How to Write the Boston University Essays 2025-2026
Boston University, or BU as it is more commonly referred to, is one of the larger private research universities in the United States. With over 38,000 students from 140+ countries, over 11,000 faculty and staff, 17 schools and colleges, and more than 300 programs of study, Boston University is a school full of possibilities.
Boston University has one required prompt for all its applicants. Applicants must choose one of two possible topics—the first asks you to reflect on a social or community issue, and the second asks how you hope to contribute to the BU campus community. If you are applying to the Kilachand Honors College, you will be required to submit an additional essay.
Since BU receives thousands of applications from academically strong students, your essays are your chance to stand out. In this post, we’ll discuss how to craft an engaging response to each of these options.
Read these Boston University essay examples to inspire your writing.
Boston University Supplemental Essay Prompts
All Applicants
Prompt 1: 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:
Option A: 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? (300 words
Option B: What about being a student at BU most excites you? How do you hope to contribute to our campus community? (300 words)
Kilachand Honors College Applicants
The mission of Kilachand Honors College is to offer a challenging liberal arts education grounded in critical and creative thinking, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and the real-world application of knowledge. Please see https://www.bu.edu/khc/about/ for more details about our program, and then respond to one of the following questions in an essay of 600 words or less:
Option A: What about the Kilachand Honors College resonates with you, and how would Kilachand’s curriculum fulfill your academic, creative, intellectual, and/or professional goals? (600 words)
Option B: If you could create a new Kilachand course, what would it be? How would your imagined course align with the core values of Kilachand? (600 words)
All Applicants, Option A
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? (300 words)
This is a combination of the community service prompt and the global issues prompt. Schools that use this kind of prompt want to know about your level of engagement with the people and environments around you. BU especially emphasizes taking the knowledge you learn in the classroom and applying it to the service of the wider community, so definitely respond to this prompt if you feel like this is you.
Your response should illustrate your values through the lens of your perspectives on, and interactions with, your community. Keep in mind that often, the best way to respond to a prompt like this is with an anecdote. This prompt is not an invitation to list all your achievements in community service, like you might on your resume—instead, you should share your experiences in a short, illustrative anecdote. With the 300-word limit, you must convey relevant details from your story as effectively and concisely as possible.
This question is twofold. The admissions committee wants to learn about an issue in society or your community that deeply resonates with you and that has motivated you to perform civic engagement and service. The prompt also asks you to reflect on how you’ve actively approached these issues and advocated for their resolution (or even attempted to solve them!).
To help you brainstorm about ongoing societal or community issues, ask yourself:
- What existing problems in my immediate community do I find personally and particularly frustrating?
- What issues have I taken a lead role in engaging with? How have I served my community?
- Have I been involved in any advocacy programs or campaigns in my community?
Additionally, there are a few other tips you can follow to stand out in this essay. Focus on one particular interest or concern if you can. Share responsibilities and accomplishments you had in your role. Highlight what you learned and how you’ll use those lessons moving forward. Don’t be afraid to call out different clubs, classes, programs, or initiatives on BU’s campus that connect with your particular interests and intersect with the types of service you do.
With only 300 words to spare, less is more—focusing on one key experience or aspect of your identity with an important relevant issue will demonstrate more thought and effort than just listing several experiences from your resume.
All Applicants, Option B
What about being a student at BU most excites you? How do you hope to contribute to our campus community? (300 words)
The key to this “Why This College?” prompt is to first lay out the specific aspects of the University that excite you, and then to supplement these aspects with how your traits and qualities will make you an excellent fit in the school’s community. Most importantly, you want to thoroughly research the aspects of BU that resonate with you.
Remember to discuss both academic and extracurricular aspects, as college is about what happens both inside and outside the classroom! The second half of this prompt asks how you plan to contribute to the BU campus community. Be sure to address this half of the prompt by explaining how your values and interests align with BU. Discuss how you hope to showcase these values and interests in BU’s lively community.
Here are some possible avenues:
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If you have a particular interest in conducting research, you might use this essay to dote on BU’s extensive undergraduate research opportunities. Maybe you’ve always been interested in studying mental illness, as it’s something you’ve both witnessed and had to reckon with personally for your entire life. You could talk about BU’s Approach Motivation and Participation (AMP) Lab, where you would have ample opportunity to interact with participants dealing with things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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If you want to study business and are applying to the Questrom School of Business, you might talk about wanting to join the Questrom Honors Program, where you would be given unique opportunities to attend seminars on niche business topics of your interest, like green technology and intellectual property, and participate in networking events with alumni. Remember to talk about your own experiences in business, whether that was through DECA or through starting your own business. Be sure to also mention why Questrom would be a perfect avenue to continue pursuing your current passions.
- Maybe you’re an aspiring English major with a love for theatre. The Shakespeare Society would be a great place to combine your passions, as the group puts on 2-4 Shakespeare productions per year.
If you’ve visited the campus or have attended a summer program at the University, you should note that in the essay. Include sensory details and specific moments, whether it was visiting the halls that Dr. Martin Luther King once studied in, lying down on “BU Beach” and catching the breeze, or simply sitting outside of Marsh Chapel and observing the great diversity on campus as people walked along Commonwealth Avenue.
That being said, this is the type of essay you don’t want to be entirely anecdotal; you want to be sure to include details about concrete resources at BU that would help you achieve your goals.
One final piece of advice is that you should avoid mentioning generic aspects of BU that could apply to many other schools, such as its location in Boston or low student-to-faculty ratio. You want to show the admissions committee that you’ve seriously reflected on how well you’ll fit at BU, and you can do that by mentioning specific, unique BU resources that support your aspirations.
Honors College Prompt, Option A
What about the Kilachand Honors College (KHC) resonates with you, and how would Kilachand’s curriculum fulfill your academic, creative, intellectual, and/or professional goals? (600 words)
Understanding the Prompt
This is essentially a “Why This College?” essay with an interdisciplinary twist. Kilachand Honors College (KHC) is not just about taking harder classes—it’s a unique community within Boston University that blends liberal arts exploration, interdisciplinary collaboration, and hands-on problem-solving in a global context.
KHC wants students who can think beyond a single discipline and connect academic learning to real-world impact. Your essay should show:
- That you understand Kilachand’s core values (critical and creative thinking, interdisciplinary problem-solving, global awareness, application of knowledge).
- How your experiences, interests, and ambitions align with their curriculum.
- That you’re ready to contribute to and grow from the community.
Approaching Your Essay
If you’ve already chosen Option B for the general essay, you want to be careful that you don’t repeat yourself in this essay. It’s important your focus is exclusively on the Honors College and not BU as an institution.
With that in mind, you will need to do some research into specific opportunities that you can only access through Kilachand. Since the word count is fairly generous for this essay, you should discuss multiple opportunities that excite you. While this will be different for every student, it’s a good idea to, at the very least, discuss one academic opportunity and one extracurricular opportunity you are looking forward to engaging with.
An academic opportunity could be anything from a specific class you plan to take, a professor you are looking forward to researching with, a topic for your Keystone Project you are excited to explore, and more.
Extracurricular opportunities might include clubs only offered through the Honors College, internship programs, study abroad opportunities, and special programming for Honors students.
Remember, a successful “Why This School?” essay goes beyond listing the opportunities; the most effective essays explain how each of those opportunities at the school connect to your interests, goals, and aspirations.
Make use of anecdotes and personal details to share with the Kilachand admissions committee how each of the resources you look forward to using will make you a more informed, engaged, and successful student.
Honors College Prompt, Option B
If you could create a new Kilachand course, what would it be? How would your imagined course align with the core values of Kilachand? (600 words)
Understanding the Prompt
This essay allows you to get creative and step into the shoes of a college professor. The biggest mistake you can make if you choose this prompt is to pick a class like “Geology”. Share or expand upon a part of your personality and passions the admissions committee hasn’t learned much about yet through this essay.
The two key parts here:
- Inventing a course: This isn’t just a “what class would be fun” exercise. It’s a chance to show your intellectual curiosity, creativity, and understanding of how Kilachand works.
- Connecting it to Kilachand’s core values: You can find these on their website, but they include knowledge, humanity, and community.
The best essays will blend your own passions with Kilachand’s philosophy and demonstrate how your course idea fits naturally into its curriculum.
Remember, as part of the Kilachand curriculum, students complete a Keystone Project their senior year. While you aren’t committing to your project as a high school senior, admissions officers are using this essay to get a sense of what type of Keystone Project you might choose. So, it’s not a bad idea to think about topics you might want to focus on for that project and come up with a course through that.
Hypothetical Student Examples
For example, let’s look at how you can turn your interests into exciting college courses:
- An aspiring public health advocate and life-long tinkerer discovered her interest in environmental health after testing water quality in her neighborhood. She wants to teach an immersive class called “From Policy to Pipes: Building Sustainable Water Infrastructure” to collaborate with local policy makers and BU’s College of Engineering to design sustainable urban water systems.
- A student who loves acting in his school plays and who wants to major in neuroscience proposed the “Science of Storytelling”, a course that combines neuroscience research and theater workshops to learn—through theory and practice—the psychology of emotion and how performance can influence brain chemistry.
- After immigrating to the US to escape a repressive political regime, a student discovered video games were a bridge to connect with his peers. His class is “Play for Change,” a course blending game design, sociology, and psychology. He imagines students creating their own games addressing social issues like migration, inequality, or climate change, to not just bring people together, but have real conversations
- A student has always been fascinated by music therapy since sitting in on sessions her younger brother attended after a brain injury. She proposes “NeuroSound: Music, Medicine, and the Mind,” combining neuroscience, bioengineering, and music studies, with students designing assistive tech devices that use sound for cognitive or motor recovery.
You may notice a couple things about these examples. First, they all are interdisciplinary. The courses combine multiple interests the student has, like neuroscience and theater or video games and social change. This results in the admissions committee learning more about the student. Additionally, it shows layers of complexity to your intellectual curiosity, making you more unique than the student who wants to teach a class on “The History of the American Rail System,” which, presumably, would only focus on one topic.
Another successful aspect of these examples is that we see where each student’s passion for the topic came from. It’s extremely important your essay provides the background to explain why this course is meaningful to you. Whether it’s because you’ve done work related to the topic before or you had a personal experience with it, it’s necessary that you show the admissions committee why your class is personal to you.
Finally, remember to incorporate the Kilachand values in your essay. You don’t need to be so obvious as to say “This class reflects Kilachand’s value of…”, but your description of the class and what it aims to achieve should emphasize that your class is contributing to the greater good and the mission of the Honors College.
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