How to Write the UNC Greensboro Essays 2025-2026
UNC Greensboro is a public research university nestled in the vibrant arts district of Greensboro, North Carolina. It offers strong undergraduate and graduate programs in areas like nursing, business, fine arts, and the sciences, all grounded in real-world experience and community engagement. UNCG prides itself on its inclusive culture, small class sizes, and opportunities for students to lead through service, research, and creative work.
This year, UNC Greensboro only has one optional supplemental essay for students to respond to. While this essay is optional, we strongly encourage you to submit a response as your supplemental essays are the only part of your application where you can speak directly to the admissions officers reading your application and share key details of who you are that don’t appear on a transcript. Plus, this essay has three different options you can choose from which should hopefully give you more freedom to talk about what you want.
Keep reading to find out our best tips for responding to UNC Greensboro’s supplemental essay for 2025-2026.
University of North Carolina Greensboro Supplemental Essay Prompts
Prompt (optional): UNCG’s essay is optional but it gives you a chance to tell us more about yourself. Please answer one of the following essay prompts:
Option A: Describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will impact your college experience and your contribution to the UNCG community. Consider reflecting on your ideas about student responsibility, academic integrity, campus citizenship, or a call to service. (200-600 words)
Option B: Explain your choice of academic major and how you plan to use your degree to meet your career goals? (200-600 words)
Option C: What does “global citizenship” mean to you? How do you envision becoming a global citizen through your studies in your future career? (200-600 words)
Option A (optional)
Describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will impact your college experience and your contribution to the UNCG community. Consider reflecting on your ideas about student responsibility, academic integrity, campus citizenship, or a call to service. (200-600 words)
While this prompt might seem like it’s asking a lot at first, at the end of the day it is a chance for you to share an important aspect of your identity that will shape the type of student you will be in college. Another way to think about this prompt is as a Diversity essay.
The admissions committee wants to know:
- How have your past experiences shaped your character?
- How will you bring these qualities and lessons into the UNCG community?
- How will you contribute to the culture of responsibility, integrity, and service on campus?
Brainstorming Your Topic
To help you brainstorm, consider the following questions:
- What experience in your life has changed how you view responsibility or citizenship?
- Is there an accomplishment that required you to show leadership, integrity, or service?
- Have you ever been part of a community that emphasized giving back or supporting others? How did that shape your values?
- Was there a moment when you realized the importance of academic honesty or student responsibility?
- How have these experiences inspired you to contribute meaningfully to a college campus?
As you start brainstorming, do remember that the way colleges factor race into their admissions processes is different since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023. Colleges can still consider race on an individual level, however, so if you would like to write your response about how your racial identity has impacted you, you are welcome to do so.
Tips for Writing Your Essay
When it comes to actually writing your essay, make sure you follow the prompt’s instructions: “Describe a meaningful event, experience, or accomplishment in your life.” One meaningful thing, not multiple. By honing in on one specific event, experience, or accomplishment, you will be able to share more details with the admissions committee and dive deep into why it is important to you.
We often recommend using anecdotes to bring your event or experience to life. Vivid details and descriptive imagery make your essay more interesting to read, while also revealing more about you. Consider the difference in how these two examples describe the same accomplishment:
Weak Example: “My proudest moment was organizing a toy drive for my town during the holidays last year after I saw the economic hardship my community faced as a result of the hurricane.”
While this does provide us details about what the accomplishment was, the student just tells us without placing us in the moment with them or sharing more about the details of why it was a proud moment for them. Consider the difference:
Strong Example: “‘Do you think this one’s for me?’ a little girl whispered, holding up a stuffed bunny from the donation pile. Her wide-eyed smile that warmed my heart made the weeks of late-night planning sessions and weekends spent going door to door for toy contributions completely worth it.”
Notice how this example starts with a quote to immediately bring the reader into the moment. It also includes more details about what organizing the toy drive entailed up front so we get a sense of why this student was proud of the work they had done on a personal level.
You have a maximum of 600 words to use for this essay, so take your time fleshing out your meaningful moment. While you definitely want to incorporate background details to contextualize the event, and you want to thoroughly explain your role in the experience, you also need to highlight your character through your description of the event.
The anecdote you share should shine a light on one of your positive qualities that you will bring with you to UNC Greensboro’s campus. While the prompt gives you multiple traits to choose from, you can also highlight different ones if there is something you feel better represents you.
A great way to highlight your character traits through your anecdote is to provide specific details of what actions you took—for example, if you are trying to show your leadership you might say something like, “When half our robotics team quit mid-season, I reorganized our build schedule, reassigned coding responsibilities, and stayed late every night to ensure we were competition-ready.” Another option is to incorporate your internal monologue to share your inner thoughts and feelings: “She looked down at the math worksheet, shoulders slumped, and for a moment I thought about how many times I’d felt that same frustration. ‘Okay,’ I told myself, ‘don’t just explain it—make her believe she can do it.’”
Once you’ve clearly shared an experience and incorporated personal reflection about how that experience exemplifies a particular quality, you need to discuss how you will continue to show up with this quality at college. UNC Greensboro wants to admit students who will be assets to their campus community, so you need to show that in your essay.
This goes beyond saying, “I will continue to serve others with empathy at UNC Greensboro.” Like before, you need to show how you will continue to engage with this aspect of your personality. For example, a student who has volunteered at a local women’s shelter might write something like this:
“Luckily, my commitment to uplifting women doesn’t have to stop when I move away for college. When I join the Bridging Basics group at UNC Greensboro I will get to continue helping women feel a sense of dignity—this time by providing makeup and personal hygiene products rather than sweatshirts and blankets.”
Show exactly how you will fit into UNC Greensboro’s campus—whether that’s through a club, interactions/conversations you will have with your roommates, school programs and initiatives, etc.—so the admissions officers don’t have to do the hard work of imagining what type of student you will be; it will be right in front of their eyes.
Option B (optional)
Explain your choice of academic major and how you plan to use your degree to meet your career goals? (200-600 words)
This is a classic “Why This Major?” essay. This one is a good option if you are particularly passionate about your prospective college major and want to share your enthusiasm for the topic and your future goals with the admissions officers.
While it’s still possible to write a “Why This Major?” essay if you are undecided, since you have the option to pick from the other two prompts, it might be a better idea, in this case, to not choose this prompt if you aren’t completely set on your major.
In order to write a successful essay, you need to accomplish three main things:
- Explain how your interest developed
- Detail your goals and aspirations
- Describe how you will use school resources to your benefit (this isn’t stated in the prompt, but the best responses will include this)
Beginning with explaining how your interest developed, the best way to do this is through examples. Whether you include a few examples of you deep in research or you share an anecdote about your first encounter with the subject, make sure to paint a picture for the reader. Show us what about the topic excites you, how it makes you feel, and why you fell in love with it. Here are a few examples of successful ways to accomplish this:
Example 1: “My mom’s bookshelf is the cheapest, fastest airplane you will ever find. On the left, bound in thick leather is Shakespeare’s first play, Henry VI. Move one over and we’ve traveled to the south of the continent to Greece for a quick tour of Plato’s Republic. Next stop: tsarist Russia for War and Peace. Every day, I get to leave behind the drone of suburban Ohio and transport myself to a new country and period. The noise of the outside world falls away as I travel through the pages, across space and time.”
Example 2: “Age 7: I see a white rhino at the zoo and buy a stuffed animal, affectionately named Rob the Rhino.
Age 11: I ask all my friends to donate to the World Wildlife Fund to support endangered rhinos in place of a new lego set for my birthday.
Age 15: I learn climate change causes the rhinos’ grasslands to dry up and flood in an unpredictable cycle.
Age 16: I found the Forces of Nature club in my school to develop creative solutions to protect habitats from the effects of climate change.”
Once you’ve established what your interest is, where it came from, and why you are passionate about it, it’s time to be more forward-looking. UNC Greensboro wants to admit students who are ambitious and driven, with a passion for changing the world. Now’s the time to share your aspirations with the admissions committee.
Tell the reader what you hope to accomplish one day in regards to your field of study. You might know exactly what you want, for example a student who is going into Computer Science might want to create a social media platform that actively promotes diversity of ideas rather than echo chambers as part of its mission. On the other hand, another student might know they want to major in psychology, but they don’t know how they want to apply it yet.
In the event you don’t have a clearly defined goal, it’s okay to admit you don’t know where your studies will take you—after all, the whole point of college is to explore new ideas and figure out what you are passionate about. Don’t completely write off this portion of the essay though. Still talk about what you hope to bring to the world in a broader sense. Rather than describing the specific contribution you will make to the world of medicine, describe how you are studying biology to learn about the inner workings of the human body so you are equipped to handle any organ or system.
Finally, you’ll want to dedicate a portion of your essay to the school-specific opportunities you will utilize during your four years to both deepen your passion and work towards your goals.
There are two key things to keep in mind. First, quality over quantity is everything here. Name dropping four classes and three professors without expanding on why you are drawn to them won’t add much to your essay. Instead, pick two or three resources that closely align with your specific interests and explain why you are excited about this opportunity and how it will help you achieve your goals.
Secondly, the offerings you discuss have to be unique to UNC Greensboro. Nearly every school you apply to will offer Chemistry 101 or have a finance club. You need to spend some time poking around their website to find distinctive opportunities you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else to prove to the admissions committee you genuinely want to go to the school.
All in all, your passion and interest for your major should be front and center in this essay. Think of it like you are taking the admissions officers on a journey from your past to your present (at UNC Greensboro) to your future goals.
Option C (optional)
What does “global citizenship” mean to you? How do you envision becoming a global citizen through your studies in your future career? (200-600 words)
For this prompt, the admissions committee wants to see that you’re thinking about your role in the world and how you plan to make a positive impact beyond your local environment. They also want to understand how you’ll use your education to engage with global issues. You don’t just have to be studying International Relations to answer this prompt! Anyone can talk about global citizenship—let’s go over how.
Rather than thinking about “global citizenship”, you can reframe this question to think about how you want to make a difference in the world or make it a better place. These might be more tangible starting points for your brainstorming.
There are three key things your essay should accomplish:
- Define what global citizenship means to you.
- Connect your college academics to global engagement.
- Explain how your career will have a global impact.
Defining Global Citizenship
This first step of your essay is to define what it means to you to be a global citizen who makes an impact in the world. A word of caution: you should not write a dictionary definition or start with a long-winded, academic description. Writing something like this will add nothing to your essay:
“To me, global citizenship signifies the conscious embrace of an identity that transcends borders, where one recognizes both the moral responsibility and the intellectual privilege of engaging with cultures, histories, and challenges beyond one’s own.”
Instead, you want to define what global citizenship means through tangible examples from your own life. What experiences opened your eyes to other cultures or global issues? Was there a time you exercised social responsibility or advocated for a cause bigger than yourself? Drawing on personal experiences will show the admissions officers that you have a true understanding of what it means to be a global citizen, while also sharing an anecdote about you (bonus!).
Consider the following example of how a student can naturally show the reader what global citizenship means to her by starting her essay with an example:
“The streets outside City Hall echoed our chants as I held up my hand-painted sign: “There is No Planet B.” Sweat dripped down my neck, but when I checked my phone during a lull in the march, I froze. On Instagram, I saw students in Sweden, Chile, and Kenya holding almost identical signs, their videos echoing the same words I had just shouted minutes before. The realization struck me—I wasn’t just part of a protest in my city, I was part of a global chorus demanding change. In that moment, I understood global citizenship as something larger than belonging to one country; it meant recognizing that my voice was braided into thousands of others across borders, that my responsibility stretched beyond my hometown to the shared challenges of humanity.”
Opening the essay with this anecdote not only shows us what global citizenship means to her, but it also shows us an issue she is passionate about (climate change) and actions she has taken to address it. We are left knowing immensely more than we would have if she just started her essay with a dictionary definition.
Connect Your Academics to Global Engagement
The next part of your essay is to explain how you will become a better global citizen during, or as a result of, your college education.
Remember, you don’t have to study Government or International Relations to further your global citizenship. A student studying civil engineering could talk about how they want to build better infrastructure so people can more easily get around and connect with one another. Another student studying literature could write about how reading novels with characters from different cultures will help them appreciate multiculturalism from Greensboro.
Make sure you flesh out how your academics will help you engage with the world and make it a better place. What classes will you take that will teach you important skills? What extracurriculars will you join that will help you give back or engage with other cultures? Clearly explain what you will do and what you will get out of it.
Here’s an example of how a student could begin to address this part of the essay:
“At UNC Greensboro, I see Communications as my path to global citizenship. I want to study how stories—whether through journalism, digital media, or intercultural dialogue—can transcend borders and bring people together. I imagine myself in the Speaking Out for Community Change seminar, learning how a single phrase can carry vastly different meanings across cultures, and then testing those lessons when I study abroad in Italy or Korea. By immersing myself in these opportunities, I’ll strengthen my ability to listen, translate, and connect diverse voices. In doing so, I hope to graduate not just as a communicator, but as someone equipped to amplify perspectives that too often go unheard.”
Explain Your Career’s Global Impact
The last piece of this essay is looking to the future and the career you hope to have one day. UNC Greensboro wants to admit students who will be committed to making the world a better place for years and years to come. While you don’t have to know exactly what your career will entail, you should provide a general idea of the change you hope to see—and be—in the world.
For example, maybe you know you want to go into medicine one day, but you aren’t sure in what specific area yet. You could say something like, “Whether I become a physician or go into public health, I want to use my skills to reduce disparities in healthcare and ensure that where someone is born doesn’t determine the care they receive.” A sentence like that shows us this student’s broad goals for helping others, while still acknowledging they are undecided in their future.
You should try to have your essay flow naturally from talking about your studies to your career. For example, here’s what a smooth transition looks like:
“These experiences at UNCG will guide my future work in designing and managing public spaces that prioritize accessibility, cultural awareness, and environmental stewardship. I envision coordinating educational programs that connect local communities with global environmental initiatives, or developing recreation initiatives that teach stewardship and foster cross-cultural understanding. By applying the knowledge I’ll gain in my community engagement and environmental education courses, I can transform the lessons from the classroom into meaningful, real-world solutions—creating parks, trails, and programs that help people connect with each other and the planet on a broader scale.”
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