CollegeVine College Essay Team August 29, 2025 14 Essay Guides 2025-26,MIT

How to Write the MIT Application Essays 2025-2026

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more familiarly known as MIT, is consistently revered as one of the best institutions in the world for STEM fields. However, don’t let their name fool you—MIT offers a full range of majors and minors in the humanities and arts as well. 

This year, MIT has 5 required essays that cover a range of topics that you’ve likely already been thinking about throughout your college process: your intended major, a favorite hobby, an unexpected aspect of your educational journey, your collaboration skills, and managing a challenge.

In addition, there is one additional information essay that is optional. Although we typically advise you to respond to every prompt, even optional ones, this is truly optional–you should only write an essay if you actually have something to say.

Keep in mind that MIT does not use the Common Application, and instead uses its own application portal. So, in addition to the essays, make sure you leave yourself extra time to fill out your personal information and the other standard pieces of the application.

Read these MIT essay examples written by real students to inspire your writing!

MIT Supplemental Essay Prompts

This prompt is the classic “Why This Major?” question, that asks you what you want to study and why. Most importantly, it asks you why you want to study this major at MIT. Ultimately, the most compelling response to this essay prompt is one that:

1. Demonstrates your passion for the major that you have chosen.
2. Integrates your past and present studies and interests seamlessly with your future at MIT and your long-term academic and professional goals.
3. Specifically addresses why MIT―the campus, resources, faculty, programs, and opportunities―is the place where you need and want to study.

That’s a tall order for only 100 words, so it’s important that you take the time to fully consider the best way to convince MIT of your passion for your major and MIT’s program.

Before you start brainstorming and drafting a response to this prompt, spend ample time exploring the various majors, or “courses” as MIT calls them, on MIT’s website. You should pinpoint a few courses of study that appeal to you and then dive deeper into what the curricular emphasis is of each course of study, what resources and opportunities are available, and which faculty you might be interested in studying with or whose research you find compelling. 

Note that the prompt includes the phrase “right now,” meaning MIT does not expect you to have your entire future figured out at 17. You are allowed to change your mind once you get to campus, but for the sake of this essay, hone in on whatever you are most interested in studying in college now. 

For anyone who has many interests, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to choose just one major to write about. It is completely fine, and even expected, that you may be undecided, but spend time condensing your list of potential majors to one or two that you are truly interested in pursuing further. 

Once you have introduced the field of study that most appeals to you, you will need to discuss why this field appeals to you. The reasons that you give need to be authentic reasons; they should be based on intellectual curiosity, personal goals, and values you hold. Avoid listing prestige, post-graduation salary, or your parents’ desires as reasons for choosing your major or MIT. The admissions committee wants to know what you are genuinely passionate about and why. 

From there, the essay should connect the moment to a broader trajectory in your academic interests. If a student writes about coding a small mobile app to help their grandfather track medication, they should link that project to a sustained interest in both computer science and public health. This shows that the spark wasn’t random, but that it’s part of an ongoing pattern of curiosity and action. 

One of the most frequent missteps is relying on generalities instead of specifics. Saying “I’ve always liked science” or “I’m passionate about helping people” doesn’t tell the MIT admissions committee anything unique about you. For instance, a student who loves biology could instead describe a specific experience like designing a genetics experiment in class and realizing the thrill of predicting and then testing a hypothesis. Without that level of detail, your essay risks blending in with thousands of others.

Finally, an effective response looks forward, showing how the student will explore this interest at MIT. This doesn’t mean listing every course or lab; instead, it means finding specific offerings that naturally tie back to the student’s passion. The focus should always stay on your own goals, with MIT appearing as a natural fit for pursuing them.

A student might mention “MIT’s strong engineering program, diverse community, and great professors” without explaining how they would engage with those opportunities. Compare that to a student who explains how their independent robotics project stalled because of a lack of mentorship, and how MIT’s Sandbox Mentors initiative would give them the collaborative environment they need. The latter feels intentional; the former reads like a brochure.

Remember, while it’s important to provide backstory, you need to be forward-looking in this essay as well. In such a short essay, every sentence has to move the reader from “this is something I’ve enjoyed,” to “this is why I want to study it,” to “so this is why MIT is the right place for me.”

With these ideas in mind, you should be able to write a concise response about why you have picked your major of choice and why MIT will be the perfect fit for you.

This falls into the typical extracurricular essay category, however it wants to know something you do outside of your required activities. Essentially, MIT is curious to hear how you fill your time when nothing else is expected of you.

While it’s possible one of your established activities brings you joy, we recommend taking advantage of this prompt to share something personal that doesn’t show up on your application already. Sure, maybe you love basketball, but if you’ve already included the fact you are captain of the varsity team on your activities list, MIT won’t learn anything new about you if you write this essay about basketball. Write it about your collection of international potato chip flavors you and your brother taste test weekly? Well now they’ve learned something they couldn’t have possibly found out about anywhere else in your application.

A great way to approach this prompt is to construct a brief anecdote to illustrate your passions. Do you love reading because you enjoy imagining yourself in fictional worlds? Do you find peace in painting natural scenery? Now is a great time to describe these experiences.

For example, consider a student who loves photography. She might write something like this:

Maybe another student loves learning Japanese on Duolingo:

What makes both of these examples strong is that they bring us into the moment so we feel the joy with the student. Whether it’s through the vivid sensory imagery in the photography example or the level of specific details in the Duolingo example. Engaging your reader with descriptive writing will allow them to appreciate why you love your topic or activity. At the end of the day, the age old wisdom of “show, don’t tell” applies perfectly..

Remember, your essay will be much more impactful if you are honest about what brings you joy—don’t lie for the sake of sounding more impressive. While volunteering at the local homeless shelter may sound very humble, don’t write about that if it isn’t what you actually do in your free time. MIT can spot essays that try too hard and lying about humanitarian efforts is definitely one of those instances. 

While it’s important to be honest, make sure to also use good judgment when articulating your response. Generally, anything goes for this prompt and you can essentially write about anything you’re passionate about. But if your favorite activity is “looking at memes,” it might be better to choose something else.

This prompt asks you to reflect on a time when you deviated from the norm or went against expectations in your educational journey. MIT places a high value on creative thinking, so it’s no surprise that the admissions committee wants to see how you think independently, take initiative, or approach learning in a unique way. 

Taking a non-traditional approach to learning could involve a range of things, including:

• Pursuing a subject in an unconventional way.
• Going beyond your standard school curriculum to explore a passion.
• Challenging the expectations of teachers, peers, or even yourself.
• Finding an unexpected solution to an academic problem.
• Engaging in self-directed learning or projects that others wouldn’t have considered.

When brainstorming, it helps to look for moments where curiosity guided you more than the assignment did. Did you ever choose a project topic because it genuinely fascinated you, even if it was harder? Have you taught yourself something independently—coding, designing an experiment, or learning a new language? Did you ever lead a class project in a direction others didn’t see at first? These are the kinds of examples that can bring your individuality to life.

But what makes a response truly strong isn’t just the idea—it’s the specificity. A vague answer like, “I enjoy learning outside the box,” falls flat because it doesn’t show the admissions reader what that actually looked like. 

Compare that to a student who, for a freshman project on technology, didn’t just write a paper but instead built a working smart home prototype. They had no coding experience, yet spent weeks learning Python, wiring sensors, and running endless trial and error until a lamp finally flicked on at the sound of movement. That’s a vivid, concrete story—and it shows us not just what they did, but how they think.

MIT isn’t just looking for accomplishments; they want to understand the mindset behind them. That smart home example shines because it illustrates a bigger theme: the student thrives on hands-on, self-directed learning. Through that project, they discovered that pushing past expectations and diving into the unknown excites them more than following the given path.

A strong response also reflects on the growth you experienced. It’s not enough to show that you tried something unusual; you should also explain what it taught you. Did you uncover a love for problem-solving? Did you gain confidence in teaching yourself difficult skills? Did you realize that creativity can be applied in unexpected ways? That reflection turns your story from a simple anecdote into an example of who you are as a learner.

Finally, the best essays avoid clichés and focus on what makes your journey uniquely yours. Many students might say they “love learning” or “like challenges,” but what sets you apart is the exact way you followed your curiosity. 

Maybe you redesigned a science fair project to test something unconventional. Maybe you stayed up late teaching yourself music production software because a beat in your head wouldn’t leave you alone. Maybe you wrote a program that solved a problem your school didn’t even know existed. These details, rooted in your lived experience, are what make your essay stand out to MIT.

In the end, what admissions officers want to see is a spark: the moment where you couldn’t help but go beyond, even when no one asked you to. Whether it’s a smart home prototype, a self-taught skill, or an unexpected solution, the point is to reveal your independence, your initiative, and your joy in learning. Show them how you created your own path—and how that path shaped you.

For this prompt, MIT wants to see your selfless side by looking at the strategies you take to help those around you. Don’t panic if you haven’t saved hundreds of lives or discovered the cure for cancer; as the prompt suggests, helping your community can be as simple as lending a shoulder for your friend to cry on. Your community can be practically any group from family, neighbors, classmates, sports team, etc.

Whether big or small, think of a time that you made a positive impact on one or more people. Maybe you have experience volunteering at the Red Cross or at your local retirement home. Or maybe you founded a club at your school with the goal of bringing education to children in need. No matter what the cause is, show the admissions officers your generosity and willingness to make a difference in your community.

The key here is not just describing the scenario, but providing the insight about what you learned or gained from this experience. Show how collaborating with others has helped you grow as a person. This means going beyond vague statements like “we were stronger when we worked together” by providing details.

For example, consider a student who tutored one of her teammates from her cross country team who was struggling in Algebra. She didn’t see the point of math and thought she was just “bad” at it. You volunteered to tutor her for free on a weekly basis because you enjoyed math. After just a month of your tutoring sessions, your teammate got her first A on a test. Watching understanding dawn on her as she solved problems and seeing her elation at getting an A, made you feel a sense of pride that confirmed teaching math would be a great career for you.

Another student might have noticed his school cafeteria was generating tons of daily food waste, so he created a campaign to implement a compositing system and encourage students to reduce their waste. He gathered a team of peers interested in sustainability to research different composting services, contact the principal and school board, and create educational materials on how to compost correctly. The program was successful at his school and diverted several tons of food from the landfill weekly. He’s currently working on getting the system implemented across the district.

What both of these examples succeed at doing is describing the impact that an action has on others. Whether it be putting a smile on someone’s face or preventing a child from contracting a deadly disease, remember to show the reader what the outcome of your efforts were. Tying in your personal development is another great way to heighten the magnitude of your contribution, as it gives your actions more significant personal meaning. Ask yourself: How did you grow from this experience? What changes did you see?

The idea of this prompt is similar to the archetypal “Overcoming a Challenge” prompt. Whether it is a personal situation or a challenge, MIT wants to know how you handle difficult situations that suddenly arise and what you learn from such experiences.

You want to construct an anecdote that goes through both the situation and/or challenge and your thought process. When crafting your response, start by briefly describing the situation or challenge, making sure to answer the question, “What was so significant about this event?” Next, go into detail about the steps you took to approach the unexpected event and how you went about this process.

Make sure to discuss the outcome of the situation and show the admissions officer how you matured from this experience, specifically identifying what you learned. The most common mistake students make is to focus too much on the situation or challenge, rather than their thought process, emotions, and their growth.

As you brainstorm and begin drafting your response, here are some guided questions to get you thinking:

1. Why was this challenge so important to you? What is the significance?
2. At that moment, what was your reaction to the situation? How did it affect you (thoughts, emotions)?
3. Were the steps you took to manage the situation successful? Why or why not?
4. How did this challenge allow you to grow and mature as an individual?

Try to avoid “challenges” that are too trivial—while you may be upset that you got a B on that one calculus test, this is not a significant enough challenge to analyze. For this prompt, it’s important to demonstrate personal growth and maturity, as this shows your capacity to adapt to difficult environments.

You should also try to avoid challenges that are cliché, such as:

• A sports injury
• Working hard in a difficult class
• Adjusting to a new culture or school
• Facing tragedy (death, illness, abuse)
• Romantic relationships and breakups

These tend to be very common experiences that have a predictable outcome, often focus too much on the challenge instead of your growth, or are simply inappropriate topics for your essay. Of course, you can still choose to write on a common topic if you feel that you can write something especially meaningful, but it’s better to find a more original experience to share.

You can, however, “spin” a cliche topic. For example, the “sports injury” essay tends to go: you get injured, can’t play, have to go through rehab, and you eventually get back on the field and succeed. A more unique approach would be to talk about how your injury led you to start a blog while you were recovering, and that became a big passion. Or, how your injury made you realize that you actually liked the strategy of the sport more than the actual sport, which led to your interest in competitive chess.

Here is a good example:

This is your typical “Additional Information” prompt, and while we usually recommend that you fill out all optional prompts, this is an exception. As MIT says themselves, many students won’t need this space to complete their application.

However, if you have unusual circumstances or a significant experience you weren’t able to address, you should write about it here. Some potential topics include:

• Illness
• Financial hardships
• Death of a loved one
• Divorce
• Unique extracurricular that can’t be fully explained in the Activities section

While your other essays should have a more narrative quality, your response here can be more straightforward, and you also don’t need to take up the full 300 words. 

Just avoid using this space for topics that may be deemed trivial, such as explaining that B on your transcript when you otherwise have straight A’s. Significant dips in grades for reasons out of your control are certainly fine to explain, but make sure that anything you cover here is actually a major part of your high school experience and development.

It’s important to note that in light of the Supreme Court striking down the use of affirmative action in college admissions, many colleges have added open-ended prompts that give students the opportunity to discuss their racial background. Because the ruling allows colleges to consider race on an individual basis, essays are the prime place for you to reveal your racial background and its effect on you. If you feel that your racial background has impacted you significantly, this is the place to discuss that.

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