How to Write the Claremont McKenna College Essays 2023-2024
Claremont McKenna has two supplemental essay prompts, one that asks for your motivation to attend CMC, and another about a time you disagreed with someone. Since CMC is a selective college, it’s important to write strong essays to help your application stand out.
In this post, we’ll go over key strategies for writing a strong CMC essay, plus give you tips on what to avoid!
Claremont McKenna College Supplemental Essay Prompts
Prompt 1: CMC’s mission is to prepare students for thoughtful and productive lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions. With this mission in mind, please explain why you want to attend Claremont McKenna College. (150-250 words)
Prompt 2:
A critical part of fulfilling our mission is living out the commitments of CMC’s Open Academy: Freedom of Expression, Viewpoint Diversity, and Constructive Dialogue. We want to learn more about your commitment to listening and learning from others with different viewpoints, perspectives, and life experiences from your own.
Describe a time when engaging with someone about a specific topic resulted in you changing your attitude, belief, or behavior, or you changed the belief or behavior of someone else. What was the change that occurred for you, and what facilitated that change? What did you learn from that experience, and how has it informed how you engage with others? (150-250 words)
Prompt 1
CMC’s mission is to prepare students for thoughtful and productive lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions. With this mission in mind, please explain why you want to attend Claremont McKenna College. (150-250 words)
This is a classic “Why this college?” prompt, and there are two things you want to focus on in your response. First, specific opportunities offered at CMC. Second, how those opportunities align with your passions and goals to be a productive citizen.
Let’s begin with identifying specific opportunities. When you start brainstorming, it’s possible you realize the reasons you’re interested in CMC are pretty general: perhaps you like California, or you want to go to a small school. That’s completely normal, since there’s only so much you can learn from brochures and info sessions, but you’ll need to research more concrete reasons in order to write a strong response.
For example, perhaps you’re a woman interested in a career in business. After exploring the CMC website, you might write about how you envision the Women and Leadership Alliance, which “highlight[s] issues faced by women in leadership in business, government and the professions,” helping you develop skills to combat workplace discrimination.
CMC also offers the Washington Program, an off-campus program in Washington DC where students spend a semester completing an internship while taking CMC classes at night. You might discuss how this program will give you an opportunity to identify potential career paths.
In contrast to the examples above, just saying you like CMC’s government department is boring and ordinary. Every college has a government department, so that doesn’t tell the admissions committee anything about why you want to attend their school specifically. The examples above, on the other hand, are specific and unique to CMC.
These examples are also strong because they tell the committee something about who you are and what you hope to achieve in college. The opportunities you mention should be very different from the ones listed above based on your interests and goals.
There are also some things you want to avoid doing. First, “Why this college?” is a very common prompt, one you may have already responded to for another school. We strongly discourage you from just recycling that response and replacing the school name with CMC. You want your essay to feel original and thoughtful, not like you’re working from a template.
Second, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Once you start doing research, you’ll probably identify a whole bunch of things you’d love to do at CMC. But this essay isn’t long enough to mention all of them, and if you try to fit them all in you’ll likely run out of room to connect these opportunities to your own interests.
Third, try to avoid writing about the appeal of the Claremont Consortium. Although the Consortium is absolutely an awesome thing about CMC, it isn’t the best thing to mention in this particular essay. Wanting to be part of the Consortium only tells the committee you want to attend one of five schools, not their school specifically.
In summary, you want to paint a picture for the committee of what you would look like as a CMC student. What opportunities are you interested in, and what is your personal interest in those particular opportunities? If your essay answers those questions, you’re in great shape.
Prompt 2
A critical part of fulfilling our mission is living out the commitments of CMC’s Open Academy: Freedom of Expression, Viewpoint Diversity, and Constructive Dialogue. We want to learn more about your commitment to listening and learning from others with different viewpoints, perspectives, and life experiences from your own.
Describe a time when engaging with someone about a specific topic resulted in you changing your attitude, belief, or behavior, or you changed the belief or behavior of someone else. What was the change that occurred for you, and what facilitated that change? What did you learn from that experience, and how has it informed how you engage with others? (150-250 words)
In today’s polarized world, it’s important to have the skills to engage in healthy debate with others. CMC wants to know that you’re open to learning and changing your perspective, or that you’re able to respectfully share your viewpoint and convince others to change their beliefs.
Write down a list of possible experiences you had, and don’t worry about whether the topic/issue you were debating was “important” enough or not. What matters is the context around this discussion.
Your essay doesn’t necessarily need to be about traditional political debate topics, such as abortion or gun control. In fact, we encourage you to write about issues that will be a little less common, if you can think of some relevant experiences (local issues can be especially promising). Topics such as cultural appropriation, the ethics of thrifting and reselling, or whether your school district should get rid of its gifted program are all fair game.
After creating your list, reflect on which experience was the most transformative, intellectually stimulating, emotional, and unique. Which do you remember the most clearly and why? Once you’ve narrowed down your options into a few viable ones, pick the one that you feel will make it easiest to craft a compelling story.
When starting this essay, include just enough to set the scene. Don’t dwell on exposition, irrelevant details of the conversation, or negative emotions surrounding the event for too long. Who was there? How did you disagree, and why?
Make sure to provide just enough context before focusing on the second part of the essay: the change that occurred for you or the other person. A common mistake in this essay would be to spend too much time talking about the disagreement and not enough about your growth.
Really dive into how your thinking was shifted, or what you did to shift another’s thinking. What did you do during or after the discussion? Did you research it more deeply? Talk with others?
Finally, explain how this experience changed the way you engaged with others in the future. Do you now take a step back and consult more people before launching an initiative? Do you make sure to acknowledge the merit of the other side in discussions?
Here’s an example: maybe you’re the leader of your environmental club and launched a campaign for your school to ban plastic straws because of their negative impact on ocean life. Then, several disabled students messaged you to explain how they were against the measure since plastic straws can be necessary for accessibility. You organized a town hall with your club and everyone who messaged you. After hearing stories of students with mobility issues who couldn’t drink without straws, and their bad experiences with paper and metal straws (which pose injury risks), you realized that this initiative wasn’t inclusive, and the whole group brainstormed ways to make it so. In the end, it was this open and patient forum that led to you changing your mind, and the willingness of the opposed students to contribute to another solution. The final solution was an offering of both plastic straws for those who needed them, as well as reusable straws for others. Now, the environmental club regularly holds town halls to ensure that diverse voices can weigh in on future initiatives.
Where to Get Your CMC Essays Edited
Do you want feedback on your CMC 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!
