How to Write the Illinois State University Essay 2025-2026
This year, Illinois State University has one optional supplemental prompt for applicants to respond to that acts a bit like a personal statement. While it is optional, we recommend students take the opportunity to respond to this prompt as it’s a great chance to share more about yourself with the admissions committee.
Keep reading for our advice on responding to the ISU essay.
Illinois State University Supplemental Essay Prompt
Optional: If you would like to submit a personal statement, your submission should be approximately 500 words in length and address the contributions you are prepared to make to our community, both academically and otherwise. Specifically, your statement should:
Identify any circumstances that affected your academic performance, if applicable
Make clear your commitment to academic success in college, acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses and your plans to utilize available resources
Articulate your readiness to engage productively in our campus community outside the classroom. (500 words)
While you are not required to submit this essay, we strongly encourage students to as it’s a great chance to elaborate more on your personality, ambitions, and goals. Don’t get discouraged by the multifaceted prompt—this essay isn’t as complicated as it might appear at first! It really boils down to sharing how you will engage with and contribute to the Illinois State community both inside and outside of the classroom.
Before You Begin
You might notice the prompt says this is a place where you can identify any circumstances that might have affected your academic performance. In addition to using this essay to learn about how you will fit into the campus community, the admissions officers are also using it as an Extenuating Circumstances essay, allowing students to share more about their unique situations that affected their performance.
If you don’t feel like your academics have been affected by any external factors, you can skip this part of the essay. This is completely optional and should only be incorporated if you genuinely have circumstances you would like the admissions committee to take into account when reviewing your application. These could include (but are not limited to):
- Personal illness or injury
- Illness or death of a close family member
- Moving to a new school
- Job or family responsibilities that took up a majority of your time
We wouldn’t recommend including the Covid pandemic here—as every student experienced that extenuating circumstance—unless it resulted in another situation like the death of a family member or the loss of a parent’s job which forced you to start working after school.
If you do have an extenuating circumstance to write about, you should probably address that up front to get it out of the way. When you discuss it, you want to give an honest depiction of what the circumstance was and what effect it had on you. There’s no need for embellishments or flowery language here. However, you don’t just want to explain the negative effects and leave them there as an excuse for your poor performance; you should show maturity and growth by explaining how you’ve learned or overcome the challenges you faced.
For example, maybe your grades took a dip when a parent was diagnosed with cancer. You should share the emotional impact their diagnosis had on you and why it became difficult to focus on your schoolwork, but also show how you didn’t let this experience completely control you. Whether you started leaning on your friends for emotional support and academic help and your grades eventually rose, or you learned the importance of spending time with your family and making personal sacrifices to support your loved ones, just show that you have taken something away from the experience and can approach it from a mature angle.
Academic Commitment
If you don’t have any extenuating circumstances, you can jump right into the heart of this essay: explaining how you will contribute to the Illinois State community both academically and extracurricularly. We’ll begin with your academic contributions.
For this portion of your essay, the key is to demonstrate your intellectual curiosity, or your passion for learning. The most natural route is to think about your major and the different ways you will engage with the subject in the classroom, but if you’re undecided, don’t worry! You can still delve into your academic interests, they just might be more diverse.
You want to demonstrate to the admissions officers that you will be an engaged student, and the best way to do that is to include specific examples of classes, professors, research opportunities, and more that you will engage with to show exactly how you will fit in. What you don’t want to do though, is name-drop a bunch of classes and research labs without providing any elaboration. Instead, you want to make sure whatever ISU offering you include connects back to your interests or goals in some way.
For example, a student who wants to be an elementary school teacher and is hoping to study Human Development and Family Science might write something like this:
“The first time I helped a second grader finally read a full page on her own, she looked up at me and whispered, “I did it.” That tiny moment—her pride, her surprise, her joy—made me realize how deeply I love guiding children as they discover what they’re capable of. At Illinois State University, I’m excited to study Human Development and Family Science so I can understand not just how children learn, but why they learn best when they feel seen and supported. Working in the ISU Child Care Center will let me put that understanding into practice, helping me learn to respond to real developmental needs with patience and empathy. I’m also looking forward to classes like Organization and Administration of Early Childhood Programs, where I can learn what makes a classroom run smoothly, and Issues and Development in Middle Childhood, which will deepen my insight into the social and emotional challenges kids face as they grow. Each experience at ISU will bring me one step closer to becoming the kind of teacher who creates those “I did it” moments every day.”
The prompt also mentions acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses. Now, this doesn’t have to be stated point-blank like “My strength in organization will help me…” or “I struggle with procrastination…”. Instead, you want to naturally weave these strengths and weaknesses in.
So for example, maybe the student above might recognize one of her weaknesses as a lack of understanding how to help neurodiverse kids or kids with learning disabilities, which is why she is especially interested in the Issues and Development in Middle Childhood course. Or perhaps she thinks her previous work with kids is a strength because it has taught her strategies and mechanisms for keeping their attention that she will use at the Child Care Center. Make sure you show how you will build upon your strengths and address your weaknesses through the resources you choose to highlight.
Community Engagement
The other piece of this essay is how you will be an engaged member of the ISU campus community outside of your academics. Here, you want to demonstrate to the admissions officers that you will contribute through your extracurriculars and social involvement.
Once again, you don’t want to list out all the clubs you plan to join—you want to use this space strategically to share what specifically you will bring outside of your academics. Let’s look at a few different examples of how students might do this:
- Chris: Chris wants to engage with and share his Filipino heritage with his fellow students, so he is looking forward to joining the Filipino Student Association to connect with people from the same background. He also wants to join the Student Government Association and plan cultural takeovers in the dining halls where all students will be able to experience food from Filipino, and other, cultures.
- Nicole: Outside of her academics, Nicole has always been a competitive gymnast and dancer, plus her favorite activity in high school was helping to plan pep rallies, so she’s looking forward to joining the ISU Competitive Cheer team to combine her love for tumbling with raising school spirit. She shares a story of picturing herself competing at the National championship and representing ISU with pride.
- Victoria: Victoria wants to be a doctor one day, so she’s excited to not only get hands-on experience working with patients, but also help keep the community safe by working with the Redbird EMS as an EMT. She also wants to engage with the Bloomington community more by volunteering with the Red Cross of Central Illinois.
- Micah: Micah loves to play the saxophone and while he’s planning to major in Music Performance, he wants to create a jazz band of movie aficionados to play jazzy versions of popular film scores at ISU. He thinks playing in this band will allow him to exercise his creativity outside of his structured academic performances, while also helping him connect with like-minded students who love movies and music.
As you can see in each of these examples, the students have a focus on what they want to bring to the ISU community outside of their academics. In some cases, their extracurricular contributions are connected to their major or their career goals, but in others, it’s completely separate. You can go any route you want. All that matters is that you are sharing something you are genuinely passionate about and truly see yourself engaging in.
Where to Get Your Illinois State Essay Edited for Free
Do you want free, nearly-instantaneous feedback on your Illinois State essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. So meet Sage, our AI tutor and advisor, who will rate your essay, give you suggestions for improvement, and summarize what admissions officers would take away from your writing. Sage can improve your chances of acceptance to your dream school by helping you show what you have to offer beyond the numbers!
