How to Write the Macalester College Essays 2023-2024

Since Macalester receives thousands of applications from academically strong students, your essays are your chance to stand out. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to respond to these prompts, even though they’re optional. The exception to this recommendation is the third prompt, which you should only respond to if it’s actually relevant to you. In this post, we’ll discuss how to craft an engaging response to each of these prompts.

Macalester Supplemental Essay Prompts

As you begin to dissect the prompt above, you will notice that it’s essentially asking why you want to attend Macalester, focusing your response on the opportunities surrounding the college’s metropolitan location. This means that while you may elaborate on why Macalester’s unique campus culture, traditions, courses, professors, or other (academic or non-academic) opportunities attract you to the college, you should relate each reason to Macalester’s location in particular.

Now, you may be saying, “Wait, I thought I shouldn’t mention location in a “Why This College” essay, since that’s a general feature that can apply to many other schools?” Generally speaking, that’s correct, but this prompt goes outside the box by asking specifically how you plan to interact with the surrounding off-campus community. So, you should definitely mention location, but, like in any other “Why This College?” essay, be sure to also describe how you will engage with the opportunities available because of Macalester in particular.

For example, if you’re interested in education or community outreach, you could mention your interest in Macalester’s Opportunities Abound: A Partnership for College Access Program (which ensures that local, low-income high school students in the Twin Cities have access to the information they need in order to make an informed decision regarding their futures).

Alternatively, if you are interested in the environment and sustainability, you could mention your interest in engaging with the organization Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy in Minneapolis during your free time in order to supplement your academic studies with impactful action.

For any “Why This College” essay, your goal is to convince the admissions officer that their school is the best fit for you, by intertwining your reasons for applying with your unique background and motivations. Therefore, it’s crucial that the reasons you provide for wanting to attend Macalester are school-specific. Generally, the more specific you can be, the more likely you are to seem genuinely interested and well-researched.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to visit Macalester before writing your application, drawing on your own memories and experiences from your visit is a great way of enriching your essay. For example, you could talk about how the friendliness of the teenagers you asked for directions in the Twin Cities inspired your interest in the “Opportunities Abound” program mentioned above.

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit campus, you can also strengthen your essay by researching Macalester’s core values, and ensuring that the values and traits you reveal about yourself are aligned with the college’s core values. Simply put, doing a little research (or just checking out the values already listed in Prompt 2!) can help you avoid emphasizing misaligned values in your essay, which risks potentially alienating admissions officers.

For example, Macalester College places a strong emphasis on multiculturalism, so writing an essay on the importance of nationalism may not make the impact you’re planning. Instead, perhaps you want to study displaced populations in college, and you specifically want to learn more about how refugees integrate into American life. Minneapolis is home to the world’s first Somali culture museum, which would be a perfect place to delve into the stories of this displaced group. Writing about this would align with Macalester’s value of multiculturalism.

In addition to not aligning your own value’s with Macalester’s, another thing you want to avoid is listing the college’s various accolades, or generic traits like a low student-to-faculty ratio—your response must be both specific to the school and personal to you to be effective. Also keep in mind that supplemental essays should complement, not merely rehash, your main Common App essay, so make sure you’re providing new information to admissions officers.

While this prompt may seem a bit daunting at first, due to the unconventional angle into the “Why This College?” question, this essay should not be a cause for stress. Just think carefully about the reasons that you want to attend Macalester, and then, frame each reason with the college’s location near the Twin Cities.

If you’re familiar with the most common essay archetypes, you may notice that this is a version of the diversity essay. So, to brainstorm, you want to consider which aspects of your identity are most important to who you are. Aspects of identity can include traditional markers such as ethnicity/race, gender, country of origin, and language. But don’t feel limited to those—your identity also includes things like your hometown, income class/socioeconomic status, illnesses/disabilities, and even interests and activities. In your response, you’ll want to show how the aspect you focus on will allow you to uniquely contribute to Macalester’s community.

A quick note if you intend to write about your racial background: in June 2023, the United States Supreme Court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling, however, still allows colleges to consider race on an individual basis, which is one reason many schools are now including diversity prompts in their supplemental essay packages. So, if you feel that your racial background has impacted you significantly, this is a good place to talk about that, since schools are now legally banned from factoring your race into their decision in any other context.

Regardless of whether you write about your race or something else, remember to show, not tell—sharing an anecdote is the best way to bring your story to life. Think about times when your chosen trait was particularly relevant to your growth. For example, if you were raised in a family that blended multiple cultures, you might talk about how your grandparents visited from Pakistan every summer and gave you clothing as a gift, which helped you stay connected to their culture over the years.

Finally, the prompt specifically asks you to connect your life experiences to Macalester’s mission or learning environment, so do research on Macalester’s website to find things that resonate with you. For the above example, you could talk about how receiving gifts from your grandparents showed you the importance of making a concerted effort to connect with other cultures, so you will make sure to go out of your way to engage with your Macalester peers who come from different backgrounds than you.

Things to avoid:

• Complaining. While discrimination and negativity may be a part of your experience as part of a specific identity group, you don’t want to use this space solely to complain about experiences you’ve had. Frame your experiences as growth opportunities.

• Discriminating against other communities and identities. This is an opportunity for you to showcase what’s important and unique about you. There is no need to put other people down in order to tell your story.

• Simply listing aspects of your identity. Writing a list of traits without any elaboration will make your essay read like a generic laundry list.

• Choosing a clichéd topic like an immigrant story or traveling/moving. While these experiences may have been incredibly formative for you, they’re also some of the most overused tropes in college admissions, so it’s hard to make yourself truly stand out if you write about one of them.

Much like the Common App’s “Additional Information” section or the common “exceptional personal circumstances” prompt, this is an opportunity to explain any outliers on your transcript. While we typically highly recommend that applicants answer optional prompts, this question is truly optional, as it simply will not apply to everyone. If your grades were relatively consistent throughout high school, you should skip it. However, if your grades dropped or went up significantly at some point, this is your chance to explain why.

If you choose to answer this question, you can set yourself up for success with these tips:

• Be as direct and concise as possible. In some cases, grade fluctuations are due to factors outside your control, such as health or family issues. Explaining how these situations impacted your grades should be fairly straightforward. Or, perhaps you wanted a challenge and overextended yourself by signing up for too many AP classes or extracurriculars.

• Be careful not to make excuses. Admissions officers do not want to hear that you ended up with a C in Algebra II your junior year because you got that math teacher everyone hated. You never want to suggest that your poor performance in a class was someone else’s fault, as that may make admissions officers think you lack accountability.

• Show that you have grown and remained resilient. Instead of blaming teachers for your bad grades, a much better approach is to talk about how you remained positive, embraced the challenges presented to you, and ultimately learned from the experience. While we’d all love to apply to college with a perfect GPA, most of us don’t have that, and showing that you can respond to challenges in a mature, growth-oriented way can ultimately strengthen your application.

Where to Get Your Macalester Essays Edited 

Do you want feedback on your Macalester 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!