How to Write the Colorado College Essays 2024-2025
Located in Colorado Springs, Colorado College is a liberal arts institution best known for the immersive Block Plan curriculum, in which students take one class over a period of three and a half weeks for a total of four classes per semester.
This application cycle, applicants will need to respond to one supplemental essay prompt, which allows you to choose between three areas of focus. Regardless of which area you choose, you want to make sure your response highlights your personal strengths and overall potential as a CC student. In this post, we’ll break down the prompt as a whole, so you can be sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Read this Colorado College essay example written by a real student to inspire your own writing!
Colorado College Supplemental Essay Prompt
Colorado College values creating an equitable, environmentally conscious, and healthy community. Choose one of these areas – antiracism, sustainability, or wellness – and describe your experiences and the specific ways you plan to get involved in this area at CC. (300 words)
This prompt wants you to describe how you would contribute to the campus culture at Colorado College with regards to one of three specific tenets: antiracism, sustainability, or wellness. These are three of CC’s most important commitments, and are named as lenses that they use to inform their decision-making process as an institution.
To start, you’ll want to identify the area that you are most passionate about, or that you have the most related experiences for. If you want a better idea of what each lens entails, you can read more about them using the link above.
Once you have a grasp of what each one means, think about which of the three areas you are most impacted by. Have you participated in any extracurriculars, service projects, or other activities that clearly relate to one of them? What groups and initiatives do you most want to be involved with in college, and do any of them align well with one of the lenses? Once you’ve selected an area, you can jump to our specific breakdown for it below.
Antiracism
This option has some overlap with the common Diversity essay archetype, although the two are not exactly the same. The main difference is that your focus should be less on your identity, and more on the tangible actions you have taken to combat racism. Of course, there may well be overlap between the two, but make sure the actions are there, as that’s the core of what this prompt is getting at.
The first thing we want to note here is that the way colleges factor race into their admissions decisions changed last year following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action in June. Schools can no longer consider a student’s racial identity in isolation, but they are allowed to consider it as part of a student’s overall background and life experiences, specifically in the context of the essay.
If your racial identity is important to you, this prompt is a great opportunity to explain a bit more about how it’s shaped you. While you can certainly still choose one of the other options if they resonate more with you, do be aware that if you don’t discuss your racial identity in your essay, CC will be legally forbidden from thinking about it as they decide about your application.
On the other hand, even if you are not a person of color, you can still respond to this prompt! You just want to make sure that you take care to use a thoughtful tone, and don’t frame your contributions to the antiracism movement in a way that could come across as naive or worse, self-absorbed. The movement needs everyone, of course, but you want to be sure to show that you recognize your role is different from that of people of color.
After all, “action” doesn’t necessarily have to mean participating in protests or writing to your local congressperson to encourage her to support antiracist bills. Those things absolutely work, but just because you haven’t done something on that scale doesn’t mean you haven’t helped work towards an antiracist future. Lots of small steps, when added all together, matter just as much as one big one.
If you want to get a more concrete sense for what CC considers to fall under this umbrella, or just more information about their commitment to antiracism, there are lots of events and offerings posted on their “Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Some possible, less obvious examples of topics you could write about could include:
- A student who lives in a homogenous, mostly white town but has made an effort to read books and watch documentaries on the lived experiences of people of color and the history of racism in the United States in order to develop a better understanding of race relations
- A Black student who took a creative writing class for which their final project was a collection of poems focused on their struggle to find empowerment in their identity, and their pleasant surprise at how thoughtfully their non-Black peers engaged with their work
- A student who grew up in a diverse but economically disadvantaged neighborhood and organized events like picnics and a babysitting marketplace to help build bridges between different groups, and who wants to join CC’s Butler Center to sponsor similar inclusivity initiatives on campus.
As long as your actions show that you are genuinely committed to the antiracism movement, you can write a strong response centered around them. The scale doesn’t matter–what does is your authentic investment in a more just future.
Once you have a few examples of antiracist actions you’ve taken, you’re ready to start writing. In your response, the key is to highlight “your potential to advance CC’s commitment to antiracism.” What this line means is that you don’t just want to describe what you’ve done in the past; you also want to explain what you’ve learned from these experiences–whether that’s a particular skill, perspective, or way of thinking–and how those lessons will help you make Colorado College’s campus more inclusive and equitable.
For example, maybe the student with the poetry collection talks about how this experience showed him the power of art as a conversation starter, and how at CC he hopes to join the B-Side Arts Collective, a student organization that seeks “to make all forms of art more accessible to historically marginalized students at CC.” In joining this group, he hopes to both continue sharing his own stories and learn from students who are marginalized for reasons other than race.
You don’t absolutely have to include some specific club or other resource at CC to write a strong response, but 9 times out of 10, your essay will be stronger if you make this explicit link between your past experiences and your potential future at CC. After all, the job of an admissions officer is to imagine how you’d fit into their school’s culture and community, and what makes that job easier than you doing it for them, and explaining exactly how you hope to get involved in antiracism efforts at CC?
You also want to make sure your takeaways from your past experiences are thoughtful and personal. If you say that participating in a Black Lives Matter protest made you want to run for president so that you can just sign bills that eliminate institutional racism, you may come across as overly idealistic, or naive about the complexity of the issue.
A better approach would be explaining that, while protesting was empowering, it also made you realize that any demonstration, no matter how large, won’t change anything if the people in power aren’t paying attention. So, at CC, you hope to take political science courses like “PS210: The Law & Social Justice” and “PS213: Leadership and Governance” to acquire a better understanding of how individual action can be most effective.
Similarly, make sure that the essay is ultimately about you. Racism is something you probably have strong, potentially painful feelings about, but you don’t want your essay to turn into an op-ed about the evils of racism–write that piece another time. Because this is a college essay, the point is to teach admissions officers about who you are.
So, you want to be sure that you’re not just focusing on racism, but also showing which skills or personality traits you’ve developed as a result of your commitment to fighting this evil. Above all, you want CC admissions officers to see how you are prepared, in a way nobody else is, to make their campus a more equitable place.
Sustainability
The second area you can write about has some crossover with the Impact on Community/Community Service essay, though it’s much more specific, as it’s limited to the realm of environmental service. If you’re choosing this option, think about the following:
- Any actions you have taken in your daily life to reduce your environmental impact
- Involvement in environmental clubs, groups, campaigns, movements, or projects
- The factors that sparked your interest in sustainability and the actions you have taken to pursue this passion
- The environmental-related initiatives you hope to participate in at Colorado College, like their CC Student Farm Club or State of the Rockies Project
A good response will be about an action or group that you’ve been involved with for a long time. Stand-alone events and short-term projects can be meaningful, but they won’t reflect genuine commitment to and prioritization of sustainability issues as well as something that you’ve participated in for years.
Additionally, the longer your involvement, the better you can demonstrate your sustained positive impact. A weeklong Habitat for Humanity trip building energy-efficient homes or an afternoon picking up litter from the side of the road don’t pack much of a punch on their own, but organizing beach cleanups every summer, or keeping in touch with Habitat for Humanity after your trip and helping them with fundraising efforts, show that the initial event kicked off a deeper passion.
In other words, sometimes a shorter term involvement, or even a single-day event, can make a big impact on you. Just make sure to clearly connect this starting point to broader efforts you’ve made since then, and/or illustrate your plan to increase your involvement with sustainability initiatives through specific CC resources.
As discussed in the antiracism section above, this last step is key, regardless of how in-depth your past involvement is: in addition to demonstrating authentic passion for this cause and laying out concrete actions related to it that you’ve taken in the past, you want to build a connection to your future participation in specific CC resources and organizations. Indicating that you have a clear vision for how sustainability will shape your life on campus proves that your interest isn’t confined to high school, but is a broader part of who you are.
You might want to familiarize yourself with Colorado College’s Office of Sustainability, which coordinates projects across campus to “foster communication, collaboration, and coordination between the college and stakeholders in the broader community.” This office’s site presents many jumping-off points for identifying more specific initiatives you can participate in at CC and actions you can take.
Again, the key is in connecting your past participation with environmental work you could do in the future. Check out some potential ideas below for inspiration:
- A student from a food-insecure urban area who helped organize a community garden to provide fresh produce to local families who wants to join the CC Student Farm Club
- A student who participated in a zero-waste initiative at their high school and helped successfully reduced cafeteria waste by implementing composting and reusable containers who plans to apply to the Office of Sustainability’s Waste intern team
- A student who practices sustainability in their daily life by biking instead of driving, eating locally sourced food, upcycling old clothes, and doing neighborhood clean-up days who plans to utilize CC’s PikeRide program and participate in Green Events
Each example has varying degrees of leadership and involvement, but they all demonstrate an existing commitment to sustainable living and lay out how that commitment will manifest on CC’s campus through specific environmental initiatives.
Also note that they don’t just talk about sustainability in general, but identify specific topics within that huge field, like food waste or energy conservation. This approach feels far more authentic and personal than dramatic statements about the planet dying or the need to convert everyone to electric vehicles.
Wellness
The wellness aspect of the prompt may seem a bit more open-ended than the other areas, especially since the associated word in the prompt is “healthy,” which can have a wide range of definitions. Don’t panic, though! The description of the wellness lens specifically names “mental health and wellness” as the CC’s priority.
So, consider mental wellbeing as the foundation of the wellness topic and explicitly connect any discussion of other strands of health (e.g., physical, emotional, etc.) back to the mind. Wellness involves all aspects of yourself and your life, and CC will certainly love to see you lay out a well-rounded view of health–just make sure you do ultimately touch on the mental side of things.
More concretely, the prompt is asking you to reflect on your personal journey with wellness and how you aim to continue this journey at Colorado College. Your response should highlight your understanding of wellness, and demonstrate how your experiences have shaped this understanding and your commitment to promoting the wellness of others. You should also detail how you plan to engage with and enhance wellness initiatives on campus.
The most compelling responses will, of course, include a relevant personal experience, like how you persevered through a difficult time in your life, a habit or practice that has significantly improved your daily well-being, or a wellness-related initiative or group you participate in, and connect this experience to the resources and programs you plan to engage with on campus. As with the rest of the areas of this prompt, make it clear that you have done your research on CC’s wellness offerings and priorities.
Additionally, take care that your writing is specific, but not overly personal. Strike a balance between demonstrating your authentic connection to the topic by sharing your lived experience and remaining professional and appropriate. Your essay, after all, will be read by a complete stranger.
Avoid sharing details that are too private, unrelated to your potential as a future CC student, or could remind your reader of an unpleasant time in their own life. Instead, focus on experiences that have a clear connection to your goals and that show how you’ll add value to the campus community. Keep your tone sincere and reflective, and don’t dwell too much on any struggles you’ve faced–instead, highlight how you addressed or overcame them. Admissions officers would rather see your resilience in action than read a graphic description of the difficulties you’ve faced.
Now, let’s take a look at some potential examples:
- A student who struggled with anxiety found support in their school’s counselor and wants to join CC’s Peer Health Educators program to keep themselves accountable in their own wellbeing and help empower their friends and neighbors to take control of their wellness
- A softball player who was introduced to mindfulness meditation as a stress management strategy by their coach now uses this tactic in their daily routine and is interested in taking and eventually teaching mindfulness classes at the CC fitness center, to encourage students to think more deeply about the connection between mind and body
- A student who finds confidence and community in rock climbing as a form of exercise and wants to work out at the Ritt Kellogg Climbing Gym and join the CC Climbing Team
By focusing on growth, actions, and positive outcomes and using a thoughtful tone, you can craft a wellness essay that both reflects on your personal journey and looks forward, to your future aspirations. Connect the wellness causes important to you to the resources that exist on the CC campus to demonstrate that you’re already envisioning how your commitment to health and wellbeing will continue in college.
Where to Get Your Colorado College Essay Edited For Free
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