2026–27 application
Portland State University supplemental essays
Every prompt and word limit, from the application itself.
Only for some programs.
These apply if you’re applying to the program named on the prompt.
Gratitude, unexpectedly
Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way.
A turning point
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
What makes you, you
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it.
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.
A challenge or setback
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.
How to approach it. The challenge is the setup, not the essay. Spend most of the words on what you did and how you changed. Readers are wary of a hard story used as currency. Growth is the currency.
Questioning a belief
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
How to approach it. The challenge is the setup, not the essay. Spend most of the words on what you did and how you changed. Readers are wary of a hard story used as currency. Growth is the currency.
What captivates you
Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you?
Your own topic
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
Solnit on the unknown
In her essay "Open Door," from A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005), Rebecca Solnit writes, "Leave the door open to the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where you find the most important things come from, where you by yourself came from, and where you will go." The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. For this essay, show how you think with and respond to another writer. In a carefully crafted and well-organized essay of 300-500 words, address the following: What do you understand Solnit to be saying about the unknown? What is at stake in engaging the unknown? How do artists, scientists, and philosophers approach the unknown? Why is this significant? What, if anything, would you add to this discussion of the unknown?
Hayden on place
In her book, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, the architect and urban historian Dolores Hayden writes, "'Place' is one of the trickiest words in the English language, a suitcase so overfilled one can never shut the lid. It carries the resonance of homestead, location, and open spaces in the city as well as a position in a social hierarchy. The authors of books on architecture, photography, cultural geography, poetry, and travel rely on 'sense of place' as an aesthetic concept but often settle for 'the personality of a location' as a way of defining it. Place for such authors may engage patterns in the mellow brick of an eighteenth-century building, the sweep of the Great Plains, the bustle of a small harbor full of sailboats, but such images can easily become cliches of tourist advertising." In a carefully crafted and well-organized essay of 300-500 words, address the following questions: What is Hayden saying about place and why is the concept significant? What do you think Hayden means when she writes that place holds both spatial and political meanings? What, if anything, would you add to this discussion of place?
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