Princeton University supplemental essays

• Prompt 1Required500 words max

  How you've been shaped

  Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 400-500 words.)

  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 2Required250 words max

  Service and civic engagement

  Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

• Prompt 3Required50 words max

  A skill to learn

  What is a new skill you would like to learn in college?

• Prompt 4Required50 words max

  What brings you joy

  What brings you joy?

• Prompt 5Required50 words max

  Your life's soundtrack

  What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?

These prompts are program-specific.

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

• A.B. or undecided applicantsRequired250 words max

  Your academic curiosity

  As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

  How to approach it

  Resist the abstract here. Name the question you worked on. Say what you actually did day to day. Add one moment where it got hard or surprising. Then say what you want to find out next. Curiosity with a track record is the whole pitch.

• B.S.E. (Engineering) applicantsRequired250 words max

  Why engineering at Princeton

  Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at Princeton. Include any of your experiences in or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the University suit your particular interests. (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

  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.