2014 Application Essay Prompts

After much discussion among the admissions committee, we've now selected the essay prompts for the 2013-2014 first-year application. We hope they will inspire you to write an essay that will help us understand who you are, how you think, and what you might contribute to the University community. Keep in mind that your essays will be evaluated not only for admission, but also for possible selection for Honors Carolina, merit-based scholarships, and Excel@Carolina.

You'll submit two essays, the first of which is from the main part of the Common Application. These prompts are common to all schools who accept the Common Application and you can view both the prompts and instructions here.

The second essay will be specific to the UNC application. You'll choose one prompt and respond in an essay of 400-500 words. Here are the questions:

1. Most of us have one or more personality quirks. Explain one of yours and what it says about you. 
2. What do you hope to find over the rainbow? 
3. Why do you do what you do? 
4. If you could travel anywhere in time or space, either real or imagined, where would you go and why? 
5. Tell us about a time when your curiosity led you someplace you weren’t expecting to go.

We hope you'll have fun with these essays. We had fun writing the prompts, and we look forward to reading your responses!

Essay Prompts for Fall 2013 First-Year Applicants

We've finalized the essays prompts for our Fall 2013 First-Year Application. This year, we'll be asking first-year applicants to submit two essays, one on the main part of the Common Application and one on our Supplement form. The rest of the application will be available on August 1, but you can get a jump-start on your essays now. At the bottom of the post, I've also included some helpful advice from the reading team here.


First Essay. Choose one of the following prompts, and respond in an essay of 250-500 words. These are the essays listed on the main part of the Common Application.

1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. 
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc) that has had influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
6. Topic of your choice. 

Second Essay. Choose one of the following prompts, and respond in an essay of about 500 words. If you're applying via the Common App, these questions will be listed on the UNC-Chapel Hill Supplemental form.

1. You just put a message in a bottle and threw the bottle out to sea. What is the message?
2. If you could design and teach your own course, what topic would you cover? What texts, assignments, projects, field trips, or other resources would you use in teaching this course?
3. What is your comfort food and why?
4. You just made the front page of the New York Times for doing something important that no one before you has ever thought to do. What did you do and why did you do it?
5. Carolina encourages students and faculty to solve problems. What problem are you trying to solve, and why is it important to you?
6. Tell us about a time when you changed your mind about something that mattered to you. What led to that change? 

Please note the recommended word counts for each essay listed above. Every year we get a lot of questions about length. We don't count words and your essay doesn't get cut off if you go over the word limit. However, we really appreciate it if you stay close to the recommended length. We have a lot of essays to read, and a succinct, well-edited essay is going to be much more effective than a rambling one. I know it can be challenging to stay within the word limit, but it's a challenge we think you're up to!

So what do we look for in an essay? Well, here's some advice which comes from the collective wisdom of our readers, each of whom reads thousands of essays each year.

• Show us, don’t tell us. For example, rather than just telling us “I am an adventurous person,” why not show us your adventurous spirit by recounting your latest adventure with colorful details and descriptive language. Showing is always more persuasive and interesting than telling. 
• Focus. Don’t try to tell your entire life story (it’s impossible), but instead think about how you can communicate one little slice of life. Can you tell a story that will illustrate one aspect of your personality? Can you zoom in on an idea that you find compelling? Can you incorporate details that will be memorable to your reader? 
• Remember it doesn't have to be all about you. Some of the best essays are about people or ideas outside the writer's own life--these essays can still tell us a lot about the person who did the writing. 
• Be concise. Don’t use 10 words when five will do the trick. 
• Don’t feel strictly tied to the essay prompts. Use them as jumping off places, and feel free to let your creativity take you where it may. We work hard to come up with essay prompts that will inspire students to craft an interesting essay. But if your muse leads you in a slightly different direction, that's perfectly okay. 
• Be yourself. Instead of trying to figure out what we want to hear, ask yourself how you can portray your unique voice and personality. This is your opportunity to show us who you are, and make us want to get to know you better. 

Do you have any good advice for essays? Please feel free to share your opinions, and let us know if you have questions.

Edited to add: I came across this video online by animator Kirsten Lepore today, and I though it might inspire you all to think outside of the box--it's a charming and unique story about messages in bottles. (And no, we don't accept videos in lieu of written essays, but I thought it was a great example of story-telling that you all might enjoy!)


Bottle from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

2012 Essay Questions for First-Year Applicants

Although the first-year application for Fall 2012 admission isn't ready just yet, we have finalized the essay prompts we'll provide for applicants. So if you want to get a jump-start on your application, you can begin thinking about your essays over the summer.

On the application, we'll ask you to provide two essays:

Essay 1. Choose one of the prompts below and respond in an essay of 250-500 words. (These are the essay prompts provided by the Common Application.)

1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music,science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
6. Topic of your choice.

Essay 2. Choose one of the prompts below and respond in approximately 500 words.

1. What’s your latest discovery? What do you hope to learn next?
2. Tell us about a time when you failed. How did you react? What if anything did you learn?
3. Tell us about a time when you struggled to convince someone of something you believed to be right. How did the process go? What was the end result?

We hope these prompts will inspire you to write an essay that expresses your unique voice and helps us understand your personality and passions. (And what do we think makes a good essay? We've posted some advice about essays on the blog in past years, so check it out here and here.)

You may have noticed that some of the prompts above come from the Common Application. Yes, that's right, this year we'll be accepting the Common Application. We'll also continue accepting applications through the College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC). You can choose to submit either the Common Application or the CFNC application--whichever is more convenient for you. We'll have more details on our website in the coming weeks and the first-year application will be available in early August.

In the meantime, good luck on your essays!

Transfer Essay Questions

We have finalized the essay questions for the Fall 2011 transfer application, so now if you're planning to apply as a transfer student, you can get a head start on your essay. We require just one essay for transfer applicants, and we ask that you limit your response to about 500 words.

The full transfer application will be up in September, and the deadline is March 1, 2011. We'll let you know when the application is available online.

Fall 2011 Transfer Essay Questions:

1. People find many ways to express their inner world. Some write novels; others paint, perform, or debate; still others design elegant solutions to complex mathematical problems. How do you express your inner world, and how does the world around you respond?
2. Tell us about a group project in which you had to collaborate with your peers. How did it go?
3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received or given?
4. If you have written an essay for another school’s application that you really like, feel free to use it as your short or long essay for us. Please be sure to tell us (a) what essay you are answering and (b) why you think this essay represents you well (your explanation will not be included in the word count).

Thanks! Please let us know if you have questions.

Thinking about Essays

In the office lately, we seem to have essays on the brain. A couple weeks ago, we posted this year’s essay questions on the blog and that always prompts interesting discussions with students and among our staff about what makes a good essay. There are, of course, varying opinions on the subject, but I’d say we all agree that the best essays help us get to know the applicant as a person. We don’t get to meet all our applicants face-to-face, so I often think of the application as an interview—it allows me to get a glimpse of the walking, talking, breathing person behind the application.

First off, the nuts and bolts of our application essays: We require two essays, one about 500 words and the other about 250 words. We get a lot of questions about essay length—do you penalize for long essays, do you count words, etc. The answer is no, we do not count words, but we do really appreciate it if you’re able to stick close to the recommended word count. We read a lot of essays, and we can tell you that a longer essay is not a better essay. In fact, the best essays are concise, with nary a word to spare.

Now, what advice would we offer to students who are sitting down to write an essay for our application? Our director offered three or four hints for the essay in a post we shared a couple years ago, which is a great place to start.

I’d add the following tips, which comes from the collective wisdom of our counselors, each of whom reads hundreds or even thousands of applications each year.

• Show us, don’t tell us. For example, rather than just telling us “I am an adventurous person,” why not show us your adventurous spirit by recounting your latest adventure with colorful details and descriptive language. Showing is always more persuasive and interesting than telling.
• Focus. Don’t try to tell your entire life story (it’s impossible), but instead think about how you can communicate one little slice of life. Can you tell a story that will illustrate one aspect of your personality? Can you zoom in on an idea that you find compelling? Can you incorporate details that will be memorable to your reader?
• Remember it doesn't have to be all about you. Some of the best essays are about people or ideas outside the writer's own life--these essays can still tell us a lot about the person who did the writing.
  
• Be concise. Don’t use 10 words when five will do the trick.
• Abandon the thesaurus. I read essays where it is very obvious that the student wrote their essay, then replaced half the words with “smarter” words they found in the thesaurus. Let us hear your voice—speak to us as you would normally speak, and don’t use words that you don’t normally use.
• Don’t feel tied to the essay prompts. Use them as jumping off places, and feel free to let your creativity and instinct take you where it may. We work hard to come up with essay prompts that will inspire students to craft an interesting essay. But if your muse leads you elsewhere, go for it.
• Instead of trying to figure out what we want to hear, ask yourself how you can portray your unique voice and personality. This is your opportunity to show us who you are, and make us want to get to know you better.

Do you have any good advice for essays? Please feel free to share your opinions, and let us know if you have questions.

-Julie

Three or Four Hints About Essays (Reposted)

We received this essay two years ago, in response to a prompt that asked students to choose and describe a logo that encapsulates who they are:

Logos are symbols that are used to describe or stand for objects, places, or people. If I were to choose a logo for myself it would be a boat.

One reason I would choose my logo to be a boat is because I love to fish and most of the time when I go fishing it takes place on a boat. I try to go fishing on my boat as often as I can. I usually go out every weekend and if I have free time after school I don’t mind going in the late afternoon. My favorite fishing is waking up early and going way offshore. I like this best because the fish are bigger.

Another reason I would choose a boat as my logo is that I’d much rather drive a boat than a car. …

And so it went on — for five well-organized but tough-to-wade-through paragraphs. After reading it, we knew that this student liked his boat. But we didn’t know much else about him.

Now here's an excerpt from a different essay — one that left a different impression.

It seemed like everything exciting in the world was about to happen to you when you were ten. Even in the books I read, ten-year-olds seemed always about to embark on some new adventure. Wendy from Peter Pan was ten. So was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Anne in Anne of Green Gables. Secretly I had a feeling that life would now start being like a book, full of humor and excitement. I was ten years old, and I thought I could do anything. Well, no, that’s not true. I knew I could do anything.

This student was writing in response to a prompt that asked, “What advice would you give to a ten-year-old?” She ended like this:

Keep that feeling, that confidence, as long as you can. It’s a way of looking at things that makes the whole world seem as if it’s just a little more brightly colored, a little more gentle. If you don’t know the odds, you may find yourself accomplishing anything.

Where did this essay succeed where the Boat essay fell short? Here are three ideas about these two essays, and about essays in general.

1. Voice matters as much as content. Good essays sound as though they were written by real people — ideally, smart, curious, good-hearted people.

2. Little is better than big. Small subjects close at hand are better than big subjects that are beyond any writer’s grasp. Students are tempted to write about big things, about ultimate experiences — the best thing that ever happened to me; the worst thing that ever happened to me. Almost no one can write well about this kind of thing, and students should generally steer clear.

3. Others are better than self. Not everyone shares this view. In fact we often advise students that the essay is a chance to say something about themselves — preferably something winning and definitive. But in my view this is really a tall order for any student, and in fact it’s something of a curse. It’s the rare writer and the rarer seventeen-year-old who can write self-consciously in this way. Better to write about something else, especially since we learn a lot about others by listening to them talk about something not themselves.

To illustrate this point, here’s a third essay from two years ago. The prompt read: “Describe a mistake you’ve seen some leader make.”

Head over heels, my grandfather entered the grave. He was merely ashes at that point, stored in a modest cardboard box. Before his death, he was a dedicated minister and teacher. Despite this, the pastor in charge of the internment ceremony bent down slightly and tossed Granddaddy into the hole. The priest let gravity take my grandfather three feet down when he was supposed to be ensuring a journey many miles upward.

I watched disbelief spread like a wave around the circle of family members. Their eyes fixated on the hole as my grandfather bumped and tumbled into his final resting place like a man in a barrel going over Niagara Falls.

The pastor was the leader of the ceremony, the emcee of mourning and remembrance. …

“The emcee of mourning and remembrance”: I wish I'd written those words. Wouldn’t we all want to teach this student? Wouldn’t we want to learn alongside her?

Three ideas: Voice as much as content. Little better than big. Others better than self.

And this fourth one: stories help. If you get stuck, tell us a story. Humans are suckers for stories, because our stories tell us something about ourselves, and because our stories matter.

--Stephen Farmer

(Reposted, with a few changes, from October 2008.)

Transfer Essay Questions

We have finalized the essay questions for the Fall 2010 Transfer Application. The application itself won't be up for another few weeks, but now you can get a head-start on your essay. You'll need to choose one of the prompts below for a 500-word essay:

1. People find many ways to express their inner world. Some write novels; others paint, perform, or debate; still others design elegant solutions to complex mathematical problems. How do you express your inner world, and how does the world around you respond?
2. It’s easy to identify with the hero—the literary or historical figure who saves the day. Have you ever identified with a figure who wasn’t a hero—a villain or a scapegoat, a bench-warmer or a bit player? If so, tell us why this figure appealed to you—and if your opinion changed over time, tell us about that, too.
3. After your long and happy life, your family must choose no more than a dozen words to adorn your headstone. What do you hope they choose, and why?
4. If you have written an essay for another school’s application that you really like, feel free to use it as your essay for us. Please be sure to tell us (a) what essay you are answering and (b) why you think this essay represents you well (your explanation will not be included in the essay word count).
   

You can also choose to submit an optional additional statement. We ask that you please limit your answer to about 250 words:
Is there anything else you would like to share with us regarding your background or interests that you didn’t have the opportunity to share elsewhere? Have you overcome exceptional difficulties or challenges? Have you participated in any programs or activities to help you prepare for college, such as Governor’s School, Project Uplift, Gear-Up, AVID, Upward Bound, LEAD, ROTC or Summer Ventures?

-Julie

What's Your Life Goal?

I spent much of last week on vacation with my family, which includes our dog Samwise, shown here in mid-retrieve.

On the ride home, our daughter told us about a conversation she’d recently had with two of her fourth-grade friends about something they called their “life goals.”

“Jenny’s life goal is to try mahi-mahi,” she said. When we asked her why mahi-mahi, she thought for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Maybe because she’s never tasted it.”

She went on to tell us about John, whose life goal is either to get a minifridge or to become a garbage collector -- the latter, we were told, "because he just likes the stench."

People who work in admissions like to talk about "passion," which I suppose is our word for "life goal." It's not a word I'm fond of, mainly because students tend to hear it not as passion but as Passion -- something cosmic, final, and fantastic, rather than something familiar, provisional, and real.

We ask about your passion not so that we can weigh your aspirations, much less pass judgment upon them. Rather, we ask because we long to know who you are.

Whatever drives or intrigues you -- whether it's medicine or monetary theory, travelling or retrieving, gustation or refrigeration or sanitation -- is exactly what we hope you'll show us should you choose to apply to Carolina.

In the meantime, please know that we wish you all the best.

--Stephen Farmer

Final 2010 Essay Questions

Thanks to everyone who voted for their favorite essay questions. We've now finalized the seven essay prompts for the 2010 First-Year Application. So now you can spend your entire summer vacation crafting your essays if you like. The rest of the application will be available by mid-August.

Below are the new essay prompts. You'll respond to two of the prompts below. One of your essays should be short (about 250 words), and one essay should be longer(about 500 words).

1. People find many ways to express their inner world. Some write novels; others paint, perform, or debate; still others design elegant solutions to complex mathematical problems. How do you express your inner world, and how does the world around you respond?
2. It’s easy to identify with the hero—the literary or historical figure who saves the day. Have you ever identified with a figure who wasn’t a hero—a villain or a scapegoat, a bench-warmer or a bit player? If so, tell us why this figure appealed to you—and if your opinion changed over time, tell us about that, too.
3. Carolina students conduct original research and work to solve problems in almost every imaginable field. If you could spend a semester researching a specific topic or problem, what would you choose and why?
4. After your long and happy life, your family must choose no more than a dozen words to adorn your headstone. What do you hope they choose, and why?
5. We tend to spend our time doing the things we know we do well—running because we’re good runners or painting because we’re talented artists. Tell us about a time when you tried something for which you had no talent. How did it go?
6. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? What’s the best you’ve ever given?
7. If you have written an essay for another school’s application that you really like, feel free to use it as your short or long essay for us. Please be sure to tell us (a) what essay you are answering and (b) why you think this essay represents you well (your explanation will not be included in the essay word count).

2010 Essay Questions

We're contemplating essay questions for next year's application, and we'd love your feedback! Which questions do you like? Which would help inspire you to write a great essay? Comments and suggestions are also very welcome.

For those of you who are eagerly awaiting the Fall 2010 first-year application, the online application will be up in mid-August. At that time, you'll also be able to request a paper application or download a PDF from our website.

Three or Four Hints about Essays

This morning I visited West Charlotte High School, home of the Lions, with our chancellor, Dr. Holden Thorp. We were warmly welcomed and had a great time.

The students at West Charlotte asked terrific questions. One of them had to do with application essays: What specifically do we look for when we read them?

Because this is such a good question, and because it’s one that comes up a lot, I thought it might be helpful to post a talk on this subject that I gave last spring to a group of guidance counselors. Let me know if this does any good at all—and please feel free to tell me if it doesn’t.

We received this essay last year, in response to a prompt that asked students to choose and describe a logo that encapsulates who they are:

Logos are symbols that are used to describe or stand for objects, places, or people. If I were to choose a logo for myself it would be a boat.
One reason I would choose my logo to be a boat is because I love to fish and most of the time when I go fishing it takes place on a boat. I try to go fishing on my boat as often as I can. I usually go out every weekend and if I have free time after school I don’t mind going in the late afternoon. My favorite fishing is waking up early and going way offshore. I like this best because the fish are bigger.
Another reason I would choose a boat as my logo is that I’d much rather drive a boat than a car. …

And so it went on—for five well-organized paragraphs. After reading it, we knew that this student liked his boat. But we didn’t know much else about him.

Now let me quote from a different essay—one that left a different impression.

It seemed like everything exciting in the world was about to happen to you when you were ten. Even in the books I read, ten-year-olds seemed always about to embark on some new adventure. Wendy from Peter Pan was ten. So was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and Anne in Anne of Green Gables. Secretly I had a feeling that life would now start being like a book, full of humor and excitement. I was ten years old, and I thought I could do anything. Well, no, that’s not true. I knew I could do anything.

This student was writing in response to a prompt that asked, “What advice would you give to a ten-year-old?” She ended like this:

Keep that feeling, that confidence, as long as you can. It’s a way of looking at things that makes the whole world seem as if it’s just a little more brightly colored, a little more gentle. If you don’t know the odds, you may find yourself accomplishing anything.

Where did this essay succeed where the Boat essay fell short? Let me offer just three observations, in the hopes that they’ll be helpful to at least some of your students.

The first idea: voice matters as much as content. Good essays sound as though they were written by real people—ideally, smart, curious, good-hearted people.

The second idea: little is better than big. Small subjects close at hand are better than big subjects that are beyond any writer’s grasp. Students are tempted to write about big things, about ultimate experiences—the best thing that ever happened to me; the worst thing that ever happened to me. Almost no one can write well about this kind of thing, and students should generally steer clear.

The third idea: others are better than self. Not everyone shares this view. In fact we often advise students that the essay is a chance to say something about themselves—preferably something winning and definitive. But in my view this is really a tall order for any student, and in fact it’s something of a curse. It’s the rare writer and the rarer seventeen-year-old who can write self-consciously in this way. Better to write about something else, especially since we learn a lot about others by listening to them talk about something not themselves.

To illustrate this point, here’s a third essay from last year. The prompt read: “Describe a mistake you’ve seen some leader make.”

Head over heels, my grandfather entered the grave. He was merely ashes at that point, stored in a modest cardboard box. Before his death, he was a dedicated minister and teacher. Despite this, the pastor in charge of the internment ceremony bent down slightly and tossed Granddaddy into the hole. The priest let gravity take my grandfather three feet down when he was supposed to be ensuring a journey many miles upward.
I watched disbelief spread like a wave around the circle of family members. Their eyes fixated on the hole as my grandfather bumped and tumbled into his final resting place like a man in a barrel going over Niagara Falls.
The pastor was the leader of the ceremony, the emcee of mourning and remembrance. …

“The emcee of mourning and remembrance”—what a beautiful and evocative phrase! The student closed with the quiet lesson she’d drawn from her experience: “A leader must realize the effect of every choice he makes on the people in his charge and must act in the best interest of his followers.” Wouldn’t we all want to teach this student? Wouldn’t we want to learn from her?

Three observations: Voice as much as content. Little better than big. Others better than self.

And this fourth one: stories help. If your students get stuck, encourage them to tell us a story. Humans are suckers for stories, because our stories tell us something about ourselves, and because our stories matter.

--Stephen Farmer

Essay Questions for the 2009 Application!

Today on the website, we're publishing the seven questions that will be the options for the long essay portion of the First-Year Application this year. A lot of thought and debate goes into these questions--we end up reading hundreds of these essays, so for our sake as well as yours we do our best to make them interesting!

Here are the 2009 essay questions:

1. We tend to spend our time doing the things we know we do well—running because we’re good runners, or painting because we’re talented artists. Tell us about a time when you tried something for which you had no talent. How did it go?
2. If you were principal of your school, what one thing would you change first, and why?
3. What one thing would you hope to be remembered for after four years at Carolina? What do you hope would be your most memorable contribution—to the life of our community and the experience of your fellow students?
4. Is there someone in your school who should attend college but for some reason can’t or won’t? What's standing in this student's way? What might help this student move forward?
5. Carolina seeks students who are exceptionally curious. Tell us about a time when your curiosity led you someplace you weren’t expecting to go.
6. Tell us about your best teacher ever—or your toughest, or your worst. What distinguished this teacher from the others you’ve known?
7. If you have written an essay for another school’s application that you really like, feel free to use it as your longer essay for us. Please be sure to tell us (a) what essay you are answering and (b) why you think this essay represents you well (your explanation will not be included in the essay word count).

Last year, I posted my Top 10 Tips for Essays. Check it out.