How to Write the Lafayette College Essay 2024-2025
Lafayette College, located in the College Hill neighborhood of Easton, Pennsylvania, provides the classic northeastern liberal arts experience. With a curriculum that promotes a broad base of knowledge, Lafayette teaches students to approach problems from various perspectives, strengthening their critical thinking skills.
Writing effective supplements will be crucial to impressing admissions officers and securing your spot. Read on for all the best tips and tricks for crafting a successful supplemental essay that will ensure you stand out from the crowd.
Read this Lafayette essay example written by a real student to inspire your own writing!
Lafayette College Supplemental Essay Prompt
Why Lafayette? (20-200 words)
Ah, the classic “why this college” supplement. With prompts like these, the key is to identify specific offerings on Lafayette’s campus that speak to your unique interests and aptitudes. Make sure to mention several logistical characteristics, professors, courses, extracurriculars, etc. and relate them directly to your personal goals.
Perhaps you want to conduct research through Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program, which will connect you with a professor so you can find STEM mentorship and engage with original scientific literature. Maybe you want to join the Lafayette College Democrats in preparation for your political career. Whatever your passion, the key to this part of answering the prompt is thorough research. Don’t speak about academic offerings in broad terms or name drop professors for the sake of it. Rather, figure out what is unique to Lafayette’s programming, and tie it back to your own goals and interests. For example:
“I want to attend Lafayette because they have a good biology department, and I’m really interested in the more scientific aspects of medicine.”
This is not a good response because it says little to nothing about Lafayette’s actual biology department. While it tells admissions readers a bit about you, it doesn’t indicate that you actually cared enough about the school to look deeply into their offerings. Instead, try something like:
“I look forward to taking BIOL 110 on Edible Ethics, where I will not only explore the science behind food production and consumption, but also the ethical issues surrounding these fields. As an environmentalist and anti-food waste advocate, I hope to gain knowledge from this course that will allow me to engage in concrete change.”
This is better because it shows not only that you’ve looked into Lafayette’s offerings, but also that you’ve thought about how that relates to your interests and drawn a clear connection between the two. Additionally, this provides more specificity and substance. You should strive to be as detailed as you can within the word count while also covering all bases that serve as reasons behind your applying to Lafayette. In a situation like this, word count is currency, and you’ll have to spend carefully.
The more you’ve delved into Lafayette’s offerings, the broader of a base you’ll be able to pull from when answering this question. Admissions officers will be able to tell that you’ve done your research, so you’d better get to work sleuthing around the website! Beyond that, as long as your response answers all the requisite components of the question, and it does so with clarity and detail, you’ll be in good shape with this prompt.
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