a community play essay

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The impact of community service – a deep dive into the power of giving back to society.

Community service essays serve as a powerful tool for individuals to reflect on their experiences, values, and impact on the world around them. Through the process of writing about their volunteer work, students are able to articulate the positive changes they have made in their communities and explore the lessons they have learned along the way.

Community service essays also play a crucial role in highlighting the importance of giving back to society and fostering a sense of empathy and compassion in individuals. By sharing personal stories of service, students can inspire others to get involved and make a difference in their own communities.

Moreover, community service essays can help students gain valuable skills such as critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving, as they reflect on the challenges and successes of their volunteer experiences. By documenting their service work, students can also showcase their commitment to social responsibility and community engagement to colleges, scholarship committees, and potential employers.

Why Community Service Essays Matter

In today’s society, the importance of community service essays cannot be overstated. These essays serve as a platform for individuals to showcase their dedication to helping others and making a positive impact on their communities. Through these essays, individuals can share their experiences, insights, and perspectives on the value of giving back to society.

Community service essays also play a crucial role in raising awareness about different social issues and encouraging others to get involved in volunteer work. By sharing personal stories and reflections, individuals can inspire and motivate others to take action and contribute to the betterment of society.

Furthermore, community service essays provide an opportunity for individuals to reflect on their own values, beliefs, and goals. Through the process of writing these essays, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world, leading to personal growth and development.

In conclusion, community service essays matter because they have the power to inspire change, raise awareness, and promote personal growth. By sharing their stories and insights, individuals can make a difference in their communities and create a more compassionate and giving society.

The Impact of Community Service Essays

Community service essays have a profound impact on both the individuals writing them and the communities they serve. These essays serve as a platform for students to reflect on their experiences and articulate the lessons they have learned through their service work.

One of the primary impacts of community service essays is the opportunity for self-reflection. Students are encouraged to critically analyze their experiences, challenges, and accomplishments during their community service activities. This reflection helps students develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their values, and their role in the community.

Another significant impact of community service essays is the awareness they raise about social issues and community needs. By sharing their stories and insights, students can shed light on important issues and inspire others to get involved in community service. These essays can also help community organizations and stakeholders better understand the needs of their communities and how they can address them effectively.

Overall, community service essays play a vital role in promoting social responsibility, empathy, and civic engagement. They empower students to make a positive impact in their communities and contribute to creating a more compassionate and inclusive society.

Guidelines for Writing Community Service Essays

When writing a community service essay, it is important to follow certain guidelines to ensure that your message is clear and impactful. Here are some tips to help you craft a powerful and compelling essay:

• Start by brainstorming ideas and reflecting on your community service experiences.
• Clearly define the purpose of your essay and what you hope to convey to your readers.
• Organize your essay with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
• Use specific examples and anecdotes to support your points and showcase your personal growth.
• Highlight the impact of your community service activities on both yourself and others.
• Showcase your passion and dedication to serving your community.
• Be authentic and honest in your writing, and avoid exaggerating or embellishing your experiences.
• Edit and proofread your essay carefully to ensure clarity, coherence, and proper grammar.

Examples of Effective Community Service Essays

Community service essays can have a powerful impact on the reader when they are well-written and thoughtful. Here are a few examples to inspire you:

1. A Well-Structured Essay:

This essay begins with a compelling introduction that clearly articulates the author’s motivation for engaging in community service. The body paragraphs provide specific examples of the author’s experiences and the impact they had on both the community and themselves. The conclusion ties everything together, reflecting on the lessons learned and the importance of giving back.

2. Personal Reflection:

This essay delves deep into the author’s personal experiences during their community service work. It explores the challenges they faced, the emotions they encountered, and the growth they underwent. By sharing vulnerable moments and candid reflections, the author creates a connection with the reader and demonstrates the transformational power of service.

3. Future Goals and Impact:

This essay not only discusses past community service experiences but also looks toward the future. The author shares their aspirations for continued service and outlines how they plan to make a difference in the world. By showcasing a sense of purpose and vision, this essay inspires the reader to consider their own potential for impact.

These examples illustrate how community service essays can be effective tools for conveying meaningful stories, inspiring others, and showcasing personal growth. By crafting a compelling narrative and reflecting on the significance of service, you can create an essay that leaves a lasting impression.

How Community Service Essays Empower Individuals

Community service essays provide individuals with a platform to express their thoughts, share their experiences, and make a meaningful impact on society. By writing about their volunteer work and the lessons they have learned, individuals can empower themselves to create positive change and inspire others to do the same.

• Through community service essays, individuals can reflect on the importance of giving back to their communities and the value of helping those in need.
• These essays can serve as a source of motivation and inspiration for individuals to continue their philanthropic efforts and make a difference in the world.
• By sharing their stories through community service essays, individuals can raise awareness about social issues and promote greater empathy and understanding among their peers.

Overall, community service essays empower individuals to take action, advocate for change, and contribute to building a more compassionate and equitable society.

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How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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The Community Essay

“Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you’d like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you’ve had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke.” 

As with every essay you ship off to admissions – think about something you want admissions to know that hasn’t been represented. What can you expand upon to show your versatility, passion and ability to connect with the world around you?

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Written by CEA HQ

Category: Admissions , College Admissions , Essay Tips , Essay Writing , Supplemental Essays

Tags: admissions essay , admissions help , application , application supplement , applications , brainstorming , college admissions , college admissions essay , college application , college application help , college applications , college essay , common application , supplemental essays

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Blog > Essay Advice , Supplementals > How to Write a Community Supplemental Essay (with Examples)

How to Write a Community Supplemental Essay (with Examples)

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

If you're applying to college, there's a good chance you'll be writing a Community Essay for one (or lots) of your supplementals. In this post, we show you how to write one that stands out.

This post is one in a series of posts about the supplemental essays . You can read our core “how-to” supplemental post here .

When schools admit you, they aren’t just admitting you to be a student. They’re also admitting you to be a community member.

Community supplemental essays help universities understand how you would fit into their school community. At their core, Community prompts allow you to explicitly show an admissions officer why you would be the perfect addition to the school’s community.

Let’s get into what a Community supplemental essay is, what strategies you can use to stand out, and which steps you can take to write the best one possible.

What is a Community supplemental essay?

Community supplemental essay prompts come in a number of forms. Some ask you to talk about a community you already belong to, while others ask you to expand on how you would contribute to the school you’re applying to.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

1: Rice University

Rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community. The Residential College System and undergraduate life is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural tradition each student brings. What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community? 500 word limit.

2: Swarthmore College

Swarthmore students’ worldviews are often forged by their prior experiences and exposure to ideas and values. Our students are often mentored, supported, and developed by their immediate context—in their neighborhoods, communities of faith, families, and classrooms. Reflect on what elements of your home, school, or community have shaped you or positively impacted you. How have you grown or changed because of the influence of your community?

Community Essay Strategy

Your Community essay strategy will likely depend on the kind of Community essay you’re asked to write. As with all supplemental essays, the goal of any community essay should be to write about the strengths that make you a good fit for the school in question.

How to write about a community to which you belong

Most Community essay prompts give you a lot of flexibility in how you define “community.” That means that the community you write about probably isn’t limited to the more formal communities you’re part of like family or school. Your communities can also include friend groups, athletic teams, clubs and organizations, online communities, and more.

There are two things you should consider before you even begin writing your essay.

What school values is the prompt looking for?

Whether they’re listed implicitly or explicitly, Community essay prompts often include values that you can align your essay response with.

To explain, let’s look at this short supplemental prompt from the University of Notre Dame:

If you were given unlimited resources to help solve one problem in your community, what would it be and how would you accomplish it?

Now, this prompt doesn’t outright say anything about values. But the question itself, even being so short, implies a few values:

a) That you should be active in your community

b) That you should be aware of your community’s problems

c) That you know how to problem-solve

d) That you’re able to collaborate with your community

After dissecting the prompt for these values, you can write a Community essay that showcases how you align with them.

What else are admissions officers learning about you through the community you choose?

In addition to showing what a good community member you are, your Community supplemental essays can also let you talk about other parts of your experience. Doing so can help you find the perfect narrative balance among all your essays.

Let’s use a quick example.

If I’m a student applying to computer science programs, then I might choose to write about the community I’ve found in my robotics team. More specifically, I might write about my role as cheerleader and principle problem-solver of my robotics team. Writing about my robotics team allows me to do two things:

Show that I’m a really supportive person in my community, and

Show that I’m on a robotics team that means a lot to me.

Now, it’s important not to co-opt your Community essay and turn it into a secret Extracurricular essay , but it’s important to be thinking about all the information an admissions officer will learn about you based on the community you choose to focus on.

How to write about what you’ll contribute to your new community

The other segment of Community essays are those that ask you to reflect on how your specific experiences will contribute to your new community.

It’s important that you read each prompt carefully so you know what to focus your essay on.

These kinds of Community prompts let you explicitly drive home why you belong at the school you’re applying to.

Here are two suggestions to get you started.

Draw out the values.

This kind of Community prompt also typically contains some kind of reference to values. The Rice prompt is a perfect example of this:

Rice is lauded for creating a collaborative atmosphere that enhances the quality of life for all members of our campus community . The Residential College System and undergraduate life is heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural tradition each student brings. What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community? 500 word limit.

There are several values here:

a) Collaboration

b) Enhancing quality of life

c) For all members of the community

d) Residential system (AKA not just in the classroom)

e) Sharing unique life experiences and cultural traditions with other students

Note that the actual question of the prompt is “What life perspectives would you contribute to the Rice community?” If you skimmed the beginning of the prompt to get to the question, you’d miss all these juicy details about what a Rice student looks like.

But with them in mind, you can choose to write about a life perspective that you hold that aligns with these five values.

Find detailed connections to the school.

Since these kinds of Community prompts ask you what you would contribute to the school community, this is your chance to find the most logical and specific connections you can. Browse the school website and social media to find groups, clubs, activities, communities, or support systems that are related to your personal background and experiences. When appropriate based on the prompt, these kinds of connections can help you show how good a fit you are for the school and community.

How to do Community Essay school research

Looking at school values means doing research on the school’s motto, mission statement, and strategic plans. This information is all carefully curated by a university to reflect the core values, initiatives, and goals of an institution. They can guide your Community essay by giving you more values options to include.

We’ll use the Rice mission statement as an example. It says,

As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to pathbreaking research , unsurpassed teaching , and contribution to the betterment of our world . It seeks to fulfill this mission by cultivating a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor.

I’ve bolded just a few of the most important values we can draw out.

As we’ll see in the next section, I can use these values to brainstorm my Community essay.

How to write a Community Supplemental Essay

Step 1: Read the prompt closely & identify any relevant values.

When writing any supplemental essay, your first step should always be to closely read the prompt. You can even annotate it. It’s important to do this so you know exactly what is being asked of you.

With Community essays specifically, you can also highlight any values you think the prompt is asking you to elaborate on.

Keeping track of the prompt will make sure that you’re not missing anything an admissions officer will be on the lookout for.

Step 2: Brainstorm communities you’re involved in.

If you’re writing a Community essay that asks you to discuss a community you belong to, then your next step will be brainstorming all of your options.

As you brainstorm, keep a running list. Your list can include all kinds of communities you’re involved in.

Communities:

• Model United Nations
• Youth group
• Instagram book club
• My Discord group

Step 3: Think about the role(s) you play in your selected community.

Narrow down your community list to a couple of options. For each remaining option, identify the roles you played, actions you took, and significance you’ve drawn from being part of that group.

Community: Orchestra

These three columns help you get at the most important details you need to include in your community essay.

Step 4: Identify any relevant connections to the school.

Depending on the question the prompt asks of you, your last step may be to do some school research.

Let’s return to the Rice example.

After researching the Rice mission statement, we know that Rice values community members who want to contribute to the “betterment of our world.”

Ah ha! Now we have something solid to work from.

With this value in mind, I can choose to write about a perspective that shows my investment in creating a better world. Maybe that perspective is a specific kind of fundraising tenacity. Maybe it’s always looking for those small improvements that have a big impact. Maybe it’s some combination of both. Whatever it is, I can write a supplemental essay that reflects the values of the university.

Community Essay Mistakes

While writing Community essays may seem fairly straightforward, there are actually a number of ways they can go awry. Specifically, there are three common mistakes students make that you should be on the lookout for.

They don’t address the specific requests of the prompt.

As with all supplemental essays, your Community essay needs to address what the prompt is asking you to do. In Community essays especially, you’ll need to assess whether you’re being asked to talk about a community you’re already part of or the community you hope to join.

Neglecting to read the prompt also means neglecting any help the prompt gives you in terms of values. Remember that you can get clues as to what the school is looking for by analyzing the prompt’s underlying values.

They’re too vague.

Community essays can also go awry when they’re too vague. Your Community essay should reflect on specific, concrete details about your experience. This is especially the case when a Community prompt asks you to talk about a specific moment, challenge, or sequence of events.

Don’t shy away from details. Instead, use them to tell a compelling story.

They don’t make any connections to the school.

Finally, Community essays that don’t make any connections to the school in question miss out on a valuable opportunity to show school fit. Recall from our supplemental essay guide that you should always write supplemental essays with an eye toward showing how well you fit into a particular community.

Community essays are the perfect chance to do that, so try to find relevant and logical school connections to include.

Community Supplemental Essay Example

Example essay: robotics community.

University of Michigan: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (Required for all applicants; minimum 100 words/maximum 300 words)

From Blendtec’s “Will it Blend?” videos to ZirconTV’s “How to Use a Stud Finder,” I’m a YouTube how-to fiend. This propensity for fix-it knowledge has not only served me well, but it’s also been a lifesaver for my favorite community: my robotics team(( The writer explicitly states the community they’ll be focusing on.)) . While some students spend their after-school hours playing sports or video games, I spend mine tinkering in my garage with three friends, one of whom is made of metal.

Last year, I Googled more fixes than I can count. Faulty wires, misaligned soldering, and failed code were no match for me. My friends watched in awe as I used Boolean Operators to find exactly the information I sought.(( The writer clearly articulates their place in the community.)) But as I agonized over chassis reviews, other unsearchable problems arose.

First((This entire paragraph fulfills the “describe that community” direction in the prompt.)) , there was the matter of registering for our first robotics competition. None of us familiar with bureaucracy, David stepped up and made some calls. His maturity and social skills helped us immediately land a spot. The next issue was branding. Our robot needed a name and a logo, and Connor took it upon himself to learn graphic design. We all voted on Archie’s name and logo design to find the perfect match. And finally, someone needed to enter the ring. Archie took it from there, winning us first place.

The best part about being in this robotics community is the collaboration and exchange of knowledge.((The writer emphasizes a clear strength: collaboration within their community. It’s clear that the writer values all contributions to the team.))  Although I can figure out how to fix anything, it’s impossible to google social skills, creativity, or courage. For that information, only friends will do. I can only imagine the fixes I’ll bring to the University of Michigan and the skills I’ll learn in return at part of the Manufacturing Robotics community((The writer ends with a forward-looking connection to the school in question.)) .

Want to see even more supplemental essay examples? Check out our college essay examples post . 

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How to Write the “Community” Essay

A step-by-step guide to this popular supplemental prompt.

When college admissions officers admit a new group of freshmen, they aren’t just filling up classrooms — they’re also crafting (you guessed it) a campus community. College students don’t just sit quietly in class, retreat to their rooms to crank out homework, go to sleep, rinse, and repeat. They socialize! They join clubs! They organize student protests! They hold cultural events! They become RAs and audition for a cappella groups and get on-campus jobs! Colleges want to cultivate a thriving, vibrant, uplifting campus community that enriches students’ learning — and for that reason, they’re understandably curious about what kind of community member they’ll be getting when they invite you to campus as part of their incoming class.

Enter the “community” essay — an increasingly popular supplemental essay prompt that asks students to talk about a community to which they belong and how they have contributed to or benefited from that community. Community essays often sound something like this:

University of Michigan: Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (250 words)

Pomona College: Reflecting on a community that you are part of, what values or perspectives from that community would you bring to Pomona?  (250 words)

University of Rochester: Spiders are essential to the ecosystem. How are you essential to your community or will you be essential in your university community? (350-650 words)

Swarthmore: Swarthmore students’ worldviews are often forged by their prior experiences and exposure to ideas and values. Our students are often mentored, supported, and developed by their immediate context—in their neighborhoods, communities of faith, families, and classrooms. Reflect on what elements of your home, school, or community have shaped you or positively impacted you. How have you grown or changed because of the influence of your community? (250 words)

Yale: Reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)

Step 1: Pick a community to write about

Breathe. You belong to LOTS of communities. And if none immediately come to mind, it’s only because you need to bust open your idea of what constitutes a “community”!

Among other things, communities can be joined by…

• West Coasters
• NYC’s Koreatown
• Everyone in my cabin at summer camp
• ACLU volunteers
• Cast of a school musical
• Puzzle-lovers
• Powerlifters
• Army brats who live together on a military base
• Iranian-American
• Queer-identifying
• Children of pastors

Take 15 minutes to write down a list of ALL the communities you belong to that you can think of. While you’re writing, don’t worry about judging which ones will be useful for an essay. Just write down every community that comes to mind — even if some of them feel like a stretch.

When you’re done, survey your list of communities. Do one, two, or three communities jump out as options that could enable you to write about yourself and your community engagement? Carry your top choices of community into Step 2.

Step 2: Generate content.

For each of your top communities, answer any of the following questions that apply:

• Is there a memorable story I can tell about my engagement with this community?
• What concrete impacts have I had on this community?
• What problems have I solved (or attempted to solve) in this community?
• What have I learned from this community?
• How has this community supported me or enriched my life up to this point?
• How have I applied the lessons or values I gleaned from this community more broadly?

Different questions will be relevant for different community prompts. For example, if you’re working on answering Yale’s prompt, you’ll want to focus on a community on which you’ve had a concrete impact. But if you’re trying to crack Swarthmore’s community essay, you can prioritize communities that have impacted YOU. Keep in mind though — even for a prompt like Yale’s, which focuses on tangible impact, it’s important that your community essay doesn’t read like a rattled-off list of achievements in your community. Your goal here is to show that you are a generous, thoughtful, grateful, and active community member who uplifts the people around you — not to detail a list of the competitions that Math club has won under your leadership.

BONUS: Connect your past community life to your future on-campus community life.

Some community essay prompts ask you — or give you the option — to talk about how you plan on engaging with community on a particular college campus. If you’re tackling one of those prompts (like Pomona’s), then you guessed it: it’s research time!

Often, for these kinds of community prompts, it will serve you to first write about a community that you’ve engaged with in the past and then write about how you plan to continue engaging with that same kind of community at college. For example, if you wrote about throwing a Lunar New Year party with international students at your high school, you might write about how excited you are to join the International Students Alliance at your new college or contribute to the cross-cultural student magazine. Or, if you wrote about playing in your high school band, you might write about how you can’t wait to audition for your new college’s chamber orchestra or accompany the improv team for their improvised musicals. The point is to give your admissions officer an idea of what on-campus communities you might be interested in joining if you were to attend their particular school.

Check out our full College Essay Hub for tons of resources and guidance on writing your college essays. Need more personalized guidance on brainstorming or crafting your supplemental essays? Contact our college admissions team.

Caroline Hertz

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, tips for writing the community essay.

Hi fellow applicants! I've been working on the 'community essay' for some of my applications and I'm having trouble figuring out what to write about. Any advice on how to approach this essay and make it stand out? Thanks!

Hello! Writing a community essay can indeed be challenging, but with the right approach, you can create a standout piece. Here are some tips to help you craft a memorable essay:

1. Reflect on your personal experiences: Think about the communities you belong to, whether they're based on a physical location, a shared interest, or a certain background. Consider how your involvement in these communities has shaped the person you are today, and how you've contributed to their growth or well-being.

2. Be specific and provide anecdotes: To make your essay stand out, it's important to focus on a particular aspect of your community involvement. Share personal stories or unique experiences, rather than simply providing general descriptions of your community engagement.

3. Show growth and self-awareness: A well-written essay should convey the growth and personal development you've experienced through your involvement in a community. Don't be afraid to share challenges you've faced and the lessons you've learned from them. Demonstrating self-awareness and personal growth can give your essay a strong emotional impact.

4. Connect to your future aspirations: Reflect on how your community involvement has shaped your future goals and aspirations, and how you'd like to continue contributing to other communities in the future. This can help create a lasting impression on the admissions committee and show that you're committed to using your education for the betterment of your communities.

5. Edit and revise: As with any essay, make sure to thoroughly proofread and revise your work. This will help ensure that your essay is clear, concise, and free of any errors. Consider seeking feedback from a teacher, mentor, or peer to gain additional insights on how to improve your content.

In summary, to craft a standout community essay, focus on specific personal experiences, illustrate growth and self-awareness, and connect your involvement to your future aspirations. Best of luck with your applications!

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How to Write the Supplemental College Essay on Your Community

Posted on: October 20, 2021

This blog is part of our series on how to write the college application supplemental essays. Check out our blogs on some of the other commonly asked questions, including those about “why us?,” diversity , creativity , and your activities .

What’s the Point of the Community Essay?

Many colleges will ask you to write about a community you belong to and to describe your place within it. This essay can give colleges insight into how you might engage with, enhance, and maybe even build communities on their campus.

Any Group Can Be a Community

The community essay prompt stumps a lot of students because when they hear the word, “community,” they only think of location-based communities such as their school or their hometown. Or sometimes, they only think of communities defined by identities such as religion or ethnicity. 

Of course, a community can be any group that comes together. We all belong to several communities, and these communities often overlap.

A lot of communities are defined by a shared interest like playing chess, swimming, or dancing. 

Your community could be fellow members of a club or the people you interact with at a job. I once worked with a student who wrote about working for a dog grooming business. In her case, the members of her community weren’t just her coworkers and human customers but also included the animals she came to know.

Some of the most meaningful communities form out of a desire to create change. One student I worked with wrote passionately about being part of an organization that speaks to teens about sexual health and gender equality.

Nowadays, many communities are virtual. I know a student who wrote about an advice and support chat group for students stressed about applying to college.

The pandemic has made some communities even more important for some students. I once worked with a student who wrote about taking his leadership responsibilities to his baseball community even more seriously because practices were some of the only in-person social interactions he and his teammates enjoyed for months. 

Why These Essays Worked

What made these essays work were the following:

1) The students wrote about communities that were meaningful to them, and this came through strongly in their essays.

2) They were active participants in their communities and mentioned specific things they did to support their communities.

3) They talked about the insight they gained from being a part of these communities. 

  Writing Your Community Essay

If you’re not sure which community to write about, before you begin the essay, take some time to list some of your communities. Then look at your list and try answering a few questions to help you make a choice.  

Ask yourself questions such as:

1) Why is this community important to me?

2) What is my role in this community? How do I support this community?

3) How has this community influenced me? 

4) What have I learned by being a part of this community?

Keep in mind the word limit. If it’s under 200 words, you might not have space to make every point, so you’ll have to be judicious when selecting which parts of your notes make it into the final draft. 

Remember, This Essay is About You!

As with all your supplemental essays, you should use the community essay as an opportunity to talk about something that isn’t reflected elsewhere in your application. Is there a value you want to convey? Are you a leader but never held an official leadership title like the club president or team captain? Maybe write about being a part of a community where you have had a leadership role. Does your application mostly reflect your serious side? Maybe write about being a part of the Waffle Club. Just remember, ultimately, this essay is an essay about you , not just the community you select. 

The community you decide to write about gives colleges some insight into you, but the reasons why you picked a community are even more insightful.

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The Community Essay for the Common App Supplements

Mark montgomery.

• July 24, 2023

How do you write the community essay for the Common App? Many college applications require supplemental essays. A common supplementary question asks you to consider and write about a community to which you belong. 

The definition of community is open to interpretation and can be difficult to pin down. We each belong to a wide variety of communities ranging from our family and friend groups to being members of the global community.  

My Communities 

For example, I belong to a bunch of different communities. I sing in a choir, so I’m part of the community of the Colorado Chorale community (and within that community, I’m a member of the tenor section). I go to see plays a lot, so I’m a member of the “theater-going” community. Birdwatching can be fun, I find, so I belong to the “community of birdwatchers.” I belong to a club or two, so I’m a member or those communities. I belong to a political party, which is a community in a sense. I went to Dartmouth , so I belong to a community of alumni, both locally and globally. Same with my grad school: my friends and I still talk about belonging to the “ Fletcher Community .” 

When I lived in Hong Kong, I was a member of the American community, which was part of the large expatriate community. I speak French and live in Denver. Therefore, I’m part of the community of Denverites who speak French as a second language. I live in a specific neighborhood in the city of Denver in the State of Colorado in the United States. All of those communities define me in one way or another. Finally, at a more intimate level, I also belong to a family community that is very important to me.

Really, when you stop to think about it, we all belong to a large number of overlapping communities. Think of a Venn diagram with lots of overlapping circles—and we are at that tiny dot in the center where each of those circles overlaps. 

Why write the community essay for the Common App?

Why do colleges ask you to write this community essay? In writing about community as it relates to you, you reveal important details at the core of who you are. Colleges are hoping to bring students to their campuses who will contribute in a positive way to campus culture, whether intellectually, socially, or through their extracurricular activities. 

They want students who will be successful in their new community and enrich the college through their varied backgrounds, experiences, accomplishments, activities and behavior. Thus, the way you answer this prompt will help them imagine if you would be a good addition to their campus community.

Here are some examples of the community essay prompt:

• Please complete the following, and have a little fun doing so: “I appreciate my community because …” (up to 300  characters)
• At MIT , we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being good friends. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (200-250 words)
• What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?  (up to 350 words)
• Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.  (up to 300 words)
• Macalester is a community that includes people from many different backgrounds, some who have lived around the world and others who have lived in one place their entire lives. Please write an essay about how your background, experiences, or outlook might add to the Mac community, academically and personally. (up to 500 words)*

* Note: this last prompt doesn’t ask about a community to which you currently belong, but rather asks you to reflect on what you will bring to the community. This essay is a mix of activities and community essays. However, this essay should emphasize what the applicant would add to the campus community.

The community essay vs. the community service essay

Notice that this essay is not narrowly focused on any service you might provide to your community. Of course, it is entirely possible that your involvement in a community may include some sort of involvement that helps to promote the community and the interests of its members in some way.  

However, the community essay prompts do not specifically ask you to talk about this service. The prompts want you to think about what it means to “belong,” and how you conceive of yourself in the larger world. A sense of community may, indeed, lead you to act in certain ways to advance a cause, donate your time, or exert your energies to meet the needs of your community. Your actions certainly may become part of this community essay as a way to demonstrate the ways in which you identify with—and contribute to—this community. But the focus of this essay is on that sense of belonging. 

Service to your community—or to someone else’s?

To put a finer point to it, it is possible to provide “community service” to communities to which we do not belong. We might donate time to the homeless community—but that does not make us homeless. We might spend time working with refugees, even if we, ourselves, are not refugees. Or while we might enjoy good health, we still might donate time to make meals for the critically ill.

So make sure that when you write the community essay you zero in on a community that defines you, and not on the service you devote to a community that is not your own.  

When preparing for the community essay for the Common App, DO THESE THINGS:

Think carefully about your choice of community.

The community you choose says a lot about you. Think carefully about what message even just the choice of community might convey to your reader. In fact, you may even want to start by asking yourself “What aspects of who I am do I want the reader to know?” and then pick the community that will do that in the best possible way. Think, too, how your choice can help you differentiate yourself and share important insight into who you are. 

Factors for you to consider as you brainstorm the community essay for the Common App:

• Which communities are most important to you and why?
• What do these communities say about you that you haven’t shared with your reader elsewhere in your application?
• What roles have you played in these communities?
• How would you measure the impact of your participation in these communities?
• What does your participation in these communities say about your character, qualities, and how you interact with the world around you?
• What does the overall message say about you as a future college student?

Use this as an opportunity to reveal more about yourself

This prompt isn’t just to elaborate on your community; this is another opportunity to reveal important qualities about yourself. Explain why this community is so important to you. Write about what you learned about yourself and how it has shaped who you are. Reveal how you have made contributions to this community.  

Show, don’t tell

Like every essay, the details show your reader what you want them to know about you. Be specific, but selective, with the details you include. Every word should contribute to the message you want to share with your reader. If you have space, share an anecdote to help the reader visualize the qualities that you are trying to share.

Ensure you answer the prompt fully and directly

Some of these prompts are simple and short, but other schools have long prompts. Don’t get lost in answering the first part of the prompt and forget about the remainder. Re-read the prompt after you have drafted your ideas to make sure you’ve addressed everything. 

In addition, sometimes, if you have multiple applications that ask a “community” question, you may be tempted to simply repurpose the same exact essay from one application to the other. Beware! Each prompt will have different nuances to it, and you will need to ensure that you are actually answering the prompt that is being asked. You can certainly re-use the content from one application to the next, but you should tailor how you express those ideas so that they match the prompt.

When drafting the community essay for the Common App, DON’T DO these things

Don’t be afraid to “think outside of the box”.

Some communities to which we belong are obvious because we participate in them on a daily basis. These would include our families and our friend groups. Others are obvious because they are clearly defined: the football team or student government. But what about those informal communities, occasional communities, or hard-to-define communities to which you might belong? Are you a crafty person who blogs about your creations with an online community?

Do you belong to a book group in your neighborhood? Are you a classic car connoisseur? Even writing about things that might not seem like natural “communities” can work quite well as long as they reveal important aspects of who you are. For example, we’ve read a successful “community” essay about a student who belonged to a community of anonymous subway riders. We read another about a community of students who wear crazy socks to school. 

Don’t share obvious details

The detail about the community is not the most important part of your response, even if the prompt does say to “describe a community to which you belong.” Consider only sharing those details about the community that ties into what you are trying to share about yourself. For example, most drama groups put on performances for the public.

But not all drama groups are community-based and have participants ranging in age from 9 to 99. If part of your story is about this multi-generational community, then this detail plays a part in your story. Include those details that play a role in why the community is important or impactful for you.

Remember these things about the community essay for the Common App

No matter which community you choose to write about, you want to be sure that you reflect deeply about why this community is important to you. If you have a longer word count, you can consider using an anecdote to share with the reader, but for the shorter prompts, keep your writing personal, but just more to the point.

And don’t lose sight of the reason that you are writing this essay. You are applying to be a part of a new community. You want to show that you have a deep appreciation for the sense of satisfaction, dedication, and attachment that comes with being a member of a community. The purpose is to demonstrate that you know how to nurture the community and how you nourish others’ sense of belonging in that circle.  

Colleges want to know that you will keep the flame of that college community alive, even as you graduate and move on with your life. The admissions office wants to know that you will cherish and contribute to the community that they already call their own. Convince them that you deserve to belong.

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7 Understanding Discourse Communities

This chapter uses John Swales’ definition of discourse community to explain to students why this concept is important for college writing and beyond. The chapter explains how genres operate within discourse communities, why different discourse communities have different expectations for writing, and how to understand what qualifies as a discourse community. The article relates the concept of discourse community to a personal example from the author (an acoustic guitar jam group) and an example of the academic discipline of history. The article takes a critical stance regarding the concept of discourse community, discussing both the benefits and constraints of communicating within discourse communities. The article concludes with writerly questions students can ask themselves as they enter new discourse communities in order to be more effective communicators.

Last year, I decided that if I was ever going to achieve my lifelong fantasy of being the first college writing teacher to transform into an international rock star, I should probably graduate from playing the video game Guitar Hero to actually learning to play guitar. [1] I bought an acoustic guitar and started watching every beginning guitar instructional video on YouTube. At first, the vocabulary the online guitar teachers used was like a foreign language to me—terms like major and minor chords, open G tuning, and circle of fifths. I was overwhelmed by how complicated it all was, and the fingertips on my left hand felt like they were going to fall off from pressing on the steel strings on the neck of my guitar to form chords. I felt like I was making incredibly slow progress, and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t be a guitar god until I was 87. I was also getting tired of playing alone in my living room. I wanted to find a community of people who shared my goal of learning songs and playing guitar together for fun.

I needed a way to find other beginning and intermediate guitar players, and I decided to try a social media website called “Meetup.com.” It only took a few clicks to find the right community for me—an “acoustic jam” group that welcomed beginners and met once a month at a music store near my city of Sacramento, California. On the Meetup.com site, it said that everyone who showed up for the jam should bring a few songs to share, but I wasn’t sure what kind of music they played, so I just showed up at the next meet-up with my guitar and the basic look you need to become a guitar legend: two days of facial hair stubble, black t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a gravelly voice (luckily my throat was sore from shouting the lyrics to the Twenty One Pilots song “Heathens” while playing guitar in my living room the night before).

The first time I played with the group, I felt more like a junior high school band camp dropout then the next Jimi Hendrix. I had trouble keeping up with the chord changes, and I didn’t know any scales (groups of related notes in the same key that work well together) to solo on lead guitar when it was my turn. I had trouble figuring out the patterns for my strumming hand since no one took the time to explain them before we started playing a new song. The group had some beginners, but I was the least experienced player.

perienced player. It took a few more meet-ups, but pretty soon I figured out how to fit into the group. I learned that they played all kinds of songs, from country to blues to folk to rock music. I learned that they chose songs with simple chords so beginners like me could play along. I learned that they brought print copies of the chords and lyrics of songs to share, and if there were any difficult chords in a song, they included a visual of the chord shape in the handout of chords and lyrics. I started to learn the musician’s vocabulary I needed to be familiar with to function in the group, like beats per measure and octaves and the minor pentatonic scale . I learned that if I was having trouble figuring out the chord changes, I could watch the better guitarists and copy what they were doing. I also got good advice from experienced players, like soaking your fingers in rubbing alcohol every day for ninety seconds to toughen them up so the steel strings wouldn’t hurt as much. I even realized that although I was an inexperienced player, I could contribute to the community by bringing in new songs they hadn’t played before.

Okay, at this point you may be saying to yourself that all of this will make a great biographical movie someday when I become a rock icon (or maybe not), but what does it have to do with becoming a better writer?

You can write in a journal alone in your room, just like you can play guitar just for yourself alone in your room. But most writers, like most musicians, learn their craft from studying experts and becoming part of a community. And most writers, like most musicians, want to be a part of community and communicate with other people who share their goals and interests. Writing teachers and scholars have come up with the concept of “discourse community” to describe a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communicating, the same genres, and the same lexis (specialized language).

What Exactly Is a Discourse Community?

John Swales, a scholar in linguistics, says that discourse communities have the following features (which I’m paraphrasing):

• A broadly agreed upon set of common public goals
• Mechanisms of intercommunication among members
• Use of these communication mechanisms to provide information and feedback
• One or more genres that help further the goals of the discourse community
• A specific lexis (specialized language)
• A threshold level of expert members (24-26)

I’ll use my example of the monthly guitar jam group I joined to explain these six aspects of a discourse community.

A Broadly Agreed Set of Common Public Goals

The guitar jam group had shared goals that we all agreed on. In the Meetup.com description of the site, the organizer of the group emphasized that these monthly gatherings were for having fun, enjoying the music, and learning new songs. “Guitar players” or “people who like music” or even “guitarists in Sacramento, California” are not discourse communities. They don’t share the same goals, and they don’t all interact with each other to meet the same goals.

Mechanisms of Intercommunication among Members

The guitar jam group communicated primarily through the Meetup.com site. This is how we recruited new members, shared information about when and where we were playing, and communicated with each other outside of the night of the guitar jam. “People who use Meetup.com” are not a discourse community, because even though they’re using the same method of communication, they don’t all share the same goals and they don’t all regularly interact with each other. But a Meetup.com group like the Sacramento acoustic guitar jam focused on a specific topic with shared goals and a community of members who frequently interact can be considered a discourse community based on Swales’ definition.

Use of These Communication Mechanisms to Provide Information and Feedback

Once I found the guitar jam group on Meetup.com, I wanted information about topics like what skill levels could participate, what kind of music they played, and where and when they met. Once I was at my first guitar jam, the primary information I needed was the chords and lyrics of each song, so the handouts with chords and lyrics were a key means of providing critical information to community members. Communication mechanisms in discourse communities can be emails, text messages, social media tools, print texts, memes, oral presentations, and so on. One reason that Swales uses the term “discourse” instead of “writing” is that the term “discourse” can mean any type of communication, from talking to writing to music to images to multimedia.

One or More Genres That Help Further the Goals of the Discourse Community

One of the most common ways discourse communities share information and meet their goals is through genres. To help explain the concept of genre, I’ll use music since I’ve been talking about playing guitar and music is probably an example you can relate to. Obviously there are many types of music, from rap to country to reggae to heavy metal. Each of these types of music is considered a genre, in part because the music has shared features, from the style of the music to the subject of the lyrics to the lexis. For example, most rap has a steady bass beat, most rappers use spoken word rather singing, and rap lyrics usually draw on a lexis associated with young people. But a genre is much more than a set of features. Genres arise out of social purposes, and they’re a form of social action within discourse communities. The rap battles of today have historical roots in African oral contests, and modern rap music can only be understood in the context of hip hop culture, which includes break dancing and street art. Rap also has social purposes, including resisting social oppression and telling the truth about social conditions that aren’t always reported on by news outlets. Like all genres, rap is not just a formula but a tool for social action.

The guitar jam group used two primary genres to meet the goals of the community. The Meetup.com site was one important genre that was critical in the formation of the group and to help it recruit new members. It was also the genre that delivered information to the members about what the community was about and where and when the community would be meeting. The other important genre to the guitar jam group were the handouts with song chords and lyrics. I’m sharing an example of a song I brought to the group to show you what this genre looks like.

This genre of the chord and lyrics sheet was needed to make sure everyone could play along and follow the singer. The conventions of this genre—the “norms”—weren’t just arbitrary rules or formulas. As with all genres, the conventions developed because of the social action of the genre. The sheets included lyrics so that we could all sing along and make sure we knew when to change chords. The sheets included visuals of unusual chords, like the Em7 chord (E minor seventh) in my example, because there were some beginner guitarists who were a part of the community. If the community members were all expert guitarists, then the inclusion of chord shapes would never have become a convention. A great resource to learn more about the concept of genre is the essay “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk in volume 1 of Writing Spaces .

A Specific Lexis (Specialized Language)

To anyone who wasn’t a musician, our guitar meet-ups might have sounded like we were communicating in a foreign language. We talked about the root note of scale, a 1/4/5 chord progression, putting a capo on different frets, whether to play solos in a major or minor scale, double drop D tuning, and so on. If someone couldn’t quickly identify what key their song was in or how many beats per measure the strumming pattern required, they wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively with the community members. We didn’t use this language to show off or to try to discourage outsiders from joining our group. We needed these specialized terms—this musician’s lexis—to make sure we were all playing together effectively.

A Threshold Level of Expert Members 

If everyone in the guitar jam was at my beginner level when I first joined the group, we wouldn’t have been very successful. I relied on more experienced players to figure out strumming patterns and chord changes, and I learned to improve my solos by watching other players use various techniques in their soloing. The most experienced players also helped educate everyone on the conventions of the group (the “norms” of how the group interacted). These conventions included everyone playing in the same key, everyone taking turns playing solo lead guitar, and everyone bringing songs to play. But discourse community conventions aren’t always just about maintaining group harmony. In most discourse communities, new members can also expand the knowledge and genres of the community. For example, I shared songs that no one had brought before, and that expanded the community’s base of knowledge.

Why the Concept of Discourse Communities Matters for College Writing

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I didn’t understand that each academic discipline I took courses in to complete the requirements of my degree (history, philosophy, biology, math, political science, sociology, English) was a different discourse community. Each of these academic fields had their own goals, their own genres, their own writing conventions, their own formats for citing sources, and their own expectations for writing style. I thought each of the teachers I encountered in my undergraduate career just had their own personal preferences that all felt pretty random to me. I didn’t understand that each teacher was trying to act as a representative of the discourse community of their field. I was a new member of their discourse communities, and they were introducing me to the genres and conventions of their disciplines. Unfortunately, teachers are so used to the conventions of their discourse communities that they sometimes don’t explain to students the reasons behind the writing conventions of their discourse communities.

It wasn’t until I studied research about college writing while I was in graduate school that I learned about genres and discourse communities, and by the time I was doing my dissertation for my PhD, I got so interested in studying college writing that I did a national study of college teachers’ writing assignments and syllabi. Believe it or not, I analyzed the genres and discourse communities of over 2,000 college writing assignments in my book Assignments Across the Curriculum . To show you why the idea of discourse community is so important to college writing, I’m going to share with you some information from one of the academic disciplines I studied: history. First I want to share with you an excerpt from a history course writing assignment from my study. As you read it over, think about what it tells you about the conventions of the discourse community of history.

Documentary Analysis

This assignment requires you to play the detective, combing textual sources for clues and evidence to form a reconstruction of past events. If you took A.P. history courses in high school, you may recall doing similar document-based questions (DBQs).

In a tight, well-argued essay of two to four pages, identify and assess the historical significance of the documents in ONE of the four sets I have given you.

You bring to this assignment a limited body of outside knowledge gained from our readings, class discussions, and videos. Make the most of this contextual knowledge when interpreting your sources: you may, for example, refer to one of the document from another set if it sheds light on the items in your own.

Questions to Consider When Planning Your Essay

• What do the documents reveal about the author and his audience?
• Why were they written?
• What can you discern about the author’s motivation and tone? Is the tone revealing?
• Does the genre make a difference in your interpretation?
• How do the documents fit into both their immediate and their greater historical contexts?
• Do your documents support or contradict what other sources (video, readings) have told you?
• Do the documents reveal a change that occurred over a period of time?
• Is there a contrast between documents within your set? If so, how do you account for it?
• Do they shed light on a historical event, problem, or period? How do they fit into the “big picture”?
• What incidental information can you glean from them by reading carefully? Such information is important for constructing a narrative of the past; our medieval authors almost always tell us more than they intended to.
• What is not said, but implied?
• What is left out? (As a historian, you should always look for what is not said, and ask yourself what the omission signifies.)
• Taken together, do the documents reveal anything significant about the period in question? (Melzer 3-4)

This assignment doesn’t just represent the specific preferences of one random teacher. It’s a common history genre (the documentary analysis) that helps introduce students to the ways of thinking and the communication conventions of the discourse community of historians. This genre reveals that historians look for textual clues to reconstruct past events and that historians bring their own knowledge to bear when they analyze texts and interpret history (historians are not entirely “objective” or “neutral”). In this documentary analysis genre, the instructor emphasizes that historians are always looking for what is not said but instead is implied. This instructor is using an important genre of history to introduce students to the ways of analyzing and thinking in the discourse community of historians.

Let’s look at another history course in my research. I’m sharing with you an excerpt from the syllabus of a history of the American West course. This part of the syllabus gives students an overview of the purpose of the writing projects in the class. As you read this overview, think about the ways this instructor is portraying the discourse community of historians.

A300: History of the American West

A300 is designed to allow students to explore the history of the American West on a personal level with an eye toward expanding their knowledge of various western themes, from exploration to the Indian Wars, to the impact of global capitalism and the emergence of the environmental movement. But students will also learn about the craft of history, including the tools used by practitioners, how to weigh competing evidence , and how to build a convincing argument about the past.

At the end of this course students should understand that history is socially interpreted, and that the past has always been used as an important means for understanding the present. Old family photos, a grandparent’s memories, even family reunions allow people to understand their lives through an appreciation of the past. These events and artifacts remind us that history is a dynamic and interpretive field of study that requires far more than rote memorization. Historians balance their knowledge of primary sources (diaries, letters, artifacts, and other documents from the period under study) with later interpretations of these people, places, and events (in the form of scholarly monographs and articles) known as secondary sources . Through the evaluation and discussion of these different interpretations historians come to a socially negotiated understanding of historical figures and events.

Individual Projects

More generally, your papers should:

• Empathize with the person, place, or event you are writing about. The goal here is to use your understanding of the primary and secondary sources you have read to “become” that person–i.e. to appreciate their perspectives on the time or event under study. In essence, students should demonstrate an appreciation of that time within its context.
• Second, students should be able to present the past in terms of its relevance to contemporary issues. What do their individual projects tell us about the present? For example, what does the treatment of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans in the West tell us about the problem of race in the United States today?
• Third, in developing their individual and group projects, students should demonstrate that they have researched and located primary and secondary sources. Through this process they will develop the skills of a historian, and present an interpretation of the past that is credible to their peers and instructors.

Just like the history instructor who gave students the documentary analysis assignment, this history of the American West instructor emphasizes that the discourse community of historians doesn’t focus on just memorizing facts, but on analyzing and interpreting competing evidence. Both the documentary analysis assignment and the information from the history of the American West syllabus show that an important shared goal of the discourse community of historians is socially constructing the past using evidence from different types of artifacts, from texts to photos to interviews with people who have lived through important historical events. The discourse community goals and conventions of the different academic disciplines you encounter as an undergraduate shape everything about writing: which genres are most important, what counts as evidence, how arguments are constructed, and what style is most appropriate and effective.

The history of the American West course is a good example of the ways that discourse community goals and values can change over time. It wasn’t that long ago that American historians who wrote about the West operated on the philosophy of “manifest destiny.” Most early historians of the American West assumed that the American colonizers had the right to take land from indigenous tribes—that it was the white European’s “destiny” to colonize the American West. The evidence early historians used in their writing and the ways they interpreted that evidence relied on the perspectives of the “settlers,” and the perspectives of the indigenous people were ignored by historians. The concept of manifest destiny has been strongly critiqued by modern historians, and one of the primary goals of most modern historians who write about the American West is to recover the perspectives and stories of the indigenous peoples as well as to continue to work for social justice for Native Americans by showing how historical injustices continue in different forms to the present day. Native American historians are now retelling history from the perspective of indigenous people, using indigenous research methods that are often much different than the traditional research methods of historians of the American West. Discourse community norms can silence and marginalize people, but discourse communities can also be transformed by new members who challenge the goals and assumptions and research methods and genre conventions of the community.

Discourse Communities from School to Work and Beyond

Understanding what a discourse community is and the ways that genres perform social actions in discourse communities can help you better understand where your college teachers are coming from in their writing assignments and also help you understand why there are different writing expectations and genres for different classes in different fields. Researchers who study college writing have discovered that most students struggle with writing when they first enter the discourse community of their chosen major, just like I struggled when I first joined the acoustic guitar jam group. When you graduate college and start your first job, you will probably also find yourself struggling a bit with trying to learn the writing conventions of the discourse community of your workplace. Knowing how discourse communities work will not only help you as you navigate the writing assigned in different general education courses and the specialized writing of your chosen major, but it will also help you in your life after college. Whether you work as a scientist in a lab or a lawyer for a firm or a nurse in a hospital, you will need to become a member of a discourse community. You’ll need to learn to communicate effectively using the genres of the discourse community of your workplace, and this might mean asking questions of more experienced discourse community members, analyzing models of the types of genres you’re expected to use to communicate, and thinking about the most effective style, tone, format, and structure for your audience and purpose. Some workplaces have guidelines for how to write in the genres of the discourse community, and some workplaces will initiate you to their genres by trial and error. But hopefully now that you’ve read this essay, you’ll have a better idea of what kinds of questions to ask to help you become an effective communicator in a new discourse community. I’ll end this essay with a list of questions you can ask yourself whenever you’re entering a new discourse community and learning the genres of the community:

• What are the goals of the discourse community?
• What are the most important genres community members use to achieve these goals?
• Who are the most experienced communicators in the discourse community?
• Where can I find models of the kinds of genres used by the discourse community?
• Who are the different audiences the discourse community communicates with, and how can I adjust my writing for these different audiences?
• What conventions of format, organization, and style does the discourse community value?
• What specialized vocabulary (lexis) do I need to know to communicate effectively with discourse community insiders?
• How does the discourse community make arguments, and what types of evidence are valued?
• Do the conventions of the discourse community silence any members or force any members to conform to the community in ways that make them uncomfortable?
• What can I add to the discourse community?

Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces , vol. 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249–262.

Guitar Hero . Harmonics, 2005.

Meetup.com . WeWork Companies Inc., 2019. www.meetup.com.

Melzer, Daniel. Assignments Across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing . Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2014.

Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings . Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Twenty One Pilots. “Heathens.” Suicide Squad: The Album , Atlantic Records, 2016.

Young, Neil. “Heart of Gold.” Harvest , Reprise Records, 1972.

Teacher Resources for Understanding Discourse Communities by Dan Melzer

Overview and teaching strategies.

This essay can be taught in conjunction with teaching students about the concept of genre and could be paired with Kerry Dirk’s essay “Navigating Genres” in Writing Spaces , volume 1. I find that it works best to scaffold the concept of discourse community by moving students from reflecting on the formulaic writing they have learned in the past, like the five-paragraph theme or the Shaffer method, to introducing them to the concept of genre and how genres are not formulas or formats but forms of social action, and then to helping students understand that genres usually operate within discourse communities. Most of my students are unfamiliar with the concept of discourse community, and I find that it is helpful to relate this concept to discourse communities students are already members of, like online gaming groups, college clubs, or jobs students are working or have worked. I sometimes teach the concept of discourse community as part of a research project where students investigate the genres and communication conventions of a discourse community they want to join or are already a member of. In this project students conduct primary and secondary research and rhetorically analyze examples of the primary genres of the discourse community. The primary research might involve doing an interview or interviews with discourse community members, conducting a survey of discourse community members, or reflecting on participant-observer research.

Inevitably, some students have trouble differentiating between a discourse community and a group of people who share similar characteristics. Students may assert that “college students” or “Facebook users” or “teenage women” are a discourse community. It is useful to apply Swales’ criteria to broader groups that students imagine are discourse communities and then try to narrow down these groups until students have hit upon an actual discourse community (for example, narrowing from “Facebook users” to the Black Lives Matter Sacramento Facebook group). In the essay, I tried to address this issue with specific examples of groups that Swales would not classify as a discourse community.

Teaching students about academic discourse communities is a challenging task. Researchers have found that there are broad expectations for writing that seem to hold true across academic discourse communities, such as the ability to make logical arguments and support those arguments with credible evidence, the ability to use academic vocabulary and write in a formal style, and the ability to carefully edit for grammar, syntax, and citation format. But research has also shown that not only do different academic fields have vastly different definitions of how arguments are made, what counts as evidence, and what genres, styles, and formats are valued, but even similar types of courses within the same discipline may have very different discourse community expectations depending on the instructor, department, and institution. In teaching students about the concept of discourse community, I want students to leave my class understanding that: a) there is no such thing as a formula or set of rules for “academic discourse”; b) each course in each field of study they take in college will require them to write in the context of a different set of discourse community expectations; and c) discourse communities can both pass down community knowledge to new members and sometimes marginalize or silence members. What I hope students take away from reading this essay is a more rhetorically sophisticated and flexible sense of the community contexts of the writing they do both in and outside of school.

• The author begins the essay discussing a discourse community he has recently become a member of. Think of a discourse community that you recently joined and describe how it meets Swales’ criteria for a discourse community.
• Choose a college class you’ve taken or are taking and describe the goals and expectations for writing of the discourse community the class represents. In small groups, compare the class discourse community you described with two of your peers’ courses. What are some of the differences in the goals and expectations for writing?
• Using Swales’ criteria for a discourse community, consider whether the following are discourse communities and why or why not: a) students at your college; b) a fraternity or sorority; c) fans of soccer; d) a high school debate team.
• The author of this essay argues that discourse communities use genres for social actions. Consider your major or a field you would like to work in after you graduate. What are some of the most important genres of that discourse community? In what ways do these genres perform social actions for members of the discourse community?

The following are activities that can provide scaffolding for a discourse community analysis project. To view example student discourse community analysis projects from the first-year composition program that I direct at the University of California, Davis, see our online student writing journal at fycjournal.ucdavis.edu .

Introducing the Concept of Discourse Community

To introduce students to the concept of discourse community, I like to start with discourse communities they can relate to or that they themselves are members of. A favorite example for my students is the This American Life podcast episode that explores the Instagram habits of teenage girls, which can be found at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/573/status-update . Other examples students can personally connect to include Facebook groups, groups on the popular social media site Reddit, fan clubs of musical artists or sports teams, and campus student special interest groups. Once we’ve discussed a few examples of discourse communities they can relate to on a personal level, I ask them to list some of the discourse communities they belong to and we apply Swales’ criteria to a few of these examples as a class.

Genre Analysis

One goal of my discourse community analysis project is to help students see the relationships between genres and the broader community contexts that genres operate in. However, thinking of writing in terms of genre and discourse community is a new approach for most of my students, and I provide them with heuristic questions they can use to analyze the primary genres of the discourse community they are focusing on in their projects. These questions include:

• Who is the audience(s) for the genre, and how does audience shape the genre?
• What social actions does the genre achieve for the discourse community?
• What are the conventions of the genre?
• How much flexibility do authors have to vary the conventions of the genre?
• Have the conventions of the genre changed over time? In what ways and why?
• To what extent does the genre empower members of the discourse community to speak, and to what extent does the genre marginalize or silence members of the discourse community?
• Where can a new discourse community member find models of the genre?

Research Questions about the Discourse Community

You could choose to have the focus of students’ discourse community projects be as simple as arguing that the discourse community they chose meets Swales’ criteria and explaining why. If you want students to dig a little deeper, you can ask them to come up with research questions about the discourse community they are analyzing. For example, students can ask questions about how the genres of the discourse community achieve the goals of the community, or how the writing conventions of the discourse community have changed over time and why they have changed, or how new members are initiated to the discourse community and the extent to which that initiation is effective. Some of my students are used to being assigned research papers in school that ask them to take a side on a pro/ con issue and develop a simplistic thesis statement that argues for that position. In the discourse community analysis project, I push them to think of research as more sophisticated than just taking a position and forming a simplistic thesis statement. I want them to use primary and secondary research to explore complex research questions and decide which aspects of their data and their analysis are the most interesting and useful to report on in their projects.

• This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) and are subject to the Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ , email [email protected] , or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. To view the Writing Spaces Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces.org/terms-of-use . ↵

Understanding Discourse Communities Copyright © 2020 by Dan Melzer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write a great community service essay.

College Admissions , Extracurriculars

Are you applying to a college or a scholarship that requires a community service essay? Do you know how to write an essay that will impress readers and clearly show the impact your work had on yourself and others?

Read on to learn step-by-step instructions for writing a great community service essay that will help you stand out and be memorable.

What Is a Community Service Essay? Why Do You Need One?

A community service essay is an essay that describes the volunteer work you did and the impact it had on you and your community. Community service essays can vary widely depending on specific requirements listed in the application, but, in general, they describe the work you did, why you found the work important, and how it benefited people around you.

Community service essays are typically needed for two reasons:

#1: To Apply to College

• Some colleges require students to write community service essays as part of their application or to be eligible for certain scholarships.
• You may also choose to highlight your community service work in your personal statement.

#2: To Apply for Scholarships

• Some scholarships are specifically awarded to students with exceptional community service experiences, and many use community service essays to help choose scholarship recipients.
• Green Mountain College offers one of the most famous of these scholarships. Their "Make a Difference Scholarship" offers full tuition, room, and board to students who have demonstrated a significant, positive impact through their community service

Getting Started With Your Essay

In the following sections, I'll go over each step of how to plan and write your essay. I'll also include sample excerpts for you to look through so you can get a better idea of what readers are looking for when they review your essay.

Step 1: Know the Essay Requirements

Before your start writing a single word, you should be familiar with the essay prompt. Each college or scholarship will have different requirements for their essay, so make sure you read these carefully and understand them.

Specific things to pay attention to include:

• Length requirement
• Application deadline
• The main purpose or focus of the essay
• If the essay should follow a specific structure

Below are three real community service essay prompts. Read through them and notice how much they vary in terms of length, detail, and what information the writer should include.

From the Equitable Excellence Scholarship:

"Describe your outstanding achievement in depth and provide the specific planning, training, goals, and steps taken to make the accomplishment successful. Include details about your role and highlight leadership you provided. Your essay must be a minimum of 350 words but not more than 600 words."

From the Laura W. Bush Traveling Scholarship:

"Essay (up to 500 words, double spaced) explaining your interest in being considered for the award and how your proposed project reflects or is related to both UNESCO's mandate and U.S. interests in promoting peace by sharing advances in education, science, culture, and communications."

From the LULAC National Scholarship Fund:

"Please type or print an essay of 300 words (maximum) on how your academic studies will contribute to your personal & professional goals. In addition, please discuss any community service or extracurricular activities you have been involved in that relate to your goals."

Step 2: Brainstorm Ideas

Even after you understand what the essay should be about, it can still be difficult to begin writing. Answer the following questions to help brainstorm essay ideas. You may be able to incorporate your answers into your essay.

• What community service activity that you've participated in has meant the most to you?
• What is your favorite memory from performing community service?
• Why did you decide to begin community service?
• What made you decide to volunteer where you did?
• How has your community service changed you?
• How has your community service helped others?
• How has your community service affected your plans for the future?

You don't need to answer all the questions, but if you find you have a lot of ideas for one of two of them, those may be things you want to include in your essay.

Writing Your Essay

How you structure your essay will depend on the requirements of the scholarship or school you are applying to. You may give an overview of all the work you did as a volunteer, or highlight a particularly memorable experience. You may focus on your personal growth or how your community benefited.

Regardless of the specific structure requested, follow the guidelines below to make sure your community service essay is memorable and clearly shows the impact of your work.

Samples of mediocre and excellent essays are included below to give you a better idea of how you should draft your own essay.

Step 1: Hook Your Reader In

You want the person reading your essay to be interested, so your first sentence should hook them in and entice them to read more. A good way to do this is to start in the middle of the action. Your first sentence could describe you helping build a house, releasing a rescued animal back to the wild, watching a student you tutored read a book on their own, or something else that quickly gets the reader interested. This will help set your essay apart and make it more memorable.

Compare these two opening sentences:

"I have volunteered at the Wishbone Pet Shelter for three years."

"The moment I saw the starving, mud-splattered puppy brought into the shelter with its tail between its legs, I knew I'd do whatever I could to save it."

The first sentence is a very general, bland statement. The majority of community service essays probably begin a lot like it, but it gives the reader little information and does nothing to draw them in. On the other hand, the second sentence begins immediately with action and helps persuade the reader to keep reading so they can learn what happened to the dog.

Step 2: Discuss the Work You Did

Once you've hooked your reader in with your first sentence, tell them about your community service experiences. State where you work, when you began working, how much time you've spent there, and what your main duties include. This will help the reader quickly put the rest of the essay in context and understand the basics of your community service work.

Not including basic details about your community service could leave your reader confused.

Step 3: Include Specific Details

It's the details of your community service that make your experience unique and memorable, so go into the specifics of what you did.

For example, don't just say you volunteered at a nursing home; talk about reading Mrs. Johnson her favorite book, watching Mr. Scott win at bingo, and seeing the residents play games with their grandchildren at the family day you organized. Try to include specific activities, moments, and people in your essay. Having details like these let the readers really understand what work you did and how it differs from other volunteer experiences.

Compare these two passages:

"For my volunteer work, I tutored children at a local elementary school. I helped them improve their math skills and become more confident students."

"As a volunteer at York Elementary School, I worked one-on-one with second and third graders who struggled with their math skills, particularly addition, subtraction, and fractions. As part of my work, I would create practice problems and quizzes and try to connect math to the students' interests. One of my favorite memories was when Sara, a student I had been working with for several weeks, told me that she enjoyed the math problems I had created about a girl buying and selling horses so much that she asked to help me create math problems for other students."

The first passage only gives basic information about the work done by the volunteer; there is very little detail included, and no evidence is given to support her claims. How did she help students improve their math skills? How did she know they were becoming more confident?

The second passage is much more detailed. It recounts a specific story and explains more fully what kind of work the volunteer did, as well as a specific instance of a student becoming more confident with her math skills. Providing more detail in your essay helps support your claims as well as make your essay more memorable and unique.

Step 4: Show Your Personality

It would be very hard to get a scholarship or place at a school if none of your readers felt like they knew much about you after finishing your essay, so make sure that your essay shows your personality. The way to do this is to state your personal strengths, then provide examples to support your claims. Take some time to think about which parts of your personality you would like your essay to highlight, then write about specific examples to show this.

• If you want to show that you're a motivated leader, describe a time when you organized an event or supervised other volunteers.
• If you want to show your teamwork skills, write about a time you helped a group of people work together better.
• If you want to show that you're a compassionate animal lover, write about taking care of neglected shelter animals and helping each of them find homes.

Step 5: State What You Accomplished

After you have described your community service and given specific examples of your work, you want to begin to wrap your essay up by stating your accomplishments. What was the impact of your community service? Did you build a house for a family to move into? Help students improve their reading skills? Clean up a local park? Make sure the impact of your work is clear; don't be worried about bragging here.

If you can include specific numbers, that will also strengthen your essay. Saying "I delivered meals to 24 home-bound senior citizens" is a stronger example than just saying "I delivered meals to lots of senior citizens."

Also be sure to explain why your work matters. Why is what you did important? Did it provide more parks for kids to play in? Help students get better grades? Give people medical care who would otherwise not have gotten it? This is an important part of your essay, so make sure to go into enough detail that your readers will know exactly what you accomplished and how it helped your community.

"My biggest accomplishment during my community service was helping to organize a family event at the retirement home. The children and grandchildren of many residents attended, and they all enjoyed playing games and watching movies together."

"The community service accomplishment that I'm most proud of is the work I did to help organize the First Annual Family Fun Day at the retirement home. My job was to design and organize fun activities that senior citizens and their younger relatives could enjoy. The event lasted eight hours and included ten different games, two performances, and a movie screening with popcorn. Almost 200 residents and family members attended throughout the day. This event was important because it provided an opportunity for senior citizens to connect with their family members in a way they aren't often able to. It also made the retirement home seem more fun and enjoyable to children, and we have seen an increase in the number of kids coming to visit their grandparents since the event."

The second passage is stronger for a variety of reasons. First, it goes into much more detail about the work the volunteer did. The first passage only states that she helped "organize a family event." That really doesn't tell readers much about her work or what her responsibilities were. The second passage is much clearer; her job was to "design and organize fun activities."

The second passage also explains the event in more depth. A family day can be many things; remember that your readers are likely not familiar with what you're talking about, so details help them get a clearer picture.

Lastly, the second passage makes the importance of the event clear: it helped residents connect with younger family members, and it helped retirement homes seem less intimidating to children, so now some residents see their grand kids more often.

Step 6: Discuss What You Learned

One of the final things to include in your essay should be the impact that your community service had on you. You can discuss skills you learned, such as carpentry, public speaking, animal care, or another skill.

You can also talk about how you changed personally. Are you more patient now? More understanding of others? Do you have a better idea of the type of career you want? Go into depth about this, but be honest. Don't say your community service changed your life if it didn't because trite statements won't impress readers.

In order to support your statements, provide more examples. If you say you're more patient now, how do you know this? Do you get less frustrated while playing with your younger siblings? Are you more willing to help group partners who are struggling with their part of the work? You've probably noticed by now that including specific examples and details is one of the best ways to create a strong and believable essay .

"As a result of my community service, I learned a lot about building houses and became a more mature person."

"As a result of my community service, I gained hands-on experience in construction. I learned how to read blueprints, use a hammer and nails, and begin constructing the foundation of a two-bedroom house. Working on the house could be challenging at times, but it taught me to appreciate the value of hard work and be more willing to pitch in when I see someone needs help. My dad has just started building a shed in our backyard, and I offered to help him with it because I know from my community service how much work it is. I also appreciate my own house more, and I know how lucky I am to have a roof over my head."

The second passage is more impressive and memorable because it describes the skills the writer learned in more detail and recounts a specific story that supports her claim that her community service changed her and made her more helpful.

Step 7: Finish Strong

Just as you started your essay in a way that would grab readers' attention, you want to finish your essay on a strong note as well. A good way to end your essay is to state again the impact your work had on you, your community, or both. Reiterate how you changed as a result of your community service, why you found the work important, or how it helped others.

Compare these two concluding statements:

"In conclusion, I learned a lot from my community service at my local museum, and I hope to keep volunteering and learning more about history."

"To conclude, volunteering at my city's American History Museum has been a great experience. By leading tours and participating in special events, I became better at public speaking and am now more comfortable starting conversations with people. In return, I was able to get more community members interested in history and our local museum. My interest in history has deepened, and I look forward to studying the subject in college and hopefully continuing my volunteer work at my university's own museum."

The second passage takes each point made in the first passage and expands upon it. In a few sentences, the second passage is able to clearly convey what work the volunteer did, how she changed, and how her volunteer work benefited her community.

The author of the second passage also ends her essay discussing her future and how she'd like to continue her community service, which is a good way to wrap things up because it shows your readers that you are committed to community service for the long-term.

What's Next?

Are you applying to a community service scholarship or thinking about it? We have a complete list of all the community service scholarships available to help get your search started!

Do you need a community service letter as well? We have a step-by-step guide that will tell you how to get a great reference letter from your community service supervisor.

Thinking about doing community service abroad? Before you sign up, read our guide on some of the hazards of international volunteer trips and how to know if it's the right choice for you.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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What Is Community, and Why Is It Important?

In 2005, the Center asked several people whose work involves community building this simple question, and got some not-so-simple answers.

Riché C. Zamor, Executive Director, Latin American Health Institute, Boston

To me a community is a group of individuals connected to each other by one or more attribute(s). The element that links them together is at the core, and is the essence of the group. Just as denoted by the root and the suffix of the word (common-unity), a certain segment of the population is united by a familiar thread. In the field of Public Health, we see community as a group of folks that are at risk of being infected or affected by certain types of diseases based on their demographic, social, and economic status. A community is a familiar thread used to bring people together to advocate and support each other in the fight to overcome those threats. As human beings, we need a sense of belonging, and that sense of belonging is what connects us to the many relationships we develop. Communities are also rich in resources, that is where their collective aspect comes into play. We are all members of many communities (family, work, neighborhood, etc.), and we constantly move in and out of them, depending on the situation. Community is where we find comfort in difficult times. When things are not going well in one community, we have the option to move to another. For me, the community is where one finds the balance between physical and mental fitness.

Sarah Michelson, Teen Intern with The Food Project

Most people in today’s world rely on a community for practical purposes. The necessities of life rarely come from one’s own hands, but rather from a complicated “web of mutuality,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. once phrased it. While most people need to be part of a community for life’s necessities, most people want to be part of a community because there is something indescribably lovely about being a part of a group of people who share something more substantial than geographical location… something they feel passionately about. Something that, when shared, makes individuals seem less lonely. A community is a safe place.

But there is something potentially dangerous about communities. A community that is safe, comfortable, and trusting can be so enticing that individuals can forget about the world outside of their community, or regard other communities with subtle prejudices.

I am a member of the Sudbury community, an affluent suburb of Boston. While I work to give back to my community, I also need to spend some time away from Sudbury, to know what life is like in Bolivia, in the American South, or in Roxbury, the inner city neighborhood where the Food Project does a lot of its work. I need to go to these places to remind myself that this way of life I am used to is not the only way or the best way. I need to be reminded that, while I give to my community, other communities are no less deserving. I need to be reminded that when I form a connection with someone based on common experience, it is not because that someone is from Sudbury. It is because we are both human beings, and I am part of a global community.

Alan O’Hare, Schenachie (Celtic Storyteller) and Director Life Story Theatre

In the silence of an early morning walk recently, the crystal song of a scarlet red cardinal atop an oak tree awakened me more fully. As I stood listening to him and his mate in a nearby tree serenading each other, a couple walking their dog joined me. Without speaking a word, it was clear we were enchanted by the gift of their song, and we joined together briefly in a community of celebration for the gifts of Nature.

The new light, the morning hymn, and the momentary connection with other travelers evoked images from other communities. Each of these whether for learning, work, healing, prayer, or friendship creates for us a safe experience of belonging, purpose, and shared values. In them, each of us encounters who we are and what our gifts are.

In the Sufi tradition, it is taught that the primary purpose of life is to awaken to the essence of who we are. Once we do so, we are invited to lovingly embrace this realization. The gift of community is that it offers each of us the fire of affirmation and support to achieve this… even on those days when we feel no fire.

But at that time we can recall the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “I ask all of you to hold up your hands and tell me the truth. Do you believe, as I do, that someone in our hamlet is keeping the fire alive?”

Frances Moore Lappé, Author of Democracy’s Edge

Community — meaning for me “nurturing human connection” — is our survival. We humans wither outside of community. It isn’t a luxury, a nice thing; community is essential to our well being.   Inclusion in the social life of society is community’s foundation. By inclusion I mean universal access to entry, starting with legal protections against exclusion — racial discrimination, for example — but going far, far beyond. Inclusion means access to jobs with fair pay, decent shelter, effective schools, and reliable health care. If you deprive “a man of a job or an income,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., “you are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist…it is murder, psychologically…”   Yet today the ethic in ascendance is exclusion. We have allowed the government to let the minimum wage lose a quarter of its value in thirty years. One out of every five jobs in the U.S. will not lift a family of four out of poverty. And we’ve allowed health care to become unattainable by so many that America now ranks 42nd among the world’s nations in infant survival.   This profoundly disturbing assault on community calls us to accept an irony: We must risk exclusion — alienating or at least disturbing others — to become advocates for inclusion in community. That may mean speaking our minds even if  doing so triggers discomfort in others, reaching out to those excluded even when it feels awkward, engaging in visible civic public action such as a vigil or door-to-door education even where we risk angry rejection.   Appreciating that community is essential to human well being calls us to a particular kind of courage: walking with our fear of exclusion in order to stand up for inclusion.

Lisa R. Fortuna, Staff Psychiatrist, Cambridge Health Alliance

Community is about growing with others. I grew up surrounded by a culturally rich and loving community which has shaped my identity and pride as a black Latina woman. I have been blessed to be around young people and families ever engaged in improving the vitality of their community. Now, thirty five years into my life, I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Everyday, I get to meet with young people. I have the opportunity to be there in their lives during some of their most difficult and distressing moments. Because of who these young people are, and because of the love I have received, I strive to be the best physician I can be and to serve those who need me most.

In the process, my spirituality has been a central stabilizing and informing force in my life, one that has been very personal, very quiet and that has nevertheless guided every one of my life choices. This interface between community, medicine, and personal faith started with an early and long-standing fascination with the world around me. My mind was ignited by a love of science and medicine, and reliant on the power of community and deep respect and appreciation for healing. This attitude towards the world was inspired by my grandmother my mother, and the elders around me who took the time to care. This is what community is about… taking care of each other.

Shirley Tang, Assistant Professor, Asian-American Studies & American Studies, UM ass Boston

I accepted the invitation to write for the BRC newsletter as a way to reflect briefly upon my own questions about community-building after twelve years of teaching and developing Asian American Studies in both university and street settings with students from urban immigrant/refugee communities. I was first drawn to Asian American Studies, and ethnic studies in general, because of its revolutionary commitments to community-building, justice-centered education, and hands-on, practical work. I have always felt that the best places to learn/teach are not behind the closed doors of an ivory tower but where people are experiencing marginalization and exclusion from decision-making power and resource-rich opportunities.

Several years ago, that was all theory. After I listened carefully to how young people and their families experienced problems first-hand and after I realized that they had always been at the forefront in fighting for a just and healthy community for all, I had begun to see things from their perspective and apply myself to keeping their—our—dreams alive. Since I started working at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, I have become a U.S. resident, and like many of the students and community members that I work with, I also found my life becoming more and more tied to the political and social situation of immigrant communities/communities of color in U.S.  society.

So, why is community important? Because community saves us from the isolation and alienation we fear. Because in the real world people have no choice. Because community is about finding each other and a place we can call home. But we are also compelled to build community not only because we are survivors in an existing world order but because we bring differences to a society that erases our differences. By dealing with differences we confront the question of the social and economic foundations of our society. By building community we put some order in the fragmented world.

Interdependence

It’s a simple idea with vast implications. Known in Western society as interdependence, the concept has been known for millennia in Buddhism as “dependent origination.” Because of the light it sheds on all manner of living relations, Ikeda returns time and again to it in his writings, speeches, and dialogues.

Pushing Play in the Community

A 16-year-old describes her community’s play day.

Posted December 26, 2015

*From Pat Rumbaugh, the Play Lady

For Play Day inspiration, here is a paper written by Claire Koenig when she was in 10th grade. Claire and a handful of other teens helped with our 1st Play Day.

The Takoma Park Play Committee reminds the community of the importance of pressing the ‘play’ button for the new generation

An Indian princess, a fairy queen and a southern belle step out on the town together – dressed in their finest. They stroll along with bright smiles shining as they chat together about grown-up things like taxes and dictionaries. Up the road the next Michael Jordan shoots baskets with his coach, and up-and-coming challengers of the Williams sisters take on a potential Roger Federer in a friendly tennis match. Aspiring master architects and city planners design skyscrapers to touch the clouds just inside the door to a small white cabin. A young entertainer discovers a knack for juggling while an artist showcases her work in the medium of chalk drawings on the asphalt next to a sign that reads “Welcome to the 2009 Takoma Park Play Day.”

Amid the fantasies of the children that have gathered in a playground in Takoma Park stands Pat Rumbaugh – founder and director of the Takoma Park Play Committee and leader of a hearty crew of “Playful People." Rumbaugh describes herself as an “advocate of play” with a mission to make Takoma Park a more playful city for everyone in the area. “I love talking to people about play. I just feel like our backgrounds, ages and interests don’t matter; we all just seem to have so much fun.”

As a child, Pat Rumbaugh developed a passion for sport and play that has grown throughout her entire life. She grew up playing with her childhood friend Robin on the quiet streets of a small town in western Pennsylvania. “Kickball, tag, catch, bike riding, exploring the woods…we played all the time, that’s just what we did.” In the winter they played inside a local gym, or they played broom hockey on a frozen lake. When she reached high school she played on the basketball, volleyball and track teams and tried out for boy’s sports when there wasn’t a girl’s team available. “It’s amazing to think how much I did active- wise ,” she says.

Now an adult, Rumbaugh works as a Physical Education teacher for middle and high school students at the Washington International School, and her love of play still defines her. “I feel like I’m broadening, just wanting to promote play.” She teamed with a photographer to write a children’s book about play called “Let’s Play in the Playground.” During a promotional reading at the Takoma Park library in February, she began to seek support for her new idea. “So I’m thinking of starting this play committee . . .”

Those words kick-started a new adventure for Rumbaugh and her crew of play advocates. She sought help in the most unlikely of places – the senior’s home in Takoma Park, the Old Takoma Business Association and eventually the Mayor's Office. Parents, grandparents, teachers and a host of others who are passionate about play signed up to encourage fun for all shapes and sizes. After a few weeks of planning and anticipation, the new committee members had gathered on the second floor of the SunTrust Bank building in Old Town Takoma Park for their first meeting.

A small hand reaches towards the sky in wonder as a stream of bubbles twinkle joyfully into the sunlight. They drift down from the hot-pink plastic wand in lazy waves before gently popping on curious fingers. A giggle escapes the little girl as she runs off in pursuit of the bubbles, but once they’ve said their goodbyes and kept on flying, she turns back to the creator of these fascinating little creatures expectantly. A man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a large smile dips his wand back into the tub of soap and takes a deep breath.

Phil Shapiro has been an advocate for unstructured, imaginative play since his childhood. He had a friend who would create his own games - scrabble with ten pieces instead of seven or Frisbee soccer. “He convinced me that even though we were kids, we could still play scrabble. That we had the same ability as the adults.” He stresses the importance of kids learning how to play in order to ignite creativity and improvisation, “Play is connected with imagination ,” he says. “Play is full of surprises. It’s fun, and you never know what’s going to happen.”

Shapiro first heard about the committee from the children’s librarian at the Takoma Park Library where Rumbaugh did her book talk. He quickly adopted her cause, and eagerly looked for ways to help. “In the old days, play was something you did naturally,” he says. “In the modern world, it’s different. If you don’t teach play they won’t know what it is.”

Advocates of the powers of imagination and creativity confirm the findings and share the concerns of the Play Committee in Takoma Park. Einstein High School junior Molly Graham Hickman works as a drama teacher and director for children ages seven to eleven at Silver Spring’s Lumina Studio Theater. She teaches her students to draw on their imagination and natural creativity. “The kind of play that I facilitate at Lumina accelerates the rate at which shy children come out of their shells, something video games could not do,” she explains.

Although younger than Shapiro and Rumbaugh, Hickman still remembers a time when she would play ninjas or catch outside with her brothers, or dress-up with her sister. “My mom was a big believer in good old fashioned, roll-in-the-sandbox, wooden toys, getting plenty of fresh air, all that.” She also fully supports the efforts of the Play Committee to keep play the way that it was when she was younger. “The Takoma Park Play Committee’s work has definitely paid off,” she says, “we need more places like Takoma Park all around our screen-infested country!”

Three cardboard boxes filled with purple “play” shirts sit behind a carefully arranged fold out table, half dedicated to a face painting and tattooing station where a small girl shows her mother the orange “KaBoom!” sticker that stands out loud and proud on the back of her hand. The other half of the table holds a white and orange striped beach ball which a volunteer eagerly encourages passing people to sign. The ball with its signatures and messages of support for play will be sent to congress to showcase the love of play displayed in Takoma Park.

The volunteer is Mary Hanisco, who became one of the core members of the Play Committee while relaxing in her front yard just after moving into her house in Takoma Park. Rumbaugh came by to introduce herself, and she convinced Hanisco to join the committee. “She was a godsend,” explains Rumbaugh, “Organized, dedicated, and good on the computer.” Hanisco was the driving force behind raising the money for a “Play Day” banner and the purple t-shirts.

As a child Hanisco remembers playing with her younger brother at their grandmothers house in Kentucky during the holidays. “We would make up newscasts and pretend to be reporters, traveling through town to get stories and then we would put on a news broadcast.” She supports imaginative play especially, and says that it helps kids to become independent people, “Unstructured play helps [kids] use their imagination, while toys tell them how to play.”

Another crucial member of the Play Committee is Roz Grigsby, a member of the local Old Takoma Business Association. She works with Rumbaugh and the other members of the committee on approaching the city council and city staff with new ideas. Grigsby represents the businesses in Takoma Park, saying, “There is a natural connection between local businesses, which do so much to encourage play, and the work of the committee. In addition to selling toys, games, play equipment, musical instruments and imaginative items, merchants are also big supporters of the local soccer league, baseball teams and so on.”

Grigsby grew up on a farm with lots of space and time. She would meet her friend from a neighboring farm at the cottonwood tree between their houses to play and enjoyed many imaginary games outside. She says that it is through unstructured play that children learn to try on different temperaments, and to find new responses to situations they encounter in their games * * *

Weathered fingers lock themselves around a pair of smaller, unwrinkled hands and guide them in a sweeping motion. Young arms move back and forth with old and youthful muscles draw some expertise from experienced limbs. The child watches his arms move for several passes, then turns to smile over his shoulder at the kind eyes of his teacher. Then she steps back, and looks on as he draws the tennis racket back by himself to hit his first ball.

Colleen Dipaul is 82 and has been playing tennis her whole life. “I never had any tennis coaches per se; I didn’t play on tennis teams. I was very fortunate to learn to play tennis on a court.” Dipaul grew up in a small city in North Carolina with friends in a close-knit neighborhood. “I was so fortunate to be in a community where it was encouraged for children to go out and play. There was a seventh grade school teacher across the street that we all had at one time or another; she was our adult supervision.”

Dipaul became friends with Rumbaugh through tennis, and joined the Play Committee as soon as it began. “I was in it from the first time Pat started to think about it.” Since then she has been a frequent presence at committee events, helping in any way she can. Dipaul believes in play not only as an outlet for creativity, but as a way for children to learn. “It’s through play that vocabulary is found, and new words. And how to get along with one another.”

Dipaul describes the way that the people of Takoma Park work together to make sure it’s a safe place for children to play. Parents and nannies wait at the bus stops for their kids to be picked up. Organizations like the Play Committee arrange time for kids to play together. Everyone works together to ensure that the children can play and grow safely. “It’s a marvelous way for a child to grow up.”

The Play Lady says: Lets change the world for the better by bringing back play. Go play!

POSTS IN THIS SERIES

1 The Play Lady Tells Us How to Become Play-ers

2 How to Start a Play Committee in Your Community

3 How to Plan a Play Day in Your Community

4 Pushing Play in the Community

5 Why Close a Street to Play?

6 Join an Already Planned Community Event and Promote Play

7 Inter-generational Games Night

8 Community Service: Teens Make Great Play Advocates

9 Start a Play Club in Your School

10 The Benefits of Play Events in Your Community

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Watch one of the two TEDxTalks Pat gave on play .

Pat is the Co-founder of the nonprofit Let’s Play America . Like us on Facebook Let’s Play America.

Invite The Play Lady to your community.

Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Abstract: Personalized text-to-image generation using diffusion models has recently emerged and garnered significant interest. This task learns a novel concept (e.g., a unique toy), illustrated in a handful of images, into a generative model that captures fine visual details and generates photorealistic images based on textual embeddings. In this paper, we present ViCo, a novel lightweight plug-and-play method that seamlessly integrates visual condition into personalized text-to-image generation. ViCo stands out for its unique feature of not requiring any fine-tuning of the original diffusion model parameters, thereby facilitating more flexible and scalable model deployment. This key advantage distinguishes ViCo from most existing models that necessitate partial or full diffusion fine-tuning. ViCo incorporates an image attention module that conditions the diffusion process on patch-wise visual semantics, and an attention-based object mask that comes at no extra cost from the attention module. Despite only requiring light parameter training (~6% compared to the diffusion U-Net), ViCo delivers performance that is on par with, or even surpasses, all state-of-the-art models, both qualitatively and quantitatively. This underscores the efficacy of ViCo, making it a highly promising solution for personalized text-to-image generation without the need for diffusion model fine-tuning. Code: this https URL

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How to Write the “Make Community a Better Place” UC Essay

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Vinay Bhaskara in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info. 

What’s Covered:

Defining “community”, demonstrating your values.

The University of California system requires you to answer four out of eight essay prompts . The seventh University of California prompt asks, “What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?” For a lot of people, a key to unlocking this essay is to think about defining “community” effectively.

Communities Come in All Sizes

Many people reading this prompt might think they should talk about something they did to make a positive impact in their town or their school. But your community does not need to be defined as something as large as your whole school or whole neighborhood. It can be as small as a club or a class, or even a friend group, all of which are communities to some extent.

Consider Virtual Communities

Don’t be afraid to even talk about a virtual community in answering this essay prompt. For so many of us these days, the communities we find and belong to are virtual, whether it’s a Reddit forum or Twitch chat, the comments section of a YouTuber you really like, a Discord server, or something along those lines. Not enough students write about virtual communities relative to how much time we all spend in them, so if you’ve done something to make a virtual environment a better place, that is absolutely valuable material for this essay prompt. 

Be sure to highlight your personal connection to the community you write about and your motivations for the actions you took to improve it.

Another important consideration in writing this essay is demonstrating your values and how you upheld them through your actions. You’ll also want to mention the positive impact your actions had, but be careful not to spend too much time in this area. Describing the positive impact you had is important, but you don’t want to take up too much of the word count with this. 

As an example, say you’re writing about social justice, perhaps a change you drove in your school to promote inclusivity. An essay that focuses too strongly on the impact of your actions isn’t going to be as powerful as an essay that mentions the impacts, but focuses more on your personal motivations. Instead of emphasizing how your actions improved your community, emphasize why you felt motivated to make those improvements. 

This is important because, with this essay, you’re not just answering the prompt. You’re also answering the underlying questions of how you define your community, how you relate to it, and how capable you are of having an impact on those around you. 

Colleges want to figure out whether an applicant will be a positive contributor to their community. This essay prompt is much more about your personal character than it is about the outcomes of your efforts. In answering this prompt, you’ll be demonstrating how you’ll fit in with and improve the community at your school of choice.

For more information on how to write responses for the other UC essays, consider reading  this article  on CollegeVine!

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US Election 2024: Expert Calls Bitcoin Community 'A Politician's Dream Population Segment'

• Burnett expects campaign teams to study Bitcoin and the people supporting the digital coin
• Politicians will soon realize that they have to 'embrace' BTC or lose, he said
• Trump is one of several politicians who have signaled a softer stance on the crypto industry

With U.S. elections in less than six months, the small but "powerful" Bitcoin community will soon become a voting group that politicians will have their eyes glued to, a cryptocurrency expert predicted.

For Joe Burnett, senior product marketing manager at BTC native financial services firm Unchained Capital, politicians will soon realize how important the community using Bitcoin is to their campaigns.

He said in a video on X (formerly Twitter) that he is expecting campaigning teams of American politicians to study the voting public's activity around Bitcoin. First, they will research how Bitcoin works, but "most importantly, who supports Bitcoin and who doesn't."

Bitcoin holders are becoming a powerful, intolerant minority. #Bitcoin is going to rapidly become a hot political talking point—and future elections will hinge on a candidate's stance on bitcoin. Politicians will soon learn this one simple fact: Embrace bitcoin or lose. pic.twitter.com/KEQkzf8UVb — Joe Burnett (🔑)³ (@IIICapital) May 9, 2024

He went on to explain that BTC owners are a "new growing intolerant minority" that just could be "a politician's dream population segment," given how the said group will "immediately" vote for a politician who welcomes or embraces the world's largest digital asset by market value. "Politicians will soon learn this one simple fact: embrace Bitcoin or lose," Burnett concluded.

Burnett's view of how the Bitcoin community can affect the political landscape may be related to the recent signals from some of the most prominent figures in politics, who have signaled a softening stance toward Bitcoin and the broader digital assets sector.

For instance, former President Donald Trump told NFT investors whom he hosted at his Mar-a-Lago estate Wednesday that he was now " fine" with cryptocurrencies , and he would "stop" the hostility that regulators have shown toward crypto in recent years. It is worth noting that the business mogul was a former critic of Bitcoin and digital currencies.

Another Republican, John Deaton, is looking to unseat crypto critic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. He is known for his work in standing alongside holders of XRP, the native token of the Ripple network, amid the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) lawsuit against the crypto giant.

The crypto community also found a friend in Bernie Moreno , who is looking to challenge the Democratic Party's Sen. Sherrod Brown – another crypto critic – in November. Moreno was endorsed by Trump in December, and the digital assets sector celebrated his Ohio primary win earlier this year. "Ohio is THE key statewide race to ensure the future of crypto in the U.S.," one crypto enthusiast said.

The true impact of the Bitcoin and crypto community on the elections has yet to be seen. However, it appears that some politicians are already recognizing the importance of the emerging voting group in securing wins during the elections later this year.

© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.

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Today’s Wordle Review No. 1,054

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By New York Times Games

Welcome to The Wordle Review. Be warned: This page contains spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Wordle first , or scroll at your own risk.

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Today’s Difficulty

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Today’s average difficulty is 3.7 guesses out of 6, or easy breezy.

For more in-depth analysis, visit our friend, WordleBot .

Today’s word is PIOUS, an adjective. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it means “earnestly compliant in the observance of religion; reverent or devout.”

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Julien Posture is an illustrator and researcher who creates images about society and writes about the social life of images. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology at Cambridge, studying the ways humans and machines see images, specifically illustrations.

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