CollegeVine College Essay Team December 4, 2024 7 Essay Breakdowns,Essay Guides 2024-25

How to Write the Coastal Carolina University Essays 2024-2025

Coastal Carolina University is a public university in South Carolina. For this year’s application, there is one required essay and one optional essay applicants may choose to submit. In addition to these essays, applicants to the Honors College are required to submit another essay. In this post we will go through our tips for how to write each of these essays to help your application be as strong as it can be.

Coastal Carolina University Supplemental Essays

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This prompt is a classic “Why This College” essay archetype. The admissions committee at Coastal Carolina University (CCU) wants to understand what specifically about their university appeals to you and how attending aligns with your academic, extracurricular, and personal goals. You’ll need to demonstrate that you’ve done your research and highlight unique aspects of the school that connect to your background and aspirations.

With just 250 words, you will want to be concise but detailed. Try to avoid vague answers about the university’s location or general statements about its reputation. Instead, focus on specific programs, resources, or opportunities at CCU that excite you, connect them to your goals, and explain why they matter to you personally.

Let’s look at some strong student examples, and discuss what makes them effective

• Madison is passionate about environmental science and has spent their summers volunteering at coastal cleanups. They are excited about CCU’s proximity to the Atlantic coast and the opportunities to participate in the Marine Coastal Environmental Science program. They plan to write about how the hands-on research experience in this unique setting will prepare them for a career in marine conservation.
• Javier is a business student with an interest in entrepreneurship. He’s drawn to CCU’s Wall College of Business and its focus on experiential learning. He plans to write about how the student-run investment fund and the Entrepreneurship Club at CCU will allow him to test his ideas and learn from real-world experience.
• Sarah is interested in theater and the arts. She was captivated by CCU’s Theater Department and its renowned BFA programs. She plans to write about how working in CCU’s state-of-the-art performance facilities and collaborating with passionate artists will help her refine her craft and prepare her for a career in theater.

Notice as you review these examples that each resource or opportunity mentioned is explored and explained in the context of the applicant – nothing is random, nor is it a long list without any connection to the student. By choosing specific aspects of the school carefully, these students show us more about themselves and their goals, which makes their essays more individual to them, and thus more memorable. 

The selection of specific aspects of Coastal Carolina also shows that this applicant did their research, and is taking the application seriously. This makes the applicant instantly more attractive, where a phoned-in or vague essay might have the opposite impact. 

This prompt is a classic Extracurricular essay archetype, which asks you to highlight one of your most meaningful activities or work experiences and explain why it’s important to you. They want to understand how this activity has shaped your interests, values, or personal growth. You’ll also want to convey why you’re passionate about it and, if possible, connect it to what you plan to do in college or beyond.

If there’s an activity that you didn’t get to talk about, or one that was mentioned, but not fully explored, in the rest of your application, this is the perfect space for it. You’ll still want to choose such an activity carefully – the activity you choose, and how you talk about it, will tell the admissions committee a lot about you. That doesn’t mean it needs to be directly tied to your future goals or potential major, but the values or lessons learned from this activity could inform your future at Coastal Carolina. 

If you’re stumped as to how to choose a powerful activity, consider the questions below to guide your thinking. 

• What activity or experience has had the biggest impact on you? 
• Do you have an activity or experience that you feel is connected to your identity? 
• Is there an activity or experience that aligns with your values or best personal qualities?
• Have you faced any work or extracurricular challenges, or achieved any exceptional successes?
• Is there a particular story about a work experience or extracurricular that says a lot about you or about the activity?

As you brainstorm topics, remember that the admissions committee may be reading hundreds of these essays – you want yours to stand out from the crowd, and stick in the committees’ minds. This can be achieved through powerful writing or unusual story structure, but a unique topic is definitely essential. 

Another way to make your essay memorable and meaningful is to pick just one activity, and to use grounding details and specific stories to make your essay come to life. Your passion and authenticity will come through in your writing, so make sure you pick something that you really do care about. 

Finally, in connecting this essay to your future, consider what you’ve learned through this experience or activity. If there are important lessons you’ve taken away, qualities you’ve honed, or values you’ve discovered, all of these can speak to your future at Coastal Carolina. More concretely, you might’ve learned skills or gained experience in areas that will aid your future career. 

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This essay prompt asks for a broad overview of who you are, your background, values, experiences, and the unique contributions you would bring to the Honors College at Coastal Carolina University. It’s not just about your academic achievements, but about your personality, interests, and how you would enrich the Honors College community. The admissions committee wants to see that you understand what makes the HTC Honors College special and how your presence there would positively impact others.

This kind of broad prompt might seem overwhelming, but it’s a great opportunity to introduce yourself as a full person. Rather than focusing on just academics, or a single extracurricular, you can talk about yourself academically, socially, and culturally. 

Though you want to take a broad view here, you can still organize your essay around a uniting feature, like a particular story or theme. You could describe a day in your life, talk about what it looks like to work hard in different areas of your life, or list all of the ways that your value for helping others shows up. Picking a throughline that will be relevant throughout your essay is a great way to keep your essay tight, organized, and effective. 

Once you’ve selected a topic, or have an idea of how you might structure your essay, you should think about how you can connect these things to Coastal Carolina University, and the Honors College in particular. Talking about how you’ll show up on campus is a necessary component of this prompt, and it also helps the admissions committee envision you as a contributing member of the community. 

Let’s look at one example of what an effective essay might look like. 

“First, it was the hours spent playing computer games. Then, the long nights trying to learn Python and Java. Don’t even make me count the amount of time that went into building my own website! From a young age, I’ve been fascinated by the endless possibilities of technology, but it wasn’t until I started organizing after-school coding workshops for younger students that I realized my love for teaching, too, and sharing this passion with others. The way kids’ eyes would light up when they saw what they could do with a simple line of code lit a fire in me. What started as a small club in my local library has grown into a weekly program where I teach coding fundamentals to middle school students, many of whom come from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM. The experience has taught me not only the technical aspects of coding but also the importance of patience, communication, and fostering a supportive learning environment.

At Coastal Carolina University’s HTC Honors College, I’m excited to bring these skills to the campus community when I organize peer-led coding workshops, similar to those I started in my high school. Coding doesn’t have to be scary and foreign, locked away in the realm of computer geeks – it can, and should, be for everyone. I’m also eager to collaborate with fellow students and professors on interdisciplinary projects that combine technology with fields like environmental science and ethics. In fact, I’m particularly interested in exploring how data analysis can be used to track and mitigate coastal erosion, a pressing issue in the region.

Beyond academics, I hope to launch a campus chapter of a coding outreach program that works with local schools to promote STEM education, especially among underrepresented communities. As someone who thrives in collaborative and intellectually curious environments, I’m confident that the HTC Honors College will provide the perfect space for me to continue growing both personally and academically, while also helping others discover the power of technology.”

Why it works: This essay uses the story of the author’s passion to talk about their volunteer work, but it moves beyond that, to the plans they have for Coastal Carolina University and the Honors College Community. All of it is weaved together seamlessly, showing how these attributes don’t just make this applicant a great person, but a great future student. 

Where to Get Your Coastal Carolina University Essays Edited For Free

Want feedback on your Coastal Carolina University essays to improve your chances at admission? When you’ve proofread your essay a dozen times, it can be hard to even spot where there’s room for improvement. That’s why we’ve created our free Peer Essay Review tool, where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also sharpen your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays!

Need feedback faster? Get a free, nearly-instantaneous essay review from Sage, our AI tutor and advisor. Sage will rate your essay, give you suggestions for improvement, and summarize what admissions officers would take away from your writing. Use these tools to improve your chances of acceptance to your dream school!