How to Write the University of Vermont Essays 2025-2026
Founded in 1791, the University of Vermont (UVM) is one of the oldest colleges in the country. Over the years, it has established itself with over 100 majors for students to choose from. Its location in Burlington is known as a vibrant college town with access to arts, culture, and nature.
While applicants to UVM are not required to submit a supplemental essay, there is one optional prompt students can respond to if they would like to do so. There are six prompt options to choose from.
Because UVM is a competitive school to get into, we strongly advise students to respond to one of these prompts and include an essay with their application so they can share more about themselves with the admissions officers and add extra detail to their application. Plus, some of these prompts might be a fun reprieve from your other supplements (writing about ice cream and your favorite song, yes please!)
Keep reading for our advice on which prompt to choose and how to respond.
University of Vermont Supplemental Essay Prompts
Prompt (optional): If you would like an opportunity to further present yourself to the Admissions Committee, you may submit a short answer to ONE of the following prompts. (500 words)
Option A: Why UVM?
Option B: Established in Burlington, VT, Ben & Jerry’s is synonymous with both ice cream and social change. The “Save Our Swirled” flavor raises awareness of climate change, and “I Dough, I Dough” celebrates marriage equality. If you worked alongside Ben & Jerry, what charitable flavor would you develop and why?
Option C: UVM is a community that celebrates the unique identity of every student, faculty and staff member. Tell us how your identities have shaped the ways you interact with the world.
Option D: From the Green Mountains to Lake Champlain to our campus, UVM students are inspired by our location to think about their relationship to the environment. What does your relationship with your environment look like?
Option E: If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be? What is your connection to the song?
Option F: What is your favorite sentence from your application essay?
Option A (optional)
Why UVM? (500 words)
This is your classic “Why This College?” essay. The point of this essay is to communicate your genuine enthusiasm for attending UVM over hundreds of other colleges. Additionally, you want to use this essay to convince the admissions officers that you would not only fit in well with the UVM community, but also contribute to it and make it stronger.
Most “Why This College” essays tend to have stricter word limits, so you should take advantage of the ample space UVM gives you to respond to this prompt.
If none of the other essay options appeal to you, we’d recommend submitting this essay as it’s a great chance to emphasize your enthusiasm for UVM directly to the admissions officers.
What to Avoid
Before getting into what you should do, let’s go over a few things you should avoid in this essay. The biggest thing is avoiding general statements like “I want an interdisciplinary liberal arts education” or “The access to beautiful nature is exciting”. Facts about the school that you could find in a brochure or front-and-center on their website are not unique enough to show that you are actually passionate about attending UVM specifically. Also, they could apply to dozens, if not hundreds, of other schools.
In the same vein, we caution against platitudes like “It felt like home when I visited” because a statement like this doesn’t tell us anything about why you are drawn to UVM.
This isn’t to say you can’t talk about any of these in your essay—you just have to elaborate on the why and establish why these more generic aspects of the school excite you. For example, UVM’s connection to nature can be a big draw for many of its applicants, so it’s natural that you might want to incorporate that into this essay. The key is to pick more specific aspects and connect them to your interests—whether that’s access to hiking gear and trails because you feel most at peace in nature or joining one of UVM’s many outdoorsy clubs that relates to one of your passions.
Another thing to avoid in your essay is name-dropping a dozen different offerings that you plan to take advantage of without elaborating on what you hope to get out of those resources/opportunities. The admissions committee doesn’t want to read a list of professors, classes, and clubs you pulled off of their website if you aren’t going to explain why each of those offerings are significant to you and your goals. Instead, it’s far more effective to pick a few unique offerings and go into detail about why you are looking forward to those specifically.
What to Include
Now that we’ve covered what you don’t want to do in your essay, let’s talk about what you should include. As we stated above, you want this essay to highlight why UVM is a good fit for you and why you are a good fit for UVM. This means your essay needs to also include information about yourself, like your interests.
You should probably start by spending some time on UVM’s website to find information on classes, professors, research opportunities, extracurriculars, special programs or centers, study abroad opportunities, and more that appeal to you. From there, pick a handful that you are especially drawn to and then find connections to your experiences.
For example, say a student is excited by the extensive undergraduate research opportunities UVM offers, specifically working with Professor Tiffany Hutchins to develop interventions for people with autism spectrum disorder. The student would explain that they are interested in conducting this research because they have always been fascinated by psychopathology and during their time volunteering at a clinic they gravitated towards working with patients with autism spectrum disorder.
Another example could be a student who is drawn to UVM because of their Agroecology and Landscape Design major. This is a unique major that combines growing food in a sustainable way and designing landscapes that are multifunctional and promote sustainability. Because this student has a passion for sustainable food production—which they’ve nurtured through gardening as a hobby, building a community garden at their school, and volunteering at a vegan soup kitchen—this major fits right into their interests and goals for redesigning farmland to better serve the growing population while strengthening the environment.
As you can see through both of these examples, as the student elaborates on why they are interested in the particular offering at UVM, they share details about their experiences and interests to help the reader learn more about them. For each resource/opportunity you include in your essay, you should do the same.
Remember, your entire essay doesn’t have to be dedicated to one central theme (i.e., you don’t have to spend the entire essay talking about nature and environmental opportunities). You could discuss multiple aspects that draw you to UVM and highlight each one in its own paragraph. You have 500 words to work with; don’t squander them!
Option B (optional)
Established in Burlington, VT, Ben & Jerry’s is synonymous with both ice cream and social change. The “Save Our Swirled” flavor raises awareness of climate change, and “I Dough, I Dough” celebrates marriage equality. If you worked alongside Ben & Jerry, what charitable flavor would you develop and why? (500 words)
Who wouldn’t want to write about ice cream in their college essay? If you are passionate about social change—or you just love ice cream—this could be a great prompt for you. With 500 words though, way more of your essay will be devoted to describing the cause you care about and why rather than the components of your ice cream flavor.
For this prompt, you want to highlight an issue you care deeply about and that is close to your heart. Since college essays should always be used to reveal more about you, we recommend choosing a cause you have some experience with. For example, it would make sense for a student who volunteers at an animal shelter to pick something like animal abuse rather than, say, racial equality.
When it comes to your brainstorming process, ask yourself the following questions:
- What social issue or cause are you most passionate about right now?
- Is there a problem you’ve witnessed in your school, community, or family that you want to help solve?
- Why does this cause matter to you personally—did an experience, class, or event spark your passion for it?
- How do you already engage with this issue in your daily life (volunteering, advocacy, family traditions, personal values)?
- How does raising awareness through something joyful, like ice cream, make the message more powerful?
Once you have an idea in mind, you can get to the fun part: coming up with a name! This is where you can let your creativity shine through. This part of the process might require some more thinking, so allow yourself ample time to brainstorm a bunch of names. You want it to be something memorable that encapsulates your message, while also being short and sweet.
Although you’re not explicitly asked to talk about the makeup of your flavor in your essay, one strategy might be to talk about the different components of your ice cream and how they relate to the cause you care about. For example:
“In Meltdown Mocha, coffee ice cream will be swirled with caramel ‘heat waves’ and chunks of melting white chocolate glaciers. To mirror rising sea levels, I’d include a salty-sweet ribbon, evoking the taste of seawater seeping into fresh-water sources.”
Remember, the ice cream is just a vehicle to talk about a social cause you care about. It’s far more important that your essay shares details about why you are passionate about this topic, how you’ve engaged with it in the past, and what ideas you have to address it/support it in the future. If your essay reads more like an ice cream recipe, you probably need to go back to the brainstorming stage.
To illustrate how you can use this essay to talk about a social issue you care about, consider the following students:
- Ryan – Resilient Roots: Ryan grew up helping his family tend a small community garden that provided fresh produce in a food desert. He saw how neighbors relied on those tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers because grocery stores were far and overpriced. His flavor, Resilient Roots, celebrates the dignity of growing one’s own food and his belief in sustainable, local agriculture. Daniel wants to continue working on urban farming initiatives in college, making fresh food a reality for underserved neighborhoods.
- Casey – Equali-Tea Swirl: Casey grew up hearing stories of her mother and grandmother facing pay disparities in the workplace. Determined to tackle gender inequality, she joined her school’s Women in Leadership club and organized panels where female professionals shared their experiences in male-dominated fields. Equali-Tea Swirl is a celebration of the work generations of women have done before her and of the work that her generation still must do. Casey hopes to study political science and go to law school so she can craft policies ensuring equal pay and representation in leadership.
- Mateo – Clean Water Cocoa: On a family trip to visit relatives in Honduras, Mateo realized that access to clean drinking water was not guaranteed for everyone. He was shocked when his cousins had to boil water daily and couldn’t trust the taps. Back home, he began fundraising for water purification projects in Central America. His flavor, Clean Water Cocoa, represents both the injustice of water scarcity and the hope for solutions through engineering and activism. Mateo wants to help design systems that make clean water a right, not a privilege.
Option C (optional)
UVM is a community that celebrates the unique identity of every student, faculty and staff member. Tell us how your identities have shaped the ways you interact with the world. (500 words)
This is a common Diversity prompt that you’ve probably encountered at other schools. That means that, as you prepare to write your response, the first thing you need to do is focus on some aspect of your identity, upbringing, or personality that makes you different from other people.
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.
If race doesn’t seem like the right topic for you, however, keep in mind that there is no shortage of ways we are different from one another. Common ones that normally come to mind first include race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and the other aspects of our identities that people normally think of when they hear the word “diversity.” That’s not to say that you can’t write about those things, of course. But if you don’t feel like those things have played a significant role in shaping your worldview, don’t worry. Here are some examples of other topics that could support a strong essay:
- An unusual hobby or interest, like collecting campaign pins or unicycling
- Being the founder or president of a club
- A learning or physical disability
- Speaking multiple languages
- Being the oldest (or youngest child)
The only questions you need to ask yourself when picking a topic are “Does this thing set me apart from other people?” and “Will knowing this thing about me give someone a better sense of who I am overall?” As long as you can answer “yes” to both of those questions, you’ve found your topic!
When it comes to actually writing your essay, you need to make it clear 1) what your identity is, and 2) how it influences your perspectives, thoughts, actions, etc. We recommend using anecdotes to show your reader the impact this identity has had on you. That way, you are able to bring your identity to life for your readers, while also communicating in detail the way it shapes your thoughts and actions.
For example, if a student chose to highlight her identity as an entrepreneur in her essay, she wouldn’t want to write something like this:
“The identity that is most important to me is being an entrepreneur. Since my first lemonade stand when I was five to the Etsy business I’ve been running for the past three years, I’ve always considered myself very enterprising. Because of this, I’m always seeing opportunity everywhere I look. Some may say I’m a dreamer, but I consider it seeing endless possibilities.”
This excerpt relies heavily on telling the reader about the student’s identity, rather than showing it to us. The result is that we learn very surface-level details but we don’t feel like we really understand this student and what drives them. We also don’t get a great sense of how their identity shapes how they interact with the world because they don’t provide any examples or details to illustrate their point.
Instead of the above excerpt, this student could have written something like this which is much stronger:
“Three years ago, I launched my Etsy shop, Charm & Clay, where I sell handmade polymer clay jewelry—colorful earrings shaped like lemons, tiny stars, and abstract patterns that feel like wearable art. What began as a hobby at my kitchen table turned into a business that has now reached hundreds of customers across the country. Each order connects me to someone new—the teacher who bought a set to celebrate the end of the school year, the friend group who commissioned matching pieces for prom, the customer who told me my designs helped her feel more confident in her style.
Running the shop has taught me far more than crafting; I’ve learned about branding, supply management, and customer communication while balancing the demands of school. More importantly, entrepreneurship has changed the way I see the world. When problems arise, I don’t just look for fixes—I look for opportunities to create something better. When a holiday market was canceled, I organized a pop-up with local vendors in my driveway; when a glaze shortage hit, I used it as a chance to experiment with textures and designs that became bestsellers. These experiences have shaped my identity as someone who faces challenges with creativity and resilience, eager to build solutions that are both practical and meaningful. Whether in the classroom, community, or future career, I carry with me the entrepreneurial spirit of Charm & Clay: resourceful, collaborative, and driven to make ideas real.”
Yes, this example is far longer (although still no where near the 500 word maximum), but you can see how the same basic ideas are being communicated, just with far greater detail and visuals to make the essay more engaging.
Another tip to keep in mind for this essay is that you might want to incorporate UVM into your essay. While you aren’t explicitly asked to discuss how your identity will influence you in college, a strong response might include a reference to how the student intends to continue engaging with their identity at UVM. For example, a student who wrote about his mixed-race identity could incorporate something like this in his concluding paragraph:
“At UVM, with its strong emphasis on community and inclusion, I know my mixed identity will not only be welcomed but will also allow me to contribute a perspective that bridges cultures and sparks dialogue.”
Again, this isn’t required, but if you have the space to tie your identity and worldview back to UVM, it can only help the admissions officers picture you on their campus.
Option D (optional)
From the Green Mountains to Lake Champlain to our campus, UVM students are inspired by our location to think about their relationship to the environment. What does your relationship with your environment look like? (500 words)
This is a good prompt for students who are excited about UVM’s emphasis on the environment and nature to choose. While students planning to pursue an environmental major might gravitate towards this question, you could also respond to this prompt even if your academic interests lie somewhere entirely different.
Here’s the key: this essay isn’t just about nature. It’s about how the world around you—whether that’s the outdoors, your neighborhood, or even your community—influences the way you think, act, and aspire.
Start by defining what “environment” means to you. For some students, that might be something literal like hiking trails, coastlines, or a family garden that sparked a love for sustainability. For others, it might be cultural—a bustling city block, a close-knit immigrant community, or a school robotics lab that feels like home. Your goal is to paint a vivid picture of your environment through sensory details and lived moments. Instead of saying, “I care about nature,” describe the crunch of pine needles under your boots or the cacophony of overlapping languages on your multicultural block.
Once you’ve established your setting, show how your environment has shaped your outlook or actions. Maybe your coastal hometown made you passionate about marine conservation, or growing up in a food desert motivated you to study nutrition access. Whatever it is, connect your experiences to your mindset; how do you interact with and respond to your surroundings?
Finally, tie your perspective back to UVM. The university values students who see themselves as stewards of both community and planet, so show how that ethos resonates with you. Maybe you’re excited about UVM’s strong environmental studies program, its emphasis on experiential learning, or its culture of sustainability woven into campus life.
In short, think of this essay as your chance to answer: How does where you come from shape the way you’ll show up in Burlington? The strongest essays don’t just describe an environment—they reveal how you’ve learned to live thoughtfully within it.
To show how you can respond to this prompt with equally strong responses regardless of your interest in nature, consider the following two examples. The first talks about the environment in a more traditional sense, while the second one thinks more broadly about environments.
Example 1: “My mornings start with the sound of cows in the distance and my grandpa’s boots crunching over the frozen grass. Growing up on a small farm, I learned how much work goes into keeping the land healthy—turning soil, rotating crops, watching the weather like it’s a second job. The environment has always felt like part of our family. When a summer drought hits, it affects more than our fields; it changes how we live. That connection made me realize how much I want to protect the places that feed us, not just for us, but for the next generation of kids waking up to the same sound of boots on grass.”
Example 2: “Most people picture their environment as a park or a mountain trail. Mine has linoleum floors, a buzzing neon “Open” sign, and the scent of fried dumplings in the air. It’s my family’s restaurant — the center of my world since I could reach the cash register. I’ve seen countless first dates, birthday dinners, and late-night study sessions happen at our tables. In that space, I learned that community doesn’t have to be large to be powerful. Every plate we serve connects people — and that connection has shaped how I see the world: as a place where small acts of care can create big change.”
Option E (optional)
If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be? What is your connection to the song? (500 words)
If you’ve ever wanted a theme song, here’s your chance to shine! You don’t just have to be a prospective music major to choose this option—anyone could have fun with this and share more about themselves. You want to be careful with this prompt though; don’t use this as a chance to talk about your favorite song and why it’s so amazing. Use the song as a vessel for sharing more about yourself with the admissions officers.
When it comes to brainstorming, it might be more helpful to work backwards. Start by figuring out what you want to share about your life with the admissions committee, and then pick a song that allows you to talk about that. The song can connect to your story through the title alone, the lyrics, or even just the more musical elements of the song like the instrumentation.
Here are some examples of how students can think backwards:
- Maribel will be the first in her family to attend college. She’s faced a lot of obstacles like having to work part-time jobs after school to save up money, keeping up her grades, navigating the college process without guidance, and balancing the pressure her family members put on her to succeed. Her perseverance and belief in the light at the end of the tunnel made her choose “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. Beyond just symbolizing her determination and hope, it’s also a song she’s always listened to when she needs motivation in hard times.
- Nick is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and he was terrified to come out to his friends on the basketball team because he was scared they would make fun of him and exclude him. After confiding in one of his friends who accepted him with open arms, he told his whole team and they all supported him. The song “No One is Alone” from the musical Into the Woods resonates with Nick because it reminds him that there will always be people there for you and even when things are scary, it’s easier to do it with others supporting you.
- Rylee has grown up a huge bookworm. She’s always been reading, daydreaming, and in recent years she’s begun writing her own short stories that she hopes to turn into fantasy novels after studying Creative Writing in college. Rylee chooses the song “Hedwig’s Theme” from the Harry Potter soundtrack because to her it epitomizes how imagination and fantasy worlds have shaped her into the reader/author she is today. Whenever she’s in a writer’s rut, she plays this song to spark her creativity.
As these examples show, you aren’t limited to choosing well-known pop songs—you can pick from any genre. If you are going to pick something more obscure though, it might be a good idea to include more details about the piece. For example, you might want to call out some specific lyrics that speak to you or maybe discuss the context of when the song was released or what the message of the song is generally before connecting it to you.
At the end of the day, while this essay is technically about a song, it’s still primarily about you. Choose something to share with the admissions officers that they either haven’t learned elsewhere in your application, or something that you want to elaborate more on.
Option F (optional)
What is your favorite sentence from your application essay? (500 words)
This prompt is highly unique because it asks you to reference another essay—your Common App essay. If you choose this prompt, you have the opportunity to reflect on what you’ve already written in your application. You can also get creative with how you approach this essay, so if you are looking for a chance to do something more unconventional, maybe you go with this prompt.
This should go without saying, but don’t choose this option if you haven’t finished your Common App essay yet! The last thing you want is to pick a line that you end up changing—or worse, removing—and then the admissions officers notice the difference.
There are a few ways you can approach this essay, so let’s look at some of the options in more detail.
Choosing a Line to Elaborate On
One option you might consider is picking a line in your essay that you want to provide more detail on.
For example, maybe in an essay about your Indian heritage, you talk about participating in the Bhangra dance group at your school as one way you connect with your heritage, but Bhangra wasn’t the main focus of your Common App essay so that’s all you said about it. You could use this opportunity to talk more about Bhangra in detail and in what ways it helps you connect with your Indian heritage.
If you choose something to elaborate on, it should be related to you. What we mean by this is don’t dedicate this essay to providing a more detailed description of your grandmother’s kitchen or the beach you visited each year. Make sure you are sharing more about yourself in some way, whether that’s through your activities, perspectives, emotions, etc.
Choosing a Line That Exemplifies You
Another option is to choose a sentence that you feel like reflects a certain theme or idea that you are trying to get across in your application. Maybe you want the admissions officers to view you as a leader, so you choose a line in your essay that exemplifies your leadership. You will use this supplement to expand on detailed ways you’ve put your leadership into action, why being a leader is significant to your identity, etc.
Similarly, you might want to convey that you are adventurous and love exploring, so maybe you pick a sentence that has a hiking metaphor in your Common App essay as a way to discuss your adventurous nature.
Choosing a Line That’s Well-Written
Okay, this path requires a little more tact, but if there’s a sentence you wrote that you keep rereading because you love the way you wrote it, you could pick that. Now, you have 500 words to use and you don’t want to waste your supplemental essay gushing over literary techniques, so if you choose this path, you still need to connect it back to you in some way.
For example, maybe your use of alliteration reminds you of your favorite author and you use this line as a way to talk about how you admire this author and how they’ve shaped your writing style as a writer, or their works have taught you something as a reader.
Another possibility is that you wrote a sentence to emulate a famous saying or quote. You could then discuss the impact that quote has had on you in your life and why you found it significant enough to include in your college essay.
Or perhaps you are passionate about linguistics so you’re fascinated by the mechanics of the sentence you choose and you can use this essay to dive deeper into your passion.
While this is a less-traditional method, if it’s done properly, it can make for a great essay.
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