Sources and citation are provided. For example, instead of writing about homesteading trends across the country, cornell admissions essay, write about a local farm in your area that you visited as a child or how you got interested in food science. Your Cornell essay prompt will correspond to the school that you plan to study at, so give your future as a Cornell student some thought before you start writing. What is your "thing"? Do you need cornell admissions essay inspiration?
Cornell University Supplemental Essay Prompts
You may be wondering how you can make your college application stand out besides just your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars. Personal essays are a great way to show admissions officers who you are and what makes you a great candidate for admission. Cornell University admissions officers read your Common Application personal statement and supplemental essay based on the specific college you choose to apply to within Cornell. By reading these essays, they can learn more about your personality and what would make you a great fit at the university, cornell admissions essay. Many strong students apply to Cornell each year, and developing a unique, authentic supplemental statement that showcases your personality gives admissions officers a chance to get to know you as an individual.
Do you need essay inspiration? Read over these Cornell supplemental essays. Want to know your chances of being admitted to Cornell? Check out our chancing calculator. Before you apply to Cornell, you should determine which specific college is right for you, cornell admissions essay. Understanding the differences between the colleges is really important when applying. For example, you can apply to Cornell as a biology major within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences or College of Arts and Sciences. Although the classes for the major are the same, the overall college requirements are slightly different, cornell admissions essay, and tuition cost may be different if you are a New York State resident, cornell admissions essay.
This is why it is extremely important that you do your own research to determine the best college and major for you before you write your supplemental essay. Below are the supplemental essay prompts for each college:. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences CALS is the second-largest school at Cornell with majors ranging from communication to entomology. Even if you decide to apply as an undeclared major, you need to have potential areas of interest in mind to fully address the essay prompt. You should use your current experiences to explain why you want to study the major you selected, cornell admissions essay.
A longitudinal approach lends itself well to this portion of the essay. For example, if you want to study animal science, you could begin by explaining how you always loved going to the zoo growing up. You can then transition into describing how this love of animals led you to volunteer at the local animal hospital, and conclude your essay by explaining that your time at the animal hospital inspired your desire to become a veterinarian. The second half of this prompt asks you to explain why you want to study your intended major through CALS and Cornell, cornell admissions essay. You need to provide college-specific examples that directly relate to your prospective major. Find courses, clubs, or research opportunities that would be difficult to find at another university.
For example, a prospective Viticulture and Enology major could discuss the field practicum course that allows students to gain hands-on vineyard management experience. A prospective Development Sociology major could talk about the international trips that would allow them to see socioeconomic development firsthand. Students can study topics ranging from information science to Africana studies, and the College houses multiple programs that allow students to design their own major. Try to connect any diverse interests into a singular goal.
For example, if your interests are math and Asian studies, cornell admissions essay, you could discuss how you plan to use statistics or other mathematical models to gain social insight into the Asian-American experience. Establish your interests by linking them to your present experiences. If you are a government major, write about your time on Model UN. If you are a biology major, write about your success in Science League. Use your present experiences to illustrate the depth and range of your personal interests.
Cornell has an open course catalog, so you can research interesting courses. Do not select common courses such as General Chemistry. Instead, focus on classes that are unique to the university. For example, Cornell offers a class called the Death Penalty cornell admissions essay America that is taught by top capital punishment scholars. This connection point would enrich the essay of a government or policy analysis major. Students applying to the College of Engineering are required to respond to two out of the three prompts below. Each response should be words or less. Option 1: Engineering is inherently collaborative. What does collaboration mean to you? What strengths do you bring to the collaborative process? Option 2: For you, what makes Cornell Engineering special?
Why do you want to attend Cornell Engineering? Option 3: Diversity in all definitional forms is intrinsic to excellence in engineering. Indeed, devising the best engineered solutions to complex problems is cornell admissions essay achieved by drawing from the diverse ingenuity of people from broadly different backgrounds, lived experiences, and identities. How do you see yourself contributing to the diversity and inclusion of the Cornell Engineering community? What is the unique voice you would bring to the Cornell Engineering community? This prompt option is interesting because it requires you to have a solid understanding of collaboration and how you can bring it into an academic setting.
For this essay, college admissions officers want to know how your personality impacts your willingness and ability to collaborate. Remember that admissions officers want to create diverse classes, so they will look for unique responses that are highly personal. If you can only think of an example where you worked on an uneventful group project at school, cornell admissions essay, you may want to pick the other two essays instead. Not Making it Personal Enough: Although you need to define collaboration for this essay, cornell admissions essay, you need to make sure that you tie it back to your own experiences, cornell admissions essay. Oftentimes, students will write a great essay that answers the prompt, but lacks personality. Remember, cornell admissions essay, these essays give admissions officers insight into your life, so you should make them about you!
Not Answering the Entire Prompt: As you write the essay, make sure that you address all parts of the prompt. Too often, students will only answer one of the cornell admissions essay and forget about the rest. This is important because it will show admissions officers how you can work collaboratively within the Cornell College of Engineering. To answer this prompt, you could choose to write about collaborating with your robotics team at the state competition. Cornell admissions essay this topic, here is an example from a student:. After months of sleepless nights and weekends spent preparing for the largest robotics competition in the state, cornell admissions essay, this was it. We were ready to win the competition.
That was before the unthinkable happened. Right as we lifted our robot into the ring, a giant piece fell off. Luckily, the judges were sympathetic and allowed us five minutes to fix our robot. For a minute, we blamed each other. But then, one of my teammates rallied up the four of us. Being a naturally practical and efficient person, I outlined all the steps we cornell admissions essay have to do in the remaining four minutes in order to cornell admissions essay the robot working again. I then assigned my team members to each task based on their own personal strengths.
Even in a highly calculated environment like a robotics competition, unexpected problems can occur. In this section, the student defines collaboration, a requirement when answering this prompt, while also explaining their strengths in the collaborative process. By defining collaboration later in the essay, the response was more engaging since it allowed for the student to tell a story that highlighted cornell admissions essay clear example of their collaboration. For this type of essay, a good response should show your interests through your previous experiences, discuss your goals for the future, and show how Cornell Engineering can help you achieve these goals in cornell admissions essay. Empty Flattery: One common mistake is just to write about what you are interested in at Cornell without connecting it back to yourself.
Remember, these essays give admissions officers a chance to get to know you, and they know a lot about their own programs. As you write these essays, talk about why you are interested in the subject, not just the subject itself. Misaligned Childhood Experiences: It is totally ok cornell admissions essay talk about how an experience in childhood led to an academic interest later on, cornell admissions essay. But make sure that this interest has persisted throughout your life. Many essays start by describing interests in childhood, which can be cliche. Only employ this method if it is authentic and true cornell admissions essay your life.
Here are two examples of this type of response, one stronger than the other, to help get you started:. Moore, developed my love for chemistry and physics. I read all I could about the subject, and my teacher even started tutoring me outside of class so that I could learn more advanced material. Although I participated in science clubs at school, I developed a keen interest cornell admissions essay research during my summer experience in a research lab at Fermilab, which led to cornell admissions essay current goals of pursuing a PhD. During the summer of my junior year, I worked on a project on particle physics and accelerator research at FermiLab which fascinated me. This is a solid example because the narrator discusses how they went above and beyond in an academic class to learn more about chemistry and physics, and tied their summer experience with something that they would want to pursue at Cornell Engineering, cornell admissions essay.
Additionally, they discussed their long term goals of getting a PhD. In third grade, I won the science fair for my physics experiment, where I made balloon rockets to see how high they could go. I carried this interest with me to high school, where I took the most advanced science classes and participated in as many science fairs as possible. An education at Cornell Engineering would help me cornell admissions essay develop my interests and career goals. This example is not nearly as good as the first. The narrator talks about their experience as a child, but does not connect it to their interests later in life. Additionally, they do not mention why they are interested in engineering, or how Cornell Engineering can help them achieve their academic or career goals.
The goal of this type of essay is to find out how your values and background influence your personal choices and goals. To learn more about this post, check out our tips for writing a diversity essay. Coming up with a good topic for a diversity essay can be tricky. It is important to consider how your emotions tie in with one of your identities and what story or stories may demonstrate this emotion. This way, cornell admissions essay, you can write an essay that shows the identity and how it has shaped you.
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For the "where do you plan to go from here" part of the question, don't get too stressed out trying to develop a detailed life plan for yourself. Broad plans for your future are fine, and you can even keep things shorter term by discussing how you'll use the knowledge you learn to get prestigious internships or take courses in a specific subject to better prepare you for a future career. If you're specifically interested in the SHA and you're having trouble coming up with a topic, use the list of global hospitality industry topics as a jumping off point. Which are you interested? How did you become interested in them? Why do you care so much about these topics? What type of career do you want in this industry? When writing about your personal qualities that make you a good fit for the program, don't describe yourself using only adjectives and generalizations.
Instead, use stories, anecdotes and experiences from your life that actually happened and that show your personality traits. Follow that old grade school writing rule: show, don't tell. Demonstrate your personal qualities through examples, rather than just stating them. Applicants must write responses to two of the three essay options. They may choose which two prompts they write about — their choice. Each response is limited to a maximum of words. And now for something a little different. College of Engineering applicants, instead of writing one long essay, have to write two shorter essays, and they get to choose from three prompts.
Each of the prompts seeks to understand why you want to study engineering, and why you believe you'd excel at engineering. For all prompts, be sure to go beyond the surface level with your answers. Don't just say that you want a steady job after graduation. Cornell's College of Engineering wants to see that you have both ambition and interesting ideas. For the first prompt, Cornell wants a better understanding of how you view collaboration. Teamwork is extremely important in engineering, and they want to make sure they're admitting students who work well with others. If you choose this prompt, be sure to explain both why collaboration is important to you and why you think you're a good collaborator.
The more specific you can be the better, so don't shy away from using specific examples and stories to back up your assertions. The second prompt is the most similar to the prompts for the other colleges. It's a basic "why us" prompt where you explain to Cornell what it is about their College of Engineering that made you want to apply. Again, the more specific you can be here, the better. Mention things like specific professors, classes, internship opportunities, etc. to strengthen your essay. For the third prompt, you're focusing on diversity and how you'll add to it. This doesn't just need to be racial diversity; think about what your unique life experiences can bring to Cornell's College of Engineering and how that would contribute to its diversity. How has your decision to apply to the College of Human Ecology been influenced by your related experiences?
How will your choice of major impact your goals and plans for the future? This essay prompt gives you lots of room for creativity. That being said, heed this caveat: don't get carried away in stating your grandiose mission for solving the world's problems. As with the other essay prompts, specificity is key. Pick something that has truly been formative in your educational and professional goals, dive in deep, and write from the heart. For example, if you're interested in studying Policy Analysis and Management, you could talk about how your experience with social welfare programs has affected your life.
Be sure to include your future goals in your answer. The College of Human Ecology has a very specific focus—you'll want to reflect that in what you write about. Your response should show us that your interests align with the ILR School. This essay is a great opportunity to show off your academic side. You get to write about your topics of study and describe how you will continue to make it a part of your life in your college career and beyond. You don't have to limit your answer to school experiences. Academic pursuits can grow from hobbies, travels, or personal experiences. Do you take on leadership roles in your religious community? Have you had a particularly influential summer job? As long as you relate the experience back to academics you are golden.
You should also specify what ILR is the right college at Cornell for you to pursue these interests. What can you study at ILR that you can't study in Cornell's other colleges, such as the College of Arts and Sciences? It can be helpful to list specific courses or tracks of study at ILR that reflect your intellectual interests. Remember, the prompt specifically asks why ILR is your Cornell college of choice. Regardless of which Cornell essay prompt you're responding to, you should keep in mind the following tips for how to write a great Cornell essay.
The point of a college essay is for the admissions committee to have the chance to get to know you beyond your test scores, grades, and honors. Your admissions essays are your opportunity to make yourself come alive for the essay readers and to present yourself as a fully fleshed out person. You should, then, make sure that the person you're presenting in your college essays is yourself. Don't try to emulate what you think the committee wants to hear or try to act like someone you're not. If you lie or exaggerate, your essay will come across as insincere, which will diminish its effectiveness. Stick to telling real stories about the person you really are, not who you think Cornell wants you to be. These include quotations that have been quoted to death and phrases or idioms that are overused in daily life.
The college admissions committee has probably seen numerous essays from students who have grand plans to change the world. Only talk about changing the world if you have legitimate interests to back it up. Strive for originality and avoid using cliches, which take away from the strength and sincerity of your work. It should almost go without saying, but you want to make sure your Cornell essay is the strongest example of your work possible. Before you turn in your Cornell application, make sure to edit and proofread your essays. Your work should be free of spelling and grammar errors. Make sure to run your essays through a spelling and grammar check before you submit. It's a good idea to have someone else read your Cornell essay, too. You can seek a second opinion on your work from a parent, teacher, or friend.
Ask them whether your work represents you as a student and person. Have them check and make sure you haven't missed any small writing errors. Having a second opinion will help your work be the best it possibly can be. The Cornell essay prompts give you a chance to really show the admissions committee who you are. Regardless of the question you're answering, remember to follow these basic dos and don'ts as you're writing:. Are you working on the Common App essay as part of your application? Read our breakdown of the Common App prompts and our guide to picking the best prompt for you. If you're planning to take the SAT or ACT as part of your application , try out some of our famous test prep guides, like "How to Get a Perfect Score on the SAT" and "15 Key ACT Test Day Tips.
Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional help from PrepScholar. Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges. Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now :. Hayley Milliman is a former teacher turned writer who blogs about education, history, and technology. When she was a teacher, Hayley's students regularly scored in the 99th percentile thanks to her passion for making topics digestible and accessible.
In addition to her work for PrepScholar, Hayley is the author of Museum Hack's Guide to History's Fiercest Females. Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub. com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers. How to Get a Perfect , by a Perfect Scorer. Score on SAT Math. Score on SAT Reading. Score on SAT Writing. Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests. What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For? How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. What ACT target score should you be aiming for? ACT Vocabulary You Must Know. ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score.
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