How to Write the University of Utah Honors College Essays 2025-2026
Located in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah is the oldest college in the state. While there is no supplemental essay for general applicants, if you wish to apply for the Honors College, you will be required to choose between two prompts to submit an essay.
In this post, we’ll share our advice for writing the University of Utah essays.
University of Utah Honors College Supplemental Essay Prompts
Honors College Applicants
Prompt: If you would like to apply to the Honors College, you are required to respond to one of the following prompts. (500 words)
Option A: Intellectual Traditions courses in the Honors College help prepare students to make informed decisions about complex, interdisciplinary problems. Each course explores big or universal questions that transcend historical bounds. You are tasked with creating a new Intellectual Traditions course. Please name your course and describe the topics and questions it would cover.
Option B: The Honors Thesis is an independent research or creative project completed with the mentorship of a professor. Describe what motivates you to pursue this opportunity, and why you would like to have the chance to do an Honors Thesis.
Honors College Prompt, Option A
Intellectual Traditions courses in the Honors College help prepare students to make informed decisions about complex, interdisciplinary problems. Each course explores big or universal questions that transcend historical bounds. You are tasked with creating a new Intellectual Traditions course. Please name your course and describe the topics and questions it would cover. (500 words)
This essay allows you to get creative and step into the shoes of a college professor. The biggest mistake you can make if you choose this prompt is to pick a class that can already be found at Utah like “Geology” or “History of Art”.
You want to use this essay to share or expand upon a part of your personality and passions the admissions committee hasn’t learned much about yet through this essay. This isn’t just a “what class would be fun” exercise; it’s a chance to show your intellectual curiosity, creativity, and appreciation for the Honors College’s Intellectual Traditions.
The best essays will blend your own passions with the Honors College’s philosophy and demonstrate how your course idea fits naturally into its curriculum.
For example, let’s look at how you can turn your interests into exciting college courses:
- An aspiring public health advocate and life-long tinkerer discovered her interest in environmental health after testing water quality in her neighborhood. She wants to teach an immersive class called “From Policy to Pipes: Building Sustainable Water Infrastructure” to collaborate with local policy makers and Utah’s College of Engineering to design sustainable urban water systems.
- A student who loves acting in his school plays and who wants to major in neuroscience proposed the “Science of Storytelling”, a course that combines neuroscience research and theater workshops to learn—through theory and practice—the psychology of emotion and how performance can influence brain chemistry.
- After immigrating to the US to escape a repressive political regime, a student discovered video games were a bridge to connect with his peers. His class is “Play for Change,” a course blending game design, sociology, and psychology. He imagines students creating their own games addressing social issues like migration, inequality, or climate change, to not just bring people together, but have real conversations
- A student has always been fascinated by music therapy since sitting in on sessions her younger brother attended after a brain injury. She proposes “NeuroSound: Music, Medicine, and the Mind,” combining neuroscience, bioengineering, and music studies, with students designing assistive tech devices that use sound for cognitive or motor recovery.
You may notice a couple things about these examples. First, they all are interdisciplinary. The courses combine multiple interests the student has, like neuroscience and theater or video games and social change. This results in the admissions committee learning more about the student. Additionally, it shows layers of complexity to your intellectual curiosity, making you more unique than the student who wants to teach a class on “The History of the American Rail System,” which, presumably, would only focus on one topic.
Another successful aspect of these examples is that we see where each student’s passion for the topic came from. It’s extremely important your essay provides the background to explain why this course is meaningful to you. Whether it’s because you’ve done work related to the topic before or you had a personal experience with it, it’s necessary that you show the admissions committee why your class is personal to you.
Remember, this essay is just as much a chance to describe your new class as it is an opportunity to share more about yourself with the admissions officers. With 500 words at your disposal, there should be ample room to describe your class and explain your connection to the subject.
Finally, don’t forget that the prompt asks for you to describe the topics and questions your class would cover. This doesn’t mean you need to list out everything like a syllabus would, but you should make sure you talk about key themes your class explores and maybe what some of the big units you would touch upon. For example, a student whose class is about designing happiness through the study of psychology, economics, architecture, and culture, might include a paragraph like this:
“In Designing Happiness, we’d begin with one question: Why do we treat happiness as a destination instead of something we can create? Students would explore this from multiple angles—psychology’s insights into dopamine and habit formation, philosophy’s questioning of what it means to live well, and urban design’s role in shaping daily joy. We’d analyze Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index, conduct a case study on how Copenhagen’s public spaces contribute to it being the happiest city, and even test small interventions on campus to see how environmental factors affect mood. The goal wouldn’t be to define happiness, but to understand how culture, policy, and design intersect to shape it, and how we might use that knowledge to build more fulfilling communities.”
Honors College Prompt, Option B
The Honors Thesis is an independent research or creative project completed with the mentorship of a professor. Describe what motivates you to pursue this opportunity, and why you would like to have the chance to do an Honors Thesis. (500 words)
Like with the prompt above, this is an opportunity to demonstrate your intellectual curiosity and passion for learning to the Honors College admissions committee. However, if thinking creatively about a new course seemed too daunting, this prompt might speak to you more because it asks you to focus on a tangible experience you will have: your Honors Thesis.
It’s important to note, the prompt does not ask what you want to pursue your Honors Thesis in. So, even if you are undecided—which is natural as you’re still in high school—you could still choose this prompt because it’s more to do with why you want to write a thesis.
That being said, if you already know what you would like to write about, don’t hold back! Even if you just have a general sense of the subject matter or the types of questions you would like to include in your thesis, you should share those. Your essay will be stronger if you can at least allude to general things you are interested in pursuing rather than keeping it completely surface level.
Ultimately, you need to discuss your passion for going above and beyond in your learning and why you are excited about the idea of doing a deep dive to learn more about a specific topic during your college career.
What Makes a Good Essay
A strong essay will open with a clear sense of curiosity: What kind of questions keep you up at night? What problem, issue, or theme do you keep returning to in your studies, even when it’s not assigned? Maybe it’s the way urban design impacts mental health, or how music influences memory retention. Start by showing that spark—perhaps through a vivid anecdote, class discussion, or moment of discovery—so your interest feels lived, not abstract.
Next, you should demonstrate how this motivation has already shaped the way you engage as a learner. An Honors Thesis is about sustained, self-directed inquiry, so admissions officers want evidence that you’re ready to take on that responsibility. Describe a time you went beyond the classroom to explore an idea—maybe you read additional research papers after a lab experiment, or conducted interviews for a history project that grew into something larger.
The key is to show your process of intellectual curiosity: how you seek out information, what excites you about research or creative exploration, and what you’ve learned about tackling complex questions without a clear answer.
Then, look ahead. Explain what specifically draws you to the Honors Thesis experience. Mention that you’re eager for one-on-one mentorship with a professor, but don’t stop there—show that you understand the deeper value of this opportunity. Maybe you’re drawn to the challenge of producing original research that could help inform public policy, or you see it as a bridge to graduate school or a creative career. This is where you should connect your long-term academic and professional goals to the kind of independence, rigor, and intellectual growth the thesis provides.
Finally, close your essay by circling back to your personal motivation in a reflective way. How does pursuing a thesis align with the kind of learner, and person, you want to be? Maybe it’s about contributing new insights to your field, or maybe it’s about learning how to persist through uncertainty and discovery. The most compelling essays end with a sense of momentum: that the Honors Thesis isn’t a capstone, but a launchpad—a way to turn passion into purpose and curiosity into impact.
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