Boston University is a large well-respected and selective private research university in — you guessed it — Boston, Massachusetts. BU has built a reputation as a formidable education institution, offering over 300 programs of study to over 38,000 students coming from over 140 countries. The acceptance rate has plummeted in recent years, falling from 48% for the Class of 2015 to closer to 11%. The important thing to see in this drop is that BU is still BU. It was a great school with a nearly 50% acceptance rate, and it is a great school with an acceptance rate approaching 10%. The school hasn’t really change that much through the last decade. The professors continue to be strong; the research opportunities continue to be strong, it’s just a lot harder to get in.
If you want to go to BU, Early Decision I is your best option for admission. BU knows that lots of extraordinary students aiming for the Ivy League use them as a back-up. As a result, they often reject very qualified and objectively impressive students who they don’t think will pick them. How can they tell? Well, if a student with a sky-high GPA and impressive extracurriculars doesn’t apply ED I or ED II, that’s a bit of a giveaway that BU is a backup. During the ED rounds, BU accepts more than 50% of their first-year class.
Another giveaway that you aren’t serious about BU is not submitting test scores. Boston University is test-optional, which means that you don’t need to submit SAT or ACT scores to be considered for admission — officially, at least. But if you don’t apply through an ED pathway and don’t submit scores, that is not a great look. A relatively low number of admitted and enrolled applicants submitted test scores for the fall of 2024, but our experience shows us that submitting strong scores always helps an application, even when it’s optional.
Whether or not you submit scores, the supplements are an important way to counter concerns by admissions officers over whether you really want to go to BU. In this post, we’re going to break down the Boston University supplement to give you the best possible chance at a letter of acceptance.
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Boston University has one required supplement with two options to pick from. Regardless of which option you pick to respond to, you get a good amount of space. 300 words is enough room to tell a story, but not so much that you risk getting lost in the middle of it. Below is our guide to making it through each option, strengthening your application each step of the way.
Boston University is dedicated to our founding principles: “that higher education should be accessible to all and that research, scholarship, artistic creation, and professional practice should be conducted in the service of the wider community—local and international. These principles endure in the University’s insistence on the value of diversity in its tradition and standards of excellence and its dynamic engagement with the City of Boston and the world.” With this mission in mind, please respond to one of the following two questions in 300 words or less:
1. Reflect on a social or community issue that deeply resonates with you. Why is it important to you, and how have you been involved in addressing or raising awareness about it?
This prompt is fun, and a lot of students have something to say for it, but — to be honest — we prefer #2. Whereas number 2 lets you really sell yourself to BU, this first prompt carries some risks. If you are involved in social justice or giving back to your community, that probably shows up in your activities section. You don’t have much room there to explain what it is you do and why, so this prompt may be tempting. We get it, but there are also a lot of potential places for you to trip up.
For example, if you pick an issue that is divisive politically, you don’t know the politics of the people reading your application. Or, if you pick an issue that is important to you but that doesn’t impact you personally, you could come off as being paternalistic or positioning yourself as a savior. At its worst, it could seem like you think you are better then or deserve more than the people you are helping, which we know you don’t feel and isn’t what drives you to doing this work.
But what if you really want to pick this prompt? If you are 100% set on picking this prompt, we highly advise making it as personal as possible. Write about an issue that is relevant to your life and share how you are involved in addressing it. Tell this story in a way that is action forward while also providing context such that the reader understands why you care so much. For example, maybe going to the food pantry with a parent when you were a young kid has driven you to care a lot about food insecurity more broadly and work with a local food pantry. If you can’t make that kind of personal connection, this is not your prompt.
2. What about being a student at BU most excites you? How do you hope to contribute to our campus community?
This is a classic “why us,” and it’s our much preferred prompt option on the BU supplement. As we’ve emphasized, it’s very important for BU to truly feel your enthusiasm for the school. This prompt lets you show that, in detail.
Before you start writing your answer to this prompt, you need to do some research. Dig deeply into your major, find a professor or two you’d want to study under, and a few courses you’d love to take and that are beyond the introductory level. Also look at the community. What is it, really, about BU that makes you excited to be on campus — not only in the classroom? What student groups would you like to become involved with, and what traditions are you excited about?
Once you have all of this research pulled together, it’s time to write the story. Start your supplement with a short, 50-80-word story that shows your excitement for what you want to study and how you collaborate with others in pursuit of excellence. For example, if you are on a quiz bowl team or a robotics team, you could spotlight a moment in a competition.
Then you need to pivot into the research you did. Share how you want to continue this type of work, exploration, and collaboration, at BU.
End the supplement by again spotlighting collaboration, building on your opening story either by giving a close to what you set up at the top, or taking the story to BU and envisioning your future there.
BU also allows you to upload a document with “Additional Information” if you would like to. They invite applicants to “use this space if you have additional information, materials, or writing samples you would like us to consider.”
We advise all of our students to include something for this additional information upload, but you need to approach it with care. What you upload must be only one page, and we do not advise including links. You have, at most, 10 minutes of the application readers’ time — so anything you put here needs to be worthy of potentially taking time away from consideration of your transcript, activities section, or essays. To fulfill this requirement, we recommend only including things that connect back to other pieces of your application, providing greater detail and background on something that you want to emphasize. This could be a piece of writing you’ve had published, a research report, a list of events or experiences, or something else that is crucial to understanding you and compact. Remember the one page max, too. While this isn’t an official limit, we highly recommend adhering to it.
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