Bryn Mawr College is a private liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It is a small school with only 1,350 undergraduates. More importantly, it is a women’s college. According to their website, “Bryn Mawr College considers as eligible to apply to the undergraduate college all individuals who have identified and continue to identify as women (including cisgender and trans women), intersex individuals who do not identify as male, individuals assigned female at birth who have not taken medical or legal steps to identify as male, and individuals assigned female at birth who do not identify within the gender binary.” The acceptance rate at Bryn Mawr is 34%
Bryn Mawr has two supplemental questions. The first is included in the general “questions” section of their college-specific information section.
Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below. (Minimum 50 words, Maximum 100 words)
This is a very short supplement, so it’s best to keep in simple. First, you need to pick an activity of job. We prefer jobs. Why? Because we think having work experience is critical to becoming an independent college-bound adult. Plus, we like pocket money. If you are going to focus on an activity, though, there are some guidelines. It has to be something entirely outside of school. That means no in-school sports and no clubs. It also needs to be something that you’ve committed to and made time for on an ongoing basis. It cannot be a three-week service trip. If you haven’t been doing the activity for more than a year, or job for more than six months, it won’t work.
Once you’ve picked something to focus on, you need to highlight a specific piece of it. For example, if you are writing about scooping ice cream, you might write a funny micro-story about cleaning up after a late shift and pretending the mop is a mic. Trying to summarize an activity in 100 words in a compelling way, that also highlights how awesome you are, is a failing proposition. The paragraph above is more than 100 words. It’s not a lot of space. Use it well.
As you prepare to join a new college community, reflect on your role as a community member throughout the past four years. What legacy do you hope to leave behind?
The “official” supplement (is in, it is in the supplement section) is pretty non-traditional. The question isn’t the reason why, though. That’s pretty standard. What makes Bryn Mawr unique is that they ask you, the applicant, to upload your response as a document. They also don’t give you a word count.
Before starting, the first thing you should do is to give yourself a maximum number of words that you will use. We recommend 600 words double spaced or two pages double spaced, whichever is shorter in size 12 of your chosen font. Speaking of which, no crazy fonts and you must use standard margins. Application readers are reading hundreds of applications each day. Let’s make their lives easier. Writing a slow-burn supplement that takes 1000-words to get to the point is begging the reader to stop before they get there. You don’t need to go too short, but if you’re willing to try for 500 instead of 600, that would be a good idea.
Another thing to consider before starting is that Bryn Mawr emphasizes on their website that one of your goals for this essay should be to show off your writing chops. They care what you have to say, so it shouldn’t overlap with other parts of your application, but they also care deeply about how you choose to say it. This is not a place to list your accomplishments, awards, recognitions, honors, or medals; it’s a place to tell a story.
Understanding that they don’t want a list of accomplishments helps to illuminate what they mean by “legacy.” They are looking for your qualitative impact, not your quantitative one. They don’t care that you broke every volleyball record. They want to know how you made a positive impact on people’s lives.
Making a positive impact on people’s lives is not a round-about way of saying “write about community service,” though. In fact, please don’t write about community service unless you have been heavily involved with and committed to an organization for at least two years. You also probably shouldn’t write about sports unless you had immense success as a team and you are hoping on continuing to play in college and have had conversations with team coaches to that end.
What you should write about are relationships, especially relationships that bridge grade levels and so are not isolated to your graduating class. Write about a relationship or even a few relationships by telling stories. You could write one store, a braided narrative that weaves together a few different stories, or even a series of vignettes. You can try including dialogue, developing vivid imagery, or writing from a perspective that is not the first person. If your most significant commitment in high school was as the anchor on the school news show, you might want to try writing a piece that mimics the style of the work you do there. Whatever you choose, make sure that you write a narrative that tells a story of who you are. Authenticity over accolades every single day.
Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or need any help at all. We’re here to help you answer every question authentically so that you feel proud hitting “submit.” Drop us a line.