How to Write the UNC Charlotte Essays 2025-2026
UNC Charlotte (Charlotte) is an urban research university that’s become one of the fastest-growing and most influential institutions in the UNC system. With over 30,000 students from around the country and world, it offers more than 170 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs across eight colleges.
For the 2025-2026 application cycle, Charlotte has one required essay for all applicants to respond to about why they are interested in attending. Additionally, applicants to Charlotte’s Honors College will have to submit two more essays.
In this post, we’ll share our advice for writing all of these UNC Charlotte essays.
UNC Charlotte Supplemental Essay Prompts
All Applicants
Prompt: Please describe why you are interested in attending UNC Charlotte. Your statement lets us get to know you beyond your academic credentials. Your response will distinguish you from other qualified candidates within the applicant pool. (250 words)
Honors College Applicants
Prompt 1: Honors and merit scholars programs at UNC Charlotte expect you to be intellectually curious. Tell us in your own words how you have demonstrated a deeper desire to understand an idea or concept. Use specific examples from your own experiences to explain how you explore ideas beyond what is required in your school or life. What does this reveal about you as a learner? (500 words)
Prompt 2: What are the top 2 elements of the Honors College you are most interested in engaging with and why? (200 words)
All Applicants Prompt
Please describe why you are interested in attending UNC Charlotte. Your statement lets us get to know you beyond your academic credentials. Your response will distinguish you from other qualified candidates within the applicant pool. (250 words)
This is a prime example of the “Why This College?” prompt. Colleges want an idea of who you are, what motivates you, and what you want to do in the future. Through this kind of prompt, the admissions committee can see how you will fit in the college and how you might use its resources to achieve your goals.
Remember, even if you have already responded to a “Why School?” supplement for another college you’re applying to, you shouldn’t just copy and paste Charlotte into that template. While you will likely end up using some elements from that other essay, each school has different values and opportunities, so you should approach each “Why School?” prompt as a different essay.
As you begin drafting your response, there are two things you want to keep in mind. First, the reasons you want to go to Charlotte should be specific, and truly unique to Charlotte. Second, those reasons should clearly connect to you and your goals for college.
To identify opportunities that are unique to Charlotte, you’ll have to do some research. Clubs, course offerings, research opportunities, specific professors, and study abroad programs are some good starting points. Once you have identified some things you’re interested in, make sure you explain to your reader why you’re interested in these particular opportunities. You want to paint a picture of how you would fit into the Charlotte community—if you just list the opportunities without connecting them to you, your response may end up sounding more like a brochure than a college essay.
Say, for example, that you’re interested in pursuing a career in the arts, and you have found some opportunities at Charlotte that would help you do so. Here are some good and bad examples of how to describe those opportunities in your essay.
Good example: “At Charlotte, I would be able to fuel my creativity by exploring a wide range of artistic fields. On campus, courses from “Introduction to Historic Preservation” to “Architectural History and Criticism Methodologies” would encourage me to consider applications of the arts I am not familiar with. Charlotte would also allow me to take the skills I learn from these courses to a new environment, such as the study abroad program at the Geppert Academy of Art in Poland. I envision this program showing me the uniting power of art, even across continents and centuries.”
Bad example: “Charlotte offers lots of classes that would also teach me a lot about art, like those offered in the Art History department. I’m also super excited about the possibility of studying abroad at the Geppert Academy of Art, because I’ve always wanted to go to Poland and explore European cities.”
The discrepancy between these particular examples may seem extreme, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of speaking generally about why you want to attend a school. Nearly every school has an Art History department, and many schools have study abroad programs, so being excited about those things doesn’t say anything about why you’re excited to go to Charlotte, as opposed to any other school with an Art History department and a study abroad program.
The good example, on the other hand, connects Charlotte’s opportunities to the specific skills and lessons you hope to learn in college, and tells the admissions officer a little bit about how you envision yourself fitting into their community. Basically, you want to show your reader you’ve done more than a quick Google search, and actually thought about how you would take advantage of Charlotte’s opportunities to reach your personal goals for college.
Finally, there are some things you should avoid in this essay:
Don’t write a laundry list of name-dropped offerings. As you do your research, you’ll likely come across dozens of things you hope to do at Charlotte, but you only have 250 words. If you try to cram in as many opportunities as possible, your essay will end up sounding like a list of bullet points. Instead, select two or three things to focus on and describe in more detail. That will give your personality space to shine, which is, after all, the whole point of the college essay.
Don’t write about wanting to attend UNC Charlotte because it’s a state school and you’re a North Carolina resident as there’s a whole system of UNC schools you could just as easily attend for that reason. Focusing on that aspect of Charlotte in this essay will probably make your reader wonder why you aren’t just applying to the other UNC schools instead.
In the same vein, don’t harp too much on factors of the school that are not unique to Charlotte like the weather or the size of the student body. You could find dozens of other schools that check these requirements for you, so use your essay to focus on things that are genuinely special to Charlotte.
An essay that stands out will construct a clear image of the writer on Charlotte’s campus—how they fit in, what communities they engage with, and the ways in which their academic passions intersect with the other aspects of their life.
Honors College Prompt 1
Honors and merit scholars programs at UNC Charlotte expect you to be intellectually curious. Tell us in your own words how you have demonstrated a deeper desire to understand an idea or concept. Use specific examples from your own experiences to explain how you explore ideas beyond what is required in your school or life. What does this reveal about you as a learner? (500 words)
This essay is all about your intellectual curiosity. Honors students are driven to learn in all aspects of their life—beyond just what occurs in a classroom—so Charlotte is using this essay to gauge your passion for education. The key is to show your genuine interest and enthusiasm for learning new things.
In terms of what a good essay will contain, you should do the following three things:
- Identify an idea or concept you are passionate about understanding.
- Share anecdotes about how you’ve explored that interest in great detail.
- Reflect on what type of learner you are and how that will drive you at Charlotte.
Identifying an idea you are passionate about
The first step is to come up with the focus of your essay by asking yourself the following question: What is a topic I am genuinely curious about and can spend hours thinking about?
Many students will gravitate towards something related to their prospective major, however, that is not required of you for this essay. You could just as easily choose a topic that is completely unrelated to your major but you have a deep interest in. You don’t even need to choose something that is stereotypically “academic” like a science or history topic—maybe you’ve spent hours researching the profitability of NFL trade deals and use that as the focus of your essay. If anything, choosing something like that might make for a stronger essay because your passion and enthusiasm will shine through.
Whatever you choose, the most important piece of advice we can give is to pick something specific. For example, if you enjoy biology and want to study it in college, you don’t want the focus of your essay to just be biology. Instead, you should choose something like understanding the effects of urban runoff on watersheds or studying how caffeine affects reaction times.
Honing in on specific interests like these will show the depth of your intellectual curiosity and allow you to pinpoint more specific examples of the type of ways you’ve learned more about these niche topics.
Share anecdotes of your experiences
The bulk of your essay should be dedicated to describing how you’ve engaged with the topic or idea you’ve chosen. You want to be specific here and paint a vivid picture of the type of learner you are. Do you start by asking yourself questions to guide your thoughts or do you just jump in and start scouring the Internet for facts? Do you watch YouTube videos and rewind until the concept sticks or do you prefer to read books and jot down notes in the margin?
Giving your reader the specific details will help engage them with your essay more and really gain an appreciation for the type of student you are. You can see the difference specifics make between the following two examples:
Bad Example: “I’ve always been fascinated by how fast fashion has changed the way people dress. When I started noticing how similar everyone’s outfits looked, I read a few online articles about the rise of brands like Shein and Zara and watched a couple of TikToks explaining how it affects the environment. It made me realize how big the issue really is and how people don’t think about where their clothes come from.”
Good Example: “When I first started wondering why everyone seemed to be wearing the same clothes from Shein hauls, I didn’t stop at frustration—I got curious. I spent a weekend tracing the path of one $10 sweater from the factory to my feed, following YouTube documentaries about textile waste in Ghana and reading The Conscious Closet with a highlighter in hand. I made a spreadsheet comparing fast fashion prices to those of sustainable brands and discovered how deeply marketing and algorithms shape what we think of as “personal style.” To dig deeper, I interviewed friends about why they shop where they do and found that convenience often outweighs individuality.”
Additionally, you might want to talk about how you’ve engaged with this topic over a long period of time. Did your interest in this topic evolve from studying something else? Did you begin by just learning a lot on this topic from others but now you know so much you share fun facts about it on TikTok for others to learn from you? If you can, it’s a great idea to show how your engagement has evolved over time.
Reflect on who you are as a learner
This prompt also asks you to consider how your intellectual curiosity reflects on you as a learner. The Honors College wants to hear more than “I’m a visual/auditory learner” here. They are looking to understand you better.
Your job shifts from describing what you did to showing who you are because of it. You’ve already given the reader a clear picture of how you explored your idea, but now you want to zoom out and ask yourself: What did my curiosity uncover about the way I think, problem-solve, or engage with new information?
Think about your intellectual habits. Are you the kind of learner who keeps asking “why” until you get to the root of something? Do you get energy from connecting different subjects—like linking environmental science to ethics or history to art? Or are you someone who learns best by doing, who needs to test, build, or experience an idea to truly understand it? Reflecting on how you learn will give admissions officers insight into what kind of student you’ll be at the Honors College—not just in one class, but across your academic life.
You can also use this moment to reveal how your curiosity shapes your mindset. Maybe your deeper exploration taught you patience when answers didn’t come easily. Maybe it showed you that learning isn’t about perfection, but about persistence and revision. Or perhaps it helped you see that curiosity can be collaborative. These reflections show maturity and self-awareness, qualities that honors and merit programs value highly.
Finally, try to link what you’ve learned about yourself as a thinker to your future growth. How will these traits—your persistence, creativity, or openness to complexity, etc.—help you thrive in Charlotte’s Honors College? This not only closes your essay with intention but also reinforces that your intellectual curiosity isn’t situational; it’s part of who you are.
Honors College Prompt 2
What are the top 2 elements of the Honors College you are most interested in engaging with and why? (200 words)
Our advice for this essay is quite similar to the essay for all applicants to respond to. Again, you are asked to answer the question “Why This College?”, only now, you have to talk about the Honors College specifically. Discussing resources that are available to all Charlotte students won’t cut it here—you need to pick specific opportunities you can only get through the Honors College.
The prompt helps you out by limiting you to your top two elements—now you don’t have to worry about trying to cram too much into only 200 words. While there might be a great deal you are excited about when it comes to the Honors College, pinpoint the ones that get you the most excited. Additionally, think about ones that you can connect back to yourself easily, as the same rules from before apply here: you need to provide reasoning for why you are interested in these resources and that reasoning will come from your interests and goals.
Try to avoid picking reasons like “small class sizes and more personalized attention” or “joining a community of like-minded, driven students”. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be part of the Honors College for these reasons, but for the sake of this essay, these are very generic sentiments and don’t allow you to show the admissions committee you are serious about the UNC Charlotte Honors College in particular, as just about every Honors College offers these benefits.
Instead, pick specific opportunities. For example, a student passionate about science research might choose the Conference Travel Support the Honors College offers because it will open up doors for them to travel around the country to present their scientific findings in their chosen field. Another student who is passionate about international relations might be thrilled with the City as a Text: International study abroad programs only available to Honors students because it will allow them to explore these cities with a more critical eye.
Remember, the why is the most important part of your essay. Make it clear to the admissions committee that you would take full advantage of what the Honors College has to offer and would be an asset to the community.
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