Northwestern is a top research university in Evanston, Illinois that has become iconic for combining a collaborative learning environment with innovative hands-on research opportunities. They have a top engineering program, a top business school, a top education program (as in teaching future teachers), a top speech-language pathology program. If that sounds diverse, it is. Northwestern doesn’t pigeonhole themselves, and they excel across the board. It’s not surprising, then, that it isn’t easy to get in. There are about 8,000 undergraduate students, and the acceptance rate is under 8%.
The university has been test-optional since 2020. This means that first-year applicants are not required to submit SAT or ACT test scores, and they don’t even include average scores, nor a score range, in their class profile reports. If you are going to submit scores, which most accepted applicants historically do, you want a composite SAT score of at least 1500 or an ACT score of at least 33.
To stand out as an applicant, you need to do more than have strong grades and scores, though. Northwestern looks for students who are independently motivated and who excel in novel and challenging environments. Northwestern doesn’t look for any particular type of interests, as graduates have gone on to every type of future and range from Stephen Colbert to George R.R. Martin, but they do look for particular types of students. Northwestern wants to see creativity and passion paired with a “go get it” attitude.
In this post, we’ll break down exactly how to show these characteristics through your application supplements.
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When we work with students on a Northwestern application, we create a personalized approach to the supplement prompts that delivers exactly what the college is looking for as they “imagine what kind of Northwestern student you may become.” When you are going it alone, though, there are some rules that we highly recommend following.
Now, you also need to remember that Northwestern does not require the Common App/Coalition App personal essay, and so you can technically repurpose your essay for a supplement if it makes a lot of sense. Do not, however, simply reuse your Common App essay because it is fast and easy. We coach our students to still submit the Common Application personal essay to Northwestern, which they will consider as part of your application, and to write wholly new work for the supplemental essays.
This is because each application must be your best work for each school, and shortcuts don’t lead to acceptances. So don’t look for a way to use what you’ve already done as you read through these prompts. Rather, look for how to best amplify your strengths. Now let’s get into the questions.
The following question is required of all Common Application and Coalition with Scoir applicants (optional for QuestBridge applicants). Please respond in 300 words or fewer):
We want to be sure we’re considering your application in the context of your personal experiences: What aspects of your background (your identity, your school setting, your community, your household, etc.) have most shaped how you see yourself engaging in Northwestern’s community, be it academically, extracurricularly, culturally, politically, socially, or otherwise?
This is Northwestern’s way of opening the door to you providing answers to questions they aren’t legally allowed to ask. They know and expect many applicants to write about race or ethnicity here, but that isn’t the only thing that can go here — and it isn’t the most impactful for all applicants, even if they are a minority in some way. This question also comes in two parts. First, your background.
In order to write about an aspect of your background in a way that hooks the reader, you need to tell a story that illustrates the pieces of yourself that you want to highlight but that is, first and foremost, a story.
What do we mean by that? Well, we spend a lot of time working with our students not simply on completing their college essays, but on learning how to write creative personal essays that are truly impactful whether or not the context they are being read in is for a college application. Very few high school students are assigned personal essay writing in school, and so this is a wholly new format with its own challenges and stumbling blocks. It’s not a journal entry, but it needs to be personal. It’s not a dry autobiography, but it needs to be packed full of facts. Finding that balance is crucial. And, for us, it all starts with pinpointing a specific story that can used as an entry point into explaining a piece of who you are because of where you’ve come from. Oh, and you have to be concise because you only have 200 words, max, of the 300 word limit.
The second part of this supplement is tying that piece of yourself to Northwestern. While you can write about any part of Northwestern, we encourage students to keep in mind that this is a college application, not an application for a social club. You want to go to school there to study, so we recommend making an academic link a centerpiece of your reasoning. It can then have spokes that hit on related extracurricular opportunities, social opportunities, or anything else about Northwestern that draws you in that is, in some way, linked to your academic aspirations.
Next, you have options.
We encourage you to answer at least one and no more than two of the following questions. Please respond in fewer than 200 words per question.
Now, while this prompt is optional, we hope we are not the first to tell you that when it comes to college applications optional is not, in fact, optional. If you want to go to Northwestern, you absolutely musts rise to this opportunity. We work with our students to do the maximum two responses. Below, we’ll break down each option, why it might be right for you, and how to approach it.
Painting “The Rock” is a tradition at Northwestern that invites all forms of expression—students promote campus events or extracurricular groups, support social or activist causes, show their Wildcat spirit (what we call “Purple Pride”), celebrate their culture, and more. What would you paint on The Rock, and why?
We don’t love this prompt. While “The Rock” is a key Northwestern tradition, you only have 200 words, and we want you to be more than a social issue or activist cause. The only way we like this prompt is when what you are really writing about is an extracurricular that relates to something you are already doing, and what is put on The Rock connects to that extracurricular. That makes the paint job a piece of the supplement, but not the whole point of the supplement. So, basically, this isn’t our first choice. There is a way to make it work, but there are other better options.
Northwestern fosters a distinctively interdisciplinary culture. We believe discovery and innovation thrive at the intersection of diverse ideas, perspectives, and academic interests. Within this setting, if you could dream up an undergraduate class, research project, or creative effort (a start-up, a design prototype, a performance, etc.), what would it be? Who might be some ideal classmates or collaborators?
This is a super fun prompt. First, absorb that they are not asking you to teach the course, lead the project, or take on a creative effort on your own. In fact, what they want to see is actually the opposite of that. The admissions officials want to see collaboration and teamwork, so what you dream up for this supplement should put both of those things front and center. But how do you actually write about this? We recommend taking a creative approach.
If you are writing about a course, structure is as a course description with a course name and description, including the types of students who should consider taking the class. If you are dreaming up a research project, write your supplement like the content of a poster recruiting peers to your project as collaborators.
Another approach is to write this supplement as a scene in the midst of the activity you’re proposing. Maybe you drop the reader into the first day of the course, or put them in the lab with you testing out an experiment.
The commonality between these approaches is that they are collaborative. They pull the reader in and show off your writing chops alongside your imagination, enthusiasm, and passion for what Northwestern offers.
Community and belonging matter at Northwestern. Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.
We like the previous prompt more than this one, but the approach is really quite similar if you want to ace this. Instead of telling them about a community, network, or student group, you need to show them how you would connect with it by dropping them in on the action. Maybe a student group has an annual tradition that you would love to be part of. Write yourself into it, before giving a “why.” Note that this prompt is similar to the first one (“The Rock”), but we like it a lot more because of the opportunities it poses for immersive storytelling that links what you want to do to what you are already doing.
Northwestern’s location is special: on the shore of Lake Michigan, steps from downtown Evanston, just a few miles from Chicago. What aspects of our location are most compelling to you, and why?
This prompt is, for most applicants, a dud. You have so much more to write about than geography. The only students we would support in selecting this prompt is probably counter-intuitive: Chicagoans. Yes, people from Chicago and the surrounding area. As a local, you can write about the impact of going to university in your hometown, and how you can build the skills to improve your community from within your community. As a school that really emphasizes the importance of giving back, this can resonate strongly, but you should already be doing stuff in the area related to giving back — and in a big way. For example, you could focus on work you are already doing for a nonprofit and how Northwestern would help you amplify your impact on the community you love while in school, not only after you graduate.
Northwestern is a place where people with diverse backgrounds from all over the world can study, live, and talk with one another. This range of experiences and viewpoints immeasurably enriches learning. How might your individual background contribute to this diversity of perspectives in Northwestern’s classrooms and around our campus?
This prompt is very similar to the required supplement that all applicants have to answer. So, if you want to do this one, what’s different? You absolutely must write about something totally different from what you did for the first supplement.
The same rules as the first supplement apply. You need to tell a story. You need to make your background personal, pulling them into your narrative through, well, narrative. You absolutely must connect to the reader through that narrative, making them feel invested in your life today and your future at Northwestern.
Best sure not to skip or rush the last piece of the prompt, either. How are you going to contribute? If you pick this prompt, do not repeat anything from any other prompts. This must be new information.
The Northwestern supplement is genuinely fun. It asks you to explore yourself and tell your story in a concise format. But while the supplements aren’t long that doesn’t mean that they should be rushed. We begin working with our students on supplements the summer before their senior year to ensure time for drafting and editing before senior fall stress kicks in.
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