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How to Write the Barnard College Essays 2023-2024

For all applicants, Barnard College has two required supplemental essays and one optional essay that gives you a choice between three different prompts. If you are applying to the Science Pathways Scholars Program (SP)2 or Bridgewater Scholars Program, you will also have one additional essay to write.

 

Barnard’s location in New York City, elite academics, and status as a historic all-women institution make admissions incredibly competitive, which means your essays will need to truly shine in order to set your application apart. In this post, we’ll break down how to tackle each prompt, so you can be confident that you’re putting your best foot forward.

 

Along similar lines, although one of Barnard’s supplements is optional, we strongly encourage you to write a response. College applications are limiting by their nature, so you don’t want to pass up any opportunity to share more about yourself and how you’d enrich Barnard’s campus community.

 

Read these Barnard essay examples to inspire your writing.

 

Before You Write

 

When composing your essays for Barnard, you need to be thinking about 1) larger issues in the world, 2) your relationship to them, and 3) your contribution to a meaningful solution. Barnard is a very “outward-looking” college, and admissions readers will be looking for applicants that share this wide, “macro” perspective. You should talk about larger issues in a personal way, and demonstrate your knowledge with both academic achievements and personal connection. 

It might be worth it to brainstorm the following things: 

 

  • Values. What values listed on Barnard’s website really hit home with you? Print out this Mission page and this Fearless History page from Barnard’s website, and circle words that resonate with you. List reasons why they’re important to you. Then emphasize those value-oriented words and themes in your essays.

 

  • Womanhood. Big topic, isn’t it? And it’s a good one, because everyone relates to it a different way.  Because Barnard is a women’s college, you should sit down with some blank paper and list your experiences in relation to this category. Make a flow chart; list the things that come to mind. How have you engaged with, experience, and wrangled with “womanhood” in a way that sets you apart? Do you have a unique cultural understanding, experience, or research perspective? 

 

All right, let’s take a deep breath and dive in!

 

Barnard College Supplemental Essay Prompts

 

All Applicants

 

Prompt 1: Our backgrounds and experiences shape how we navigate the world and see ourselves. Tell us about when, where, or with whom you feel your most authentic, powerful self. How might Barnard further cultivate this version of you? (250 words)

 

Prompt 2: Barnard celebrates intellectual risk-taking, and we believe that academic inquiry starts with bold questions. What questions do you have about the world around you, and why do they matter to you? (250 words)

 

Prompt 3: If you would like to respond to one of our optional questions, please choose from the selected prompts below (250 words):

 

  • Option A: Barnard’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mission statement says “Our commmitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity has the potential to disrupt and transform entrenched practices and thinking.” In what ways have you challenged ideas, practices, or spaces? What did you learn from these experiences?

 

  • Option B: As a college for women, “Barnard embraces its responsibility to address gender issues in all their complexity and urgency to help students achieve the personal strength that will enable them to meet the challenges they will encounter throughout their lives.” How have you thought about gender in your academic life thus far and how has it shaped your learning experiences?

 

  • Option C: Pick one woman — a historical figure, a fictitious character, or a modern individual — who you’d like to converse with for an hour and explain your choice. Why does this person intrigue you? What would you talk about? What questions would you ask her?

 

Science Pathways Scholars Program Applicants

 

The Science Pathways Scholars Program (SP)2 aims to support underrepresented students of color and first-generation students as they pursue careers in science research. Please discuss your interest in science research and future career goals. You may choose to reflect on past experiences or projects, role models, or ideas for research that you would like to explore. (300 words)

 

Bridgewater Scholars Program Applicants

 

The Bridgewater Scholars Program is open to First Year students who express interest in the fields of economics, math, statistics, and computer science.  It provides access to a range of mentorship opportunities along with funding to support research and internships. Please discuss your interest in this program and possible future career goals. You may choose to reflect on past experiences or projects, role models, or ideas for research and internships that you would like to explore. (300 words)

 

Prompt 1

Our backgrounds and experiences shape how we navigate the world and see ourselves. Tell us about when, where, or with whom you feel your most authentic, powerful self. How might Barnard further cultivate this version of you? (250 words)

Brainstorming Your Topic

 

This is an example of the common “Diversity” essay, which you may have already come across in another school’s supplemental essay package, but with the more creative framework of sharing your identity by describing “your most authentic, powerful self.” While that may initially seem like a somewhat abstract idea, Barnard is actually helping you out with your brainstorming by prompting you to think about activities, places, and people who make you feel most empowered. 

 

For example, maybe for you, no feeling compares to the one you have just before jumping off the diving board into the pool so many meters below you. Or maybe your favorite place to be is just sitting by the sea, listening to the sound of the waves. Or maybe your incredibly tightly knit neighborhood friend group has given you the second family anyone would dream of having.

 

Of course, whatever you choose to write about will be particular to your life and circumstances, but you do want to make sure you have a single, precise topic to structure your essay around. 250 words isn’t all that many, so if you try to cram multiple things in, you won’t be able to describe them all in enough detail for your reader to understand their significance. If you think of multiple possibilities, that’s awesome, as you clearly have several strong support networks in your life! But for the sake of organization in this particular essay, you’ll want to write about just the one that you think works the very best for this prompt.

 

Before we move on to talking about how to tackle the actual writing of the essay, note that this prompt also has a second piece, in which you’re asked to connect “your most authentic, powerful self” to Barnard. This element of your response will essentially be a mini “Why School?” essay, which should connect to the activity, place, or person you’re describing.

 

We’ll get into more detail below about how to make this connection, but you can streamline the writing process for yourself by doing some research on Barnard’s website up front, on specific courses, clubs, or programs that you feel will inspire you and help you continue to grow. This essay isn’t that long to start with, and this “Why School?” piece is only going to be about half (or maybe even a little less) of your response, so you don’t need a list of 20 things, but having four or five to choose from will likely save you some time once you actually start writing.

 

Tips for Writing Your Essay

 

To write a strong response, you want to structure your ideas not around what makes you feel most empowered, but why it makes you feel empowered. Barnard admissions officers are trying to envision you as a member of their campus community, and details about, for example, your favorite diving practice drills and the design on your lucky cap and the pool’s annoying lack of fresh towels won’t help with that.

 

What will showcase your potential as a Barnard student is highlighting a couple of aspects of your personality that define the most authentic, powerful version of yourself. For example, maybe diving has made you more courageous, because you used to be afraid of heights, and you still have to conquer a tiny bit of unease every time you start climbing the ladder. Or maybe needing to have so much awareness of your body while in the air has helped you become more self-aware in general.

 

In addition to describing a couple of aspects of your personality that speak to the best version of yourself, the second thing you want to make sure to do in your response is explain how Barnard will “further cultivate this version of you.” As noted above, this portion of the prompt is essentially a “Why School?” essay, which means the key is identifying specific classes, clubs, or programs or Barnard that you feel will bring out the best in you.

 

For example, if you choose to write about how diving has made you more self-aware, you could connect that to Barnard’s Collective Advocacy Project, which “seeks to make Barnard students’ written and spoken voices visible beyond the classroom and in all aspects of life.”

 

Alternatively, you could talk about how you hope to harness your courage and study Italian, even though you currently don’t know a single word, so that you can eventually participate in the Bologna Consortial Studies program, which would be your first time outside of the United States.

 

The important thing to note here is the specificity of these resources. If you just said “Because I’m so much more courageous now, I think I’d like to study a foreign language,” Barnard admissions officers won’t have any idea why you’re applying to their school in particular, as you could learn a new language at any school in the country. By instead focusing in on one specific program, you show them that you already have a sense of why Barnard, as opposed to any other school, is the right place for you to achieve your goals for college.

 

Mistakes to Avoid

 

250 words isn’t a whole lot, and you have to do two things well in your response: explain what “your most authentic, powerful self” looks like, and how Barnard will help bring out this side of you. So, you want to make sure you’re being detailed but also concise. 

 

When describing the activity, place, or person that makes you feel empowered, that means highlighting maximum two personality traits, and explaining in a clear, direct way how you have developed them. Similarly, when answering “Why Barnard?” you’ll want to pick just one or two resources, so that you have the space to incorporate them in a cohesive way. 

 

You probably have a million things you want to do at Barnard, but admissions officers aren’t looking for a bullet point list–they want to see thoughtful reflection on how you’d take advantage of something their school offers, as that will speak to your broader ability to both learn from and contribute to their community.

 

Prompt 2

Barnard celebrates intellectual risk-taking, and we believe that academic inquiry starts with bold questions. What questions do you have about the world around you, and why do they matter to you? (250 words)

Brainstorming Your Topic

 

The key to this prompt is showing that you can think critically about the world around you, through the lens of particular topics or issues you’re passionate about, and offer some explanation about what your interest in this thing says about who you are in general–why they matter to you, to use Barnard’s own words.

 

The key here, like with pretty much all college essays, is specificity. As the prompt itself highlights, at Barnard you’ll be given much more independence in your classes, so admissions officers want to see that you’re able to look at a broad topic and zero in on one particular feature that you feel is especially important. So, rather than asking “Will humans one day colonize Mars?” ask the much narrower “If humans are to one day travel to other planets, how are we going to manage the risks that something fundamental to our survival, like a water synthesizing machine, malfunctions?”

 

This specificity not only shows superb critical thinking skills, but also teaches Barnard admissions officers much more about who you are. People are interested in space colonization for all sorts of reasons, from the simple thrill of adventure to the possibility of a sanctuary as climate change worsens. By highlighting potential technological challenges, you show them that you have an analytic, forward-thinking mind, whereas just wondering if our species will eventually live in space is a general question that could be thrown around for any old reason.

 

As you brainstorm, keep in mind that you don’t have to answer this prompt in a purely academic way. College essays, and applications as a whole, are usually pretty dry, structured affairs, but this prompt presents an opportunity to discuss parts of yourself that might not show up anywhere else.

 

For example, maybe you want to know how Taylor Swift was motivated enough during quarantine to write two Grammy-nominated albums. Or maybe you’d like to know how your cat always manages to sit in the most inconvenient location possible.

 

You can still use these more playful questions to highlight your academic potential, for example by analyzing the poetry of Taylor’s lyrics, or wondering about what in the evolution of cats’ brains resulted in this impressive ability to be in the way. While showing admissions officers a more “fun” side of you might feel risky, in reality mixing up your tone can provide a breath of fresh air that makes your application as a whole more engaging.

 

Tips for Writing Your Essay

 

The key to a strong response is connecting the questions you have to personal experiences and anecdotes that show who you are as a person. If your essay is just a bunch of questions, and associated discussion of the topics they concern, Barnard admissions officers may come away with a much better understanding of, say, water synthesizing technology, but not of what you have to offer their school.

 

Instead, you could connect your interest in this kind of technology to your lifelong fascination with water, as you’re from Arizona and have always marveled at how many animals and plants manage to thrive in the desert, and describe a particular hike you went on to learn more about different kinds of cacti.

 

Keep in mind that, to craft a response that’s engaging throughout, you’ll likely need to discuss two or even three questions. Even if you have one that you could talk for hours about, evaluating some topic, like space colonization technology, from a variety of angles will make your essay livelier, as you’ll keep your readers on their toes.

 

Ideally, those questions will be at least somewhat related, as if you jump from talking about space colonization to your cat’s space consumption, your essay will likely feel disjointed, even if your discussion of each topic is independently engaging. If you still want to highlight your love of animals, try to find a way to do so through the lens of outer space, by discussing, for example, the challenges of designing a space suit for a cat. That will allow you to incorporate variety into your essay, while also maintaining a sense of cohesion.

 

Mistakes to Avoid

 

Remember: Barnard wants questions, so make sure that you use inquiry as your initial angle into whatever you’re talking about. Even if you already have a topic in mind, you don’t want to get so excited that you immediately get carried away by your own fascination and forget to provide the one thing the prompt is directly asking for.

 

Prompt 3, Option A

Barnard’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mission statement says “Our commmitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity has the potential to disrupt and transform entrenched practices and thinking.” In what ways have you challenged ideas, practices, or spaces? What did you learn from these experiences?  (250 words, optional)

Brainstorming Your Topic

 

An important thing to remember for this essay is that challenging ideas, practices, or spaces doesn’t necessarily mean participating in protests or compiling signatures for a petition you wrote yourself. If you have already engaged in that level of advocacy work, that’s fantastic, and this prompt is a great place for you to reflect on your experiences.

 

However, there is more than one way to transform the world around you, and even a small action geared towards breaking up the status quo can have big consequences. For example, maybe you’re from Washington D.C., and you remember how much people at your school talked about the Washington Commanders when they finally changed their name to no longer be a racial slur. You were in favor of the change, but were surprised to learn some of your friends weren’t, because they already had a lot of team merch with the old name, and they felt it was breaking tradition. You sent them some interviews where Native Americans reflected on the offense the old name caused, and although they didn’t completely change their minds, they recognized that they had previously been taking a self-centered view of the change.

 

This kind of cafeteria conversations may feel trivial, but in reality showing that you’re able to have a productive discussion even when you disagree with your peers is a great thing to do in a college essay, as admissions officers want to know you’re prepared to engage with people from all over the country, and the world. 

 

So, if a seemingly small moment comes to mind that you think would work well for this prompt, don’t write it off by saying “Oh, but Barnard admissions officers won’t care about that.” Trust us they will–if you learned something about yourself, this experience will help them better understand what you’d contribute to their campus community, which is the whole point of the college essay.

 

Tips for Writing Your Essay

 

As you map out your response, you want to be sure you’re addressing both prongs of this prompt: describing your experience challenging the status quo, and explaining what you learned from it. You don’t necessarily need to do one thing and then consciously transition to the other. Perhaps, as you flesh out your anecdote, you realize it makes sense to incorporate your broader takeaways along the way.

 

You just want to be sure that you’re providing enough detail about both your experience and your broader lessons learned. If you gloss over the experience, your readers won’t understand where the takeaways came from, and if you spent most of your words on the experience, they won’t understand the broader significance of this story to your overall growth and development.

 

Although the example given above obviously isn’t in actual essay form yet, that’s about the amount of detail you want to shoot for. The information provided is all directly relevant to the story, which is crucial when you’re working with a hard word count. Random details like which part of the cafeteria you sit in with your friends, or how many of them actually play football themselves, might be nice in a novel, but the college essay is inherently limiting, so you want to be efficient with your space.

 

This student might then address the second half of the prompt by talking about how this experience taught them that even views which may come across as incredibly offensive on the surface aren’t always a result of active malice. Inclusivity should come before tradition, but tradition is still important, and the student hopes that their friend group is able to start building some traditions connected to the new name, so that eventually, nobody even remembers the old name anymore.

 

Notice that these takeaways are directly tied to the story the student has just told. If they finished telling the story and then pivoted immediately to a generic line like “This experience taught me that listening matters,” they would totally lose their reader. By instead contextualizing that big-picture takeaway within the details of their specific story, they show that they are able to thoughtfully reflect on their own experiences and come to conclusions on their own, rather than just blindly following what people put on motivational posters.

 

Mistakes to Avoid

 

So long as you address both parts of the prompt, in the way we’ve described above, there isn’t anything glaring you need to be on the lookout for. Just make sure you’re providing a comprehensive description of both what happened and what you learned, and you’ll be in great shape!

 

Prompt 3, Option B

As a college for women, “Barnard embraces its responsibility to address gender issues in all their complexity and urgency to help students achieve the personal strength that will enable them to meet the challenges they will encounter throughout their lives.” How have you thought about gender in your academic life thus far and how has it shaped your learning experiences? (250 words, optional)

Brainstorming Your Topic

 

The first thing to note here is that “How have you thought about gender in your academic life?” is quite a broad question. You don’t have to be an aspiring Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities study major to write an excellent response to this prompt. Of course, if gender does form the backbone of your academic life, and you’re dying to talk more about it, this prompt presents a wonderful opportunity to do so! But there are also subtler ways to structure your response.

 

For example, maybe your freshman history teacher was a woman, and she spent a lot of time and energy helping you become a better writer. Although you didn’t think much about her being a woman at the time, in hindsight you realize that, because you were both women, she was able to identify particular issues you had with expressing yourself that a male teacher may not have picked up on.

 

Alternatively, perhaps your biology teacher last year was a man, but he went out of his way to highlight little-known female scientists from the early 20th century who did groundbreaking work that ended up being crucial to many of the most significant discoveries of the last 100 years. His efforts made you realize that it’s always possible to do something to help right the wrongs of gender inequality, even decades later.

 

Obviously, your example may be totally different from these two, but hopefully they give you a sense of how gender can influence your learning in ways that may not be as obvious as, say, petitioning your school to offer a senior elective on exclusively female poets.

 

Tips for Writing Your Essay

 

This is a prompt where the brainstorming will likely be the majority of your work. Selecting a topic may prove somewhat challenging, but once you identify an experience to focus on, actually getting the words on the page should hopefully be pretty straightforward, so long as that experience was genuinely formative for you.

 

Like with any college essay, specificity will give admissions officers a more concrete sense of how you grew as a result of this experience. For the history teacher example above, rather than painting with broad strokes, you could highlight one particular paper you wrote, and describe some specific conversations you had with her that helped you untangle your ideas. Or, for the biology teacher example, you could talk about a scientist or two you were particularly fascinated by, and explain why you found their work so inspiring.

 

One important thing you do want to keep in mind is the second half of this prompt. Although the words are “how has it shaped your learning experiences,” what Barnard admissions officers really want to know is how the connection between gender and your academic life has shaped you. So, you want to include at least one bigger picture lesson you took away from your experience, so that admissions officers understand why this story matters for understanding what kind of college student you’ll be.

 

For example, you could talk about how your history teacher showed you that, while engaging with diverse perspectives is of course important, sometimes engaging with someone with whom you have shared experiences can be essential for figuring out your thoughts on something. This kind of broader takeaway will connect your past experiences to your potential future as a Barnard student.

 

Mistakes to Avoid

 

As we’ve just noted, you want to be sure that, at some point in your response (likely the end, although every essay requires a slightly different structure), you zoom out to explain the broader significance of this experience. If you use up all 250 words just explaining what happened, your reader will learn about that particular moment in your life, but won’t understand what it says about how you’d contribute to Barnard’s campus community. 

 

If it helps you, mentally tag “Why does this story matter?” onto the end of the prompt. Some prompts come with that line included, while others, like this one, don’t. But ultimately, what admissions officers are always seeking to do is create a complete picture of who you are as a person, so make sure you’re tying this story to your broader personality, perspectives, and goals.

 

Prompt 3, Option C

Pick one woman — a historical figure, fictitious character, or modern individual — to converse with for an hour and explain your choice. Why does this person intrigue you? What would you talk about? What questions would you ask them? (300 words)

Take note of the hidden, secret prompts here. On the surface, this question asks you for a lot of “what” you think. What woman, what topic, what questions, etc. But Barnard is really interested in how you think. You should spend some serious time brainstorming your reasoning for interviewing this person, and the goals you want to get out of it. State your priorities as a researcher and thinker; interviews have a variety of tones and goals. Examples:

 

Confronting Marie Antoinette -> holding public figures accountable

Recording Sally Hemings talk about her life -> giving a voice to the disenfranchised

Interviewing “Eve,” the fossil -> understanding cognition in other species

Listening to Pele -> concern for the earth and nature

Navy boat “Sacagawea” -> exploring gender, appropriation, objects, and linguistics

Asking Tove Jansson how she came out -> learning lessons of strength, self-improvement

 

You should pick a figure that would challenge you, not someone you would fangirl for. For example, if you’re a progressive feminist with a “Notorious R.B.G.” poster, you’d be well justified in wanting to spend an hour talking to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. However, would RBG challenge your fundamental worldviews in any way? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to talk to a woman who opposed feminism, like Phyllis Schlafly? 

 

Exploit weird barriers and paradoxes. You can definitely lean into the sci-fi element of this question. If you’re a literature student, it might be interesting for you to probe the possibility of interviewing a fictional character. You could question whether or not she be able to survive on her own without an author dictating her words. The same goes for historical figures: we might really want to know more about Emily Dickinson, but is it ethical, since she wanted to be forgotten? You should also feel free to challenge the traditional definition of “woman,” like the Navy ship example above. We call lots of objects “she” in our various languages – hurricanes, countries, the moon, ships, cars, the sea, and aircraft. Maybe you think a certain primordial inventor – of agriculture, of the Greek drama – was a woman. These liminal figures are great opportunities to shock and intrigue your reader. 

 

Consider unconventional formats. Since the previous two questions have been essays, feel free to reimagine this question as a transcript, a time-travel manual, a movie, or a vivid portrait. Compare and contrast the person in front of you with how they’re typically imagined in media. 

 

Explore the word “converse.” If you look carefully, Barnard never said “talk.” Consider whether or not you’d want to use words or conversation to speak to your interviewee; language barriers could be a great jumping-off point: you might not be able to speak ancient Aramaic to Salome, but it’s possible you could communicate through dance. Also consider how your interviewee best expressed herself: wouldn’t Frida Kahlo make for the most revolutionary game of Pictionary ever? 

 

 Science Pathways Scholars Program

The Science Pathways Scholars Program (SP)² aims to support underrepresented students of color and first-generation students as they pursue careers in science research. Please discuss your interest in science research and future career goals. You may choose to reflect on past experiences or projects, role models, or ideas for research that you would like to explore. (300 words)

This prompt has some similarities to the classic “Why Us?” supplement. Namely, as you brainstorm your answer the key is to focus on the commonalities between your education goals and the Science Pathways Scholars Program. Notice how instead of Barnard as a whole, we now have to focus on the (SP)²  in the righthand column. And instead of yourself as a whole, you should focus on your scientific foci and how your personal experiences intersect with these foci. 

 

Me (SP)²s features
  • My scientific interests
  • My planned major
  • Opportunities I want in college
  • Research pursuits in the science
  • Mentorship, networking, etc
  • Forms of support – be specific!
  • My values
  • My goals
  • My ideal community
  • How (SP)² will help me achieve my goals
  • How (SP)² can help my goals have a larger impact on the world
  • How (SP)² will improve my body of knowledge and research acumen
  • My experiences with underrepresentation
  • Personal obstacles to higher education
  • Family history
  • How (SP)² will make a certain kind of education possible for me
  • How (SP)² fits with my/my family’s values
  • Why it’s essential to have a scientific cohort of people like me

 

Again, it’s essential to be specific. Specificity should be present in both your goals, what you like about (SP)², and any personal history you want to include. Integrate all three areas into a blended whole. To start, brainstorm a research question or area of inquiry you have, and then sketch out how you could learn more and improve your abilities through (SP)²

 

Example: I want to explore therapeutic treatment for OCD

 

  • (SP)² would allow me to spend the summer working in Columbia’s Martinez Laboratory, which is at the forefront of finding novel psychiatric treatments for compulsions
  • (SP)² mentorship would ensure that I have an experienced perspective guiding me towards the labs and classes that best fit my niche

 

Alternatively, start with an inciting incident or personal history, and discuss how it shaped you and how you’re passionate about your field, despite systemic disadvantages. 

 

When COVID-19 first started to spread in Alaska, I was worried. In the early 1900s, Native communities were devastated by the Spanish Flu, and I was worried history would soon repeat itself. But instead, my Native town made the decision to seal itself off. We closed the road and pooled our resources. Although we never had a case of COVID, our isolation meant we had to ration our medical resources for other emergencies. Seeing the sacrifices made by my community has strengthened my commitment to improving how America approaches Native healthcare. By majoring in biology, with a pre-med track, I’m hoping to do my part to lessen the burden on indigenous communities like my own. 

 

Bridgewater Scholars Program Applicants

The Bridgewater Scholars Program is open to First Year students who express interest in the fields of economics, math, statistics, and computer science.  It provides access to a range of mentorship opportunities along with funding to support research and internships. Please discuss your interest in this program and possible future career goals. You may choose to reflect on past experiences or projects, role models, or ideas for research and internships that you would like to explore. (300 words)

Brainstorming Your Topic

 

Barnard is throwing you a bone here, by telling you pretty much exactly the scope of what they want you to talk about: your interest in this program, particularly with regards to your career goals, and how your past experiences, projects, role models, or research ideas have prepared you to take advantage of the research and mentorship opportunities available to you.

 

However, while 300 words is actually on the longer side for a supplemental essay, it’s still not a whole lot–some programs at other schools ask you for a page or two explaining your interest. So, you probably won’t have space to address everything Barnard lists in the prompt, as that would likely result in an essay that feels more like a bullet-point list than anything.

 

Instead, think about each thing independently, and honestly ask yourself whether it’s part of your motivation for applying to this program. Every Bridgewater Scholar takes advantage of the program’s opportunities in slightly different ways, and nobody is able to do everything. So, don’t worry about covering every base. Rather, think about what your own personal connection is to this program, and how to show it to admissions officers.

 

Maybe that means talking about your fascination with wind energy, as you grew up near a wind farm, and are eager to develop advanced models of wind patterns so that even places without much wind can take advantage of this technology. Or perhaps you want to discuss your experience redesigning the website of the clothing store you worked at one holiday season, and how the more user-friendly layout resulted in a 25% increase in sales over the previous year.

 

Note that these two examples are not just personal, they’re also specific. If the latter student just said “I’m interested in the intersection between computer science and retail,” readers would only have a vague sense of what they hope to do through this program. By instead focusing in on website design specifically, they’re showing that they have already thought about this intersection more deeply, which would allow them to hit the ground running in this program.

 

Tips for Writing Your Essay

 

The best responses will build a bridge between your past experiences, which have prepared you to thrive in this program, and the contributions you hope to make to the program itself. While applying to Barnard in general without having a crystal clear idea of what you’d like to study is completely fine, with this kind of program, you need to already have some sense of direction, or else Barnard won’t feel confident in your ability to make the most of the opportunity.

 

So, rather than just saying generally that you hope to continue researching the viability of wind energy in college, talk about how you’d hope to get funding to place sensors on some of the tallest skyscrapers in Manhattan, and use the data to determine whether wind energy is something New York City could use to offset its enormous carbon footprint. That shows readers that you don’t just have a clear sense of how you personally could contribute to this field, you also know exactly why this particular program at Barnard is the right one to help you start actually making those contributions.

 

Make sure that you provide enough detail about both your past experiences and your future goals. Barnard needs to know that you have a vision and the preparation necessary to execute it. So long as you’re able to reassure them that you have both things, your response will be compelling and informative, and show exactly how you’d take advantage of this phenomenal opportunity.

 

Mistakes to Avoid

 

This kind of program-specific essay is almost always a lot more focused than regular supplements. As we highlighted in the brainstorming section, there are advantages to that. But there is also a common pitfall, which is that focusing so much on a particular topic, or topics, you’d like to research results in an essay that sounds more like an academic research paper than a personal reflection.

 

So, don’t spend your whole essay talking about the logistical difficulties of attaching wind sensors to tall buildings. That will be relevant to your eventual research if you’re selected for this program, but that nitty gritty level of detail doesn’t explain anything about the broader relevance of this research. Instead, as described above, talk about your hope to make New York a little more energy-efficient, as that will show your readers that you can already see how your own individual efforts will help improve a much broader issue.

 

Where to Get Your Barnard Essay Edited 

 

Do you want feedback on your Barnard essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool, where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!


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