amherst college essays that worked

Amherst College Supplemental Essays Guide: 2021-2022

Not sure how to approach the Amherst essays? CollegeAdvisor.com’s guide to the Amherst supplemental essays will show you how to write strong Amherst essays to maximize your chances of admission. If you need help crafting your Amherst supplemental essays, create your free CollegeAdvisor.com account or schedule a free advising consultation by calling (844) 343-6272.

Amherst College Essay Guide Quick Facts:

• Amherst College is ranked #2 in National Liberal Arts Colleges.
• The Amherst college acceptance rate is 12%, which makes it a most selective school according to U.S. News . 
• We recommend answering the Amherst essays comprehensively and thoughtfully.

What is the acceptance rate for Amherst College?

According to U.S. News , the Amherst College acceptance rate is 12%. Based on the low Amherst College acceptance rate, U.S. News lists Amherst as a most selective school. 

The Amherst College acceptance rate also places Amherst at number 27 in the list of the Top 100 schools with the lowest acceptance rates. 

So, how exactly are acceptance rates calculated? Like all percentages, the Amherst College acceptance rate is based on a ratio: the total number of applicants to the total number of accepted students. 

While this ratio may seem simple, many factors influence the Amherst College acceptance rate. These factors include how many seats are available in the incoming class, tuition rates, location, and more. The Amherst College acceptance rate can also be impacted by any policy changes to the admissions process, such as the university’s decision to go test-optional due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Five College Consortium

Another factor that influences the Amherst College acceptance rate is the fact that Amherst students can also take classes at any of the schools in the Five College Consortium . Under this program, Amherst students can register for courses at Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This opportunity attracts many students and contributes to the low Amherst College acceptance rate. 

Across the country, college acceptance rates continue to decrease as qualified students apply to more schools each year. However, don’t let the low Amherst College acceptance rate stop you from applying. Instead, focus on crafting a strong, unique, and engaging Amherst supplement essay. The Amherst College acceptance rate is just one piece of the admissions puzzle. 

Want to learn more about the Amherst College acceptance rate and acceptance rates in general? Read our blog article here.

Does Amherst College have any supplemental essays?

Yes. All applicants have the option to choose one of three Amherst supplemental essays to submit. You’ll also respond to the main essay prompt in the Common App , Coalition App , or the QuestBridge application.  

One of the optional Amherst supplemental essays asks you to choose from a list of four Amherst essay prompts; the others ask you to submit a graded paper or write an essay for Amherst’s A2A program. The Amherst essays are your chance to show how you’ll shape your education and expand your knowledge. 

For a detailed list of application requirements aside from the Amherst supplemental essays, please visit Amherst’s website.

How many essays does Amherst require?

In addition to the main essay prompt found in the 2021-2022 Common App , Coalition App , or the QuestBridge application , there are three optional Amherst supplemental essays. Applicants must select only one of the Amherst supplemental essays to submit. 

We have provided the prompts for the Amherst supplemental essays below, along with a strategy on how to respond to each of the Amherst essay prompts. All applicants must complete one of the Amherst supplemental essays. However, you can choose which Amherst supplement essay to complete. 

Need some assistance choosing a Common App essay prompt? Get some helpful advice from our essay guide.

How do I write an Amherst College supplemental essay?

First, read the descriptions of all three Amherst supplemental essays to decide which option is best for you. Think about what you hope to convey in your Amherst supplement essay. We will list out each of the Amherst essay prompts in the next section of this guide. 

Amherst College prides itself on admitting dynamic, innovative thinkers with strong writing skills, and the Amherst supplemental essays reflect that ideal. The Amherst essay prompts are designed to identify students who will forge their own path and discover their passions at Amherst. Consider how you can showcase your intellect and values in the Amherst supplemental essays. 

Open curriculum

Additionally, Amherst College is known for its open curriculum, where students can plan and design their own program of study. As you prepare to write your Amherst supplement essay, reflect on the five tenets of how learning happens at Amherst: adapt to new situations, pull it apart, get your hands dirty, make a beautiful mess, and create your own answers. Use the Amherst essays as a chance to show the admissions team how you embody Amherst’s style of active learning. 

Reflect on each of the Amherst essay prompts before choosing one. Remember, the Amherst supplemental essays are your chance to paint a picture of who you are apart from your transcript and test scores. This makes it even more crucial to think carefully as you choose a prompt for your Amherst supplement essay. 

We have outlined each of the Amherst supplemental essays below, along with a breakdown of how to approach the Amherst essays. 

How to Write Amherst College Supplemental Essays – Option A (Optional)

In addition to the essay you are writing as part of the Common Application, Amherst requires a supplementary essay from all applicants. There are three options for satisfying Amherst’s supplementary writing requirement: Option A, Option B or Option C. You may select only one of these options. Before deciding, carefully read the descriptions of all three options. 

Option A: Please respond to one of the following quotations in an essay of not more than 300 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay. (300 words).

“Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight – insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evidence from observation and experiments.” – Kannan Jagannathan, Professor of Physics, Amherst College

“Translation is the art of bridging cultures. It’s about interpreting the essence of a text, transporting its rhythms and becoming intimate with its meaning…Translation, however, doesn’t only occur across languages: mentally putting any idea into words is an act of translation; so is composing a symphony, doing business in the global market, understanding the roots of terrorism. No citizen, especially today, can exist in isolation – that is, untranslated.” – Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College, Robert Croll ’16 and Cedric Duquene ’15, from “Interpreting Terras Irradient,” Amherst Magazine, Spring 2015. 

“Creating an environment that allows students to build lasting friendships, including those that cut across seemingly entrenched societal and political boundaries… requires candor about the inevitable tensions, as well as about the wonderful opportunities, that diversity and inclusiveness create.” – Carolyn “Biddy” Martin, President of Amherst College, Letter to Amherst College Alumni and Families, December 28, 2015. 

“Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted.” – Attributed to William Hastie, Amherst Class of 1925, the first African-American to serve as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals.

Respond to a quote

Option A of the Amherst supplemental essays asks you to write a response to one of the four quotes listed above. As you read through the Amherst essay prompts, are there any topics that stand out to you? Can you highlight an aspect of your identity, experiences, or values with a specific Amherst essay prompt? Is there a particular activity, leadership role, or life experience that you can link to one of the Amherst essays? 

Each of the Amherst essay prompts will let you share something different about yourself that admissions officers may not see elsewhere in your application. Spend some time with the Amherst essay prompts to decide which one is right for you. 

Write what you know

For example, if you want to create policies that promote social change across society, you might consider writing a response to the third Amherst essay prompt. In this Amherst essay prompt, President of Amherst College, Carolyn Martin, talks about how creating an inclusive environment can foster connection across groups of people. Martin also states that having candid discussions about our differences might lead to better friendships. 

Perhaps you recently became friends with someone who views the world differently than you. Use this Amherst supplement essay to discuss how you could communicate with one another to bridge these differences in opinions, values, or beliefs. Write about this in your Amherst essay and share how you found common ground. For example, maybe you helped your friend realize the value of spirituality when you introduced them to your religion. Or, perhaps you learned to appreciate your friend’s culture after you vacationed with their family.

Try a different approach

You could also interpret this Amherst essay prompt in another way. Perhaps you were involved in a tense, discriminatory experience at your school and a friend or classmate stood up for you. How did that make you feel? Did your friendship become stronger after this event? In your Amherst essay, be sure to include how talking about the situation led to better outcomes for all involved. 

Whatever story you decide to share in this Amherst supplement essay, make sure to discuss your own response to the event. Use this Amherst essay to highlight your humility and compassion for others, regardless of their beliefs. 

Discuss a challenge

Maybe you are better prepared to discuss a challenge you’ve faced. If so, consider the fourth prompt for the Amherst supplemental essays. Use this Amherst essay to talk about any hardships that you have overcome. How did this issue affect your life? What did you learn about yourself after facing this problem? Did you achieve a greater perspective or better outlook on life because of this event?

For example, you could write about how you experienced food insecurity as a child. Use this Amherst supplement essay to describe what that was like and how your upbringing influenced your decision to create a sustainable food center in your neighborhood. 

Or perhaps you lost a parent or caregiver at a young age. Describe how this loss impacted your life. What new obstacles did you and your family encounter because of this event? How did you make it through? 

Additionally, consider selecting this prompt for your Amherst essay if the hardship you endured affected your academics, including your GPA or test scores. By selecting this Amherst essay prompt, you have the chance to address the factors that might undermine your academic profile. 

Try freewriting

Are you struggling to choose between the Amherst essay prompts? Consider starting with a writing exercise. Choose 2-3 of the Amherst essay prompts that interest you and set a timer for 10 minutes. In those 10 minutes, write as much as you can about that topic. Once the timer goes off, review your work. Couldn’t stop writing about one Amherst essay topic? Select that option as your final Amherst supplement essay prompt. 

Finally, do not research or reference the original texts from these Amherst essay prompts in your Amherst supplement essay. Instead, write a personal, thoughtful response to one of the Amherst essay prompts. 

Still unsure how to approach the Amherst essays? Read our article for more tips on how to write a great essay. 

Amherst Essay Draft Key Questions: 

• Did you choose a topic for your Amherst supplement essay that connects to your own identity, values, or interests?
• Does your response highlight an aspect of your identity that supplements your application as a whole? 

How to Write Amherst College Supplemental Essays – Option B (Optional)

Option B: Please submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should NOT submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. If you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the “essay topic of your choice” prompt in the Common Application writing section, you should NOT select Option B. Instead, you should respond to one of the four quotation prompts in Option A. 

For Option B of the Amherst supplemental essays, you must submit a graded paper that showcases your analytical writing skills. This Amherst essay prompt is unique and quite different from other prompts. Before you choose one of your graded papers from junior or senior year, there are a few things to keep in mind for this Amherst essay. 

Grade and comments

First, the admissions team prefers that students submit a paper that shows both a grade and comments from your teacher on it. There is no need to rewrite your paper or provide a “clean” copy for submission. All submitted papers must be written in English. Additionally, consider choosing a paper that is about 4-5 pages in length. This will provide enough material to showcase your writing skills to the admissions committee. Do not select an overly long paper just because you think it will give you a better chance of being admitted. The paper you choose to submit for this Amherst essay should not exceed 8-10 pages. 

Below are a few examples of appropriate papers to submit for this Amherst supplement essay: 

• A research-based sociological essay, such as an evaluation of the origin of an indigenous community’s values and belief systems. 
• A literary analysis essay, such as an examination of the rhetorical devices found within the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.  
• A research-based historical essay, such as an analysis of the factors that contribute to climate change.

Show progress not perfection

If you are nervous about submitting a paper that earned a less than stellar grade or that has several comments on it, don’t be. It is okay to show your reader that you aren’t perfect. Use this Amherst supplement essay to show that you can develop an argument and evaluate specific, appropriate evidence to support your conclusion. 

Finally, select Option B of the Amherst supplemental essays ONLY if you did not already submit an analytical essay for the “essay topic of your choice” prompt in the Common App or Coalition App.

Curious about Option B of the Amherst essay prompts? Review the FAQ page about this Amherst supplement essay option here.  

Amherst Essay Draft Key Questions:

• Does your paper show off another aspect of your critical thinking and analytical writing skills that isn’t emphasized in other parts of your application? 
• Are you proud of the paper you submitted? Are you excited to show it to the admissions team?
• Does your paper showcase your intellectual curiosity and engagement? 

How to Write Amherst College Supplemental Essays – Option C (Optional)

Option C: If you are/were an applicant to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program, you may use your A2A application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C. However, if you would prefer not to use your A2A essay for this purpose and you want to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. [Please note that Option C is available only to applicants to Amherst’s A2A program. Non-A2A applicants must choose either Option A or Option B]. 

Every fall, Amherst hosts the Access to Amherst (A2A), formerly called Diversity Open House (DIVOH) weekend program for prospective students. This free program is designed to introduce prospective applicants to the Amherst campus, faculty/staff, classes, etc. Priority is given to students from historically excluded groups, such as first-generation, African-American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, and Asian-American backgrounds, as well as students who may have limited financial resources. To be considered for the A2A program, students must submit an online application that includes a written response to a short essay. 

Keep in mind

If you have already applied to A2A or have previously been admitted to the A2A program, you may resubmit your essay for the Amherst College application. However, if you will not or have not already participated in this program, you will want to respond to either Option A or Option B of the Amherst supplemental essays. 

Read more about the application and selection processes to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program by visiting their website.

• Did you select Option C ONLY if you are/were an applicant to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program?
• Have you resubmited your A2A essay for this Amherst supplement essay option without any changes?

How important are Amherst College essays?

In short, the Amherst essays are a vital part of your application. For the Class of 2023 , Amherst College received over 9,720 applications. Of those applications, only 1,240 students were admitted to the college and 492 students ultimately enrolled. This makes your Amherst essays a major piece of your profile. 

Most applicants have strong GPAs, high test scores, and impressive résumés. The admissions committee looks to the Amherst supplemental essays to help identify students who will exemplify their mission statement to “seek, value, and advance knowledge, engage the world around them, and lead principled lives of consequence.” In other words, your Amherst essay should highlight your intellectual curiosity, civic engagement, and individual values. Additionally, responses to Amherst essays should show how you are a good fit for the Amherst community. 

Want to learn more about the Amherst admissions process and how high quality Amherst supplemental essays can make a difference? Check out the video below from Bloomberg for an inside look!

Amherst College Supplemental Essays – Final Thoughts

Writing thoughtful responses to the Amherst supplemental essays can seem overwhelming. However, don’t let the Amherst supplemental essays stop you from applying! Instead, use the Amherst supplemental essays to show who you are beyond your transcript. Reference this guide often as you tackle the Amherst supplement essay. Good luck!

This 2021-2022 essay guide on Amherst was written by Claire Babbs , UT Austin, ’12. Want more help responding to the Amherst University essay prompt? Click here to create your free CollegeAdvisor.com account or schedule a free advising assessment with an Admissions Expert by calling (844) 343-6272.

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Admission & Financial Aid Information about the Writing Supplement

Section navigation, amherst college writing supplement options.

Below you'll find the prompts for the writing supplement in the 2023-24 application cycle (Fall 2024 entry term).

In addition to the main essays you must write as part of the Common Application, Apply Coalition with Scoir, or QuestBridge Application, Amherst requires a supplementary essay of all applicants.

There are three options for satisfying Amherst's supplementary writing requirement for the first-year application: Option A, Option B or Option C. Applicants may elect only one of those options. Before deciding, you should carefully read the descriptions of all three options (including specific conditions associated with Option B and Option C) to determine which is most appropriate for you. Please note that these descriptions are provided for convenience of preview only; your actual writing supplement should be submitted through the Common Application or Apply Coalition with Scoir online system (unless you are submitting the QuestBridge application only , in which case you will be instructed on how to email, mail or fax your supplement to our office).

Option A  

Choose one of the following quotations, and respond to the question posed, in an essay of not more than 350 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

"Amherst College is committed to learning through close colloquy and to expanding the realm of knowledge through scholarly research and artistic creation at the highest level. Its graduates link learning with leadership—in service to the College, to their communities, and to the world beyond." – from the Mission of Amherst College

Prompt 1 Question: What do you see as the benefits of linking learning with leadership and/or service? In your response, please share with us a time where you have seen that benefit through your own experience.

"We seek an Amherst made stronger because it includes those whose experiences can enhance our understanding of our nation and our world. We do so in the faith that our humanity is an identity forged from diversity, and that our different perspectives enrich our inquiry, deepen our knowledge, strengthen our community, and prepare students to engage with an ever-changing world." - from the Trustee Statement on Diversity and Community

Prompt 2 Question: In what ways could your unique experiences enhance our understanding of our nation and our world?

"Strong commitment to the freedom of inquiry lies at the heart of Amherst College’s mission to create a home in which the liberal arts may flourish. As a small residential liberal arts college that prides itself on the ability, curiosity, and diversity of its students, Amherst seeks to create a respectful environment in which members of its community feel emboldened to pursue their intellectual and creative passions." – from the Amherst College Statement of Academic and Expressive Freedom

Prompt 3 Question: Tell us about an intellectual or creative passion you have pursued; what did you learn about yourself through that pursuit?

Option B 

Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should not submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. Also, if you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the "essay topic of your choice" prompt in the Common Application or Apply Coalition with Scoir writing section, you should not select Option B. 

Curious about Option B?  Learn more ....

If you are/were an applicant to Amherst's Access to Amherst (A2A) program, you may use your A2A application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C. However, if you would prefer not to use your A2A essay for this purpose and you want to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. Option A, Prompt 2 is the same prompt as the A2A application essay; if you would like to submit an updated version of your A2A application essay, please choose Option A.

Please note that Option C is available only to applicants to Amherst's A2A program. Non-A2A applicants must choose either Option A or Option B.

Add Project Key Words

How to Approach the Amherst Supplemental Essays 2020-2021

August 10, 2020

So, you have set your eyes on the open curriculum, beautiful scenery, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and five-college consortium that Amherst College offers; you are not alone! This past admissions cycle, Amherst College received a record-number of 10,567 applications. Because there are only 473 beds on Amherst’s first-year quad (unless forced triples are utilized), the Office of Admission aims to yield exactly 473 students each year. As a result of such a large applicant pool and a relatively small student body, Amherst has a low admission rate - this past year, the school had an admission rate of less than 11%!

As a Former Admissions Officer at Amherst, I’ve seen many students wonder how to convince the readers at the Amherst College Wilson Admission Center that they deserve one of those limited beds. The most important factor in your Amherst application is that admissions officers can clearly see how students will make meaningful, important contributions to Amherst’s relatively small community. So how does an applicant describe convincingly the impact that they will make on campus and elaborate on how they’ll support their fellow community members? There is no better way to do so than through the Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021  that the college specifically asks applicants to answer. 

Amherst Supplemental Essays 2020-2021 – The Activity Question

First, you will be required to submit a short response to the following question: 

Please briefly elaborate on an extracurricular activity or work experience of particular significance to you. (Maximum: 175 words)

Here is your chance to explain in greater detail to admissions officers one extracurricular activity or work experience. The Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021 only ask for one, so take a look at the activities you have listed on your application, and select carefully just one that meets the following criteria:

• You have not elaborated on this activity anywhere else in your application, particularly not in your personal statement. 
• You are passionate about this involvement! Amherst does not conduct interviews as part of their admissions process, so treat this response sort of like a chance to demonstrate your excitement toward what you are involved with, much like you would be able to portray in an interview. 
• You have made important, specific contributions that you can describe. 
• Preferably, you are currently involved with, or were very recently involved with, this experience or activity, and it could likely be continued in some way once you arrive on campus. Especially since the word count is so low, do not feel the need to explain explicitly why your involvement connects to something that already exists at Amherst. However, if you are most enthusiastic about something that Amherst does not already offer and which you could not realistically start on your own, then select a different involvement.

Download Every Supplemental Prompt Here!

Main writing supplement.

Finally, Amherst asks you to complete their main writing supplement. You have to choose one essay from the three options provided. Note that Option B and Option C are less time-consuming than A, so make sure you read all three options before spending significant time getting started.

Please respond to one of the following quotations in an essay of not more than 300 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay. 

Do not ignore the fact that Amherst specifies that there’s no need to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken. This does not mean that you do not have to put a lot of time and thought into this essay - you do! However, it also signifies that the admissions officers are worried less about you drawing upon outside sources and previous knowledge, and more so expecting to read about your own interpretation of the prompt after doing a close read of the text provided. They want to see your own original, critical thoughts that are rooted in your own experience. 

There are four different quotations to choose from for Option A in your Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021 . You only need to select one for a 300-word maximum response. 

"Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight—insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evidence from observation and experiments." 

- Kannan Jagannathan, Professor of Physics, Amherst College 

"Translation is the art of bridging cultures. It's about interpreting the essence of a text, transporting its rhythms and becoming intimate with its meaning… Translation, however, doesn't only occur across languages: mentally putting any idea into words is an act of translation; so is composing a symphony, doing business in the global market, understanding the roots of terrorism. No citizen, especially today, can exist in isolation—that is, untranslated." 

- Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College, Robert Croll '16 and Cedric Duquene '15, from "Interpreting Terras Irradient," Amherst Magazine, Spring 2015.

"Creating an environment that allows students to build lasting friendships, including those that cut across seemingly entrenched societal and political boundaries… requires candor about the inevitable tensions, as well as about the wonderful opportunities, that diversity and inclusiveness create." 

- Carolyn "Biddy" Martin, President of Amherst College, Letter to Amherst College Alumni and Families, December 28, 2015.

"Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted." 

- Attributed to William Hastie, Amherst Class of 1925, the first African-American to serve as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals

Analysis of Quotes

If you select Quote #1, make sure that you do not fall into the trap of utilizing too much inaccessible scientific or mathematical jargon. Admissions officers can already see elsewhere in your application that you have excelled in your school’s math or science curriculum. They don’t want an unapproachable essay which conveys little to no new information about you. 

If you select Quote #2, the most important piece to keep in mind is that you should know a lot about whatever you write. Too often, students fall into the trap of, after doing a close reading of this prompt and starting to grasp its understanding, being inspired by the ideas it presents, and then trying to inspire the reader to be inspired, likewise, by the ideas. The problem here is that the inspirational piece would not be your own idea, but what is already in the prompt! If you select this prompt, focus on grounding your response in your own interests and experience, and avoid writing in the hypothetical or general. 

If you select Quote #3 for your Amherst supplemental essay 2020-2021 , then it is absolutely crucial that you have thought a lot about what it would mean to live in a college community with a student body as diverse as Amherst’s. If the idea of “diversity,” as President Biddy Martin describes it here in this quotation, excites you, but you have had limited exposure to this idea thus far - then that is fine, and you are certainly not alone. However, do not use the Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021 to write broadly about your openness to diversity as an idea! This is a space to specifically write about why engaging in dialogue that bridges societal and political boundaries is important to you. Tackling Quote #3 is a chance for you to write about the connection you see between community and race, ethnicity, gender, religion, politics, age, wealth, etc.

If you select Quote #4, make sure that you do not fall into the trap of writing a predictable piece about how something started out as very difficult for you, but through hard work and perseverance, you succeeded. For example, as a general rule, avoid writing about a rainy day in which your chances of winning a big sporting event were limited, but at the last second, your excellent skills earned a win - it has been done too many times! Instead, think about how complicated success and achievement are, and make sure that your writing reflects that complexity. Rather than focusing on the nitty-gritty details of the incident you’ve outlined, highlight the important characteristics or lessons you picked up in the process.

Please submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should NOT submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. If you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the "essay topic of your choice" prompt in the Common Application writing section, you should NOT select Option B. Instead, you should respond to one of the four quotation prompts in Option A.

This prompt might seem too good to be true at initial glance. But you read it correctly - for Option B, you get to select your favorite paper that you have written from one of the two final years of high school. Make sure that it is a critical piece that is thesis/argument driven, and NOT creative writing, a lab report, or an in-class essay. You should have also scored well on the paper because admissions officers will see what grade you received. If you have a paper that you are proud of that also checks these boxes, then congratulations, you are already finished!

Make sure to keep it short! While there is no technical cut-off point for how long the paper you submit can be, a 5-page paper is ideal (no longer than ten, max!). Amherst prefers if you have a copy of a paper with your teacher's comments on it. If not, they would like to see some sort of indication of the grade or remarks that your teacher gave you on this writing piece. 

If you were an applicant to Amherst's Diversity Open House (DIVOH) weekend program, you may use your DIVOH application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C. However, if you would prefer not to use your DIVOH essay for this purpose and you want to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. [Please note that Option C is available only to students who were applicants to Amherst’s DIVOH program.]

Option C, which is new this year, is only for students who applied to Amherst’s Diversity Open House (DIVOH) weekend program. Just like for Option B, if you were accepted into DIVOH you already have your essay. If you did not attend the program, then you have no choice but to pick between Option A and Option B. 

Making Your Selection

The Amherst College admissions officers do not have a preference for whether you submit Option A, Option B, or Option C, as each option offers something different and important to your application. Option C is not applicable to everyone; so, you will most likely choose between Option A and Option B. 

If your academics shine best through the papers you write rather than your transcript or testing, then submitting your best writing piece as an Option B supplement can help prove your academic prowess to admissions officers. Or, if you feel like you don’t have enough time before the deadline to write a new, well-thought-out essay, Option B is a good way to lighten your workload, while still presenting high-quality work. 

However, if you find that, after completing your application, there is a very important part of your personal identity that you have not had the chance to describe yet to admissions officers, elaborating on it through one of the Option A options may be the best choice for you.

Optional Research Supplement

Next, you will be given the option to write a brief research supplement:  

If you have engaged in significant research in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences or humanities that was undertake n independently of your high school curriculum, please provide a brief description of the research project (50-75 words)

As a top U.S. liberal arts college with a sole commitment to undergraduates and with phenomenal faculty members conducting top-notch research, Amherst places a huge importance on research across all domains: natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences, and humanities. 

Importantly, because there are no graduate students on campus, there are bounteous opportunities for Amherst students to work on graduate-level research with professors. Thus, the Amherst College Office of Admission has a commitment to finding students who already love learning for the sake of learning, are learning, are thrilled at the idea of becoming experts in their chosen academic field(s), and love researching and to makeing new discoveries. 

If you have worked on significant research already, then the Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021 giveis you a chance to write a brief abstract about your project. Make this section as clear and direct as possible, describing what your research question was, your methodology, and any conclusions and/or implications of your research without any “frills." 

A key part of the instructions for this supplement that should not be ignored is that this research project must have been undertaken independently of your high school curriculum. This means that you did not work with a teacher from your high school on this project, and you did not have to complete this research as a requirement for graduation. 

If you did not conduct research that fits these specifications, do not try to force a different research-related experience into this space. Your passion for learning for the sake of learning and any excellent research projects you have conducted through your high school curriculum will shine through in other parts of the application - do not worry!

There are some students for whom it will be more important to include an optional research supplement than others. For example, if you have indicated “researcher” or “scientist” on your application as one of your primary career interests on your application, it will help codify this interest if you already have research relevant experience that you can add here. Likewise, if you have indicated on your application that your desired terminal educational degree is a your doctorate, then having already had this type of research experience will be seen as beneficial. 

As you might expect, elements of your application such as your grades, test scores, letters of recommendation, honors, and your personal statement are all considered important in evaluating your application. However, the Amherst supplemental essays 2020-2021  are absolutely key in going beyond the other components to help admissions officers determine how you would fit into the campus community. Don’t take the prompts lightly – dedicate a significant amount of time working on your responses. Good luck! 

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How to Respond to the 2023/2024 Amherst College Supplemental Essay Prompts

Cece Gilmore is a Content Writer at Scholarships360. Cece earned her undergraduate degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from Arizona State University. While at ASU, she was the education editor as well as a published staff reporter at Downtown Devil. Cece was also the co-host of her own radio show on Blaze Radio ASU.

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Amherst College is a selective and top-ranked liberal arts college with an acceptance rate of 9% . They offer unique benefits that combine liberal arts education and the resources of a university, due to being a part of the Five College Consortium . Since it is a highly competitive school, applicants will need to make their Amherst supplemental essays stand out from the others. 

Fortunately, Amherst provides some variety in options for applicants responding to the Amherst supplemental essays. So, let’s learn in this guide how you can ace the Amherst supplemental essays!

Before answering Option A in the Amherst supplemental essay questions 

Option A asks applicants to choose from three quotes and respond to them. 

Choose one of the following quotations, and respond to the question posed, in an essay of not more than 350 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

Amherst provides its applicants with some vague and open ended direction for responding to the provided quotes. This means there is some freedom in your response allowing you to truly interpret a quote the way that makes the most sense to you. Remember that supplemental essays are intended to get to know the applicants better. So be sure to select a quote that stands out to you! 

In addition, the word count for this response is 350 words. This may seem like a lot, but once you start writing it can feel a bit restrictive. Therefore, be sure to brainstorm and plan out what you want to write about. Make sure you are getting your main points across without exceeding the 350 word limit. 

Quote option #1

“Amherst College is committed to learning through close colloquy and to expanding the realm of knowledge through scholarly research and artistic creation at the highest level. Its graduates link learning with leadership—in service to the College, to their communities, and to the world beyond.”  – from the Mission of Amherst College 

Quote option #1 questions to consider : What do you see as the benefits of linking learning with leadership and/or service? In your response, please share with us a time where you have seen that benefit through your own experience.

Quote option #2

“We seek an Amherst made stronger because it includes those whose experiences can enhance our understanding of our nation and our world. We do so in the faith that our humanity is an identity forged from diversity, and that our different perspectives enrich our inquiry, deepen our knowledge, strengthen our community, and prepare students to engage with an ever-changing world.” – from the Trustee Statement on Diversity and Community

Quote option #2 question to ask yourself : In what ways could your unique experiences enhance our understanding of our nation and our world?

Quote option #3

“Strong commitment to the freedom of inquiry lies at the heart of Amherst College’s mission to create a home in which the liberal arts may flourish. As a small residential liberal arts college that prides itself on the ability, curiosity, and diversity of its students, Amherst seeks to create a respectful environment in which members of its community feel emboldened to pursue their intellectual and creative passions.”

– from the Amherst College Statement of Academic and Expressive Freedom

Quote option #3 question to consider: Tell us about an intellectual or creative passion you have pursued; what did you learn about yourself through that pursuit?

“Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should not submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. Also, if you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the “essay topic of your choice” prompt in the Common Application writing section, you should not select Option B. Instead, you should respond to one of the four quotation prompts in Option A.”

Option B is a backup in case you have a writing piece you are extremely proud of. Otherwise, you should stick to responding to one of the Option A quote prompts. Essentially, you have to decide what will provide an Amherst admissions officer with the most well-rounded idea of you. 

Amherst’s website has a helpful FAQ for Option B if you are interested in it! 

Option C – for A2A program students only

“If you were an applicant to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program, you may use your A2A application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C on either the Common Applications or the Coalition Application. However, if you would prefer not to use your A2A essay for this purpose and you wish to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. [Please note that Option C is available only to students who were applicants to Amherst’s A2A program. Non-A2A applicants must choose either Option A or Option B.]”

This option is only available for students who were applicants to Amherst’s A2A program. The A2A program is available to aid minority students while at Amherst. Therefore, if this option does not apply to you – do not respond to it! Rather select option A or option B for your Amherst supplemental essay. 

Before submitting your Amherst supplemental essays

Before submitting the Amherst supplemental essays, be sure to proofread! You can do this by reading them yourself or asking a trusted friend, parent, or teacher to read it over for you. Remember, you only have one shot to submit your application to Amherst so you want it to be flawless. 

Make sure your response not only answers the prompt but also reveals pieces of your personality throughout the essay. You want the Amherst admissions office to get a good sense of who you are as not only a student but a person. 

Next steps after applying to Amherst

Now that you have figured out which of the Amherst supplemental essays is the best for you – it is time to write! Be sure to plan out what you will write to ensure that all of your main points are included. 

Once you have completed your Amherst supplemental essay question – congratulations! Take a deep breath and go treat yourself to something special! You did it! 

Now that you have a beautiful Amherst supplemental essay written – it is officially time to submit your application! Once your application is submitted, be sure to check your Amherst portal and email for updates on your application status.

Now, you are not done with the admissions process! Continue to show demonstrated interest in Amherst by 

• Following them on social media
• Scheduling an in-person tour
• Reaching out to an admissions officer

This will give you an opportunity to get to know Amherst more! It will also provide Amherst with the opportunity to get to know you better as well. 

Good luck on the rest of your college journey! 

Additional resources

We know how stressful this time can be for students! So, we have a lot of resources available for students going through the college admissions process. We can help you determine what is a high SAT score , how many schools to apply to , how to get a college application fee waiver and so much more. And if you’re thinking that college is not for you check out some top alternatives to four-year universities. And if financial issues are hindering your choices check out our free scholarship search tool to help fund your education! 

Other colleges to consider

• Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH)
• Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)

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Command Education Guide

How to write the amherst college essays, updated for 2023-2024.

Choose one of the following quotations, and respond to the question posed, in an essay of not more than 350 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

Prompt 1: “Amherst College is committed to learning through close colloquy and to expanding the realm of knowledge through scholarly research and artistic creation at the highest level. Its graduates link learning with leadership—in service to the College, to their communities, and to the world beyond.” – from the Mission of Amherst College

What do you see as the benefits of linking learning with leadership and/or service? In your response, please share with us a time where you have seen that benefit through your own experience.

Explanation:

In responding to Amherst College’s supplemental essay prompt, which asks you to reflect on the benefits of linking learning with leadership and/or service, it is essential to convey a deep understanding of the institution’s mission and demonstrate your alignment with its core values. The prompt also calls for you to share a specific example from your own life to illustrate this connection.

First, consider how your experiences and values align with Amherst College’s commitment to learning, leadership, and service. How have you used your knowledge and skills in service of your community? Why is Amherst’s commitment to service and community a driving factor in your own interest in the institution? You might express your enthusiasm for an educational environment that values the holistic development of its students, emphasizing the synthesis of academic pursuits, leadership, and community service.

Then, you should share a specific experience from your life that illustrates the benefits of linking learning with leadership and service. This should be a time when you actively partook in a service project or leadership role that allowed you to apply your academic knowledge and skills to make a meaningful impact. For instance, you might recount a time when you took a leadership position in a community service project that was closely related to your academic major or interests. Describe how your academic insights enhanced your ability to lead the project effectively, and how the project, in turn, benefited the community. Be sure to highlight what you learned from this experience, both academically and personally, and include specific and demonstrable results (these may be qualitative through community response or quantitative through funds raised or volunteers mobilized).

Finally, link this experience not only to your personal growth but also to the way that you intend to continue positively impacting your broader community in the future. Doing so will demonstrate your leadership skills as well as the type of community member you will be on Amherst’s campus.

Prompt 2: “We seek an Amherst made stronger because it includes those whose experiences can enhance our understanding of our nation and our world. We do so in the faith that our humanity is an identity forged from diversity, and that our different perspectives enrich our inquiry, deepen our knowledge, strengthen our community, and prepare students to engage with an ever-changing world.” – from the Trustee Statement on Diversity and Community

In what ways could your unique experiences enhance our understanding of our nation and our world?

To answer this prompt effectively, you should first consider your background, personal experiences, and perspectives. Consider the various aspects of your life, experiences, and identity that make you unique. Think about your cultural background, family history, personal values, and formative experiences; then, make a list of the key factors that have shaped your identity. In your response, clearly articulate how your unique experiences align with and reinforce Amherst College’s commitment to diversity and the belief that diverse perspectives enrich the academic environment.

Rather than offering vague or general statements about diversity, provide one specific example from your life experiences that demonstrates your potential to enhance the understanding of your nation and the world. For instance:

• Share an anecdote about an event, relationship, or encounter that was profoundly influenced by your unique perspective or background.
• Discuss a cultural tradition or practice that is significant to you and has broadened your understanding of cultural diversity.
• Reflect on a time when your unique experiences provided a different perspective on a complex issue or challenge.

Finally, demonstrate that you understand the reciprocal nature of this exchange. Just as you can enrich the understanding of others, acknowledge how your experience at Amherst can further develop your own understanding of different perspectives. This mutual exchange of knowledge and growth is at the heart of Amherst’s values.

Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should not submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. Also, if you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the “essay topic of your choice” prompt in the Common Application or Apply Coalition with Scoir writing section, you should not select Option B.

If you are/were an applicant to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program, you may use your A2A application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C. However, if you would prefer not to use your A2A essay for this purpose and you want to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. Option A, Prompt 2 is the same prompt as the A2A application essay; if you would like to submit an updated version of your A2A application essay, please choose Option A.

Please note that Option C is available only to applicants to Amherst’s A2A program. Non-A2A applicants must choose either Option A or Option B.

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5 Amherst College Personal Statement Examples

• college application essays
• essay topic

Interested in applying to liberal arts colleges? Amherst College is probably already on your list! If not, these essays are a good intro into what it’s like.

If you are applying to Amherst this fall, here are Amherst’s supplemental essay prompts for 2017-2018 . Need some inspiration to help you with your essay? Here are 5 successful Amherst essay introductions that may inspire you to write about a passing encounter you had forgotten, or help you figure out how to approach a specific essay topic. Plus, check out the advice section of these students’ profiles to learn more about Amherst’s student body and campus culture. Who better to share the in’s and out’s of Amherst than current Amherst students? 

Class of 2020

The lessons I have learned in tennis can apply to everybody’s life. When someone begins learning tennis, the main focus is to keep the ball in play. Keep the ball going back and forth until you win the point. I honestly struggled keeping up my motivation in high school. However once I finally found a very steady source, it made life much easier and it kept me going much longer. Keep reading.

Class of 2019.

I am writing this essay from within the bathroom. Please, don’t think too far into that. With the toilet cover down and the door shut, this one sacred space affords me some much sought-after privacy in a house with five other people and a cat that insists on an open door policy. Read more.

Chipotleburrito

There are endless reasons why I should hate riding on airplanes. There is never enough quality food, the seats aren’t comfortable, there’s a complete lack of personal space, and I have to pay if I want to use the wi-fi. Ironically, even with all of the setbacks it is only on a airplane where I feel all of my problems and stresses disappear, as if I checked them in with my luggage at the airport. Read full essay.

I had forgotten about the plastic bowl of greasy, buttery popcorn in my hands. I’m left staring at an empty expanse of screen, mouth open at the grayscaled room. The DVD case for The Usual Suspects taunts me, sitting on the worn coffee table. The film was far from Usual and nothing I would have suspected. Continue reading.

Narcissus, Reimagined

Traditionally, failure sets the foundation for success. I reject this tradition. For me, the process is amended: earlier achievement sets the foundation for my failure, which in turn paves the road for far more meaningful success later. View full profile.  

——

Interested in reading these students’ full personal statements that got them into Amherst College? Unlock all of them in one go with  our curated package ! 

Our  premium plans  offer different level of profile access and data insights that can help you get into your dream school. Unlock any of our  packages  or search our  undergraduate profile database  to find specific profiles that can help you make an informed choice about where to apply!

About The Author

Frances was born in Hong Kong and received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University. She loves super sad drama television, cooking, and reading. Her favorite person on Earth isn’t actually a member of the AdmitSee team - it’s her dog Cooper.

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Amherst College 2020-21 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision: 

The Requirements: One essay of 300 words, one short essay of 175 words, one short answer of 75 words

Supplemental Essay Type(s):   Activity , Essay of choice

Amherst College 2020-21 Application Essay Question Explanations 

At amherst we know that identity is more than checkboxes. if you would like to share more about your identity, background, family, culture or community, please tell us more here. (maximum: 175 words).

Amherst is giving you this opportunity to further distinguish yourself from other applicants — not with amazing test scores or impressive grades, but by painting a more detailed picture of who you are. We encourage you to use this space to write about something that hasn’t been mentioned elsewhere on your application. Maybe you’d like to write about your experience growing up in a military family, or competing in the Junior Olympics, or playing Mancala with your grandpa. The options are endless!

In addition to the essay you are writing as part of the Common Application, Amherst requires a supplementary writing sample from all applicants. There are three options for satisfying Amherst’s supplementary writing requirement: Option A, Option B and Option C. You may select only one of these options. Before deciding, carefully read the descriptions of all three options.

Option a: please respond to one of the following quotations in an essay of not more than 300 words. it is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay..

Before you even get to the quotations, there’s a lot to take in about Option A, so let’s take a breather. Don’t let the seemingly academic nature of this assignment fool you; at the end of the day, Amherst admissions is still looking for a personal story. Rather than offering a series of direct questions, though, they have buried each question in quotation from some notable Amherst figure. Your main challenge, then, is to distill each quotation down to its core question. Penning your answer is the easy part.

“Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight—insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evidence from observation and experiments.”

Kannan jagannathan, professor of physics, amherst college.

With such a structured line of logic, this quotation is begging for a rebuttal. So, your first challenge is to restrain yourself. Remember that Amherst doesn’t want an argumentative essay, but a personal narrative. So, science and math whizzes, aim to address the core tenets of Jagannathan’s statement (reasoning, insight, evidence) with a personal story or series of anecdotes. Maybe you can reflect on your earliest encounters with empiricism when you started a mineral collection at age 7. Or perhaps a failed lab experiment taught you the importance of rigorous attention to detail. In other words, a few questions you might distill from this quotation are: (1) What makes a good scientist? (2) What makes a good mathematician? (3) Where is the intersection of scientific instinct and mathematical skill?

(Oh, and by the bye, while this quotation may seem like the obvious choice for the scientifically-oriented, humanities folks shouldn’t rule it out. You have clearly had to study science, so think about what it’s like to master a subject that doesn’t come naturally to you. What qualities do you bring to the table? What’s it like to be an outsider looking in?)

“Translation is the art of bridging cultures. It’s about interpreting the essence of a text, transporting its rhythms and becoming intimate with its meaning… Translation, however, doesn’t only occur across languages: mentally putting any idea into words is an act of translation; so is composing a symphony, doing business in the global market, understanding the roots of terrorism. No citizen, especially today, can exist in isolation– that is, I untranslated.”

Ilán stavans, professor of latin american and latino culture, amherst college, robert croll ’16 and cedric duquene ’15, from “interpreting terras irradient,” amherst magazine, spring 2015..

Ok humanities nerds, it’s your turn. This quotation, like the first, posits a series of definitions for an academic practice. Translation might be a literal task, or it might simply be a figurative framework for understanding any human act. So, maybe you should pick a definition that works for you and build your story around it. If you err on the literal side, ask yourself: When in my life have I experienced a bridging of cultures? What does it take to draw people with disparate perspectives into a state of mutual understanding? When have I experienced difference? When have I mediated conflict?

If you prefer a wider definition, you might focus on moments of creation or transformation: When have I brought an idea to fruition? When have I had to improvise in order to solve a problem?

“Creating an environment that allows students to build lasting friendships, including those that cut across seemingly entrenched societal and political boundaries…requires candor about the inevitable tensions, as well as about the wonderful opportunities, that diversity and inclusiveness create.”

Carolyn “biddy” martin, 19th president of amherst college, from letter to amherst college alumni and families, december 28, 2015..

Unlike the first two heady options, this passage takes a broader look at academic life. A few basic questions that spring out: What is the ideal environment for learning? How can discomfort lead to intellectual and personal growth? How can an academic environment facilitate personal connections between totally different people? And so on. In other words, this passage is an invitation to describe the relationship between intellectual and personal growth, so think about your most challenging experiences at school and in other academic environments. When have you had to admit you were wrong? Have you ever had an academic rivalry that turned into a personal feud or vice versa? What’s the most heated debate you’ve ever had in a classroom setting? This quotation is all about discomfort, so should you choose to write about it, you need to be willing to get a bit vulnerable with your storytelling.

“Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather, achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted.”

Attributed to william hastie, amherst college class of 1925, the first african-american to serve as a judge for the united states court of appeals.

What’s that feeling? Could it be deja-vu? You have definitely seen this prompt before. Although Amherst has repackaged it as a quotation, the core question has popped up on the Common App and Coalition: how do you deal with challenges? The ideas embedded in this quotation may be the most familiar, but they also require some of the most vulnerable storytelling. When have you struggled? What is the hardest thing you’ve ever done? When have you failed? When have you given up (or almost given up)? While it can be relatively easy to enumerate achievements and skills, knowing the limits of your physical and mental capabilities is a challenge. In order to nail this prompt, you’ll need to bring a bucketload of self-awareness to the table and tell a story that reveals your approach to life’s greatest challenges.

Option B: Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should not submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay. Also, if you have submitted an analytical essay in response to the “essay topic of your choice” prompt in the Common Application writing section, you should not select Option B. Instead, you should respond to one of the four quotation prompts in Option A.

Okay, we’ll keep it short. Although this is technically an option , the wording should make it clear that admissions is really angling for a response to option A. We only see two sets of circumstances where an applicant might want to consider option B: (1) if you somehow procrastinated to the eleventh hour and have no time to write an original essay or (2) you have written something you are so proud of that it could have won an award (and maybe it did).

Option C : If you are an applicant to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program, you may use your A2A application essay in satisfaction of our Writing Supplement requirement. If you would like to do so, please select Option C. However, if you would prefer not to use your A2A essay for this purpose and you want to submit a different writing supplement, select either Option A or Option B. [Please note that Option C is available only to applicants to Amherst’s A2A program.]

No explanation necessary! If you think that this essay will be the best way for you to reflect yourself to Amherst admissions, then feel free to use it here. If it’s so nice, why write it twice?

If you have engaged in significant research in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences or humanities that was undertaken independently of your high school curriculum, please provide a brief description of the research project: (Optional) (50-75 words)    

There’s not a lot of room for embellishment in this brief prompt. So only answer it if A) you have actually done research that fits the bill, and B) you haven’t already written about it in detail. (In the first prompt of this supplement, for example.) If your work meets the criteria, don’t worry about getting too clever with your description. In fact, you’ll do yourself a favor if you adhere to the standard academic practices around presenting research in your chosen field. If it’s scientific or medical research, cover the bases of a report: research question, methods, and results (with special emphasis in anything you found particularly interesting or central to your experience). If it’s in the social sciences or humanities, a basic synopsis that focuses on your main argument will do. Once you’ve filled in the basic details, you might consider giving a little background on how you came to participate in this extracurricular research: how did you get connected with the lab or program? This small narrative element will help you show admissions that you’re motivated, engaged, and already out in the world impressing people.

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The Playwright Who Fearlessly Reimagines America

In her new play, ‘Sally & Tom,’ Suzan-Lori Parks brings exuberant provocation to the gravest historical questions.

Suzan-Lori Parks Credit... Arielle Bobb-Willis for The New York Times

Supported by

By Imani Perry

• April 11, 2024

When the playwright Suzan- Lori Parks was in high school,a teacher asked what she wanted to be as an adult. Parks already knew. She had been sitting under the family piano writing songs and plays since elementary school. “I was like, ‘I wanna be a writer,’” she recalled. The teacher’s response was not encouraging. “It was suggested to me that I not be a writer — because I was such a poor speller.”

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Rather than sink into discouragement, Parks absorbed the insult, turning it into part of her origin story. “I appreciated the note,” she said wryly, “because it planted a little seed in my subconscious: I gotta learn to spell. So I’m really good at spelling now.” She has recast that potentially hurtful experience using her own distinct sense of playfulness, frequently deploying the phrase “a spell” as a stage direction. She defines it as an elongated pause, or a place “where the figures experience their pure true state.”

When we met in January at a downtown cafe, Parks greeted me enthusiastically, standing before a wall of blooming flowers in the dead of New York winter. Dressed in purple-and-lavender-striped fingerless gloves, fur-lined boots and a black Comme des Garçons jacket, she looked every bit the iconoclastic downtown New Yorker. At 60, Parks carries herself with the energy of someone half her age, her presence a combination of gravitas and lightness, wisdom and childlike exuberance. One of America’s most celebrated playwrights — a recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant,” a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize — she is in the midst of a renaissance. There is renewed recognition that her plays, inventive provocations whose sometimes scathing visions of race and gender can unsettle audiences, have something to tell us about the troublesome relationship between individual identity and national community.

Heidi Griffiths, a longtime collaborator and friend of Parks’s who has worked as her casting director, described the playwright to me as someone “who will go off into the wilderness and find a place that she has to excavate. Often the things she reveals are the things that history has left long buried. She doesn’t look away; she keeps excavating.”

The 2022 Tony Award-winning revival of “Topdog/Underdog” was a reminder of the intellectual and aesthetic commitments that make Parks a one-of-a-kind figure in American theater. It starred Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins as two brothers who are victims of an existential joke. Before their parents abandoned them, their father named them Lincoln and Booth — after the American president and the man who assassinated him. Lincoln, who works at a local arcade as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and is repeatedly assassinated, moves in with his younger brother, Booth, after his wife throws him out. Booth, a street hustler, wants Lincoln to teach him three-card monte, a game Lincoln mastered before giving it up for a respectable, if demoralizing, job. They are loving yet also distrustful and wounded, interacting with the world through a bittersweet swagger. Through the brothers, Parks brought vital, sometimes biting street language into the theater. She also suggested how history resonates down through generations. Lincoln’s repeated assassination is not just a clever conceit: In watching the brothers, we witness how the American backlash against emancipation shadows Black life.

In “Sally & Tom,” which opens this month at the Public Theater, Parks takes up the “relationship” between Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved woman who bore him seven children: Sally Hemings, who was 14 when Jefferson began a sexual relationship with her. It tells the story of a Black female playwright named Luce and her white director husband, Mike, veterans of a radical outsider theater troupe called Good Company who are trying to break into the mainstream with a production about Hemings and Jefferson. Under pressure from a fickle financier, Mike pushes for a simple story about reconciliation and forgiveness. Luce works at cross purposes, struggling with how to portray a more complicated version of Hemings and Jefferson’s entanglement — they are slave and master, girl and adult male, as well as lovers. In Luce’s rendering, this is not a love story, but it also isn’t one of simple violence.

With the help of the director Steve H. Broadnax III, Parks has constructed a dizzying production that weaves a story of Luce and Mike’s backstage wrestling with needy actors, nervous backers and their own diverging desires with scenes from rehearsals of their play in progress. We shuttle between two communities — Good Company and Jefferson’s plantation at Monticello — whose members are bound to one another yet often at odds, poised at the intersection of coercion and acceptance, cruelty and care.

Parks forces the audience to contemplate how intimacy takes root in the thick of injustice. The reality of this ambivalent attachment — and the vulnerability required to address it — is her starting point. Rather than evade the question of intimacy in favor of tidy social and political arguments, Parks embraces its formidable complications. “Vulnerability and introspection are our superpowers,” she told me at the cafe. “And we all have them — so why don’t we use them? We’re not using our superpowers.” One of her superpowers is using theater and history as invitations to be in the world together in a new way.

Rather than evade the question of intimacy in favor of tidy social and political arguments, Parks embraces its formidable complications.

A Kentucky-born daughter of an Army officer from Chicago and a college professor from Texas, Parks had a childhood that unfolded across Texas, California, North Carolina, Vermont and Germany. Her middle-school years in Germany were disorienting: While the other American kids attended American schools, her mother placed Parks and her brother — two lone Black children — in German schools.

They became fluent in German, but Parks struggled to make friends. She remembers herself as a frightened kid holding a lunch tray in the cafeteria, uncertain how to go about connecting with her peers. Libraries became a solace. “The library was a refuge for me,” she recalled. “Every lunchtime it was like, What do you do?” She mimicked her childhood self, standing before a cafeteria with her lunch tray in hand. “You look around, hoping to find a friendly face, and everyone else is already in their group. So anyway, I would go to the library and sit.” The librarians allowed her to eat her lunch even though food wasn’t allowed there, a kindness for which she was grateful. There she would immerse herself in books, and had a special fondness for Greek mythology and African folk tales.

Parks’s library isolation gave her the gift of self-reflection and creation — going the way your blood beats, to riff on James Baldwin’s advice about living truthfully. “I mean, there I am again with my lunch tray, not fitting in anywhere. There’s a certain anxiety of ‘Who am I?’” She found her identity to be, as she put it, “one of the ones who listens to the spirit.”

When it came time for Parks to apply to colleges, her parents encouraged her to consider New England, where they had attended graduate school. Parks ultimately settled on Mount Holyoke after she fell in love with the campus’s 1,200 trees. She started there in 1981, and in her junior year was admitted into a seminar taught by James Baldwin, who was then on faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She had been an admirer of Baldwin’s since 1972 — her parents gifted her a copy of “The Fire Next Time” for Valentine’s Day that year when she told them she wanted to be a writer — and was thrilled to study with him. Each week, the 15-person seminar workshopped a few students’ writing, and when Parks brought her stories to class, she would stand up and perform them as if they were theater. “I’m acting out these stories, and Mr. Baldwin suggested I try writing for the theater. He told me I could be good.”

After class, Baldwin would invite the students for drinks at a nearby bar, but Parks couldn’t bring herself to go. “To me, it wasn’t appropriate,” she told me, gently mocking her genteel Southern side. “I’d been looking at his face on the back of this paperback since I was in fifth grade!” For the young Parks, Baldwin was an educator, not a peer. The most important lesson she learned from Baldwin’s seminar, though, was how to show up, not just as a writer but as a human being. “What I received was how to conduct myself in the presence of spirit,” she told me, conjuring the religious underpinnings of Baldwin’s work. “You have to wrestle, tussle with the angels. I like writing because you get to hold the hand of the spirit.” For Parks, it became clear that the writer’s vocation was one of listening to the ancestors, and reverence for what you might learn.

Parks graduated in 1985 and moved to London to study theater at the Drama Studio for a year before returning to the United States and settling in New York. In 1987, she staged her first production, “Betting on the Dust Commander,” in a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It was only the second play she ever wrote, but it features all of her signatures: a mythic sense of time, a concern with how history echoes in intimate relationships and a reveling in language. The play tells the story of a Black couple, Lucius and Mare, who have somehow been married for over 100 years and speak in a style so country and rough that to an untrained ear it could read as pure caricature. At one point, speaking of his own death, Lucius compares himself to an old racing horse. He hopes that when he nears the end, “they stretch me out like that. Hope they get me in thuh home stretch fore I get all stuck up: arms this way, elbows funny, knees knocking, head all wrong.” Dwelling in the language of the rural South, which many might dismiss as backward, Parks listened for and shared its wisdom.

What followed was a prolific run of incisive and experimental productions. In the 1990 jazz requiem “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of Dead,” Parks filled the stage with a parade of historical figures, racial stereotypes and folklore characters (the play opens, for example, with a line from a character named Black Man With Watermelon). She confronted racial stereotype and distortion while also exploring Black people’s complex interiority. Her 30-year relationship with the Public began in 1994 with “The America Play,” about a Black man who works as both a gravedigger and (like the character in “Topdog/Underdog”) an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, and “Venus” (1996), a lyrical portrait of Sarah Baartman, the 19th-century Khoekhoe woman known as the Venus Hottentot. In Parks’s depiction, the woman who was exhibited like a zoo animal and exploited is not simply a victim but a woman in search of intimacy and a sense of self. Aside from the steady production of new plays, Parks has embraced a variety of projects. She wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee’s 1996 film “Girl 6,” about a young Black woman actor who becomes a phone-sex operator. She was tapped to write the screenplays for film adaptations of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” as well as for Lee Daniels’s 2021 biopic “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”

Parks’s day-to-day doings have a disciplined rhythm that is conventional even in what is an unconventional, spellbound life. She and her husband, Christian, a jazz musician and composer from Munich, are parents of a 12-year-old son. “When you’re a parent, life sort of has a certain flexibility,” she says, “respectful flexibility, where you can include and incorporate the boundaries that you have to erect to get your work done.” Each weekday, she wakes up at 4 to meditate and do yoga. Her son rises at 5:30 to read and play the violin beside her. She teaches in the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University, where she delights in facilitating among her students the kind of community she values dearly. “I love being with people and talking about the creative, being with people as they walk their path, because it can be very lonely. It can be very frightening. It’s a trip, so I’m like, ‘I’m a trip advisor!’”

Parks likens her eclectic body of work to a circle of trees: “You might have five redwoods in a circle. They’re all separate trees, but they’re actually all joined at the root. Some of us as artists flower like that; and some of us flower like the oak.”

If her corpus is a circle of redwoods, they’re joined at the root by her commitment to depicting Black life with historical and cultural specificity, and to understanding history’s absurd impact on individual lives. But at a deeper level, Parks is obsessed with the interplay between devastation and joy. The director Kenny Leon, who helmed the recent production of “Topdog/Underdog,” told me that “Parks, like many of the greats, loves her people, her culture and her country.” Contextualizing Parks among some of Black theater’s titans — Baldwin, Hansberry and August Wilson — he emphasized that she “loves Black culture and tackles its complex challenges.” That love insists on play and fun in order to disintegrate easy ways of thinking about race.

In her plays, humor is a place where we might set down, however briefly, the baggage of racism that weighs down every interaction. But there are also moments of vulnerability that allow us to see things differently. Simply put, Parks disarms. In “Sally & Tom,” there’s an instability at work in the play’s very staging and conceit: Tracking Luce and Good Company in the run-up to the premiere of their own play, “Sally & Tom” alternates between backstage drama and rehearsals that teleport the cast into Monticello, forcing them to confront the oppressive racial order that supported Jefferson’s intellectual life. One moment we are listening to Hemings beg Jefferson not to split up her family; the next she removes her curly wig, pale makeup and corset to become Luce, a contemporary Black woman who, though confronting the complexities of an interracial relationship, is not held captive.

With its multiracial cast, interest in interracial and queer intimacy and emphasis on race’s psychosexual dimension, “Sally & Tom” echoes recent theater hits like “Hamilton” and “Slave Play” in order to ironize both starry-eyed multiculturalism and cynical provocation. At one point, two members of the cast and crew — Geoff, who is white, and Devon, who is Black — are talking about the relationship. “Tom was nice to Sally,” Geoff says, nostalgically comparing Jefferson’s supposed chivalry to the coldness of contemporary hookups. “ ’Cause, I mean, they did stay together for over 30 years.” Devon retorts: “She was his slave, yo.” The company’s stage manager, Scout, is an aspiring Asian American actor who plays Jefferson’s younger daughter, Polly. In a nod to the vexations of nontraditional casting, she wonders whether she really has a role to play in this story. “Were there any Korean Americans in America in 1790?” she jokes. “How much skin do I actually have in this game?” The play’s jagged humor cuts in many directions at once, poking fun at the narrow and simplistic terms of our racial discourse. Instead, Parks asks us to reckon with the ways race confounds easy accounting.

In a striking scene from Luce’s play within the play, after Sally begs Jefferson not to send her family away, he attempts to elide his power over the teenage girl. “I love you,” he whispers. “I thank you,” Sally responds. At the performance I saw, the audience laughed at Sally’s answer. When Parks recounted the scene to me during a conversation, though, I did not interpret it as a joke. I heard it as both an assertion of a strategic transaction and an open question in Sally’s mind. Never mind love: Could good will and favor, the root of gratitude, be bestowed from slave to master? Could such warm feeling honestly coexist with the bitterness of unfreedom? Or was it just an act of sour piety to get along?

In March I saw Parks perform at Manhattan’s Rockwood Music Hall — not a play, but a set with her band, Sula and the Joyful Noise. (The band’s name is not a reference to Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel, “Sula,” as I first thought, but a childhood nickname Parks’s father gave her.) Parks isn’t new to music — she has played piano since she was a child, and has written songs for and played music in her plays. Inside the venue, as she met up with the other band members, the energy was warm. The room filled up with a multiracial and multigenerational group of friends and fans. The band, as Parks described it, is a “test kitchen,” and this was their first live gig.

Onstage, Parks was petite but mighty, with an electric guitar strapped in front of her. Her husband, Christian, armed with a perennially amused countenance and a deeply grooving bass, stood on one side of her. She is the one woman in the band of “dudes,” as she calls them, wearing a miniskirt and pink-glitter-dyed boots that once belonged to a beloved deceased neighbor, and a matching pink ruffled guitar strap, with her waist-length dreadlocks rolled up into huge buns as if she were a feminist superhero. Singing in a voice that sounded like what might happen if Bette Davis, Ida Cox and David Byrne had a baby, she channeled different personae. In one song, she embodied the spirit of a fugitive slave with a sardonic take on self-emancipation: “I have misplaced myself,” she repeated, eliciting a lively call and response from the crowd.

The lyrics and situation — a diverse crowd joining Parks to evoke the spirit of a runaway slave — felt like the kind of productive provocation Parks’s work insists on. She delivered a message from the American underside, welcoming all comers. In the venue, the fabled “e pluribus unum” was the song of the slave rather than that of the master.

Even though the Sula of this band is Suzan-Lori Parks, I couldn’t help thinking, as she sang, of Toni Morrison’s Sula: a Black woman who came of age in the Jim Crow 1920s, made dangerous because she was an “artist with no art form.” Parks is the opposite, a Black woman artist of the 2020s who has many art forms — playwright, novelist, screenwriter, composer, actor, musician — all because, as she says, she can. As I watched Parks thrust her shoulders forward, one eyebrow cocked, inviting the crowd to sing along with her the refrain “I misplaced myself,” I thought: Here is a woman who has rooted herself to her values, her communities. Here is a woman who has placed herself.

Imani Perry is a professor at Harvard University and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Her book “South to America” won the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction.

Read by Janina Edwards

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan

Engineered by Devin Murphy

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How to Write the UMass Amherst Essays 2023-2024

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has three required short response prompts for all applicants. The first asks you to elaborate on why you wish to attend UMass Amherst, the second asks about a community you’re a part of and its influence on you, and the third asks about why you chose the major you selected on the application.

Since UMass Amherst receives thousands of applications from academically strong students, your essays are your best chance to stand out. In this post, we’ll discuss how to craft an engaging response to each of these three prompts.

UMass Amherst Supplemental Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: Please tell us why you want to attend UMass Amherst? (100 words)

Prompt 2: At UMass Amherst, no two students are alike. Our communities and groups often define us and shape our individual worlds. Community can refer to various aspects, including shared geography, religion, race/ethnicity, income, ideology, and more. Please choose one of your communities or groups and describe its significance. Explain how, as a product of this community or group, you would enrich our campus. (100 words)

Prompt 3: Please tell us why you chose the Major(s) you did? (100 words)

Please tell us why you want to attend UMass Amherst? (100 words)

This supplement is a very standard example of the common “Why this College?” prompt , a classic way for admissions officers to learn more about your interest in their school. Just as you’re worried about colleges selecting you, admissions staff are concerned about whether you will choose their school if you’re admitted. This response provides another opportunity to distinguish yourself from other candidates and explicitly express your interest in UMass Amherst.

However, you’re only given 100 words to answer this prompt. Therefore, you should narrow your thinking down to 1-3 genuine reasons you want to attend UMass Amherst. This response should be very specific—many students make the mistake of simply listing generic positive qualities that could apply to any school.

Including general information like the strength of an academic department or a prime location can convey a lack of interest and actually detract from your application. A great starting point to research the school for this response is the school’s website , which contains copious information about its values, unique offerings, and campus culture.

Also, avoid listing school rankings or hackneyed adjectives praising the school, as this can come across as disingenuous. Admissions officers already know their school’s strengths and statistics—they want to learn more about you specifically, and how you plan to take advantage of UMass Amherst’s offerings.

Because one of the other supplemental prompts focuses on why you chose your major, you should avoid any overlap in this essay—that is to say, try not to write about your desired major here. However, because of the 100-word limit, you should focus mainly on academic or extracurricular offerings such as specific classes, research opportunities, and clubs. Think about what you hope to gain from the college experience at UMass Amherst as you select topics to write about.

Here are two examples of answers to this prompt:

Weak response: “I chose to apply to UMass Amherst not only because of its stellar academics, but also because of the extracurricular opportunities I will have to learn and grow both professionally and personally. I plan to join the Pre-Law Society to develop the soft and hard skills I need to apply to law school. I also plan to join a dance club as I am passionate about expressing myself through art. Recently, I have become interested in standup comedy, so I plan to pursue that as well. In addition, I look forward to living in and exploring the rural Amherst environment.”

Strong response: “As a future environmental rights lawyer, I am deeply passionate about gaining the tools to aid worldwide sustainability efforts. I look forward to contributing to research projects like Professor Lena Fletcher’s Outsmart app. Preventing invasive species’ destructive tendencies through early detection is important to me—my grandparents’ orchard was destroyed by emerald ash borers, so I understand the gravity of this research firsthand. Through courses like Rethinking US Environmental Policy, I can delve into the political origins of land and water distribution. Moreover, UMass Amherst’s Gardenshare Practicum will allow me to gain hands-on experience in community sustainability.”

The first response starts off with a very general sentence that could apply to any institution of higher education. The use of generic adjectives praising the school (like “stellar”) should be avoided. Because the word count is so limited, you should avoid vague language as much as possible. Don’t waste words giving trite compliments to the University!

The second response jumps into the applicant’s passions and future goals. It then directly connects a UMass-specific opportunity to the potential fulfillment of this goal. This is a much stronger approach that will grab your reader’s attention and make your response more memorable.

The first response also reads a bit like a laundry list of extracurriculars. Rather than focusing on quantity , you should try to enhance the quality of your response by adding depth through detail. The second applicant not only mentions a UMass-specific offering, but also explains their personal connection to it. Also, their note about the Gardenshare Practicum explains how they will fit into campus culture in their free time.

These inclusions add a layer of authenticity that will make a response more credible to admissions officers. Adding these types of details takes some quick research and can do a lot to add to the relatability of your essay.

At UMass Amherst, no two students are alike. Our communities and groups often define us and shape our individual worlds. Community can refer to various aspects, including shared geography, religion, race/ethnicity, income, ideology, and more. Please choose one of your communities or groups and describe its significance. Explain how, as a product of this community or group, you would enrich our campus. (100 words)

Because college is one big community just like any other, UMass Amherst wants to know about other communities you’re a member of and how you will fit into their own campus community. This prompt is very straightforward, but it also gives you a lot of freedom to talk about any community that is meaningful to you and what you do as a part of it. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate that you are an active community member and can fit right in at UMass Amherst.

It’s crucial that you pick a community that is central to your life and one that you play a significant role in. Including the examples given in the prompt, here are a few examples of communities you could consider:

• Religious community
• Racial or ethnic community
• Sports teams
• Clubs and extracurricular organizations
• Volunteer organizations
• Political movements
• Apartment building or street block
• Online communities or groups
• Community of people who share a similar hobby or interest

As you can see, there are many different ways to approach this essay. You might even write about a language community, or a community of people with a similar disability. Once you know what community you want to write about, you need to discuss your role within the community. For tips on choosing a community and writing thoughtfully about it, check out our guide to writing the diversity essay .

A quick note: Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling, however, still allows colleges to consider race on an individual basis, which is one reason many schools are now including diversity prompts as one of their supplemental essay prompts. If you feel that your racial background has impacted you significantly, this is the place to discuss that.

When choosing a community, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can only talk about one where you were a leader or contributed to some big project—even as a member of the community you could still play a large role. When you’re thinking about the role you played, ask yourself these four questions:

• What actions do I generally take?
• Why do I enjoy being in this community?
• How do I impact others in my community?
• What do I learn from being a part of this community?

If you can answer these questions, you can definitely write an essay that is personal and informative. Including self-reflection, especially for the third and fourth question, will demonstrate your critical thinking and maturity to the admissions committee.

It might help you to describe a formative experience that involved your membership in your chosen community. This experience should ideally be one in which you learned a new lesson, gained a new skill, or personally grew in some way. You are limited to 100 words total , including the last part of the prompt, which concerns your future involvement in the UMass Amherst community, so be sure to get right to the point.

These questions might help you distill the entire experience into the most important points:

• What happened?
• What was going through your mind and how did you feel as it happened?
• How have your emotions about the event changed over time?
• Have you faced any challenges as a result of membership in this community or your background?

Finally, the last part of this prompt asks how your membership in this community will help you enrich the UMass Amherst community. To discuss this, go beyond generic college tropes like late-night conversations with your roommate, as those are things you can find at any school. Instead, find some element of UMass Amherst that you’re specifically intrigued by.

Maybe your Filipino community at home is extremely important to you, so you’re looking forward to joining the Filipino Student Association on campus to stay connected to that community. Or, perhaps you’re planning to start a fashion entrepreneurship club on campus to create a community that currently doesn’t exist.

Even though you only have 100 words to work with, your response can still give your reader new information. Don’t write about something you’ve already discussed elsewhere in your application, limiting yourself by passing up one of the opportunities you do have to share something new with admissions officers.

By the end of your essay, the admissions committee should know exactly what you value in a community and should be able to imagine you in specific communities at UMass Amherst. Ending the essay with your specific ideas for your community involvement at the school will leave the admissions officers with a positive impression of you as an involved student.

Please tell us why you chose the Major(s) you did? (100 words)

A “Why this Major?” prompt is a way for colleges to learn more about you and distinguish you from other candidates with similar academic backgrounds and interests. Admissions officers want to learn more about your current experience with a subject you’re interested in, where your passion comes from, and how you plan to continue pursuing this passion beyond your college career. The committee can also get a better idea of your interest in UMass Amherst specifically, and an idea of how you plan to use its resources to better facilitate your learning.

When brainstorming content for this prompt, think about what initially drew you to the subject. Avoid using general statements like “I want to be a civil engineer because I have always enjoyed working with my hands.” Dig deeper into your passion and give specific details—one applicant might talk about how a Lego set they received for Christmas during their childhood first sparked their love of building. Another might talk about how they always admired the architectural genius behind their favorite structure in their hometown.

You should also tie your response to future goals you hope to accomplish with this major. A common mistake many students make here is being too general. Rather than using platitudes like “making the world a better place” and “helping others,” talk about specific things you could do to achieve these goals. Though you by no means need to have your career plans figured out, you can explore potential options to add depth to your response.

For example, a prospective chemistry major might discuss wanting to invent a non-teratogenic pesticide. Someone applying as a math major might want to develop an online teaching program for students who struggle with the topic and implement it at underprivileged schools.

Another factor to consider is how you plan to pursue this major at UMass Amherst, so that admissions officers will have a better idea of how you will fit into the campus culture. If you’ve already mentioned major-specific resources in the first essay, however, there’s no need to repeat yourself. You can instead focus on your interest in the major and your future goals. While you may have already discussed your academic goals in the first essay, consider this an opportunity to expand upon those goals in more detail.

No matter how you approach this essay, you should research specific classes, research opportunities , programs , student organizations , and other opportunities for involvement that tie into your major. For example, a prospective psychology major might discuss how UMass’s specific psychology programs tie into their dedication to activism. A response could go something like this:

“Participating in the Black Lives Matter movement has underscored my desire to explore the neural circuitry behind racism. As a psychology major, I plan to pursue this topic within UMass Amherst’s Psychology of Peace and Violence Program , by working with Professor Ervin Staub on developing active bystander training for police. I believe this biological approach to activism will go a long way in fomenting sustainable change at the systemic level.”

Keep in mind that this is not a full response, but it does demonstrate the tone and level of detail you should aim for when writing a response to this prompt. Adding details like this will lend authenticity to your response and make it more fun to read. Admissions officers want to know why this major is important to you, so let your creativity and passion flow—the possibilities are endless!

Where to Get Your UMass Amherst Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your UMass Amherst essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Meet Scholarship Winner Eileen Vazquez

Forty-four-year-old First Generation college student and mother Eileen Vazquez has been awarded the 2024 Rute Avelar Scholarship. Born and raised in Springfield, Eileen is a nutrition educator. Her work with low-income children has inspired her to return to college so that she can address their unserved mental health needs. She is completing her bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in applied psychology, and looks forward to pursuing a master's degree and setting an example of excellence for her three children and one stepchild.

Established by Celso Avelar, a long-time friend of UWW, this scholarship honors the memory and spirit of his beloved niece Rute Avelar, who passed away in 2003 at the age of fifteen. It is awarded at least once per year to a UWW Interdisciplinary Studies student who demonstrates financial need, is in good academic standing, has an area of concentration in human services, mental health, applied psychology or another related field, and whose career goal is to work with people in crisis. Special consideration is given to applicants who currently work in or whose career goal is to work in the field of suicide prevention.

Every adult student has a story. What's your story?

My story begins with my being a child born to parents who were unmarried and neither graduated high school. I eventually became a teen mother; however, I was able to graduate high school in the year I was supposed to with no setbacks. For many years I tried my best to balance life, motherhood, work and school, but found life's struggles got in the way, and unfortunately higher education took the backseat every time. Today I can proudly say that everything happens for a reason, and instead of carrying shame with the many setbacks, I look at them as stepping stones for such a time as this. I am determined to finish what I have started in excellence, to set the stage for my generations that follow me to excel no matter what.

What does winning this scholarship mean to you?

I was proud of myself to know I was the recipient of a scholarship, because I was never guided or encouraged while in high school to look towards them. I honestly within me felt I wouldn't be able to secure any, so this definitely builds up my confidence.

What is the best part about being a UWW Interdisciplinary Studies student?

Being a UWW Interdisciplinary Studies Student is amazing, because I actually feel like I have found a college that not only understands how hard life can be, but makes a way for the same things to help move you further by utilizing life experiences in addition to regular studies.

How do you balance work, school, and other responsibilities?

I pray a lot and try to give myself grace while being mindful of setting a time for all.

What are your plans for the future—professionally and personally?

My plans are to complete the UWW Interdisciplinary Studies program to secure my bachelor's degree, and to then move on to securing a master's in some field of psychology or social work.

*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the person being featured and do not necessarily reflect those of the University.  

University Without Walls scholarships exist thanks to the  generosity of alumni and friends .

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