CollegeVine College Essay Team September 26, 2025 16 Essay Breakdowns,Essay Guides 2025-26

How to Write the Chapman University Essays 2025-2026

Located just south of Los Angeles, Chapman University is known for its strong academics and vibrant campus life. For the 2025-2026 application cycle, Chapman has two essay prompts for students to respond to, in addition to 10 short response questions. 

While this might seem like a lot, we are here to break down how to respond to all of the questions Chapman asks. Keep reading for our best tips and tricks.

Chapman University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Chapman’s first prompt falls under the standard “Why This College?” essay. To answer this prompt, you’ll need to explain why Chapman University is the perfect college for you and why you’re an excellent fit for the community.

To do this, you’ll need to show both tangible and intangible connections to the university. Your essay should ultimately demonstrate how your academic, professional, and extracurricular goals align specifically with the college’s resources.

First, you’ll need to think about your goals for your college experience. These goals typically fall in one of the following categories:

• Academic knowledge
• Social connections
• Self-discovery
• Career advancement

It’s best to focus on one to two goals in your essay, especially since the word count is limited to 200 words. For instance, a student planning to major in pre-medicine and apply to medical school after college may want to focus on the areas of academic knowledge and career advancement.

Next, you’ll need to research the classes, extracurriculars, programs, professors, traditions, or other on-campus opportunities that are unique to Chapman that will help you reach your goals and create the college experience you’re searching for. These are your tangible connections to the university.

For example, if the pre-med student mentioned above is excited about career advancement and growing academically, they may be excited for research opportunities at Chapman. However, they should not write, “I am interested in the biology research opportunities at Chapman.” In that sentence, Chapman could be interchangeable with any other university! Many universities offer biology research opportunities for undergraduate students, so this generalized response doesn’t highlight the resources provided at Chapman.

Instead, this student should write about a particular topic or research opportunity unique to Chapman that interests them personally. It’s also important to connect the resource you choose with your personal goals. They might say:

Next, take some time to reflect on Chapman’s mission/purpose statement and understand why it appeals to you. These are your intangible connections to the university. Think about:

• Which of Chapman’s values are important to me?
• Why am I a good fit for Chapman’s community?
• How will these values impact my life at Chapman and post-college?

Although you don’t need to answer these questions verbatim in your essay, it’s important to understand the school’s values to guide your response. For example, maybe you grew up in the Presbyterian church, so you want to attend a school that adheres to your Christian belief system. Or perhaps you appreciate Chapman’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, specifically for the LGBTQ+ community, as a student who faced discrimination because of your sexual orientation in high school.

Here are some tips for writing an excellent “Why This College?” essay:

Stay focused. You may be tempted to list all the amazing resources at Chapman that excite you, but doing so is a poor use of space. The admissions officers reading your essay already know all the resources the university offers. Instead, focus on one to two things you love about the school that tie in with your personal goals for college and beyond—this way you are revealing information about yourself while talking about the school.

Avoid name-dropping. Don’t list distinguished professors, popular classes, or unique programs in your essay for the sake of naming them. Instead, explain why these resources are important to you (i.e., the unique opportunity to collaborate with a particular professor on a research opportunity in a specialized field).

Specify your goals. It’s crucial to be as detailed as possible in describing how Chapman can help you accomplish your goals for college and beyond. As the prompt said, there are thousands of universities you could have applied to. Why exactly are you applying to Chapman?

Let your enthusiasm show. Lastly, don’t forget to emphasize your excitement at the idea of calling Chapman your home for the next four years. Students can get caught up in the notion that college essays have to be serious, but the admissions officers will naturally like students more if it’s clear that you are passionate about their school. Don’t go overboard with exclamation points and excessive praise, but at the same time don’t shy away from expressing your genuine excitement.

This is a traditional “Why this Major?” prompt that invites you to share what about your background and experiences has drawn you to want to study a given subject. A key element that will differentiate a strong response from a weaker one is the ability to draw specific connections between your experiences and specific characteristics of the major in which you are interested. 

For example, a weak response would merely say that you are interested in Chapman’s B.S. in Computer Science because you grew up playing retro computer games. But a strong response would draw a specific connection between noticing glitches in the gameplay of those retro games, constantly wondering how the game programmers’ logic inadvertently created those glitches, and wanting to pursue a career in software quality assurance. As you write your essay, keep in mind the importance of drawing the linkage between experience and interest.

If you’re undecided about your major, don’t worry. You can still produce a high-quality essay by highlighting 2-3 areas of study or intellectual interest that you are drawn to, even if there isn’t a clear favorite. It would be a mistake to say that you have no idea what you may want to study. Even if you are genuinely indifferent among many areas of study, consider reflecting on which high school classes you have had the most success or interest in; those will potentially be areas on which you can write about.

We recommend beginning this essay with an anecdote that you will use to demonstrate how your interest in your major developed. This anecdote might be a personal, non-academic experience, or it may be related to coursework. Of course, a strong essay likely combines these two types of experiences: perhaps your interest in computer science logic was strengthened by writing your own proofs for the first time in a geometry class.

Here are some tips on building this “Why this Major” essay around such an anecdote:

Personal experience: Consider choosing a story in which you initially are unfamiliar with the intellectual or technical foundations of something that impacts or influences you, and you realize that you want to develop related expertise.

For example, perhaps while laughing with your dad over old sitcoms you asked who came up with the jokes and he explained there was a whole industry of screenwriting for television. Your desire to understand the mechanics of writing a successful sitcom of your own has led you to Chapman’s BFA in Writing for Film and Television.

A mistake in writing that essay would be not elaborating on specific problems or dynamics in the field of screenwriting that you are drawn to. For example, perhaps you desperately want to know how to write characters that resonate with audiences or that you are looking forward to honing your storytelling voice. It is critical that you demonstrate that you have spent time thinking about not just the impact a given area of study has had on you, but also the impact that you want to make on that area of study.

Coursework: Stories based on coursework lend themselves to more straightforward connections to a given area of study. A strong essay based on an anecdote about an assignment you’ve completed or a discussion you’ve had in class should not just depict that you have a natural talent for the subject. Instead, you should emphasize the growth you’ve undergone over the course of the class, or classes.

For example, if you’re interested in the English major, you might talk about how the critical feedback you got on a creative writing assignment pushed you to be more deliberate about your writing techniques and you eventually decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month. By showing a growth mindset, you can more easily lead into your interest in advanced, college-level study in a topic.

Regardless of the type of anecdote you choose, be conscientious about the details that you choose to include. Mention parts of the story that show your reasoning and process of developing interest, but don’t linger on elements that don’t contribute to your narrative, since you only have 200 words.

Finally, make sure that you demonstrate your specific interest in the major at Chapman and not just the major generally. You will want to include resources (classes, professors, research opportunities, study abroad, extracurriculars, etc.) that are specific and unique to Chapman that you plan to take advantage of while on campus. This shows the admissions officers that you have done your research and will only be able to reach your full potential at Chapman.

Chapman has 10 required short answer questions to help the admissions officers get to know you better. These are meant to be light-hearted and even fun (we know, college essays being fun??) so don’t get too concerned about trying to write the “right” thing. 

Since there’s no official word or character count, you can choose how long each response will be. However, don’t feel like you can never answer in one word—the question about a song can easily be answered in just one word. That being said, we recommend including brief descriptions or explanations to provide extra context to your response.

At the end of the day, you should use these questions as an opportunity to inject your personality into your application and humanize yourself. Don’t forget there are people on the other side of your application reading it—use this opportunity to connect with them and even make them smile.

Starting off strong, Chapman wants to know about your goals for the future: if you could have any job in the world, what would you pick? Now it’s likely that your dream job will connect to your major—a biological sciences major dreams of being an oncologist—but it’s also possible if you were really thinking outside the box that your dream job has nothing to do with your major. 

For example, maybe you are majoring in history because you enjoy it and know it will be more employable in the long-run, but if money wasn’t a factor, your real dream job would be to scuba dive for a living and lead scuba excursions around the Great Barrier Reef. Sure, that has nothing to do with your major, but it helps the admissions committee learn way more about you than if you said something along the lines of being a historian.

Remember, jobs don’t have to necessarily be related to academics. And this is your dream job, so it’s better to choose something that makes your heart sing than something that sounds employable or like the “responsible option”.

Since you don’t have a stated word or character limit, you might want to include a little explanation to go along with your dream job—especially if it is something more unique. 

Here are a few examples:

As you can see, each of these examples is detailed and specific. They go beyond writing “doctor” or “politician” to give us insight into the student’s interests and goals in just a handful of words.

If you’ve ever wanted a theme song, here’s your chance to shine! There are a couple of ways you could approach this essay.

One path is to choose your favorite song. If there’s a song that you’ve been obsessed with for years, share it with the admissions committee to give them a peek at your music taste.

Another avenue you could take is to choose a song that relates to the overall message/theme of your application. For example, say you are trying to convey that you have a history of activism and speaking up for issues you care about. Maybe you suggest “Roar” by Katy Perry to highlight this idea.

You could also choose a song that is related to your interests. Maybe you want the admissions committee to walk away knowing that you are an avid Broadway fan so you choose a song from your favorite musical.

Depending on how you approach this prompt, it’s up to you if you want to elaborate or not. It’s perfectly fine to just put the name of the song (we’d recommend also including the artist unless it’s a super-well known song like “Yellow Subarmine”), but if you picked a song with a deeper meaning, you might want to briefly explain it. For example:

Don’t panic if you aren’t a world-renowned cook—the admissions officers aren’t looking to hear about your Michelin star talents here. Instead, they want to get a sense of a dish that is important to you.

This is a great place to share more about your culture. If you have a dish that is culturally significant to you, you could write something like the following:

If you do like to cook, then you can use this space to talk about that. For example:

And if cooking is absolutely not your strong suit, maybe use this question to add a little humor to your application:

Have some fun with this section! Who doesn’t like thinking about delicious food? Make it your goal to be descriptive in your response so that you genuinely make the admissions committee hungry.

You can think of this question in another way: what are you passionate about? The admissions committee wants to hear about something you love so much you could talk about it un-prompted and without interruption.

Think about topics you are extremely knowledgeable and interested in. What have you spent hours doing deep-dives on? What do you enjoy talking about with your family or friends? Your topic doesn’t have to be purely academic, but we would caution you to go beyond saying something like “football” or “Tarantino movies”.

Instead, find a way to get more specific and show more of your intellectually-curious side in your response. For example, instead of saying football, you could say something like:

While you can definitely pick something related to your major, we recommend using this space to share something you are passionate about that doesn’t appear anywhere else in your application. Here are some examples:

For this question, Chapman wants to hear about your dreams and goals. What’s the number one thing you are looking forward to doing? 

This could be a place you are looking forward to traveling to:

You might want to share a goal you have for yourself instead:

This is another place where you could inject some of your humor and personality into your response. Maybe you go with something that isn’t as monumental as a typical bucket list item, but it’s something you are dying to do/try. For example:

For this short response, you might need to do more brainstorming than the others. When it comes to advice, students might be tempted to write some clichés that come to mind first like “never give up” or “everything happens for a reason”. Don’t fall into this trap.

Just like with your other short responses, you want to maximize your space by sharing something unique and personal to you—a piece of advice printed on thousands of t-shirts won’t accomplish that.

Instead, consider influential people in your life. This could be your parents, a coach, older siblings, a teacher, etc. Think of moments where you struggled with something and turned to them for help. What did they say? You don’t have to remember their advice verbatim, but conjuring up specific memories and people can help you think about advice that has been important to you.

You might also draw your advice from a piece of media like a book, a movie, or even song lyrics.

This is the type of question that could make for a full-blown supplemental essay, but you only have a limited amount of space. For that reason, focus on the advice. If you are choosing a longer phrase, it’s okay to just put the advice (as hopefully it will be long enough to reveal why it was meaningful). But if your advice is on the shorter side, you can include a brief explanation as to why it was significant.

Check out some examples:

This is another chance to talk about your family background and values that are important to you. Like with the food question, you can use this opportunity to share more about your ethnic background through a family tradition. 

You can also use this space to share why these traditions are important and why you want to continue them—what emotions do they invoke for you? Are there special memories that come to mind?

Keep in mind that the tradition will be more meaningful to the admissions officers reading your response if you provide the extra explanation. You could say something like “Saturday night pizza night,” but without elaborating it doesn’t mean much to people outside of your family.

Let’s look at some examples that provide more depth to the tradition:

These examples help us understand more about the tradition even if we aren’t part of it because they are specific and they elaborate on the significance when it’s needed.

Time for the hometown visits! This question is a chance for you to share more about your favorite place in your town—and through it, possibly your interests or passions.

For example, maybe you pick the site of your favorite extracurricular:

You could also choose a spot to talk about your values or something that’s important to you:

Like with the other questions, what’s important here is that you provide a reason for why you would bring the admissions committee to the spot. Why is it important to you? What new information can they learn about you by seeing this place? 

Whereas the last question asked about a place in your hometown, this question understands that you might feel at home somewhere else. Here, you’ll want to think about what it means to feel “at home”. Remember, you could choose a physical place, a club or community, a group or person, or something else entirely.

Again, if you can elaborate on why you feel at home in your limited space, that will help the admissions officers understand you better. For example, instead of saying “In the kitchen” if you like to cook, you could say something like:

Here are a few more examples for inspiration:

For your final short response question, you need to think about your dream roommate—and no, it can’t be your best friend. You have to choose someone that the admissions committee would be familiar with, whether that’s a famous individual like LeBron James or Taylor Swift, or a fictional character.

Before you go and pick your favorite celebrity or character, spend some time considering what message you want to convey about yourself. Maybe you want to show that you are a joker and love to laugh so you choose stand-up comedian John Mulaney. Or maybe you want to convey that you are an upbeat and positive person so you choose Joy from Inside Out.

You don’t want to pick someone that is too obscure, since you want the admissions officers to understand your choice. At the same time, just because you love a person doesn’t mean they will make the best roommate—so don’t just pick your favorite character or celebrity.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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