How to Write the Santa Clara University Essay 2026-2027
Located in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara is a Jesuit university built around the Mission Santa Clara de Asís. One of the best ways to improve your chances of acceptance to this competitive school is to submit thorough, creative essay responses.
For this application cycle, Santa Clara has one optional supplemental essay. This optional writing is through the SCU portal, not the Common Application. Although it is optional, at selective schools like Santa Clara, we always strongly encourage you to take advantage of any extra opportunity to share yourself with the admissions committee. In this post, we’ll break down the prompt so that you can be confident that your essay will help your application shine.
Read these Santa Clara essay examples from real students to inspire your writing!
Santa Clara University Optional Supplemental Essay Prompt
At Santa Clara University, we push our students to be creative, be challenged, and be the solution. Think about an ethical dilemma that you care about that our society is currently facing. This can be something happening in your local community or more globally. How can an SCU education help you prepare for and address this challenge? (150-300 words)
This is an example of the Political/Global Issues archetype prompt, which means that admissions officers want to see that you’re an engaged citizen who cares about the people around you and actively works to make your community better.
Note that the prompt does not ask you to provide a full solution to the issue you choose to write about. Rather, your goal should be to explain how Santa Clara specifically, and its educational offerings, would help you start to address this challenge. They don’t want a policy paper—they want a personal reflection that ties values, action, and education together.
The first step is to identify the ethical dilemma you want to focus on. Make sure to choose an issue that you genuinely, personally care about. As the prompt suggests, don’t discount the power of local-level problems—having a direct connection to the issue is always a plus, and other students are less likely to be writing about them.
To help you decide on an issue, consider the following questions:
- What ethical dilemma motivates, frustrates, or interests me the most in my community or in the world? (e.g., climate change, housing inequality, AI bias, healthcare access)
- Why does this issue matter to me on a personal and moral level?
- How have I personally encountered or thought deeply about this issue? (e.g., family experience, volunteer work, class project, local activism)
- Which part of SCU’s education—its Jesuit mission, specific programs, research centers, professors, classes, student organizations, etc.—connects directly to this issue?
- How do you envision using your SCU education to make tangible strides towards resolving this issue in the future?
Regardless of the scale of the issue, you should emphasize the ethical or moral dimension of it, as the prompt specifically requests that. For example, if you want to write about manatees being killed by irresponsible boaters near your hometown in Florida, make sure you explicitly state your belief that all animals have a right to a safe habitat.
Also, try to be specific about the dilemma. Instead of something really broad like, “climate change,” maybe focus on food waste at local grocery stores. Instead of “inequality,” maybe focus on digital access in low-income schools. The more specific you can narrow your issue to, the more your personal views and thoughts on it can shine through. A more specific issue will also be far more memorable to the admissions team reading everyone’s essays.
The next step is to demonstrate how specific resources at Santa Clara, or the school’s broader values, will help you deal with this issue. You should show that you have done your research on what SCU offers, and that you’ve spent time thinking about how those offerings align with your own goals. The majority of your essay should focus on this connection to Santa Clara, which is really the heart of the prompt—you shouldn’t spend more than a few sentences describing the issue itself.
Let’s look at a possible example below:
“I’m most concerned about ocean pollution because of its effects on marine life, as I’m from a coastal area and have seen its detriments. Santa Clara University’s Environmental Studies and Sciences program and Center for Sustainability seem like great places to learn more about how to protect the oceans, so I definitely want to join these programs to help solve this important issue.”
This excerpt talks vaguely about ocean pollution, but doesn’t describe the ethical dimension of the issue, doesn’t give any detail about the specific detriments the student has seen, and doesn’t provide a deep enough connection to SCU.
While the resources listed are a good start, lots of schools have Environmental Studies programs and sustainability centers—you need to go beyond just name-dropping, and explain in concrete terms how these opportunities will teach you skills or give you experiences that will help you resolve this issue you’re passionate about.
Check out this extended, revised version below:
“The stark contrast between the pristine beaches of my coastal hometown and my knowledge that the ocean becomes more polluted by the day has made me acutely aware of the moral responsibility we all have to do what’s right for future generations, not just what’s easy today. Additionally, human survival depends on a healthy marine biome—as I became a teenager, I watched numerous fisheries in neighboring towns close as the water became too polluted to support the fish.
At Santa Clara University, the Jesuit value of caring for our common home perfectly encapsulates how I think about ocean pollution. Through the Environmental Studies and Sciences major’s Sea Kayak Expedition to Baja California, I will learn how other parts of the world are working to keep their oceans clean.
On campus, I look forward to contributing to the ‘Sustainability Across the Curriculum Program’ at the Center for Sustainability, as the health of our oceans affects all academic disciplines. Today, Moby Dick might never be written—pollution is disrupting the marine food pyramid to the point that many whales are unable to get the quantities of food they need to survive.
Protecting our environment is not just a scientific challenge, but a moral imperative for the preservation of all life on this planet, human and non-human alike.”
This much stronger response provides a deeper reflection on the writer’s personal connection to the issue, and explains exactly how the resources they’ve identified will help them work towards cleaning up the oceans. Your response should always be looking forward. Don’t just describe what the issue is today, but paint a picture of how, as a result of your actions at SCU, you can start moving towards resolving it.
Finally, note these common mistakes that you’ll want to avoid making:
- Being too broad. Don’t just say “climate change is bad.” Narrow in on how and why it matters to you.
- Turning it into a policy debate. This isn’t about proving who’s right; it’s about showing your personal stake and ethical lens.
- Listing SCU resources without connection. Don’t name-drop the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics or Jesuit tradition without explaining how they link to your story.
- Ignoring the “you” part. If your particular essay could be written by hundreds of other students, it’s not specific enough.
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