How to Write the UPenn Supplemental Essays 2022-2023

Founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin, the University of Pennsylvania is one of America’s eight Ivy League institutions. Its beautiful campus features unique red-and-green-brick buildings, gorgeous tree-lined paths, and lots of tributes to Ben Franklin. UPenn is known for its premier academics, but also for its thriving student life (it’s called “the social Ivy,” and has a strong Greek life comprising 25% of students).

UPenn also enjoys the benefits of being situated in the heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — it’s just a stone’s throw from myriad museums, gardens, cathedrals, and historic sites, including Independence Hall. Students typically describe UPenn as having a highly “pre-professional” mindset, with a large cultural focus on internships, school jobs, and career preparation. All in all, it’s the perfect city refuge for ambitious, can-do students who want to maximize their college experience.

Composite Schools: Depending on their fields of study, students at UPenn will be applying to different colleges that make up the school. Undergraduate education at Penn is separated into four distinct schools: the School of Arts & Sciences, Wharton School of Business, the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and the School of Nursing. 

Admissions Rates and Resources: UPenn is a tiny bit easier to get into than more in-demand Ivies, but still enjoys a reputation of exclusivity. In its most recent admissions cycle, UPenn accepted 6% of undergraduate applicants. 

Now, onto the essays! Below, you can see a list of all the prompts we’re going to cover. All applicants must submit the two required essay prompts, listed first. Below these, we’ll break into the supplemental essays for various optional programs open to applicants. 

Read these UPenn essay examples to inspire your own writing.

UPenn Supplemental Essay Prompts 

As you’ve gone through high school, you’ve likely received help from all kinds of people. UPenn wants to give you a chance to practice gratitude and acknowledge a specific person who has positively impacted your high school journey. 

There are two main parts to this prompt: picking the person to thank and writing the note.

Who should you pick? Some commonly-influential folks include:

• Teachers
• Mentors or older students
• Coaches
• Family members
• Religious leaders
• Managers/bosses

If you’re having trouble thinking directly of people, you may want to consider thinking of experiences that shaped who you are and the person most directly involved in that. In fact, this may be more effective. There will probably be thousands of thank you notes written to parents, for example. This is great—no problem there—but execution matters. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of writing a generic note thanking this person for “supporting you no matter what” and for “believing in you.”

This brings us to part two of this prompt: writing the note. Instead of generic pleasantries, you want to share specific experiences where this person really made a difference in your life. How did they support you? How did they show they believed in you? How did this impact you? 

For example, say you want to thank your mother for her support. You might share how she woke up at 6am to run with you each day so you could get extra miles in and work towards your goal of making cross country states (while you didn’t make it, you did place in regionals for the first time!). Or, maybe you want to thank your history teacher for pushing you. You should share how he worked with you individually after school when you were initially struggling to write the AP Euro DBQs, and how this encouraged you to start tutoring others in math when you say how effective this individual help was. 

Since this essay is only 150-200 words, you likely only have space for 1-2 anecdotes, so choose the ones that stick out to you most (and ones that add additional info to your application rather than repeating it). Unlike your other essays, this one doesn’t need to be a narrative format, and you should simply address the person you’re thanking. Write as if you’re actually writing a regular thank you note to them—no need to be super formal, and do include jokes if that’s how you’d normally interact!

If you do share your note with the person you’re thanking, you don’t have to reflect on the experience in the essay, unless you want to. If you do, save about one-third to one-fourth of the space for your reflection (about 50-60 words). How did it make that person feel? How did it make you feel? How was the experience meaningful for both of you?

The goal of this essay is to see which students are self-aware and humble, so as long as you approach this essay with genuine intentions of thanking this person, you should have a strong response. 

Keep in mind that all of this applies for single-school programs only. If your dream program is dual-degree, you still need to write this essay about your back-up single school program of choice. For example, if you’re applying for the Huntsman program, but your second choice major is International Relations, you’ll need to write this essay about your interest in IR as a single-degree.

UPenn is asking you to describe something we could call your “intellectual life”: your development in terms of ideas, how you have (and will) evolve as a thinker. You should think of yourself as an intellectual athlete walking into a trainer’s office: what amazing muscles do you have, how did they get so swole, and what machines and workouts do you need to attain peak performance? What additional muscles would you like to train? 

First of all, the word “how” is important. Take a look back at the prompt: “how” is the operative word of UPenn’s question “How” is all about processes, getting to different places, and explaining changes. “How” is a fundamentally narrative word, so you’ll need to set up a strong narrative arc about yourself. Think: “first I was A, then B happened. So now I’m C. In the future, I hope to be D at UPenn.” Try to keep a 1:1 ratio of past experiences to future attractions at UPenn, for about 100 words apiece.  

In keeping with the narrative theme, you should frame your actions with captivating verbs. For example, we could be asked, “How does Tarzan move through the jungle?” A weak response would focus on nouns: “vines, trees, forest floor, hands.” For a dynamic response, we need strong verbs: “Tarzan grapples with vines, catapults from trees, crashes onto the forest floor, and flips onto his hands.” You should take a similar approach when describing your intellectual progress. Nouns like “club” or “test” will be dead on arrival without verbs like “galvanized” or “struggle.” You’re Tarzan – describe your movement in a way that’s compelling.

You should also aim to incorporate your emotions if you have the space. This will make your story more captivating and accessible from the get-go. It’s the most efficient way to connect with your reader, which is important if you’re describing your intellectual interest in a niche topic. 

In the second half, set up a Triad between UPenn, your target school, and you. You need to explain just what about UPenn is going to help you thrive: consider yourself a germ, and consider UPenn a Petri dish full of savory goop perfectly-formulated for you. This means being specific about certain programs, resources, internships, and cohorts, and spending a significant amount of time clicking through UPenn’s website. Pro tip: subscribe to certain school and department e-newsletters, which include recent works, discoveries, and publications of faculty members. These can include Omnia, the newsletter for UPenn A&S, or Penn Engineering Magazine, or anything else you find. This will give you the most up-to-date insider information about the intellectual work at UPenn.

It might be a good idea to brainstorm with a T-chart; this way, you can throw down all the specific aspects of Penn, and communicate a firm connection between yourself and the University. Fill in the listed areas with your own discoveries.

You can also look at our blog post on How to Write the “Why this Major” College Essay for more details on how to nail this You + College + Major triad. 

So what does this look like in practice? Let’s say Sam wants to study History at UPenn. The question Sam is really trying to answer is: “How can I show UPenn what it is about History that I love so much?” Sam follows the criteria we’ve discussed above. 

•  Set up a before-and-after narrative to describe his interest. Sam writes about the first time he played Civilization, a history-based video game. By reaching back to his first meaningful contact with history, he’s found a great beginning for his essay.

•  Use strong verbs to weave a narrative. Sam “tinkers with minutiae, like centurion armor, to eke out victory in crucial battles.” Civilization “enraptures” him. 

•  Demonstrate your commitment. A lot of students just stop at interest: they think all they need to say is, “Wow! This subject is fascinating!” But if Sam only described his first impression of history from playing Civilization, it would not seem as though he had thought very deeply about his passion. Instead, Sam needs to demonstrate how he has developed his interest over the past four years, and should spend at least a paragraph fleshing out how these extracurriculars informed his broader interest in history. For example, maybe researching for his history podcast showed him that a lot of what he knows about history was discovered by archaeologists. In the essay, he could point out that his love of history evolved to include a love of physical artifacts.

•  Look ahead to UPenn. By reading the course catalog at UPenn, Sam can identify specific History classes that will allow him to deepen his newfound love of artifacts. “Professors Smith and Smithson’s recent work, which reconstructs Minoan bathhouses based on tile fragments, is a great example of how UPenn’s history and archaeology departments combine to produce game-changing research. Their interdisciplinary class on material history would allow me to gain hands-on skills for a career spent in museums or archives.” 

• Hit on the big picture. For example, studying history will give Sam a much better perspective on what has made modern society into what it is today. It will prepare him to analyze evidence of many different kinds, including written and physical records. If he can write a brief conclusion that ties back to the earlier themes of his essay, that’s especially great. For instance, “The generals in my Civilization game and I have one thing in common — we both have only a short time to make a difference. By learning to think deeply and evaluate evidence, I will use my love of history to have an impact wherever the future takes me.”

Use this short essay to showcase the best parts of yourself outside of the classroom. This doesn’t mean you can’t mention your academic interests, but if you mention the same subject as you did in the first prompt, you should dramatically recontextualize it or illuminate a new aspect of it. 

The word community appears three times – so address your philosophy of community. Do some thinking about what “community” means to you, and what kind of group setting is your ideal. Is it small? Large? Gentle? Raucous? If you have an original, thought-provoking, or culturally-informed definition that you love, feel free to include it. The best essays will be about a deeper topic than simply extracurriculars or collaborative research.

Be specific, and do your UPenn research. Maybe you bring musical talents and want to join the student orchestra. Perhaps you are a Hispanic student who wants to revitalize others’ awareness of their cultural heritage. Poke around UPenn’s website to find specific groups or initiatives that address something you enjoy. As always, if you can use past accomplishments or experiences to illustrate your point, it will be more powerful. For instance, if you have led your soccer team’s community outreach efforts, talk about how the skills you learned on the team will make you better at building a relationship between UPenn and the city of Philadelphia.

Don’t just name-drop an activity. For example, “UPenn’s Black student center, Makuu, is something that interests me” shows a bit of research, but not a lot. It also does not connect the research to the applicant as an individual, or hit on the larger theme of community. A better approach is to be hyper specific: “Because I’m interested in Black literary studies, as well as crossover between literature and history, I’m captivated by the way UPenn’s Makuu house brings together young Black academics from various disciplines. As I delve into my field of interest — Black and African modernist poetry — I would love to draw on the knowledge of my colleagues to enrich my work. I’m a firm believer that the more paths we can create between different disciplines of Black studies, the easier it is to explore.” This answer is specific to the applicant, establishes an ethos for research, and addresses Makuu as more than a name.

Identify a challenge you want to pose yourself. Look at the prompt again — the verb “shape” is another word that gets repeated, and it’s backed up by “learning” and “growth.” This prompt is asking about development, so you should identify an area in which you want to evolve, grow, and improve. Ideally, think about a certain foible that challenges you and keeps you from fulfilling your potential — maybe it’s a fear of public speaking, an apathy towards volunteering, or a tendency to seek out echo chambers. Why do you feel you need to change, and what communities at UPenn could push you out of your comfort zone?

For example, I could plot out my essay like this: 

Foible: 

I’m not an effective writing mentor. I can be too harsh and too direct with my feedback. I can intimidate people I intend to help.

⬇

Need:

I need to work on my “bedside manner” as a writing mentor. I need to acquire effective strategies and principles to inform me, and I need to work with more mentees to practice.

⬇

Solution:

The student essay tutors program at UPenn’s library will offer me training to improve as a tutor, and by working there I can gain repeated experience in coaching others’ writing.

⬇

Result:

I will end up as a better communicator, and I can help writers feel confident, an essential skill for an aspiring editor like myself. 

If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas. Ask yourself these questions:

• When was a time I was challenged in an activity? What challenging moments would I want to repeat?
• Look up Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences. These are various kinds of astuteness Garnder posited exist in students to different extents. Is there an intelligence in which I’m lacking, which I want to strengthen? Which activities would help me build this intelligence?
• When have I grown as an individual? How did I change?
• What’s a club or group where I could use my skills for a greater good? 

Huntsman Program Applicants

UPenn’s Huntsman Program is a dual degree track in International Studies and Business, which brings together the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School of Business. Its focus is global, and students learn target languages and study foreign affairs with an eye towards becoming internationally-involved, global citizens.

This is a meaty question, and we should break it down into a checklist of key items they’re asking you to identify. 

• What draws you to business (B) + international studies (IS)
• A global issue in B + IS
• What you want to learn about B + IS
• How that knowledge is applicable to the global issue 

A logical, competent way to structure this essay would be a narrative format: past to present. The items that compose the question naturally lend themselves to this timeline format, so lean into it if you choose. You can talk about your past interest in a problem, the current state of that problem, and how your collegiate experience in B + IS will make you a citizen better equipped to help solve that problem. 

As always, be specific. Pick not just a broad issue (“refugee crises”), but a subset of the issue that actually seems manageable (“connecting large corporate donors with small charities run by refugees themselves”). From there, look for potential classes offered at UPenn, and student organizations involved in similar missions. It may be worth citing how the Huntsman program has aided the students featured on its website, and discuss how those same opportunities would similarly provide you with a comprehensive education in B + IS.

Demonstrate your cosmopolitanism. If you have a family history that involves living in multiple countries or cultures, you may want to evoke it here. The same goes for any educational, service, or other time spent learning abroad. Even if you’ve never left your home country, demonstrate a keen knowledge of foreign affairs by citing events, specific leaders, certain charities or businesses, etc. 

That said, be wary of “factoids” and surface knowledge. The CollegeVine writer who broke down this prompt last year had a great piece of advice that’s worth emphasizing (and maybe tattooing?): 

“Don’t do what I did. In high school, I focused on international affairs a lot during debate. Unfortunately, I messed up an important interview by talking about a bunch of breaking news instead of tying those events back to the deeper insights I had been describing in my debates.

All this is just to say: don’t mistake superficial ideas for depth of interest. One quick way to test this is to try talking about your essay topic for three minutes. If you run out of things to say about the intersection of global issues and business, you probably are coming at the issue from the wrong angle [and you need to approach it from another direction: themes, morality, ethics, etc].”

What is the philosophy behind your international focus? In addition to showing your knowledge of IS, you should state why you enjoy the field, and why it’s necessary for the world right now. Has your understanding of “the world” and your “self” changed since you first became interested in B + IS? Your understandings of “community,” “collaboration,” “multiculturalism,” “aid,” etc? 

Think of it this way: the prompt asks “what” and “how,” but there’s also a hidden question: “why?”

Digital Media Design Program Applicants 

“The Digital Media Design Program,” writes UPenn, “was established in response to what we perceived as a growing rift within the computer graphics and animation industry.” UPenn is one of few schools to offer a specialized curriculum that combines fine arts with computer engineering. However, because the DMD program is so rare, it is also competitive. In this essay, show your interest in digital media design to be sustained rather than temporary.

This prompt is similar to the first UPenn prompt, discussed above with the hypothetical applicant Sam. It asks you 1) what your interest is, and 2) why you need to pursue it at UPenn and DMD specifically. To that effect, you can brainstorm using the T-chart format we covered there, with “DMD” in the column previously dedicated to a certain major. 

That said, there are some specific things you should mind. 

Why you NEED the interdisciplinary approach. DMD combines a lot of fields that you could study in isolation elsewhere. For a standout application, you need to show why you wouldn’t be content in just the School of Fine Arts or just the School of Engineering. Rather, you should describe the magnetic pull both design and computer sciences have on your mind, and how you’ve integrated them in the past, to the point where they’re inextricable for you.

A problem you can help address. Remember, this whole program was created to solve a perceived problem! Towards the end of your essay, identify a societal or industry-specific problem that the skills set you’d acquire at DMD would help ameliorate, whether it’s user interfaces for apps, computer models for statisticians, or how to make animated fish scales look really, really good. 

Do some digging about the program. Information about DMD is scattered in multiple places, so spend a good hour clicking around and exploring the Internet. There’s some student work on this webpage, a Youtube video, and a description of Penn’s computer graphics facilities. For a program this esoteric, it’s also worth your effort to send a polite email to the Computer Graphics Department at UPenn, asking if there’s any faculty or current students who’d like to chat or answer your questions about the program. This will give you a much more specific sense of how the program would fit your interests, what career resources are available for DMD students, etc. 

The message is the medium. Since this is a design program, convey your design preferences and unique style as much as possible. A successful essay not only convinces admissions officers that you are passionate about design; it gives them a sense of what aesthetics your designs will prioritize. For example, if your style is “minimalist,” you might want to experiment with a “minimalist” writing style: sentence fragments, short sentences, and clipped breaks. If your style is vivid and colorful, engage lots of sensory words, lush descriptions, and (obviously) words for all your favorite shades of colors. 

Life Sciences and Management Program Applicants

The Life Sciences and Management Program is a dual degree that ties together the biology majors in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School of Business. Although it’s selective in the number of students it accepts (25), it’s broad in terms of focus: students pursue everything from agriculture to pharmaceuticals to bioengineering to finance. 

Wow! They already gave you a theme for this essay: innovation! That should make it easy, right? Well, maybe. By like 5%. Batten down the hatches.

We can break this prompt down into the central requirements, and all the attendant little words that feed into them. Those central requirements are:

• The issue you want to address
• LSM experience – “program,” “understanding,” “eye”
• “Innovation” – “identifying, advancing, implementing”

First, find an issue in the life sciences/life sciences business that speaks to you. This doesn’t have to be a specific problem: it can be an attitude that you feel needs fixing, a lack of collaboration, or an incorrect mindset or paradigm. However, you should have specific examples of personal experiences with it, either from your studies or some other aspect of your life. And you should demonstrate a thorough understanding of it, revealing that you’ve read widely and stayed updated. 

Second, talk about how LSM will help you become the solution. LSM provides its students with an incredible array of resources, including internships, connections, prizes, funds, and mentorship. You should discuss program-specific resources that either touch on the issue specifically or will give you the “eye,” the “understanding” mentioned in the prompt.

• Find granular examples of LSM resources. Their website is so expansive, and so full of student profiles and useful information, that we recommend spending about an hour clicking through and jotting down information that intrigues you. Find specific faculty who work in areas that interest you, or who are engaged in public work in a way you’d admire. Then connect these back to the “issue” you’ve mentioned.

• Justify your interdisciplinary needs. You need to prove that you wouldn’t be be happier in either management or bioscience — you need them both together. Good statements to have in pocket are “only through LSM,” “LSM specifically,” and “LSM’s unique X.” For example, check out LSM’s two program-exclusive courses. Citing these would be a great idea, as would clicking on the faculty links on the same page. 

Lastly, discuss your ideas of innovation. Don’t worry — they’re not expecting you to solve anything now. And actually, if you read the prompt closely, LSM wants their students to be skilled at “identifying, advancing and implementing” innovations, not necessarily inventing them. Here, it’s less important to propose a solution to your issue than it is to propose a road to that solution, an implementation plan for an extant solution, or a unique definition of “innovation.” You should focus on ideas that are key to management: how does innovation happen, how do we organize people to produce innovation, how do we establish cultures where collaboration is enjoyable? UPenn wants to learn about how you think, about your philosophy.

Jerome Fisher Management and Technology Program Applicants

The Jerome Fisher Management and Technology Program is a dual-degree program that allows students to select an interdisciplinary concentration that melds the schools of Business and Engineering. 

Note: The two essays have very different purposes, so be sure to write them with those distinct goals in mind.

• The first essay follows a similar archetype as the essay outlined under the first general UPenn prompt: the “why major” essay. Remember Sam and the T-chart? 
• The second essay is trying to learn how you think and act under pressure. Do you think like an engineer? Can you solve problems creatively? Do you take the lead when circumstances demand it?

Do you want feedback on your UPenn essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool, where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!