The University of Maryland is a large public research university located in College Park, MD, right outside of Washington, D.C. With more than 40,000 students, the University of Maryland offers a wide variety of degree programs and courses and has a little bit of something for everyone. The University of Maryland has strong engineering and technical programs, and the most popular majors include Computer Science, Biology, and Economics.
Maryland has an acceptance rate of around 44%, and takes about 25% of its students from out-of-state. The University of Maryland will ask you to answer a couple of short answer questions for their supplement. These are all tweet-sized: 160 characters or less. As such, you’ll want to make sure your responses are as concise as possible.
If I could travel anywhere, I would go to..
There are basically no wrong answers to this one--just think of an exciting place you’d like to visit! It can be somewhere you’ve already been, or someplace new. Write a short description of why as well as where--i.e. “I’d like to go to Verona, Italy, to see my grandmother’s hometown with her.”
These can be personal (the previous example), or more whimsical: “I’d like to go to Haight-Ashbury in 1967, to see the Summer of Love.” Feel free to be creative. This can be shorter than the allotted 160 characters, but try to provide at least a bit of context for why you choose your selected location.
The most interesting fact I ever learned from research was..
This is a great chance to stand out and really illustrate the depths of your academic work. If you want to be serious, think of projects you’ve worked on and papers you’ve written--what were some of the most interesting insights you found? If you wrote a research paper on malaria, and learned that mosquitoes are actually not necessary for their local ecosystems, write about that. If there’s a cool fun fact you discovered recently, this is the place to write about it.
In addition to my major, my academic interests include..
This one is simple--just list a few things that you can connect to. If you’re a prospective history major, feel free to write about your similar interest in anthropology or sociology. Try to find things that match your previously demonstrated interests--journalism if you worked at your school newspaper, or maybe game theory if you were a part of the chess club.
My favorite thing about last Tuesday was…
This one is really straightforward: they want to hear about a normal day in your life. Try to think of something a little eventful--if you laid in bed all day Tuesday, but went for a beautiful hike on Wednesday, write about the hike. That being said, you shouldn’t choose anything too crazy: this question is worded to ask for a more regular day. This really serves as a proxy question, another way to get to know you. Just choose something interesting and go with it.
Something you might not know about me is..
For this question, start by brainstorming a list of ten ‘fun facts’ about yourself--the languages you speak, how you can ride a unicycle, etc. Take the list and send it to some family and friends, and ask them to vote on their favorites. Then take whichever option got the best response/most votes, and write about that. This one should be simple too--just write a couple sentences and you should be fine,
If you’ve got any questions about Maryland, or about how to fit a response in 160 characters, we’re always here to help.
Contact us here.