Boston University supplemental essays

• Prompt 1Required300 words max

  What excites you

  Boston University is dedicated to our founding principles: "that higher education should be accessible to all and that research, scholarship, artistic creation, and professional practice should be conducted in the service of the wider community-local and international. These principles endure in the University's insistence on the value of diversity in its tradition and standards of excellence and its dynamic engagement with the City of Boston and the world." With this mission in mind, please respond to the following question in 300 words or less: What about being a student at BU most excites you? How do you hope to contribute to our campus community?

  How to approach it

  Here, specific beats important. A small, true community described from the inside beats a broad label. Write it as someone who was there, not as an observer. End on what you carry into a campus, not on a moral.

• Prompt 2Required300 words max

  What excites you

  What about being a student at BU most excites you?

These prompts are program-specific.

They apply only if you’re applying to the named program or school.

• Kilachand Honors CollegeRequired600 words max

  Why Kilachand

  What about the Kilachand Honors College resonates with you, and how would Kilachand's curriculum fulfill your academic, creative, intellectual, and/or professional goals?

  How to approach it

  This is a why-us prompt. The trap is describing the school back to itself. Rankings and a pretty campus read as filler. Name two or three things you’d actually use. A program, a professor’s work, an open curriculum. Then tie each one to something you’ve already done.

• Kilachand Honors CollegeRequired600 words max

  Invent a course

  If you could create a new Kilachand course, what would it be? How would your imagined course align with the core values of Kilachand?

  How to approach it

  This is the most literal question on the application. Why this training, for your goals. Answer in that order. Name the goal first. Then point to the two or three parts of the program that serve it. Then show one thing you’ve already done that proves the goal is real.