Like many schools in the elite liberal arts tier, Davidson College is a small, academically rigorous private institution. Located in the town of (you guessed it!) Davidson, its campus is only about 20 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina. Classes are focused, with an average size of 17 students and a 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio. With just under 2,000 total undergraduates, Davidson has gotten increasingly competitive to get into — the Class of 2027 had an acceptance rate of 14.5%.
Luckily, Davidson has two supplemental essay prompts — both short and pretty straightforward — so you’ll have a chance to say why you’d be a great fit.
Prompt 1
There are just under 4,000 4-year colleges and universities in the United States. Being as specific as possible, what interests you most about Davidson College (250-300 words)*?
Great news, kids. This is perhaps one of the few times in life we, as your elders, can responsibly encourage you to be a pick me. Davidson is being cut-and-dry here: they want to know why you want them. Remember when Blair Waldorf told Chuck Bass “three words, eight letters, say it and I’m yours?” It’s basically that moment, except you won’t massively fumble the bag.
We’ve already written a lot on the blog about this kind of supplement — what we call the “Why This College” essay — but you’ve only got 300 words max, so you’ll want your answer to be especially streamlined. Plus, Davidson dictates that you should be “as specific as possible,” so it’s particularly important that you research the school and clarify why you need this school out of the 4,000 accredited American institutions of higher learning in order to achieve your goals.
Start by quickly summing up your backstory — state the major you’d like to pursue in college, and give a brief narrative about how you discovered your affinity for it. Then move on to the meat of your short answer: the classes and professors you’d like to work with at Davidson. Remember, you need to make the case that you can best pursue your aspirations at Davidson, so you want to talk about courses and scholars that you couldn’t find anywhere else. After that, you’ll want to show your personality and mention an extracurricular that demonstrates how you’d get involved with Davidson’s study body or interact with its beautiful campus.
Davidson’s homepage will rapidly show you how much its culture prioritizes kindness and character, and its student-life page states that “Davidson's primary purpose is to help students lead lives of leadership and service.” When you’re writing your statement, it’s not enough to just mechanically check off the bullet-points of “why Davidson” — you’ll want to demonstrate shared values and a social alignment with its mission through your limited words, as well.
Prompt 2
Davidson encourages students to explore curiosities in and out of the classroom. What is a topic, activity or idea that excites you? Tell us why. Examples may include hobbies, books, interactions, music, podcasts, movies, etc. (250-300 words)*
On first glance, this question might seem similar to Prompt #1, but you don’t want to waste any of your limited space on information you’ve already included. We can think of the first question as your opportunity to focus on Davidson’s characteristics, and this second question gives you the opportunity to say more about you. If you’ve covered your bases on the first question, your readers already know what academic focus you’ll have in college. This is a more general response to show how your unique personality and brain come together. Basically, what makes you tick?
There’s a similar question on the Tufts supplement if you want to see more advice we’ve given, but the guiding principles are as follows:
Be creative with this prompt and share something new. It’s not bad if you haven’t mentioned this interest elsewhere — in fact, that’s a plus. It shows that you have a variety of passions and that your intellectual curiosity extends beyond the boundary of the classroom.
To that end, this “topic, activity or idea” can be sophisticated and intellectually stimulating without being strictly “scholastic.” In other words, don’t be afraid to be a bit more familiar with this prompt; as always, be professional and put your best foot forward, but certainly show your personality. Your topic might have come to you from pop culture rather than a textbook, and that’s just as valid. You might, for example, talk about your obsession with the proliferation of supernatural teen dramas that popped up in the 2010’s. Yes, binging Teen Wolf and The Vampire Diaries might sound less impressive than cloning DNA, but entertainment is a big piece of culture and a significant way we spend our time as human beings. It is this fascination with bad network television, in fact, that might lead you to a future minor in media studies, critical theory, and history. Your research into your own obsessions might be what helped you discover the scholastic literature on zombie novels as an allegory for slavery and abolition in the U.S.
Basically, loosen up. Show where your mind wanders when you’re really being yourself! When was the last time you accidentally stayed up way too late because every Wikipedia hyperlink led you to a more deranged subtopic? What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever learned on TikTok? Better yet, what misinformation did you find on TikTok that you were able to debunk because of your knowledge of a niche topic? Set the record straight here!
Prompt 3
If you would like to submit your resume (optional), please do so here.
This one’s easy — if you’re given the chance to, submit your resume. You have no reason not to. And we’d like to add a slogan of our own to the annals of history. If everything is fair in love and war, nothing is optional in college applications. If you don’t have a resume put together yet, check out our guide here!
Looking for personalized help on your supplements? Email us today to work with the Koppelman Group.