high point, placing the student and reader in the midst of music all around them. The use of delicate diction like “ soft melodies ” and “ feathery sounds ” creates a sense of beauty and comfort, conveying this student’s attraction towards the piano without explicitly stating it. The student continues to use their mastery of language to make the essay come alive with phrase, “ transform a monochrome score into a piece of art with color and dimension.”

Another positive aspect of this essay is how the student includes the effect playing piano has on them. Admissions officers aren’t just asking this question to get a longer summary of your extracurriculars than the 100 characters in your activities section; they want to see your personal reflection on the meaning this activity has to you. How have you grown? How has this shaped your personality? What is your emotional response to participating in this activity?

This essay touches upon those ideas to bring more depth and color to their essay. This lends to a nice structural separation of the two ideas. In the first paragraph, we see the physical aspect of playing the piano and understand the sounds of it. The essay shifts from physical to emotional description in the second paragraph by detailing the practice and discipline they have developed through their years of playing. Having this clear contrast makes it easier to focus on each idea on its own, so when the reader finishes the essay, we can appreciate the activity for both of its components.

The second paragraph could use a more emotional backbone. The student tells us about how practicing piano taught them skills like discipline and how they enjoy sharing an “ emotional experience with others ” by playing. Other than that, the rest of the second paragraph doesn’t convey anything new about the student and their emotional relationship to the piano. A more impactful paragraph might look like this:

“ Words get lost on my tongue but my music, the melodic crescendos of those black and white keys, fills the silence. When sitting on that stool, practicing and perfecting for hours on end, I replay the warm smiles, the tear-streaked cheeks, and the shaky breaths I coax from my audience, connecting us in a way no conversation ever has. Those images have instilled more discipline in me than a drill sergeant’s whistle. Repeating the same three bars, I see my mom’s face as she hears my rendition of Clair de la Lune. Stretching my fingers to reach an octave, I hear my friends’ clapping as I finish Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I can’t count the hours I’ve spent alone with my piano. All I know is it’s worth every second when I get to play for others.”

This paragraph reveals the same two central tenets but brings infinitely more emotional impact. One of the ways it is able to do this is by showing, not telling. If this student had shown what it looks like to connect with others and practice endlessly, the essay would have revealed much more about the student and been more engaging to read.

Essay Example #4: Difficult Topic

Prompt: At Princeton, we value diverse perspectives and the ability to have respectful dialogue about difficult issues. Share a time when you had a conversation with a person or a group of people about a difficult topic. What insight did you gain, and how would you incorporate that knowledge into your thinking in the future? (350 words)

Superhero cinema is an oligopoly consisting of two prominent, towering brands: Marvel and DC. I’m a religious supporter of Marvel, but last year, I discovered my friend, Tom, was a DC fan. After a 20-minute vociferous quarrel about which was better, we decided to allocate one day to assemble coherent arguments and have a professional debate.

One week later, we both brought pages of notes, evidence cards, and I had my Iron-Man bobblehead for moral support. Our moderator – a Disney fan – sat in the middle with a stopwatch – open-policy style. I began the debate by discussing how Marvel accentuated the humanity of the storyline – such as Tony Stark’s transformation from an egotistical billionaire to a compassionate father – which drew in a broader audience because more people resonated with certain aspects of the characters. Tom rebutted this by capitalizing on how Deadpool was a duplicate of Deathstroke, Vision copied Red Tornado, and DC sold more comics than Marvel.

40 minutes later, we reached an impasse. We were out of cards, and we both made excellent points, so our moderator failed to declare a winner. Difficult conversations aren’t necessarily always the ones that make political headlines. Instead, a difficult discussion involves any topic with which we share an emotional connection. Over the years, I became so emotionally invested in Marvel that my mind erected an impenetrable shield, blocking out all other possibilities. Even today, we haven’t decided which franchise was better, but I realized that I was undermining DC for no reason apart from ignorance.

The inevitability of diversity suggests that it is our responsibility to understand the other person and what they believe. We may not always experience a change in opinions, but we can grant ourselves the opportunity to expand our global perspective. At Princeton, I will continue this adventure to increase my awareness as a superhero aficionado, activist, and student by engaging in conversations that require me to think beyond what I believe and viewing the world from others’ perspectives.

And yes, Tom is still my friend.

Diversity doesn’t always have to be about culture or heritage; diversity exists all around us, even in comics. The genius of this essay lies in the way the student flipped the traditional diversity prompt on its head and instead discussed their diverse perspective on a topic they are passionate about. If you don’t have a cultural connection you are compelled to write about, this is a clever approach to a diversity prompt—if it is handled appropriately.

While this student has a non-traditional topic, they still present it in a way that pays respect to the key aspects of a diversity essay: depicting their perspective and recognizing the importance of diverse views. Just as someone who is writing about a culture that is possibly unfamiliar to the reader, the student describes what makes Marvel and DC unique and important to them and their friend. They also expand on how a lack of diversity in superhero consumption led to them feeling ignorant and now makes them appreciate the need for diversity in all aspects of their life.

This student is unapologetically themselves in this essay which is ultimately why this unorthodox topic is able to work. They committed to their passion for Marvel by sharing analytical takes on characters and demonstrating how the franchise was so important to their identity it momentarily threatened a friendship. The inclusion of humor through their personal voice—referring to the argument as a professional debate and telling us the friendship lived on—contributes to the essay feeling deeply personal.

Choosing a nonconventional topic for a diversity essay requires extra care and attention to ensure you are still addressing the core of the prompt, but if you accomplish it successfully, it makes for an incredibly memorable essay that could easily set you apart!

While this is a great essay as is, the idea of diversity could have been addressed a little bit earlier in the piece to make it absolutely clear the student is writing about their diverse perspective. They position Marvel and DC as two behemoths in the superhero movie industry, but in the event their reader is unfamiliar with these two brands, there is little elaboration on the cultural impact each has on its fans.

To this student, Marvel is more than just a movie franchise; it’s a crucial part of their identity, just as someone’s race or religion might be. In order for the reader to fully understand the weight of their perspective, there should be further elaboration, towards the beginning, on how important Marvel is to this student. Maybe they found parallels between a struggle they were going through and a character, maybe seeing Marvel movies was a bonding activity with their father, or perhaps the escapism brings them a peace they can’t find anywhere else. Letting the reader in on whatever the reason is would bring more weight to the story.

Essay Example #5: Civic Engagement

Prompt: Princeton has a longstanding commitment to service and civic engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals. (250 words)

Many students had no choice but to engage in online learning during the pandemic. However, due to the nature of digital learning, many students have faced a gap in education that may take years to remedy. I am passionate about the importance of education. Everyone should have access to quality education regardless of race, zip code, or socioeconomic status. The cold facts are that while some students have access to resources that might lessen the effects of online learning, many do not. Through no fault of their own, students are held back from achieving their full potential. To help close this learning gap, my peers and I offered free tutoring during the pandemic. I taught math and reading to elementary and middle school students, concentrating on the African American community. From this experience, I was exposed to the deficiencies of the public school system and the consequent impact on its students. Nevertheless, I genuinely enjoyed my experience instructing those children. Their warm spirit, limitless energy, and ready minds are all characteristics that I wish to emulate. Due to my experience, I never take my education for granted and am forever grateful for the future it has helped me build. I hope I can work on the public education system and make it more accessible and profitable for the children it is supposed to serve and further give back to the community.

Essays with lower word counts require students to be focused in their answers. This student does a great job of choosing a specific issue — education access — and sticking to it. While they reference the intersections of race/education and wealth/education (which are important!) they do not get sidetracked from their overall focus.

They also provide evidence of their interest in education by mentioning their free tutoring initiative. This is important. Admissions officers read lots of essays where students claim interest in issues but do nothing to improve them. This student puts their money where their mouth is.

The main issue with this essay is that the writing style and structure are not engaging or personal.

For example, while you may not have space for a “hook” or introduction in a shorter response, your first sentences must draw the reader in. This student begins with stilted sentences that tell us nothing about them — neither their life experiences nor their personality. The first personal sentence that the student writes is “I am passionate about the importance of education,” which comes too late and is not written with personality.

Structurally, for a short Political/Global Issues Essay , we recommend that students focus on their personal connection to an issue rather than the issue itself. This student primarily discusses their issue — education access —, and when they do mention their own experiences, they fall into the unfortunate trap of telling instead of showing.

To remedy this, the student should pick an anecdote that shows their personal connection to education, then use it as an avenue for communicating their values to admissions officers.

This student’s anecdote could be:

Their experience with online learning during the pandemic
How they started their free tutoring program
A specific moment with a specific student while they were tutoring
Forecasting a moment in the future when they are continuing to prioritize education access

Essay Example #6: Civic Engagement

When I began my internship in my state’s Division of Human Rights, some family members scoffed upon hearing the nature of certain cases I dissected. To them, it was a malapportionment of time to heed race-based workplace discrimination when genocides were ongoing. To them, these government institutions reflected the weakness of modern western culture. Despite this deterrence, I stayed confident that preventing severe human rights violations begins with taking more minor instances seriously.

Exercising my critical thinking while putting justice into action was fulfilling regardless of a complaint’s validity — I dealt with companies firing employees upon discovering their illness diagnoses. I helped interview a woman claiming language harassment as an English speaker in a majority-Hispanic workplace. I accounted for factors such as respondents having attorneys (unlike complainants) when recommending determinations in the face of contradicting claims. I wasn’t discouraged when the same man called the office for the 10th time that day, shouting his demand that we process his case immediately.

Bureaucracy can cause waste, yet when I compare human rights protections in the Middle East and the United States, I realize that upholding ethics through the law is necessary for many sectors. The same elements that slow the processing of cases safeguard moral consistency, allowing genuine complaints to be separated from frivolous ones. When “insignificant” discrimination slips through the cracks, more severe violations ensue. At Princeton, I’d extend my work in regional human rights to a global scale, building a safer future for vulnerable populations in the Arab world.

This essay engages a simple yet effective structure. Within 12 words, the prompt has been answered. How has the student shown vivid engagement? Through their internship in their state’s Division of Human Rights.

But they don’t stop there. They humanize their experience accepting the internship by describing the backlash they received from their family. They help us understand the nature of their work by describing the people they interact with. And they forecast what their civic engagement will look like at Princeton. This structure is pulled off beautifully.

Additionally, the student’s moments of reflection do a great job of showing admissions officers their positive qualities:

THEY ARE THOUGHTFUL — This is seen as they recognize the importance of cumulative effects over time in the sentence “When “insignificant” discrimination slips through the cracks, more severe violations ensue.”
THEY ARE STRONG-WILLED — They do not let their family’s opinions shake their values and beliefs. They are invested in the cause of human rights, no matter the consequences in their personal life.
THEY ARE MATURE — They acknowledge that positives and negatives can exist at the same time, a mature concept. This is specifically seen in the sentence “The same elements that slow the processing of cases safeguard moral consistency, allowing genuine complaints to be separated from frivolous ones.”
THEY ARE MOTIVATED — This student has taken on an intense job at a very young age. They are a hard worker, motivated, and willing to go above and beyond.

In a short essay, it is important to cut the fat. Every word should be intentional and any phrases that do not contribute to the essay should be cut. The main issue with this essay is that the student keeps a lot of fat.

For example, the sentence “Exercising my critical thinking while putting justice into action was fulfilling regardless of a complaint’s validity” can become “Exercising my critical thinking was fulfilling, regardless of a complaint’s validity.” The tighter version does not change the meaning of the sentence and helps the essay flow better.

The student also writes “when I compare human rights protections in the Middle East and the United States, I realize that upholding ethics through the law is necessary for many sectors .” The phrase “through the law” is fluff and the lack of precision about “many sectors” detracts from what the student is trying to say.

Read each sentence you write individually and make sure it makes perfect sense. Make sure it is clear, tight, and does not require extensive mental acrobatics to understand.

Secondly, while this student makes the wise decision to forecast their future, their forecasting should be more specific. They write “At Princeton, I’d extend my work in regional human rights to a global scale, building a safer future for vulnerable populations in the Arab world.”

Specific examples would make this forecasting more effective. This could look like:

At Princeton, I plan to continue my human rights work through PAJ organizations. As a vocal member of the Princeton Students for Immigration Empowerment, I will use my administrative skills and legal knowledge to help students acquire visas, housing, and support as quickly and easily as possible.

Essay Example #7: Civic Engagement

Since childhood, I have observed the adults of my life giving up their ideals due to financial struggle. My lawyer mother’s dream of justice was disrupted by the corrupt legal system revolving around bribery. My father’s architectural aspiration collapsed after his company’s bankruptcy. They wanted to contribute positively in society: my mother to protect the righteousness and fairness of the laws, and my father to creatively beautify the world surrounding him. Due to the constant pressure of satisfying the basic needs and the appeal of luxuries, they failed. They were not the only ones as illustrated by politicians whose words promise the people security yet their actions submit to corporations’ contributions. Thus, growing up, I chose to pursue money. Though it sounds like a disingenuous excuse for my own greed, I believe that studying finance and economics can exert positive changes on society because these disciplines are interwoven with industries and the well-being of individuals. Interning with a local financial service firm showed me the importance of financial security, which could produce a significant difference in more community involvement, philanthropy, and personal happiness, even among a small community. Whether it is improving financial literacy locally or addressing the wealth gap nationally, an understanding of money and its effects are necessary for meaningful changes to happen. Everyone seeks to solve world hunger, gender inequality, or climate change. Yet to each of these social problems exists an economic perspective that drives its entire operation to which I am committed to target.

One of the most important parts of writing a Political/Global Issues Essay , or a Civic Engagement Essay, is picking an issue close to your life. This student structures their essay around their family history, which helps the essay feel relatable.

The student humanizes themself by approaching their family history with vulnerability. They write about painful subjects — dreams being broken and hopes being let down — honestly, admitting that their parents were motivated by a desire for luxury and by corporate incentives.

This student’s maturity also transfers to a larger scale. They have identified that capitalism rules the world at a very young age and are committed to working within the system with the ultimate goal of advancing service and philanthropy.

Though this may be a polarizing approach to capitalism, the student addresses it in a non-polarizing way. They position their desire to work in finance as motivated by the greater good. Lots of young people don’t have complex opinions on politics and the economy so, at the very least, this student showed that they have thought about the confines of capitalism and have an opinion.

A few changes could make this essay less confusing.

One simple but important change would be adding a paragraph break to separate the student’s discussion of their family history and their discussion of their life plans. This would help the essay flow better.

The break would occur before “Though it sounds like a disingenuous…” and would turn the preceding sentence — “Thus, growing up, I chose to pursue money” — into a transitional sentence, smoothly carrying us from the student’s childhood to their present life.

Second, as the student discusses their family history, they could more clearly communicate the facts of the story. For example, after reading the sentence “My lawyer mother’s dream of justice was disrupted by the corrupt legal system revolving around bribery,” we can’t tell if the writer’s mother was implicated in a scandal, if someone attempted to bribe her, or if she was disillusioned when she saw the success of a bribe. With tighter writing, we would have fewer questions.

Additionally, if we knew the details of the parents’ stories, the summarizing sentence “Due to the constant pressure of satisfying the basic needs and the appeal of luxuries, they failed” would be more effective.

Lastly, because the connection between this student’s essay and civic engagement is looser than we’ve seen in other examples, it would benefit them to emphasize “civic engagement” at the end of the essay.

The student writes:

Whether it is improving financial literacy locally or addressing the wealth gap nationally, an understanding of money and its effects are necessary for meaningful changes to happen. Everyone seeks to solve world hunger, gender inequality, or climate change. Yet to each of these social problems exists an economic perspective that drives its entire operation to which I am committed to target.

Instead, they could write:

While everyone seeks to solve world hunger, gender inequality, and climate change, most people fail to recognize that understanding money must come first. For civic engagement to be effective, it has to be financially informed.

Essay Example #8: Quotation and Values

Prompt: Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title and author at the beginning of your essay. (250-650 words)

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Afternoon on a Hill” (Renascence and Other Poems, 1917)

My teenage rebellion started at age twelve. Though not yet technically a teenager, I dedicated myself to the cause: I wore tee shirts with bands on them that made my parents cringe, shopped exclusively at stores with eyebrow- pierced employees, and met every comforting idea the world offered me with hostility. Darkness was in my soul! Happiness was a construct meant for sheep! Optimism was for fools! My cynicism was a product of a world that gave birth to the War in Afghanistan around the same time it gave birth to me , that shot and killed my peers in school, that irreversibly melted ice caps and polluted oceans and destroyed forests.

I was angry. I fought with my parents, my peers, and strangers. It was me versus the world.

However, there’s a fundamental flaw in perpetual antagonism: it’s exhausting. My personal relationships suffered as my cynicism turned friends and family into bad guys in my eyes. As I kept up the fight, I found myself always tired, emotionally and physically. The tipping point came one morning standing at the bathroom sink before school. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the tired, sad girl that looked back with pallid skin and purple eye bags. That morning, I found my mother and cried in her arms. I decided that the fight was over.

I took a break from fighting. I let go of my constant anger about global problems by first focusing on the local ones that I could do something about, and then learning to do things not because they fixed a problem, but for the simple joy of trying. I apologized to friends that I wronged previously, said yes when my mom asked me to go grocery shopping with her, and spent afternoons alone in the park, just reading. I baked brownies in the kitchen because it made me happy. I slept in on weekends when I could, but I also made an effort to get out of bed and move. I made an effort to be nice-optimistic, even-with the people around me, but more importantly, I made an effort to be nice to myself.

After a period of self-care, the fight in me recharged, but this time I didn’t rush to spend it in anger. Now, it’s a tool I use wisely. I’ve channeled it into tangible causes: I don’t want the feeling of loneliness and anger to fester inside of anybody else, so I work with school administration to create community-building events for my senior class. From being the first to implement a class messaging system to starting a collaborative playlist with all 800 of my peers, I’ve turned my energy into positive change in my community.

I’ve still got a few more years of teenage angst in me, but the meaning of my rebellion has changed. It’s not about responding to a world that’s wronged me with defiance, anger, and cynicism, but about being kind to myself and finding beauty in the world so that I can stay charged and fight for the real things that matter.

I’ve realized that the world is my afternoon on a hill, full of sunlight and optimism if only I can see them. Now, I am the gladdest thing under the sun! I can be vulnerable and open, and I can show my passion to the world through love. I will touch a hundred flowers, seize a hundred opportunities, and love a hundred things. I will not pick just one.

This essay does a really nice job of providing an overview of this student’s personality and how it came to be. The reader sees clear growth in the student as they progress through the essay. They weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, sharing details about feeling exhausted and lonely, which helped build empathy for the journey of self-discovery and reflection they’ve been on. Understanding their past personality allows readers to understand how confronting that personality formed their new, positive outlook on life.

There was a noticeable shift in the tone from the first paragraph to the second that brought the vulnerability with it. The beginning reads as a funny anecdote where the stereotype of a moody teenager is established. What the reader doesn’t expect is the sharp turn towards discussing the emotional impact of being a moody teenager. The tone shift subverts the reader’s expectations by surprising them with deep, personal reflection that makes them read the rest of the essay with more empathy.

This essay really captures the student’s outlook on life in different stages of their development, which provides so much insight to the admissions officers reading it. They reveal so much about themselves by continuously focusing the essay on how their internal feelings dictated their external actions.

One thing this essay could have done better was work the quote into the piece as a whole. The essay had a great story, but it was difficult to piece together how the story was connected to the quote until the student explicitly explained it in the last paragraph. It would’ve been helpful to keep the theme of the quote running through the entire essay so the reader could draw a connection. For example, using metaphors of sunshine and flowers throughout the piece would have called attention back to the quote and reminded the reader of why this quote is so important.

Essay Example #9: Quotation and Values

“One of the great challenges of our time is that the disparities we face today have more complex causes and point less straightforwardly to solutions.”

– Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics, Princeton University. This quote is taken from Professor Wasow’s January 2014 speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Princeton University .

The air is crisp and cool, nipping at my ears as I walk under a curtain of darkness that drapes over the sky, starless. It is a Friday night in downtown Corpus Christi, a rare moment of peace in my home city filled with the laughter of strangers and colorful lights of street vendors. But I cannot focus.

My feet stride quickly down the sidewalk, my hand grasps on to the pepper spray my parents gifted me for my sixteenth birthday. My eyes ignore the surrounding city life, focusing instead on a pair of tall figures walking in my direction. I mentally ask myself if they turned with me on the last street corner. I do not remember, so I pick up the pace again. All the while, my mind runs over stories of young women being assaulted, kidnapped, and raped on the street. I remember my mother’s voice reminding me to keep my chin up, back straight, eyes and ears alert.

At a young age, I learned that harassment is a part of daily life for women. I fell victim to period-shaming when I was thirteen, received my first catcall when I was fourteen, and was nonconsensually grabbed by a man soliciting on the street when I was fifteen. For women, assault does not just happen to us— its gory details leave an imprint in our lives, infecting the way we perceive the world. And while movements such as the Women’s March and #MeToo have given victims of sexual violence a voice, harassment still manifests itself in the lives of millions of women across the nation. Symbolic gestures are important in spreading awareness but, upon learning that a surprising number of men are oblivious to the frequent harassment that women experience, I now realize that addressing this complex issue requires a deeper level of activism within our local communities.

Frustrated with incessant cases of harassment against women, I understood at sixteen years old that change necessitates action. During my junior year, I became an intern with a judge whose campaign for office focused on a need for domestic violence reform. This experience enabled me to engage in constructive dialogue with middle and high school students on how to prevent domestic violence. As I listened to young men uneasily admit their ignorance and young women bravely share their experiences in an effort to spread awareness, I learned that breaking down systems of inequity requires changing an entire culture. I once believed that the problem of harassment would dissipate after politicians and celebrities denounce inappropriate behavior to their global audience. But today, I see that effecting large-scale change comes from the “small” lessons we teach at home and in schools. Concerning women’s empowerment, the effects of Hollywood activism do not trickle down enough. Activism must also trickle up and it depends on our willingness to fight complacency.

Finding the solution to the long-lasting problem of violence against women is a work-in-progress, but it is a process that is persistently moving. In my life, for every uncomfortable conversation that I bridge, I make the world a bit more sensitive to the unspoken struggle that it is to be a woman. I am no longer passively waiting for others to let me live in a world where I can stand alone under the expanse of darkness on a city street, utterly alone and at peace. I, too, deserve the night sky.

There are many positives to this essay. To begin with, launching into the essay with multi sensory imagery in the anecdote was really effective at drawing the reader in. The audiovisual context (laughter, street vendors) keeps the scene alive and fully immerses the reader, while the internal narration illustrates how this student looks at the world. The contrast between the imagery of the external scene and the internal thoughts and feelings fully immerses the reader in the essay and alludes to the overarching theme of things being more complicated than they seem on the outside.

Another good thing this essay did was provide a personal account of this student’s experiences with harassment. This established their authority to speak on the topic and underscores their essay with authenticity. They then “zoom out” to provide relevant background information that supplies additional context for readers who might not be that familiar with the extent of the issue at hand. By relating their personal stories to the large-scale issue at hand, they simultaneously develop a personal connection while demonstrating an understanding of a serious global issue.

What really could’ve made or broken this essay was the quote the student chose. Allowing you to choose any quote, this is an extremely open-ended prompt which gives students the opportunity to write about whatever they choose. This student did an excellent job of picking a quote that isn’t well-known or significant, but fit perfectly into the narrative they were trying to express in this essay. The approach the student likely took with this prompt is figuring out what experience they wanted to discuss and finding a quote that fit, rather than picking a quote first. This approach made for an essay that existed independently from the quote and didn’t rely on it as a crutch.

All together, the essay feels cohesive with every part relating back to the overarching theme of diving deeper than the surface level of things. The student’s vulnerability and personal reflection throughout the essay helps carry the theme through each paragraph. Even the conclusion does a great job of circling back to the anecdote at the beginning, bringing the societal problem the student addressed back down to the personal level to remind the reader the student’s personal stake in the issue.

One potential criticism of this essay could stem from the ratio of background to active work. The author spends a lot of time setting up their personal connection and the global context of the issue; however, their essay could stand to gain from more content centered on their actual actions towards fighting harassment against women. They could discuss another small-scale discussion or project they led or elaborate more on their current inclusion. Dedicating two paragraphs to this rather than one gives admissions officers a better idea of their leadership skills and active role in fighting harassment.

Essay Example #10: Quotation and Values

“If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men . . . A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.”

Essay/Book: The Fountainhead Author: Ayn Rand —

The US Open.

My parents had asked me if I wanted to come along, and I agreed. We got there; we took pictures next to a giant tennis ball, bought some tennis rackets, and finally headed over to our seats. It was absolutely freezing–and as the match continued, the world around me got darker and darker. An open stadium, I could see the stars in the sky just as clearly as I could feel the cold seeping through my coat. Trying to forget about my discomfort, I gazed up at the stars and listened to the vaguely muffled sounds of grunts and balls hitting the court.

A million things ran through my head.

The persistent cold that I was trying to forget. The beauty of the twinkling lights in the sky. The vast emptiness of the world around me.

And, even as I pulled closer to my mom and dad, an abject feeling of loneliness settled over me, my isolation from the excitement of the crowd making itself apparent as I felt none of the frustration, disappointment, or adrenaline-fueled excitement that the crowd and the players were feeling–a million miles away from my surroundings, insignificant in this moment.

And, it dawned on me, I am. I am insignificant–we all are. Even the tennis players whom we so eagerly watch are only really significant for the few hours of their game–and, is that insignificance necessarily a bad thing? Why should I pursue significance–and essentially, recognition–throughout my life? Why do I feel the need to be recognized? Should I not just want to aid in world progress–whether that be dancing to promote emotional expression, or engineering to promote prosperity and scientific advancement?

I began to understand the futility of ambition revolving solely around world recognition. Why should the entire world know my name? Shouldn’t success be just knowing that I created something, something that helped someone or something somewhere, something that advanced the face of knowledge or innovation, regardless of whether I gained actual ‘credit’ for it?

Having changed my definition of success, I no longer search for significance. My absolute insignificance has never been clearer, clearing the way for me to discover myself in my passions, rather than discovering passions in the hope of gaining relevance. My success is no longer defined by the approval or recognition of anyone but myself, making my successes sweeter and my hard work more gratifying.

This leaves no bar on my dreams, no curb on my goals. I’m an aspiring engineer because I love how math and physics and purpose click together as you design and invent and innovate, how the electricity of passion sparks through my fingertips as I stay up late working on my model rockets and deriving simple harmonic equations. I’m a dancer because I love how the music and movements feel in my muscles and bones, how fiery adrenaline rushes through my veins when I am in the middle of a performance. I’m a hopeful social entrepreneur because I want to give purpose to my innovations; I’m a singer because I like to feel the vibrations of songs collecting in my throat; I’m a programmer because I like to ‘logic’ my way through problems. None of its for money, or for a prize, or for world recognition–because even that significance doesn’t last long. I’m insignificant, and whether or not I remain so–as long as I fulfill my own purpose and achieve my own goals–it makes no difference to me.

This essay has a strong opening that does an excellent job of setting the scene for the perspective shift this student is about to have. There is clearly a sense of the student’s indifference to attending through explaining the match was their parents’ idea, their focus on the freezing cold weather, and explaining how their mind drifted to think about anything but the match. Establishing how removed they were in the moment is a nice segway to their feeling of insignificance. Because we know how they weren’t able to appreciate a moment everyone around them hyped up and cherished, we better understand how they came to the conclusion they are insignificant.

Even once the student delves into philosophical questions about our purpose—a topic that it is easy to lose your readers on—we stay engaged because of their continued use of rhetorical questions. Especially when discussing more abstract topics in your essay, asking questions is a great tactic to help the reader see things from your perspective and break complex ideas down into more manageable chunks.

This essay concludes by telling us a lot about the student and their passions. The repetition of the phrase “ I’m a… ” creates a sense of continuity throughout their multiple identities and builds momentum for what’s to come. Not only do they reveal they are an engineer, a dancer, a singer, a programmer, and a social entrepreneur, but they also explain their reasoning and purpose for pursuing each of these passions. Sharing all of this student’s facets is a nice way to demonstrate to admissions officers that although they have a unique perspective on success, they are still an engaged and active member of their community.

There are a few ways this essay could be tightened up. The first would be to better incorporate the anecdote of the US Open throughout the rest of the essay. While there is nice set-up, the student basically abandons their story after they shift to talking about insignificance. Yes, the prompt asks for an experience that changed how you approached the world, but that experience should have more of an impact on you than just the location of your life-altering perspective shift. It would have been nice to see them grapple with how they differ from the US Open crowd who idolizes significance or even simply utilizing tennis metaphors to keep the theme going.

Another thing this essay needs to work on is being less vague. Take this sentence for example: “ Shouldn’t success be just knowing that I created something, something that helped someone or something somewhere, something that advanced the face of knowledge or innovation, regardless of whether I gained actual ‘credit’ for it?” That is wordy and reveals nothing about the student. They use a word containing “some” six times in a singular sentence—lazy writing! Although this is a particularly vague sentence, much of the essay focuses on the abstract idea of embracing insignificance without relating it personally to the student. Bringing in more concrete ideas and tangible thoughts or actions this student has to demonstrate their insignificance would leave a much stronger impression on the reader.

It’s also important to make sure your quote fits in perfectly with your essay. Since it’s the first thing your reader will see, it creates an immediate impression going into the story, but if it doesn’t obviously tie into your essay it will be forgotten by the time your reader finishes. This essay unfortunately lost the quote by the end because it wasn’t clearly connected to the essay. It possibly would have been better had they picked a quote about being insignificant, or even about staring up into the night sky and feeling alone, seeing as that was the moment that their perspective changed. Your quote doesn’t need to be moving and inspirational, it just needs to effortlessly align with your essay.

Where to Get Your Princeton Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Princeton essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Other Princeton Essay Resources

Princeton Essay Guide
How to Answer Princeton’s “More About You” Questions
How to Write the Princeton Civic Engagement Essay
How to Write the Princeton Diversity Essay
4 Example Hooks for Princeton’s Meaningful Activity Essay
How to Write the Meaningful Activity Essay for Princeton

Princeton University Essay Examples

Princeton essay examples – introduction .

Are you wondering how to write the Princeton supplemental essays? Then this Princeton essay guide is just what you need! In fact, we’ll look at six Princeton essay examples and provide a detailed breakdown of why these were Princeton essays that worked.

But before we dive into our Princeton supplemental essays examples, let’s learn more about Princeton University.

Princeton University

First, Princeton University is an elite private institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton is one of the Ivy League schools, founded in 1746. According to U.S. News , Princeton University is ranked #1 in National Universities.

Princeton is a highly competitive university with an acceptance rate of around 4% . The university also routinely makes the list of Best Colleges for many of their majors. Want to know how to get into Princeton? It’ll take much more than just a good test score . The key to gaining admission to Princeton is to make your Princeton supplemental essays shine .

Princeton essay guide

In this Princeton essay guide, we’ll explore that essential aspect of the Princeton application: the Princeton essay. We’ll highlight several Princeton supplemental essays examples and provide analysis on why these are Princeton essays that worked.

After reading through the Princeton supplemental essays examples, you’ll know exactly how to write Princeton supplemental essays! With strong essays, you have a better chance of beating that low Princeton acceptance rate.

How many essays does Princeton have?

Wondering how to get into Princeton? One of eight Ivy League schools , Princeton attracts top-tier applicants who have near-perfect GPA s and test scores . If you want to stand out from the crowd, you’ll need to focus on crafting strong essays.

We’ll give you more information on how to write Princeton supplemental essays later in this guide. Right now, let’s look at the Princeton requirements for essays.

Princeton supplemental essay requirements

In addition to the Common App essay , Princeton requests four supplemental essays, one graded written paper, and three short answer questions as part of the Princeton admissions requirements.

The purpose of the Princeton supplemental essays is to add another piece of the puzzle to your application by showcasing how your interests, passions, and goals match the college you hope to attend.

You’ll be able to review some Princeton essay examples from Princeton essays that worked later in this Princeton essay guide.

Princeton Essay Prompts

The current princeton essay prompts for the 2022-2023 princeton admissions cycle are listed below: .


“As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests?”	250 words	Required for A.B. Degree applicants or those who are undecided
“Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at Princeton. Include any of your experiences in or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the University suit your particular interests.”	250 words	Required for B.S.E. Degree applicants
“Briefly elaborate on an activity, organization work experience, or hobby that has been particularly meaningful to you.”	150 words	Required
“At Princeton, we value diverse perspectives and the ability to have respectful dialogue about difficult issues. Share a time when you had a conversation with a person or a group of people about a difficult topic. What insight did you gain, and how would you incorporate that knowledge into your thinking in the future?”	250 words	Required
“Princeton has a longstanding commitment to service and civic engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals.”	250 words	Required
“What is a new skill you would like to learn in college?”	50 words	Required
“What brings you joy?”	50 words	Required
“What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?”	50 words	Required

Prompts are subject to change

These are the most recent Princeton essay prompts. However, these Princeton essay prompts might change for next year’s Princeton admissions season. Before you start writing your own essays, verify which Princeton essay prompts Princeton admissions requires for your Princeton application.

Aside from the Princeton essays above, you must submit a graded written paper as part of your Princeton application. Princeton admissions officers use the graded written paper to assess an applicant’s “written expression in an academic setting.” We’ll discuss this aspect of the Princeton requirements in-depth later in this article.

You might notice that some of the Princeton essay examples below may not reflect the current Princeton essay prompts. That’s okay! The Princeton essay examples we’ve highlighted can still be valuable tools to help you write your own college essays. So, read on!

How often do Princeton essays change?

If you’re starting your research on how to get into Princeton early, you might be curious whether the Princeton essay prompts will change by the time you’re ready to submit your Princeton application.

Many colleges changed their admission requirements because of the pandemic, like the new test-optional policy. So, how often do the Princeton essays change? It depends. A Princeton supplemental essay that was required two years ago might no longer be required.

The Princeton requirements are usually published online in mid-summer for the upcoming admissions season. Before you start writing your Princeton essay, be sure to verify which prompts are listed as part of the Princeton requirements.

Princeton Essay Examples – Short Essay #1

Now that we know more about Princeton’s essay requirements, let’s look at some Princeton supplemental essays examples. The first prompt for the Princeton essay examples asks you to describe how you have spent the last two summer breaks from school.

With only 150 words for your response, you’ll want to get straight to the point. Even if your summers were jam-packed with activities, it’s best to select one thing to talk about (for each summer break) so that you can provide a rich description full of specific details.

The Princeton essay examples you’re about to see are not a reflection of the current essay prompts. However, they are examples of Princeton essays that worked and should be viewed as a guide on how to write a successful essay.

Keep this in mind as we review two Princeton essay examples for this prompt and explain the reasons why these are Princeton essays that worked.

Princeton Essay Examples #1

During the summer after my Sophomore year, my father was laid off from work and money was tight for my family, so I was limited in what I could do. I dedicated myself to teaching my four-year old sister, and we developed a very strong bond. I taught her to read, sounding out letters and guiding her small hand in writing them. I held the handlebars as she pedalled her first two-wheeler, picking her up every time she fell.

During the summer after my Junior year, I was accepted into the Summer Science Program in Biochemistry at a major university. At SSP, I was immersed into hours of intense lectures and lab sessions, but with some of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. I emerged with a stronger sense of the successes and failures involved in research and my unique place in the vast science research field.

Why this essay worked

This is an example of Princeton essays that worked for several reasons. First, the author anchors their response to the prompt by providing a detailed account of the activities they participated in each summer.

In the first part of the response, the author gives insight into why they may not have as many extracurricular activities on their application – “my father was laid off from work…so I was limited in what I could do.” This part of the Princeton essay examples is exactly how you want to address any gaps in your resume or educational activities.

Another reason why this example is one of the Princeton essays that worked is that the author uses a description of the science program they attended to explain their academic interests . Doing so shows the admissions officer that they are committed to this field as a result of their experiences.

Let’s look at another version of the Princeton essay examples for this prompt.

Princeton Essay Examples #2

Last summer, I served as the leader for a Summer Reading program at my neighborhood library. Whether it is talking in different voices or victory celebrations after finishing a book, whenever I am with children, I find myself being pulled into their childhood world—a world of simplicity, of undying curiosity, and of pure innocence. It is a world in which if everything is not perfect, it definitely can be.

This summer, I learned more about the ever-changing world beyond Oregon through a program at Princeton University. The Institute was the first time I was asked to think critically, challenge my perspective, and coexist with others who brought a variety of experiences that I would not have encountered in my sheltered upbringing as a child of Vietnamese immigrants. I became more conscious of my biases through role-play simulations and debates on social issues facing the 21st Century.

The second sample in our Princeton essay examples is another fantastic instance of Princeton essays that worked well. In this response, the author describes the activity they participated in as well as how they were a leader in this role. You’ll want to do the same if you have also been in a leadership position like the author of this second essay from our Princeton essay examples.

Another reason this is an example of Princeton essays that worked is because the author mentions what they did and connected this experience to what they learned. This shows self-growth and interpersonal development, which are two key characteristics of a successful college student.

As we mentioned above, these two Princeton essay examples are not related to the current Princeton essay prompts. However, these Princeton essay examples are still useful and can help you as you write your own college essays , as they demonstrate clear and well-written responses in a unique voice.

In the next few sections, we’ll examine Princeton essay examples that are relevant to the current Princeton essay prompts.

Princeton Essay Examples – Short Essay #2

There are also two Princeton essay examples for the second essay prompt. This prompt asks you to elaborate on an extracurricular activity or work experience that was meaningful to you.

Like the Princeton supplemental essays examples above, this essay has a maximum of 150 words.

To write a successful essay, like the Princeton essays that worked below, you’ll want to choose an activity or experience that holds significance to you.

You’ll want to name the activity, describe what the activity is, and elaborate on what you do in that activity. Bonus points if you can also add why it is meaningful to you and/or what you learned because of this experience.

We’ll review two extracurricular activities essay examples below and explain why they are Princeton essays that worked.

Serving as a Student Government leader at my college has taught me the power of student voice and collaborative leadership. During my Junior year, I began attending Senate Meetings and was elected as a Senator a few months later. I began proposing solutions to problems my college faces, from lack of STEM programming to low voter turnout rates to poor multicultural outreach programs.

I created student committees to tackle these problems, the most recent being a committee working to bring a series of local STEM professionals for our artist-in-residence series. I was appointed as a student voice to faculty committees, such as the Diversity and Equity Committee.

I use this position to bring student concerns I hear from SG directly to the college board to catalyze changes in our college, such as the introduction of STEM cohort groups or providing resources for students of color.

In the first of the extracurricular activities essay examples, you’ll see that the author mentioned the extracurricular activity they participated in as well as their role within this activity.

This is an important step that most applicants forget to include within their responses. You don’t want to assume that your reader knows what your position was within your activity, even if it’s listed earlier in your application. By including the name of the activity as well as your role in it, it helps your reader understand the nature of your involvement.

Another strong aspect of this extracurricular activities essay examples is how the author describes their approach to identifying issues and proposing solutions. The author takes time to explain what they did in their position to make a change. This shows how they are a critical thinker and problem-solver. It also shows how they are good at advocating for others, which are essential skills to have in college .

You can learn a lot from the first response in our extracurricular activities essay examples. Most notably, this is one of the Princeton essay examples that shows rather than tells.

Let’s look at another version of the extracurricular activities essay examples.

After watching my grandfather suffer from heart ailments, it was particularly meaningful to have the opportunity to conduct echocardiography research with a pediatric cardiologist. During my summer internship at a major Health and Science University, I designed and built heart models to mimic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) disease and investigate strain comparisons in a 2D and 3D model.

Continuously designing and analyzing my own experiments has not only taught me the value of diligence, patience, and replication in the laboratory setting, but it has also instilled in me a profound respect for the biological intricacies that make life possible.

The critical-thinking and problem-solving skills I have honed through research will enable me to tackle difficult, and sometimes unknown, problems with sound reasoning and confidence as I serve the underrepresented to help eliminate health disparities.

Like the other samples in our Princeton essay examples collection, this response works for a number of reasons. First, the author explains why this was a meaningful activity to them. This provides the reader with the connection between the author’s personal experience and the extracurricular activity they chose to highlight.

Again, the author describes what they did in this activity as well as what they learned. What takes this response to the next level is that the author describes how they will use what they learned. They explain how this experience will help them to reach their future goals.

The Princeton supplemental essays examples above are perfect samples of how to respond to the extracurricular activities prompt.

In the next sections, we’ll look at Princeton supplemental essays examples for the long response prompt. Although, Princeton admissions no longer uses this prompt, the Princeton supplemental essays examples are still helpful guides . They can show you how to write an effective essay with a higher word count.

Princeton Supplemental Essay Examples – Long Response

We have two Princeton essay examples for the final prompt. As we mentioned above, some of the Princeton essay examples in this Princeton essay guide are from old prompts. This includes the Princeton essay examples below.

When you read the next two Princeton essay examples, you’ll notice that they are long responses at 650 words each. Again, these Princeton essay examples are from old prompts, and you no longer need to write a 650-word essay in addition to your Common App personal statement .

Even though these Princeton essay examples do not reflect the newest prompts, you can use them to guide you as your work on your own Princeton essays.

The prompt for the Princeton essay examples below asks the applicant to choose from a list of themes as a starting point and write about a person, event, or experience that defined their values or changed the way they approached the world.

We’ll provide the theme that the authors of these Princeton essay examples chose before we discuss why these are Princeton essays that worked.

“Culture is what presents us with the kinds of valuable things that can fill a life. And insofar as we can recognize the value in those things and make them part of our lives, our lives are meaningful.” – Gideon Rosen, Stuart Professor of Philosophy and chair, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University. (650 words)

“You’re too white.”

I stopped in my tracks in the middle of the mall parking lot, trying to comprehend the judgement that had been cast on me by my Arab girlfriends. Too white, my friend had said. I always knew that I didn’t fit perfectly into the mold of a Middle Eastern girl, but this was the first time I had been called too much of something.

I was raised by an Arab father and an Irish-American mother. Because my father was the ultimate authority in the household, his cultural values overruled my mother’s. I grew up learning how to prepare spreads of mansaf and dancing to Jordanian dabke songs on the Arabic channel.

I twirled in my Palestinian dress in front of the mirror and painted my eyes with kohl. I was submissive and complacent, seen but not heard. I learned how to be a good hostess and to act bubbly with my friends and guests. I learned the value of family and respect for elders. In short, I was the perfect Arab girl.

When I was sixteen, however, my mom, siblings, and I left my father and moved to a different state. My mom ran our household based on her cultural values, presenting an exhilarating amount of freedom. Instead of passing by American Eagle, I was allowed to buy a pair of distressed jeans. I ordered the number two at Burger King and danced to Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” at non-Arab parties. I talked back to my mom and stormed out of the house angrily.

I never felt the “whiteness,” as some would call it, creeping up on me. I never woke up and just decided “I’m more white than Arab.” I simply took on the values that my mom’s family and my new friends expected me to have.

However, I felt that at any given time, I was either Arab or white, never both. With my Arab friends, I was the Middle Eastern fashionista princess. With my non-Arab friends, I was the rebellious American teenager. Of course, neither of these stereotypes represented my true personality; I was trying to mold myself into the cookie cutters others had created for me, so it hurt to be called too much of one thing. My cultural identity was dependent on the people I was with.

After adjusting to my new life of freedom, I reevaluated how I defined my cultural identity. Why am I limiting myself in who I can be? I thought. Why am I allowing culture to define my identity? Why do I feel the need to force myself into certain stereotypes in my family’s cultures? Faced with these questions, I realized that rather than fitting myself into my cultures, I should make the cultures fit me. I appreciate my heritage and many of the values I was raised on, but I am more than my cultural background. My experiences shape the lens through which I view and assimilate my Arab and American cultures.

My anthropology teacher once said, “Culture is a social construction. It’s what we make it.” My culture is not a force that defines me; rather, it is a conglomeration of my heritage and values that influences and guides me. Looking in the mirror, I don’t see just an Arab-American teenage girl. I see a person grown from years of stories, sorrows, and joys. I see the values that my mother and father have taught me. I see the people that have touched me.

I see the lessons I’ve learned from my mistakes. You’re too white. I can scoff at this remark now, knowing it is nothing but a cultural tag society places on me. As I continue down this lifelong path of identity formation, I will remember to keep my heart open to the lessons I can learn from experiences to shape me into the person I want to see in the mirror.

This is the first of our Princeton supplemental essays examples that starts with a direct quote. This can be an effective way to pull your reader in.

What makes this response truly unique is how personal it is. The author shows who they were, who they are, and who they hope to be as a result of their culture. They paint a picture of what it’s like to grow up within two distinct cultures.

Additionally, the author addresses the values they had before and after they moved to a different state. By describing the shift in their values, they are addressing the part of the prompt that asks how they incorporate values into their lives to make them meaningful. Overall, this is a very strong essay!

Now let’s look at a different version of the Princeton supplemental essays examples. Please note that names of specific programs have been removed to preserve the writer’s anonymity.

“Princeton in the Nation’s Service” was the title of a speech given by Woodrow Wilson on the 150th anniversary of the University. It became the unofficial Princeton motto and was expanded for the University’s 250th anniversary to “Princeton in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations.” Woodrow Wilson, Princeton Class of 1879, served on the faculty and was Princeton’s president from 1902–1910. (500-650 word limit)

My seven-year-old cousin’s thirst for knowledge, as she meticulously traced letters of the alphabet into the sandy floor of her schoolroom in Vietnam, makes me wonder what would happen if her potential met optimal resources. My aunt has to tie strips of fabric onto public buses to know which ones to take home from the market because poverty prevented her from learning how to read.

These vivid memories after my family trip to Vietnam fuel my passion to return to my country to stimulate social change through empowering people to voice their needs in front of an audience of national legislators and international agencies. This will provide my cousin with the chance to put pen to paper and finally tell her stories. The hope that my aunt will be able to read the public buses’ destinations herself reassures me that the injustices in my country will be addressed with the presence of officials advocating for change.

During an intensive seven-week program at Princeton University, I examined the economic, technological, social, and environmental needs facing the globe in the 21st Century. Through state-of-the art innovative methodologies, such as role-play simulations, case studies, and presentations, I debated on topics ranging from the cycle of recidivism that fosters the prison industrial complex to the removal of people of color from 17th and 18th Century paintings in current academia.

These enriching dialogues at three in the morning allowed me to recognize that not only does my voice matter, but the voices of other underrepresented communities do as well. I learned that my leadership abilities are no longer confined by my skin color, gender, or social and economic standing.

More importantly, this program launched my continual pursuit of the core values—Excellence, Integrity, Compassion, and Community—to empower those voices that are underrepresented in my own communities: locally and internationally. I plan to employ these values and my Princeton education to impact the societal and environmental influences on health and well-being as a public health expert.

My interests in medicine, the human body, and social activism were magnified in this program because I began to recognize that my presence in Vietnam as a future public health expert will serve as a catalyst for change, inspiring my people to become assertive in their quest for aid in a way that giving a check never could.

With a world-class education from Princeton, I will explore my passion for service through conducting lectures on making access to healthcare a reality in developing nations at the annual Princeton-Fung Global Forum. I look forward to meeting with students and professors to learn and collaborate with the goal of collective global health leadership to become a more just and equitable society.

Returning to my birth country sparked my desire to bring justice and health care to those who are marginalized. My program at Princeton helped me realize that through activism and public health outreach, I can place a spotlight on the unheard voices in the developing world.

I often ask myself, is civic engagement the only catalyst for change or does one have to be in a position of power to create a more just and equal world? I am still wrestling with these questions as I strive to discover the right balance between making a contribution and raising awareness while maximizing the ultimate benefit to the recipients. Truly, I know that community service is for my cousin, aunt, and all the nations I seek to serve.

Like the Princeton supplemental essays examples above, this response works because it’s personal. In fact, the essay pulls you in with vivid descriptions of life in Vietnam. Then, the author connects that to the need for change and how they hope to achieve this change.

Another thing that works about this sample of the Princeton supplemental essays examples is that the author bridges each example in the essay to the prompt’s theme of service . They are able to explain their interests, passions, and future goals and how each of these are related to service.

The author also explicitly states how attending Princeton will help them reach their goals, which we haven’t seen yet in any of the Princeton supplemental essays examples above. This can be an effective tool to use in your own essays. You want to stand out from other applicants and show that you want to attend Princeton, which is what this essay does well.

Now that we’ve explored all our Princeton supplemental essays examples, let’s discuss how to write the Princeton supplemental essays.

How do you write the Princeton supplemental essays?

5 tips on how to write the princeton supplemental essays, 1. start early.

As we saw in the Princeton supplemental essays examples above, writing a strong essay takes time. You’ll want to begin your Princeton essay well in advance of the application deadline.

2. Brainstorm topics for your Princeton supplemental essays

Before you start writing, you’ll want to brainstorm potential topics for your Princeton supplemental essays. Read through the prompts and think about how you can use your essay topics to highlight different aspects of your identity, interests, or passions.

3. Focus on one experience

It might be tempting to write about everything that has happened to you since you started high school, but less is always more. Focus on one experience per essay and use your word count to provide rich details about that experience.

4. Be specific

Each of the Princeton supplemental essays examples did a great job of bringing specific details into their responses. As you are writing your own essays, incorporate specific points to help your essay stand out.

5. Edit your essays

Although it might be tempting to do so, don’t skip this important step! Sometimes it takes two to four rounds of edits before your essays are ready to submit. Ask a friend, teacher, or advisor for feedback, and edit your essays appropriately .

Princeton Admissions Requirements: The Graded Written Paper

As we mentioned above, the graded written paper is on the list of Princeton requirements for admission. So, you must submit a graded written paper as part of your Princeton application.

There are certain guidelines to consider as you select which graded written paper to submit along with your Princeton supplemental essay.

Your graded written paper must meet the following criteria:

Your paper should have been written for an academic course, preferably English, social studies, or history, during the last three years of high school (including senior year).
You may choose a paper, essay, research paper, or essay exam to send. However, it must be an example of expository writing only, not creative writing.
One to two pages in length.
Must include the course instructor’s grade and/or comments. If a grading rubric was used, please include this as well.

How to submit your graded written paper for Princeton

You can submit your graded written paper to the Princeton admissions office by choosing one of the following options:

Upload the paper alongside your Princeton application materials on the Common App or QuestBridge application.
Mail, email, or upload the graded written paper to your student portal.

Princeton admissions officers will review the graded written paper. They will use it to determine whether an applicant demonstrates the ability to perform well in Princeton’s rigorous academic environment.

Keep in mind that Princeton admissions is more interested in the quality of the writing, rather than the grade you received. We encourage you to submit a paper that demonstrates your best writing abilities, regardless of the grade.

Additional Princeton Resources

Need additional Princeton resources? Check out CollegeAdvisor’s How to Get into Princeton guide . In it, you’ll find more information on the Princeton supplemental essay, Princeton requirements, Princeton admissions, and more.

How to Get Into Princeton Guide

If you loved our Princeton essay examples and Princeton essays that worked, you can read more college essay examples here .

College Essay Examples: 10 Best Examples of College Essays and Why They Worked

Moreover, you can also watch our webinar to get an overview of common supplemental essay prompts .

Supplemental Essay Prompts Overview

Finally, to learn more about how to get into Princeton, watch our Princeton University panel .

Princeton University Panel

Princeton Essay Examples – Final Thoughts

Lastly, we hope our Princeton essay examples guide helped inspire you to begin writing your own Princeton essay. Even though the Princeton supplemental essays examples we included in this article might not reflect the current prompts, they are a good to reference as you write your college essays.

While you research how to write Princeton supplemental essays, you’ll want to pay particular attention to the Princeton essays that worked in this Princeton essay guide.

So, if you want personalized support as you strategize on how to get into Princeton, we can help. Register with CollegeAdvisor today to receive one-on-one guidance through the college application process.

Claire Babbs wrote this article. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.

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On the campus guest essay: princeton must lead in making dei reforms.

On Jan. 18, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 released his “State of the University” letter entitled “Excellence, Inclusivity, and Free Speech.” The core of his remarks defended the course that Princeton has steered in pursuit of excellence and ever-increasing inclusivity through many decades and into these turbulent times.

“America’s leading universities are more dedicated to scholarly excellence today than at any previous point in their history, and our commitment to inclusivity is essential to that excellence,” Eisgruber asserted.

He added a telling admission: “Promoting both free speech and inclusivity is a challenging task. There are, to be sure, times when we or others will make mistakes. When we do, we should strive to correct them and become better.” He continued: “Some critics instead seize on those examples as ammunition for an ideological assault.”

Was Eisgruber hinting at mistakes Princeton has made and a desire to find ways to have honest conversations about how to get this right?

A critic of higher education who featured prominently in Eisgruber’s letter is the columnist and political commentator Fareed Zakaria, and specifically Zakaria’s six-minute video essay that went viral after airing in December on his CNN program GPS .

Zakaria argues that Americans have lost faith in elite institutions due to a shift by universities from “centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas.” They have neglected a core focus on academic achievement to pursue agendas “clustered around diversity and inclusion.” The original diversity mission, which was to make sure young people of all backgrounds have access to higher education and are free of discriminatory harassment, “ha[s] morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit,” he said. The mushrooming DEI bureaucracies do not address the lack of political diversity, and this oversight, he argues, undermines efforts to allow for the kind of disputation that builds and sustains excellence.

The highly publicized December hearing in which House members questioned the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, Zakaria said, was “the inevitable result of decades of the politicization of universities … . They should abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning.”

In his letter, Eisgruber unequivocally rejects Zakaria’s critique and disparages those who share his concerns: “[O]nly dewey-eyed nostalgia, baleful ignorance, or an ideologically-driven determination to erase history” could imagine that the pursuit of excellence is in decline.

The 26 paragraphs devoted to free speech were no doubt intended to assure the Princeton community that Eisgruber is committed to Princeton’s principles that provide the foundation of free speech and academic freedom guarantees, even when such speech is unpopular, offensive, and hateful.

Princetonians for Free Speech, for which I am an executive committee member, collaborates with faculty, students, and alumni at Princeton and at other universities to foster dialogue around these issues, and many of those people on the ground report the reality is often different than what Eisgruber espouses.

A fundamental problem is the way DEI bureaucracies can flout free speech and academic freedom principles. Prominent individuals and institutions who represent a wide range of political positions have offered thoughtful suggestions for how to change course and correct the reputational damage wrought by such practices.

Steven Pinker has proposed a much-referenced five point plan to save Harvard from itself . The “Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry ” was created by faculty from Princeton and elsewhere. “A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania” has been signed by more than 2,000 faculty, alumni, parents, and others. The University of Chicago’s new center, the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression , was founded last year to address these disturbing trends. Heterodox Academy ’s membership includes 5,662 faculty, 24 of whom are from Princeton.

Two prominent Black voices directly tackle ways to radically reconstitute the diversity and inclusion mission. One is Danielle Allen ’93, a political theorist at Harvard. In “We’ve Lost our Way on Campus. Here’s how we can find our way back , ” published Dec. 10 by The Washington Post , Allen rejects the inflammatory rhetoric of “institutionalized racism” and “white supremacy” and suggests ways to “protect intellectual freedom and establish a culture of mutual respect at the same time.” And there is renowned Harvard economist Roland Fryer, in “DEI is Worth Saving from Its Excesses,” published in Jan. 22 by The Wall Street Journal . His extensive, data-driven work on education, inequality, and race jettisons objectionable DEI practices such as divisive training sessions and unequal treatment based on group identity and its stigmatizing impact, and defends those aspects of DEI that focus on developing and optimizing talent among disadvantaged people.

DEI as currently practiced is under intense scrutiny from many quarters. A course correction is underway. Can Princeton become part of the solution?

Leslie Spencer ’79 is vice-chair of Princetonians for Free Speech.

What Readers Are Saying

Wrestling with the free speech question.

A Taste for Diversity

Violette chamoun, campus dining, honorable mention, 2015-2016 staff essay contest.

Diversity: This profound word, with all it embodies, is an inevitable reality. It exists in almost every aspect of one’s life. Diversity, though, is a double-edged sword of similarities and differences in race, gender, culture, religion, language, ethnicity, age, and education. Some people embrace diversity by accepting the similarities and respecting the differences. Some simply fear difference and change.

Yet, above all, diversity is uniquely human. It is not a scientific phenomenon like hunger or cold. It manifests itself within individuals, and it is defined by a person’s interaction with and interpretation of the outside world. Diversity has traveled with many people from different parts of the world, settling in one town or another not knowing what challenges were awaiting them. Yet diversity, although we may attempt to affix a definition to it, has evolved. Diversity is not the same today as it was in the past for me: I have seen the world change into a more accepting place.

In late October of 1988, I landed at Newark Airport from Lebanon and was swiftly on my way to New Brunswick, New Jersey. I was fascinated by the Halloween and Thanksgiving Day decorations and festivities that left their mark on the lawns of townspeople and in shop windows. A week later, I celebrated Thanksgiving dinner—something completely new to me, as I was never asked to give thanks to the United States before. Yet I just loved it. That night, I learned what the holiday was about, and I was (and still am) grateful for being able to step foot in the land of opportunities and dreams.

Like every immigrant who wants to be able to communicate and interact with people, I had to go to school to learn English. Little did I know that I would have to keep correcting people mispronouncing my name to such an extent that I almost forgot the sound of my name myself! In 1988, I was a young girl with a French name and speaking Arabic that sounded “weird” and was hard for people to understand. I was an immigrant who was born and raised in the midst of the Middle Eastern war. To some people, this image was disconcerting. My country, Lebanon, was a strange name for Americans, as if it did not even exist on a world map. And for those who knew where Lebanon was on the globe, it certainly was not a good place in their minds. Yet despite the many practical challenges, my biggest challenge was to form and feel a sense of belonging without losing my identity. How could I reinvent myself without losing myself?

In February 2006, after I got a college degree, I applied to Princeton University for a job in the Campus Dining department. That day, I was so happy to hear the two people who interviewed me correctly pronounce my name when they called me into the room. It was a moment of self-recognition, and I said to myself, “Well, I guess I am at the right place.”

In my current job, I interact with students and faculty in the dining hall during meal services. In those interactions, students discovered that I speak Arabic. They were curious about my ethnicity and language, and occasionally have invited me to join them at the Arabic Language Table to practice. It was a place where I felt appreciated for both whom I was and whom I had become.

The beautiful memory of Lebanon and my home town of Beirut was also brought back to life at Princeton. Because of the negative reputation my country portrayed, I almost gave up identifying myself as Lebanese. However, I soon found myself saying it again with pride and confidence. I worked my first Reunion events at Rockefeller College as an event manager for the 45th Reunion, and it was a turning point in my diversity perceptions. While in the past Lebanon was perceived as a country of terror and conflict, Princeton alumni saw it as Paris in the Middle East. Princeton alumni were uniformly so compassionate to me. By showing me their appreciation for the good service they received at their events from the Campus Dining team, which is the most diverse department on campus, they made me realize that this is where I belong.

Twenty years ago, in 1995, my oldest son entered kindergarten. I can never forget what happened on the day when parents were invited to eat lunch with their kids in the classroom. I packed lunch for the two of us, and without giving it any thought, I made the traditional pita bread, ham, and cheese wrap. At the table next to my son was sitting a six-year-old girl who was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white toast. With a frown on her face, she looked at my son’s wrap and asked him, “What is this?” To which my son said, “This is a sandwich.” In an innocently obnoxious way the little girl said to my son, “What? That’s not a sandwich,” and she pointed to her sandwich in a gesture, saying, “This is a sandwich.” It was an embarrassing moment for both of us. My son’s face turned red, and he put his sandwich down and stopped eating. I explained to the little girl that we are not from New Jersey, that we come from another country and this is our bread: it is called pita. I offered her a piece to try, but, sadly, she shook her head, saying no thanks.

I felt guilty putting my son in an uncomfortable situation, and the girl probably thought we were aliens coming from another planet after she saw the bread and heard us speaking in another language. After that day, pita bread never left our house, and my son’s school lunch became peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was a sad moment. I realized that I had to raise my child to learn both the Lebanese and the American culture. Fortunately, this memorable incident turned out to be a rewarding one in 2010, when my son was hired at Chromocell Corporation, and he was asked to bring hummus dip and pita bread to the staff dinner because it was their favorite dish. We were happy and proud to see that a part of our culture was recognized and loved.

Here at Princeton, hummus, pita bread, and tabouli salad are on every menu and served at almost every salad bar in Campus Dining. The Mediterranean diet became the new topic of health and nutrition. Now, after all these years, I am proud to say that I work at a school where I can pass by the salad bar and see Lebanese food on the line and walk into the dining room and speak Arabic to some students and staff and share beautiful stories about my country. That is what makes someone like me feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. This is why I became an ambassador on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee on campus.

Diversity, with all its challenges, goes beyond physical ethnicity. It is a question of what makes someone the person he or she is. By simply living one may contribute to the world’s diversity, but what is even better is to be able to embrace and accept the differences around us.

Contact Info

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Phone: 609.258.9980

Email: [email protected]

Princeton University 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision:

Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 1

You Have:

Princeton University 2023-24 Application Essay Questions Explanation

The Requirements: 2 essays of 250 words, 1 essay of 500 words, 3 short responses

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Community , Why , Oddball

This is Princeton, the Number One university in the nation. Maybe you’ve heard of it? JK, we can smell the sweat on your palms from here. So first, take a breath. The Princeton supplement is extremely straightforward (perhaps too straightforward?) and your greatest challenge will be to refrain from overthinking it. Don’t intimidate yourself with visions of what you think admissions officers want to see on an application. Self-aggrandizing or downright false stories aren’t going to win anyone over. It’s the unique, specific details that only you can share that will set you apart and seal you in an admissions officer’s memory. Take this as your mantra: be yourself!

For A.B Degree Applicants or Those Who are Undecided:

To ace this question, you’ll need to articulate for admissions why a well-rounded liberal arts education is important to you. Do you think Princeton’s liberal arts curriculum will allow you to build upon your communication and problem solving skills, preparing you for a career in civil service? Maybe you think it will help you be more marketable once you enter the working world, preparing you to work in a variety of fields (which is especially helpful if you’re undecided). What classes are you dying to take? Which academic programs call to you and why? Demonstrate your interest in Princeton’s academic offerings (and liberal arts curriculum, for brownie points) and admissions is bound to be impressed!

For B.S.E Degree Applicants:

Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at princeton. include any of your experiences in or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the university suit your particular interests. (please respond in 250 words or fewer.).

You can get an engineering degree at thousands of schools across the country, so why are you so keen to study engineering at Princeton specifically? Remember that this isn’t set in stone, so don’t stress over your vision; just show that you’ve done your research. Maybe your sister regaled you with stories about her experience studying engineering at Princeton, and you knew you wanted the same experience for yourself. Maybe there is an alum who is doing what you aspire to do, and you want to follow in their footsteps! Does Princeton have a specific program that many other schools do not offer? Whatever it is that draws you to Princeton’s engineering program, make sure that, after reading your essay, admissions has a clear understanding of your interest and goals.

1. Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 500 words or fewer.)

Engaging others in meaningful conversations about important issues can be incredibly intimidating and challenging, and the Princeton admissions department knows this. That is, in part, why they are curious to learn how your lived experiences will impact the way you engage with others on campus. What has shaped you as a person and how has that made your perspective unique? What lessons have you learned and applied? What can you share with others? Is there anything you can teach your classmates or peers about your hometown, culture, religion, identity, race, or ethnicity that they might not already know? Admissions wants to know how your lived experiences will affect the conversations you have and the ways in which you contribute to the Princeton community. Tell admissions a story that demonstrates your investment in listening, learning, and connecting.

2. Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

Princeton wants to welcome motivated, socially aware students to campus next fall, so tell admissions about a time when you gave back to your community in a meaningful way. (Hint: your “community” can be as small as your neighborhood and as large as the entire world or even universe!) Maybe you’ve volunteered at your church’s food pantry every other weekend since you were in middle school or canvassed for political candidates that you believe will generate positive change for generations to come. Whatever your example(s) may be, don’t be afraid to touch on what those experiences meant to you (after all, you do have 250 words to work with!). And bonus points if you can connect your past service to the work you hope to do in the future.

More About You

Please respond to each question in 50 words or fewer. there are no right or wrong answers. be yourself, what is a new skill you would like to learn in college, what brings you joy , what song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment.

Do not, we repeat, do not overthink your responses to these questions. Admissions even goes so far as to say that there are no right or wrong answers. So, go with your gut. Maybe, in college, you’re hoping to learn how to speed read, or play frisbee, or even ride a bike! Perhaps you want to tell admissions about the look on your sister’s face everytime you agree to play dress-up with her (what brings you joy?). As for the song, we’d recommend keeping it clean, but other than that, let your freak flag fly. Are you currently listening to “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus on repeat? Or maybe “Ooh La La” by The Faces really resonates with you as you’re growing up and learning life’s tough lessons. Whatever it may be, be true to yourself and you’ll ace these short answers.

About Kat Stubing

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In Search of Tranquility: My Quest for Study Spots on Campus

July 7, 2024, ava adelaja.

Toward the end of my first semester at Princeton, I came to the harrowing conclusion that I could no longer study ( productively ) in my dorm room.

It was the beginning of the winter reading period — a week-long interval at the end of the semester devoted wholly to producing final essays and projects and, of course, studying. I had an eight-page Modern Fiction paper to crank out. But, sitting at my messy desk, with the temptation of my warm bed calling to me from two feet away, I found that I could not type a word of this essay. So, like a good student, I stashed away my study materials into my backpack, donned my massive winter coat, and prepared myself to brave the impossibly terrifying world outside of my dorm: campus during finals season.

Let me explain: campus is not actually impossibly terrifying during finals season. It’s actually very fun and welcoming. It’s just impossibly crowded. Every formerly tranquil space becomes the opposite — dotted with students who’ve emerged from their campus crevices, with their friendly study buddies and loud conversations. Because of this reality, during reading period, despite its name, I found it almost impossible to read, or focus, or write a paper in any public space on campus. But, as my dorm proved not to be any more of a productive setting, I was forced to go on a quest. A quest in search of a place of quiet — without distractions — and full of sunlight (because I cannot study without some encouraging light). My first stop was Chancellor Green.

A laptop and a half-eaten croissant on a library cubicle desk

In my opinion, Chancellor Green is one of the most gorgeous libraries on campus. It shares space with the building of East Pyne — home to many of Princeton’s language and humanities departments — and has more windows than I’ll ever have time to count. I love this library because of its light. Sunshine fills every corner of it. I also love it because of its private study cubicles. The Chancellor Green library has an upper level full of single study desks. After I failed to start my daunting essay in my dorm, I was sure that the omnipresent sunshine and solitude of Chancellor Green would be the perfect ingredients for my much-needed productivity. And I was right. Sitting by a large French window, surrounded by age-old books and alone, I cranked out 2/8 pages of my paper. But, as I tried to brave the third page, I was stuck. It seemed Chancellor Green’s well of reading period productivity had run dry for the day, so I, again, braved the outside world to seek out more.

A laptop, iPad, and soda cup on a gray library table

My journey and midday hunger brought me to Frist Campus Center — home to the Frist Food Gallery (a cafeteria-esque basement level filled with snacks, a grill, a taco bar, a pasta/salad bar, an Asian food bar, and more). After securing a cheeseburger and fries for encouragement, I settled into Frist’s third-floor McGraw Center library. There, fed and encouraged by some more sunlight, I knocked out two more pages of my paper. I was feeling great about my progress and my discovery of some campus tranquility. But then came the lunch rush. More hungry students, with friendly study buddies and loud conversations, filled my study spot. It was time to disembark, again.

A laptop, water bottle, and pencil pouch on a wooden table

My next stop was New South — a building home to Princeton’s Creative Writing Department, Princeton’s Writing Center, and many empty classrooms, just waiting to be taken advantage of. Unfortunately, upon my arrival, I discovered that other desperate students had nabbed all these classrooms. But, on the Creative Writing floor, I found an empty table with some gorgeous and encouraging overhead light to knock out the next page of my paper. At this point, I was halfway through and still feeling the momentum. As a reward for finishing another page, another student abandoned their rare gem of an empty classroom, and I promptly seized it. Here, with the gift of a blank whiteboard and a room entirely to myself, I was able to brainstorm the final pages of my paper, pacing back and forth, throwing out ideas aloud, and jotting down notes on the board. It was here that I completed the final three pages of my paper.

With this completion under my belt, I felt brave enough to brave the monster of all study spots on campus — Firestone Library. I needed one last place to do the final edits on my paper. And I also needed a change of scenery. Firestone Library is the monster of all study-spots during reading period. The library has six levels — all stocked with large clusters of cubicles and a plethora of reading rooms where silence is mandatory. It is the motherlode of tranquil study spaces on campus. But, for a first-year still acclimating to the study culture, finding the right spot can be a little daunting. On this day, however, I was ready.

A picture of a ceiling of windows with hanging lights

I sent the elevator to every floor, quietly and discreetly inspecting each reading room to see which one had the most encouraging sunlight and the least daunting amount of people. I landed on the C-floor Reading Room. Nestled behind the library’s Specials Collection section, the C-floor reading room has a ceiling of windows, so sunlight reaches every corner. It also seems the quietest of all the reading rooms — even during the reading period, many people seem to ignore it or forget that it exists. For me, it was the perfect place to conclude my beast of an essay. There, I completed the majority of edits for my paper, even added an aesthetically pleasing cover page, and called it a day. Throughout my spring semester, I often returned to the study spots I found on this day-long journey for tranquility, sunlight, and productivity. I’ve found that, usually, when I’m too deep into an assignment and unsure of what to write/do next, I just need to move. Having several go-to study spots on campus allows me to circulate, and not stay in one place mentally or physically.

A laptop, iPad, and water bottle on a library table

I’m grateful for the opportunity to study on a campus with such a plethora of tranquil, sunlit spaces to focus, and I look forward to the study-spot discoveries that my next three years at Princeton will bring.

Senior year bucket list, my mathey college experience, hidden spots on campus.

Andy Cofino is Campus Life's inaugural AVP for diversity, belonging and well-being

Andy Cofino

Andy Cofino has joined Princeton University as the inaugural assistant vice president for diversity, belonging and well-being in the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life , reporting to vice president W. Rochelle Calhoun.

Cofino brings over 15 years of diversity and inclusion experience to the University, notably serving from 2013-18 as the program coordinator at Princeton's LGBT Center (now part of the expanded Gender + Sexuality Resource Center ).

“This new position underscores Princeton’s commitment to cultivating a campus culture where every student feels valued and heard, and Andy’s exceptional background and commitment to creating inclusive and supportive environments makes him the ideal leader for this vital role,” says Calhoun. “We remain eager about the impactful work Andy will accomplish, driving forward initiatives that will benefit not only our students but the entire University community.”

As assistant vice president for diversity, belonging and well-being, Cofino is responsible for providing a vision and guidance for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the campus life division as well as contributing to the University's diversity initiatives.

“I’m thrilled to be back at Princeton and be able to provide support and leadership for diversity, belonging and well-being efforts across Campus Life and in collaborative initiatives across campus,” says Cofino. “Now that I’ve had time to meet with many students, staff and faculty, I’m excited to work with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) team to build a path forward during this critical and challenging time.”

Cofino returned to Princeton in January 2024 after working as the director of the LGBTQ Campus Resource Center and Volunteer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Alongside his impactful work at Princeton, he serves as a co-core member for transgender inclusion for the National Association of Student Affairs Administrators (NASPA) and on the board of trustees for Dorothea’s House, an Italian American cultural institution in Princeton.

Cofino earned a bachelor’s degree in women’s and gender studies from Pace University and a master’s degree in LGBTQ studies, social justice and creative writing at New York University. He is currently completing an MBA at the Anderson School of Management, UCLA.

Center for gender and sexuality ushers in a new era of support for women and LGBTQIA+ students at Princeton .

A new center for gender and sexuality at Princeton University will launch in the fall 2021.

LaTanya Buck named dean for diversity and inclusion .

LaTanya Buck, founding director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Washington University in St. Louis, will join Princeton University in August as dean for diversity and inclusion.

architectural details of Frist Campus Center

New Gender + Sexuality Resource Center at Princeton to serve women, femme and LGBTQIA+ students .

The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center at Princeton University will launch this fall to serve women and femme-identifying students and LGBTQIA+ students, and to offer gender and sexuality programming and co-curricular experiences for the University community.

Calhoun appointed Princeton's vice president for campus life .

W. Rochelle Calhoun, who since 2008 has been dean of students and vice president for student affairs at Skidmore College, will become vice president for campus life at Princeton University effective Sept. 1.

Stairs lead to area behind Nassau Hall building

An update on Princeton’s ongoing efforts to address systemic racism .

Last summer, the University announced an initiative to address America’s record of structural inequality and racism as well as Princeton’s place in that history. Now, the University is providing an interim update on these ongoing efforts. An annual report will be released this fall.

Pursuing Excellence .

The award is the highest general distinction conferred on an undergraduate. The students will be recognized at Alumni Day on Saturday.

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am i the only one who feels princeton's new essays are so forced

likely due to how they got called the fuck out on blackivystories. god it seems so performative. fucking "civic engagement" my ass. what the hell is a "difficult conversation" anyway?? the sex talk???

Inside Princeton

Andy cofino drives strategic vision as campus life's inaugural avp for diversity, belonging and well-being.

Smiling man standing outdoors near building

Andy Cofino. Photo by Idriss Njike.

Andy Cofino joined Princeton University in January 2024 as the inaugural assistant vice president for Diversity, Belonging and Well-Being in the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life , reporting to vice president W. Rochelle Calhoun.

Cofino brings over 15 years of diversity and inclusion experience to the University, notably serving as the program coordinator at Princeton University’s LGBT Center from 2013 to 2018.

“This new position underscores Princeton’s commitment to cultivating a campus culture where every student feels valued and heard, and Andy’s exceptional background and commitment to creating inclusive and supportive environments makes him the ideal leader for this vital role,” said Calhoun. “We remain eager about the impactful work Andy will accomplish, driving forward initiatives that will benefit not only our students but the entire University community.”

As assistant vice president for Diversity, Belonging and Well-Being, Cofino is responsible for providing a vision and guidance for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the campus life division as well as contributing to the University's diversity goals.

“I’m thrilled to be back at Princeton and be able to provide support and leadership for diversity, belonging and well-being efforts across Campus Life and in collaborative initiatives across campus,” said Cofino. “Now that I’ve had time to meet with many students, staff and faculty, I’m excited to work with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) team to build a path forward during this critical and challenging time.”

Cofino returned to Princeton after working as the director of the LGBTQ Campus Resource Center and Volunteer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Alongside his impactful work at Princeton, he serves as a co-core member for transgender inclusion for the National Association of Student Affairs Administrators (NASPA) and on the Board of Trustees for Dorothea’s House, an Italian American cultural institution in Princeton.

How the College Application Essay Became So Important

Board of Admissions examining applicatio

S chool is out and summer is here. Yet future high school seniors and their families are likely already thinking about applying to college — a process that can be as labor-intensive and time-consuming as it is confusing. Students submit SAT scores, grades, references, personal essays, and more, often without a clear sense of what counts most.

The challenges facing college applicants today aren’t new. For over a century, Americans seeking higher education have had to navigate complicated admissions requirements including exams and grades as well as qualitative metrics of assessment, such as references, interviews, and essays.

Collecting so much academic and personal information has given colleges and universities greater control over the kinds of students they admit. In the first half of the 20th century, this information was mainly used to bar some applicants based on race, gender, and religion. Since the social movements of the 1960s and 70s, however, it has been used to do nearly the opposite by expanding access to previously excluded groups. In this process, personal essays have been especially valuable for the unique insights they can offer into applicants’ backgrounds and perspectives. In the context of today’s narrowing national diversity agenda, they are key to promoting inclusion in American higher education.

In the late 19th century, college admission standards were relatively low in America, even at the “Big Three” private universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. In an era when few Americans had more than an eighth-grade education, and even fewer could afford the cost of higher education, there was little competition for admission. Applicants needed only to pass subject matter exams, tests that were rudimentary and could be taken repeatedly until passed. Even those who failed their entrance exams might be admitted if they had elite standing and could pay tuition.

Read More: How to Talk About Race on College Applications, According to Admissions Experts

By the turn of the 20th century, however, demand for higher education was growing. Colleges worked intentionally to admit a broader range of students, dropping archaic requirements like knowledge of Latin and Greek that had previously barred all but the most privileged high school students from applying. More and more qualified applicants competed for fewer available spots, which meant that colleges and universities could be more selective.

But with more applicants passing exams and earning entry to higher education, private universities became increasingly concerned about the demographics of their student bodies. By the 1910s, as immigration increased, and more public high schools were better preparing students of all backgrounds to meet private entrance requirements, rising numbers of Jewish students were landing spots at the historically Protestant and upper-class universities. With antisemitism on the rise, many private colleges adopted new metrics of admission that could be used to limit the number of “undesirable” students, especially Jewish ones.

It was at this juncture that selective colleges introduced the application essay to assess students for the amorphous category of "fit." Applications in general became much more involved and intrusive.

For instance, beginning in 1919, Columbia required prospective students to complete an eight-page form, submit a photo, list their mother’s maiden name, and provide information about their religious background. Even standardized tests could be used to screen students by cultural background. Early entrance exams were heavily biased toward American customs and colloquialisms, putting first-generation immigrants at a disadvantage.

In the wake of World War II, the passage of the GI Bill created a surge in demand for higher education across the country. Between 1950 and 1970, enrollment in colleges and universities in the U.S. nearly quadrupled.

Although public and private universities expanded in response, they still came under new pressures to bolster selective criteria that would allow them to limit the growth of their student bodies. To ensure spots for students long considered the natural recipients of higher education — especially white, middle-class, Protestant men — private colleges continued to use quotas and other forms of preference such as legacy status to effectively limit the numbers of Jewish students, people of color, and women admitted. Meanwhile, admissions were far from need blind; applying for a scholarship could damage your chance of acceptance.

Public universities like the University of California, Berkeley charted a different course. In the post-war period, the UC system admitted all students who met basic requirements — graduation from an accredited high school along with a principal's recommendation, acceptance by exam, or completion of an Associate’s degree. But public universities now also faced more demand than they could accommodate. Indeed, the 1960s California Master Plan for Higher Education acknowledged that state universities, too, might well have to introduce a selective process for choosing applicants in the face of expanded access across much wider class, geographic, and ethnic backgrounds.

By the 1960s, a selective application process became common across major private and public universities. But the social movements of the 1960s and 70s forced private universities to drop their formal practices of discrimination and changed the use of personal essays and other qualitative metrics of evaluation in the process.

For the first time, in the 1960s, admissions officers at historically white and Protestant universities acknowledged that applicants’ academic profiles were deeply shaped by the opportunities — educational, economic, and cultural — available to them, and that these in turn were shaped by students’ race, ethnicity, and sex.

While special considerations about background had once been used to systematically exclude minorities, in the 1960s they were invoked for the first time to do the opposite, albeit with some striking limitations.

By looking at applicants from a comprehensive standpoint, which included these markers of identity, even the most selective private universities made major strides in achieving racial diversity in this period. They also dropped quotas and began to admit women on an equal basis with men. Class diversity, however, was another matter — to this day private universities continue to be comparatively socio-economically homogenous despite meaningful shifts in other areas.

Since the 1970s, the admissions system has only grown increasingly competitive, with more students than ever before applying to college. That forced universities to choose between strong applicants while building their own brands and competitive profiles. This competitive environment has turned the college application essay into a particularly important vehicle in the admissions process for learning about students’ backgrounds and human qualities.

Read More: How the End of Affirmative Action Could Affect the College Admissions Process

In 1975, a small group of mostly East Coast colleges came together to form the Common App — today used by more than 1,000 universities. The Common App led the way in formulating what we now think of as the personal statement, aimed at understanding the inner world of each student.

For more than 50 years now, universities both private and public have evaluated essays for a range of qualities including leadership capacity, creativity, service to the community, and ability to overcome hardship, as part of their admissions decisions. The kinds of questions universities ask, the qualities they seek, and the responses they receive have changed many times and have been shaped by the cultural trends of our times.

In 2021 for example, following the spread of a global pandemic, the Common App introduced a question about gratitude for the first time. And while the prompts remained unchanged following the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina , which formally excluded race as a factor in admissions, universities began to read them for the role of race, ethnicity, and other identities in students’ profiles. In these and many other ways, the essay has only gained value as a way for students to explain the important ways their experiences and identities have shaped their academic profiles.

Still, there have been calls to eliminate the college essay from admissions requirements from both the right and the left, as either frivolously inclusive, or potentially exclusionary. Now, at a time when there are major political constraints on supporting diversity and inclusion at the national level, personal essays give admissions committees important flexibility. They also allow colleges to evaluate students for underrated but essential intellectual and personal qualities hard to observe elsewhere, including the capacity for growth, self-reflection, and awareness of the world around them.

The history of modern admissions shows how institutions of higher education have sought to engineer their classes, often reinforcing harmful racial, class, and gender hierarchies. There is little objectivity in the metric of “fit” that has shaped American admissions practices. But the Civil Rights era has had a powerful and long-lasting legacy in broadening access through an assessment of applicants that is attentive to identity. However flawed the system, the essay offers something no other metric can: an account of a student’s lived experience, in their own words.

Sarah Stoller is a writer and historian. She also tutors college essay writing.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here . Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors .

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A portrait of Jennifer Lopez staring into the camera.

Opinion Guest Essay

I Can’t Revel in J. Lo’s Fall From Grace

Credit... Hector Vivas/Getty

Supported by

By Yarimar Bonilla

Dr. Bonilla is a contributing Opinion writer who covers race, history, pop culture and the American empire.

July 12, 2024

Jennifer Lopez has been hailed as a trailblazer: a Latina from the Bronx who transcended her humble origins to become a global superstar. She made the green dress she wore to the Grammy Awards in 2000 so famous that it led Google to create a separate image search function, Google Images.

J. Lo’s romantic life has been as closely followed as her artistic life. She and Ben Affleck got engaged in 2002 and later broke up, but they reunited in 2021. Their marriage the following year was her fourth and his second.

In February, she released “This Is Me … Now,” a self-funded multimedia project inspired by their love story that includes an album, a movie and a behind-the-scenes documentary titled “The Greatest Love Story Never Told.”

The internet has not been kind. The movie has been widely panned as nonsensical, corny, belabored and just plain weird, while the documentary is so unflattering, it’s hard to believe she greenlighted it. She has been accused of being a narcissist and a phony , among other things. The tour Ms. Lopez announced shortly after the album’s release has been canceled.

Throughout the documentary, friends and family members question her need to shine the spotlight on her new marriage, but she insisted that she wanted to share her journey to self-acceptance and true love.

For someone who’s reached the pinnacle of fame and wealth but struggled romantically, this might be meaningful. But for the rest of us — amid wars, postpandemic inequalities, inflation, civil rights erosion and a terrifying election — a multimillionaire’s personal quest to find love just doesn’t inspire. This is especially true for young people of color. The notion that you, too, can rise from the barrio to Hollywood through sheer grit doesn’t speak to a generation disillusioned with the myth of meritocracy.

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10 Things I Hate About You

July 11, 2024, melissa ruiz.

Returning to Princeton after a semester abroad, I was looking forward to conducting my senior thesis research over the summer. Princeton, where everything feels familiar. But I quickly realized that, like people, places frequently change over time. In honor of one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time, I decided to write my own version of 10 Things I Hate About You: Princeton Edition.

I hate the hill. (There is steady incline from Yeh College to Nassau Hall) It's simple: going up this hill every time I want a cup of coffee or have a work shift on campus is an absolute pain.

I hate the weather. As a New Jersey native, you'd think I'd be used to it by now but I live farther north where we don't have this kind of humidity. The heat wave hitting Princeton this summer, with temperatures in the high 90s, is something I'm not particularly happy about.

I hate leaving Rocky, my residential college. For my summer research, I'm staying in the newer residential colleges, NCW and Yeh. I miss the charm of Rocky, the greenery and the peacefulness. Seeing people walk around or taking photoshoots, it's a distinct environment I've grown accustomed to. NCW and Yeh feel like I'm in a small isolated world.

I hate that my friends aren't here. Most of them are off in different parts of the world or the country working on amazing projects. I miss having people I'm close to nearby, especially after being apart for so long.

I hate all the new construction sites; every day, there's literally a new roadblock. But with each detour, I'm led to a new path I've never taken. I see a new side of Princeton that I wouldn't have seen before because I stick to the same routine. So, while it can be frustrating each day, I'm learning to be grateful for each new place I discover.

I hate how much I love my lab. We have so many new people over the summer but that comes with the quick reminder that their presence is only temporary. So with each moment I grow closer to them, I know how much harder it's going to be to say goodbye.

I hate how much I love crocheting. I've picked up a hobby I've wanted to pursue for years but never had the time for. Crocheting is such a great, mindless activity and I know that soon I won't have countless hours to spend on my different projects.

I hate how much I love working on my thesis. These two months simultaneously feel like I've gotten so much and nothing done. Running a longitudinal study across different institutions takes a lot of preparation and organization. While I'm close to being where I want to be, I know I still have a lot to do. But I enjoy it because it's work I'm passionate about—work I feel is important.

I hate how time flies so fast here. I only have a few weeks left before the summer session ends and I'll be going home. I'm trying to soak in every moment, every time my lab comes up with a new topic to debate, like grapes vs. cherries or what constitutes a cake. These are the moments I won't forget.

So, in the wise words of Kat Stratford, “But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.” Just like with growing pains, I come to see everything from a new perspective. I see how change can be good and bad, but most of all, how I'm changing with it.

Senior year bucket list, my sojourn in the south of france: lessons from a summer abroad in aix-en-provence, my mathey college experience.

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