Wellesley College 2019-20 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Wellesley College 2019-20 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 1 essay of 400 words

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why

Please limit your response to the Wellesley College essay to two well-developed paragraphs with a maximum of 400 words.

When choosing a college community, you are choosing an intellectual community and a place where you believe that you can live, learn, and flourish. We know that there are more than 100 reasons to choose Wellesley, but it’s a good place to start. Visit the Wellesley 100 and select one or two items that attract, inspire, or energize you (http://w100.wellesley.edu/). Have fun with this and use this opportunity to reflect personally on what items appeal to you most and why.

Wellesley’s hyper-specific take on the Why essay instantly directs you to the key piece of advice we always offer: do your research! Admissions has literally included the URL to the specific page they want you to pore over, so your very first (and most obvious) step should be to actually pore over it. There’s no real “trick” to this one other than just doing the work and trusting your gut, since reading through these reasons to attend Wellesley with care will demonstrate beyond words your commitment to the school. (Think: trials of Hercules.) If a reason is on the list, you can be sure it’s a good reason to be interested in the school, and all of the numbers are listed out of order, so you can throw any sense of ranking out the window. As you read through, jot down the reasons that resonate most with you and then edit your list down to the most powerful one or two. Perhaps the prospect of using the Whitin Observatory (#60) and attending Lake Day (#53) both have you seeing stars! Of course, it isn’t enough to simply choose your reasons and regurgitate them — you need to make an argument for why they matter to you! So, be specific. If you need to do more research about the observatory and the astronomy program, dig through the department website. If your reason relates to a personal experience, share an anecdote to bring it to life. The point is to show who you are (and who you will become) through your relationship with Wellesley.