Gonzaga University 2023-24 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Gonzaga University 2023-24 Application Essay Question Explanations 

The Requirements: 1 short answer of 5-10 sentences

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Short Answer

Please choose one of the following questions to answer below in 5-10 sentences:

How have your experiences as an individual, personal background, education, and upbringing affected your short and long-term goals?

For this prompt, admissions wants to learn about the elements that have impacted your short and long-term goals—your origin story, so to say. Perhaps your younger sibling was born deaf, so you have been an interpreter since you were a child, which ignited your interest in both teaching and languages. Do you hope to major in Community, Culture, and Language with a track in Elementary Education? Will this help you achieve your long-term goal of becoming the kind of teacher who makes a positive impact on students and instills a love of learning? Maybe you feel passionately about being part of the movement to combat climate change (long-term goal), and a degree in Applied Mathematics (short-term goal) will enable you to develop your strongest skill set to contribute to a solution. Tell admissions a story that provides deeper insight into your background, while also revealing information about your dreams and motivations.

Gonzaga’s Presidential Speaker’s Series invites leaders from around the world (such as LTC Olga Custodio, America’s first Latina military pilot or Cotopaxi founder Davis Smith) to share their work and passions with the GU community. If you were able to invite any living person to come and speak to the GU community, who would it be? Why would you want to invite them?

Gonzaga wants you to select a living person to speak to the GU community. A question like this one is probing for an inkling of your interests and motivations. Who do you admire? What are your aspirations? What kinds of things drive your curiosity? When you come upon a prompt that directly or indirectly asks you to demonstrate your academic or cultural knowledge, the key is to be confident and genuine. Don’t second guess your own interests or strain to write about a topic simply because you think it will impress admissions—spoiler alert: they’ll be able to tell. It will be easier to write about someone you are genuinely interested in, and the results will be more personal and memorable! Which person would give you a chance to reveal something new about yourself to admissions, like an otherwise unspoken interest in politics, fashion, or ancient history?