CollegeVine College Essay Team August 29, 2025 20 Essay Guides 2025-26,Yale University

How to Write the Yale University Essays 2025-2026

Hoping to become a Yale bulldog? When applying to one of the best schools in the country (and the world!), writing standout supplemental essays isn’t just a plus, it’s practically a requirement. Through your supplemental essays, you can create a complete picture of who you are and make a strong case for why you are someone Yale should want on their campus.

For the 2025-2026 application cycle, Yale has three required essays and four required “short take” questions for applicants to answer. For one of the essays, you are given the choice to pick from one of three options to respond to. Keep reading for our best tips and tricks on answering all seven of these prompts Yale has in store.

You can also check out these Yale essay examples to inspire your writing.

Yale University Supplemental Essay Prompts

For context, as part of answering this prompt, you’ll be asked to pick three of several different academic areas from a long list. This prompt is similar to a traditional “Why This Major” prompt, however, a word count of 200 isn’t a lot to work with, so you need to be concise, comprehensive, and clear. 

It’s important to note how this prompt differs from the basic “Why This Major” essay you might be familiar with. Where you’re normally asked to explain where your interest in your major came from or how your experiences have influenced you to pursue your major, this essay asks you to hone in on a specific topic or idea related to your intended major.

Believe it or not, there will be plenty of students who don’t catch the nuance in this prompt, and the admissions officers will take note. To clearly illustrate what this prompt is asking for, consider the following example:

While this might work for your run-of-the-mill “Why This Major” essay, it does not satisfy Yale’s prompt. This example is about biology as a whole, not a specific topic or idea. Now see how the same student could demonstrate their fascination for biology by following the prompt’s instructions and honing in on something specific that excites them.

Now that we’ve established how to pick the right focus of your response, it’s important to emphasize that while you can approach this essay from multiple angles, the one thing you want to avoid is regurgitating facts about the topic or simply providing the admissions committee with a lecture on your fact. As with any college essay, the purpose is to learn more about you. So, show us why you find this topic interesting, motivating, exciting, etc. You should still be the star of your essay, not the idea.

For example, maybe you are fascinated and puzzled by how today’s political climate became so polarized. That is a specific idea to use as a jumping off point for your essay. You can incorporate an anecdote to show your reader where this interest came from or how you engage with it. Perhaps you share the story of a door getting slammed in your face while canvassing for a political candidate. After that experience you would try to understand how voters can act so aggressively towards those in a different political party. This has led you to choose Psychology and Political Science as your first and second choice majors. You want to make it your mission to understand political psychology so you can one day manage an empathetic campaign that reaches across the aisle.

Or, perhaps you are excited by the science behind language acquisition in the field of Linguistics because your Mom is Portuguese and while your younger brother is fluent, you’ve struggled to get past conversational and want to know why it’s harder for you to connect with your bilingual family. Additionally, as an aspiring lawyer, you think an appreciation for language acquisition is the secret to developing persuasive arguments.

Both of these hypothetical examples share the following components:

1. A specific topic or area of interest that is connected to the student’s major(s)
2. A personal anecdote or connection to reveal why this topic excites them/is meaningful
3. A discussion of their future goals that relate to this specific interest

While you don’t want your essay to read in a chronological, formulaic manner, you should weave all three of these in, in some way.

It’s also possible to write a strong essay without providing an anecdote. In that case, our advice is to really dive deeply into how you think about and research this idea. Don’t be afraid to nerd out—just remember to incorporate your internal monologue or descriptions about your emotional state when you learn about this topic to show your readers your depth of passion.

While a traditional “Why This Major” essay should include why you want to study that major at that specific school, you may not have any space, given the small word count. Luckily, the next question allows you to discuss how Yale can support your academic goals.

This is a classic example of the “Why This College” essay. For this prompt, you’ll want to cite specific reasons Yale is a good fit to support your academic goals. You may also want to include any compelling extracurricular reasons, as Yale wants to admit engaged students both in the classrooms and outside of them

In an essay of only 125 words, you’ll likely only be able to mention two or three aspects of Yale that resonate with you. That’s totally okay! It’s better to show a deeper understanding of what Yale offers than to list a bunch of general characteristics.

The key is not just name-dropping classes, research labs, special programs, clubs, etc. that appeal to you. What you need to do is connect them to your previous experiences and future goals. For example, consider a weak example that name-drops, and a stronger one that provides the personal reflection the prompt asks for.

Aim to get just granular in your essay, and do extensive research on resources at Yale. See our post How to Research a School for the “Why This College” essay if you don’t know where to start.

Under no circumstances should you mention anything vague that could apply to other schools, such as the location, prestige, or even a strong academic department. If you could copy and paste your essay for another school and just switch out the school name, that’s a sign that your essay isn’t specific enough. Take it to the next level; what courses, programs, organizations, or grants could support your goals? 

Finally, remember that this essay is just as much convincing Yale why they would be a good fit for you as it is why you would be a good fit for them. Don’t forget to highlight what you can bring to the campus community through your unique experiences, interests, and perspectives.

This essay presents a fantastic opportunity to showcase both your intellectual vitality and your social skills. At its core, it’s an essay about your growth as a thinker and person. 

We disagree with people often, often multiple times a day, so there’s plenty of material to brainstorm from. This may be especially pertinent for members of argument-based extracurriculars, like debate, Mock Trial, and Model UN students. Activists and researchers, too. But remember—it doesn’t have to be an argument, just a discussion with a dissenter. 

Write down a list of possible topics, and don’t worry too much about the context of the discussion so much as its content and impact. When this essay is well-written, quarrels with the woman in front of you in line for grocery checkout can be just as fascinating as a closing argument at the national debate tournament. 

Also, determining whether an issue is “important” or not can be a subjective matter. Your essay doesn’t necessarily need to be about traditional political debate topics, such as abortion or gun control. In fact, we encourage you to write about issues that will be a little less common, if you can think of some relevant experiences (local issues can be especially promising). Topics such as cultural appropriation, the ethics of thrifting and reselling, or whether your school district should get rid of its gifted program are all fair game.

Just remember that Yale is a liberal university, so you don’t want to alienate your audience by sharing that you have a particularly conservative point of view.

After creating your list, scan your potential topic ideas for varied points of interest. Pay special attention to the second half of the prompt and consider which experiences either helped you sharpen your reasoning or change your opinion. Which experience was the most transformative? Intellectually stimulating? Emotional? Unique? Which do you remember the most clearly and why? 

Once you’ve narrowed down your options into a few viable ones, pick the one that you feel will make it easiest to craft a compelling story.

When starting this essay, include just enough to set the scene. Don’t dwell on exposition, irrelevant details of the conversation, or negative emotions surrounding the event for too long. Who was there? How did you disagree, and why? Introduce each viewpoint as succinctly as possible while still preserving important details, keeping in mind the strict word count. 

Explain the important points within the conversation before fully diving into the essay. Often essays around any sort of challenge are better-written when the writer focuses on the growth aspects of the story rather than whatever challenging circumstances came before. 

Really dive into how your thinking was shifted or augmented by your experience or even what broader lessons you may have learned after better understanding a specific issue. What did you do during or after the discussion? Did you research it more deeply or take action in support of your final opinion?

For example, maybe your environmental club thought that your school should ban plastic straws because of their negative impact on the planet, but then you learned from disabled students how important plastic straws can be for accessibility. As a result, you shifted the campaign to introducing a composting system instead, and learned the importance of inviting more diverse voices to weigh in on the club’s initiatives.

By the end of the argument, your reader should feel that you’ve truly gotten to know your topic well and experienced positive change as a result. Feel free to mention specific logical progressions, newfound evidence, or novel philosophical perspectives you’ve discovered.

This essay is also an exercise in open-mindedness, so make sure to avoid ad hominem attacks against your “opponent.” As a general rule of thumb, frame your viewpoint throughout as a respectful one, regardless of how the discussion actually went. 

With this prompt, admissions officers are trying to learn two main things:

1. What you value in a community
2. How you are a valuable asset to the communities you are part of 

Yale’s essay prompts have historically stressed the importance of community, as it’s an understandable priority for them. When applying to a university, you are applying to join their community—so think about what they want! They want to accept students who form deep bonds, care for their peers, and have strong guiding values and principles. This essay allows you to show that you are already well-versed in forming meaningful connections. 

Most people are a part of various communities, whether they realize it or not or whether these communities are formal (town, soccer team, religious organization, school) or informal (group of friends, coworkers, family) ones. If you are having trouble identifying which yours are, consider which people you feel a sense of community with. Volunteer groups, families, cultures, and clubs may spring to mind. Really, though, anything can make the cut: your Dungeons and Dragons group, those sharing your gender or sexual identity, people with similar life experiences to you, etc. 

An easy way to organize your essay could look like the following:

First, define and describe the community you are writing about. Defining the community is especially important for applicants writing about informal communities. For example, if you are writing about your siblings, make sure that this is clear. When describing the community, be sure to describe the culture. How do you interact as a group? For example, your soccer team may be more than teammates—perhaps you have special moments while traveling on the bus for a match. Make sure you discuss the dynamic. As a group, are you sarcastic, silly, or serious? Does your community have a specific kind of humor or tradition? 

To draw readers into your story, feel free to lead with a charming sensory anecdote, like that of your family cooking their favorite traditional dish or the roars of laughter emerging from gameplay. In just a few sentences, show your reader just how important this community is to you and in which ways you feel connected to it. Do they make you laugh harder or understand you better than anyone else? Do you feel particularly passionate about an issue they represent? 

When you are outlining the aspects of a community that are meaningful to you, you are also outlining your values! If you want to position yourself as fun-loving, you may want to focus on the sarcastic or silly aspects of your community. If you want to be seen as deep and thoughtful, you may want to focus on your community values and traditions.

Secondly, discuss your engagement with the community. You can lead by introducing your motivation for your efforts to explain them. For example, did you create a Snapchat group chat for your debate team that allowed you to bond outside the context of serious competitions, opening up a channel for close friendship among teammates? Did you regularly grab lunch with your co-workers at a local bakery? Or, did you meet survivors of gender-based violence through your work with a local organization? In this way, your efforts and their meaning can be covered in one fell swoop. Describing your role in your community will allow admissions officers to get a more full picture of what you value and how you act on your values.

Finally, reflect on why your involvement was important to you, and how it’s shaped you. For example, did the Snapchat group chat teach you to empathize with your competition, improving your sportsmanship? Did conversations with your coworkers over lunch spark your interest in food science? Or, did volunteering at a non-profit increase your interest in being a human rights lawyer? You could also talk about how being the oldest sibling taught you to be a caretaker and sparked your interest in becoming a doctor. Regardless, you want to write about how you have become who you are through your engagement with this community.

Although this essay presents an opportunity to show off what you’ve done, there should be just as much emphasis—if not more so—on your personal connection to your achievements as on your achievements themselves. Remember that admissions officers will already be looking over your activities and awards information, so there’s a good chance they’ll see it soon before or after reading your essays! Take this chance to display your core values, because in a way, this prompt is asking a sub-question: What is meaningful to you?

This essay can take on a narrative form if you want to tell a brief story that exemplifies your community involvement or you can write it as a simple description/explanation. If you choose to be more explanatory in your writing, you should make sure to include sentences for deep reflection. While there is a prompt to answer, you still want your writing to be engaging and thoughtful!

This is a classic Diversity essay. Harvard wants to know about your unique lived experiences and how they have made you the person you are today and will influence the type of student you will be on Harvard’s campus.

A common misconception is that a diversity essay has to focus on an identity characteristic, but in reality, your answer can be almost anything that you feel has contributed to who you are. It isn’t just picking an attribute, identity, or aspect of yourself that makes for a good essay; it’s more about making a case for what your chosen subject says about you, and what you’ll bring to Harvard.

It’s also important to note that while the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in June 2023, colleges continue to consider racial diversity on an individual basis through information shared in essays. If your racial or ethnic heritage has helped shape who you are, what you believe in, and what you value, this could be a great place to write about that.

With that said, what should you choose if you don’t want to write about your racial ethnic background? Your options are broader than you might think. You might write about the more common attributes of identity, such as your religion, sexuality, gender identity, or socioeconomic status, but you could also write about hobbies, languages, family structure, or your hometown.

If you want, you can even go a bit more abstract and write about personality traits, talents, or values that set you apart from the crowd. All that matters is that you pick something that provides the admissions officers with deep insight into your life and individuality. In short, how do you stand out from the crowd?

If you have an identity or experience that most other people don’t, consider writing about that, rather than something that might be more stereotypically associated with diversity. You want your essay to paint a vivid picture of you, one that can’t be confused with any other applicant the Santa Clara admissions team might be reading about.

Once you’ve picked your topic, think about using anecdotes to illustrate your point, and show—don’t just tell—the important details. To illustrate this point, consider two different openings to the story of the young stamp collector mentioned above.

Sure, this excerpt is direct and informative, but it’s not very exciting, and doesn’t sound particularly unique. In contrast, consider this example:

This paragraph immediately stands out as more dynamic and full of personality. The student quickly gives us a glimpse into his open-minded attitude, willingness to learn from others, and insight on an older generation, alongside his passion for stamps, art, and history. This excerpt is proof that just a few sentences can pack quite a narrative punch!

In concluding your essay, make sure to reflect on how this experience, trait, or identity has shaped who you are. Remember to show, not tell, and try to avoid the generic or clichéd, like saying “X experience has made me stronger as a person.” Share specific examples or details about how you’ve developed or grown as a person.

The sample student above, for instance, could write about how communicating across generational divides has helped him develop patience, open-mindedness, and a respect for others’ experiences, even if he didn’t always agree with their opinions. Use this essay to tell the admissions committee at Santa Clara how your chosen subject has impacted you and your life, and end by showing them why that should make them want you at their school.

In addition to the more traditional, longer essays, Harvard asks applicants to respond to four short response questions. With only 200 characters—roughly 30 to 40 words—there isn’t much space to get descriptive. 

However, just because these questions are short does not mean you shouldn’t treat them like your other essays. Sometimes, a short response can reveal more about a student than a 200 word essay. Let your personality shine through in these. If you are witty and sarcastic, don’t be afraid to incorporate some humor!

We’ll walk through each short take in further detail, but as you approach them, try and treat them as distinct essays and use each question as an opportunity to share more about yourself with the admissions committee.

This sounds a lot like “vision statements” that many business professionals write for themselves. The idea here is to give a concise summary of what drives you every day.

While brainstorming an answer to this question, it’s a good idea to think about how you would summarize your application in a few sentences. What do your teachers/mentors say about you? What do your classwork and extracurriculars demonstrate an interest in? What sentence instantly helps to combine the disparate elements of your application into a cohesive narrative? This should help guide an answer to the question that’s consistent with your overall application.

For example, maybe you’re passionate about competitive weightlifting and computer programming. You love the two very different activities because they allow you to constantly push your limits. You can always lift more, and create a more efficient program. Your response to this prompt might focus on your desire to continually improve yourself and what you’ve built:

Or, maybe the focus of your high school career was leadership and service. You served in Student Government, participated in Model UN, and started an organization to combat the food desert in your local community. In this case, you might write that working with governing bodies to enact meaningful change is what motivates you:

You can also pick an object, a work, a place, or something more concrete than a feeling. For example, consider this student who listens to classical music when they study:

Of course, you could derive your inspiration from people as well. This is fine and can make a meaningful essay, but it’s the sort of thing applicants have to be very careful about. For example, writing an essay about how inspired you are by your mother’s diligence as a hand surgeon can be a great read, but these types of essays make it easy to accidentally focus more so on your inspirational subject than about you. Make sure to always tie back the source of your inspiration to yourself, your drive, your actions, and your values. 

This is just a proxy to ask “what interests you?” That is, what interests you enough that you’d want to share that passion with others? You can let your creativity run wild here; if you have a niche interest, this is the perfect place to mention it.

For a college course, share the title and give a brief description of the course, such as the works you’ll study and the themes covered.

Remember that an answer like “Designing and Testing Role Playing Games” is a lot better than “Economics 101.” Alternatively, think about two interests you have. For example, if you like cartoon shows and politics, a class called “Constitutional Law Through the Simpson’s Eyes” will definitely catch the eye of an admissions officer.

For a book, you’ll want to share the title and a brief synopsis. An example might be: 

For the original work of art, also share the title and give a visual description mixed with the inspiration for the piece. An example could look like: 

Keep it engaging, witty, and quick!

People with great mentors and role models usually become successful in their fields, and Yale wants to admit successful students. This prompt also gives you an opportunity to show self-awareness and gratitude for someone else’s impact on your growth.

If no one comes to mind immediately, it may be easier to think of traits or aspects of your application you want to highlight, and then consider who had the biggest impact on that area of your life. For example, pretend you’re Beth from the TV show The Queen’s Gambit, and your obvious talent is playing chess. You might choose to write about Mr. Shaibel, the janitor who introduced you to chess:

While it’s probably the case that someone you’ve actually interacted with in your life will come to mind, nowhere in the prompt does it specify you have to choose someone you know personally. A student who loves to cook could choose Samin Nosrat, the author of the cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat because they taught themselves the foundations of a great dish through reading that book. Or, a student who writes their own music might choose Billie Eilish because watching her write her songs taught the student that they could do the same even without professional experience.

You have an extremely limited character count, so get straight to the point, and feel free to use well-known abbreviations/acronyms to maximize space.

This one is incredibly open-ended, which can be as terrifying or as exciting as you want it to be (we recommend exciting!). It gives you a great opportunity to showcase something that wouldn’t traditionally show up in a letter of recommendation or a resume. Here are a few questions to consider for brainstorming:

• What are your hobbies?
• What could you talk about endlessly?
• What are you known for in your friend group? How about your family?
• What’s your guilty (or not so guilty) pleasure? Reality TV? In-n-Out runs? Gummy worms?
• Do you have a random skill, like cutting hair or making friendship bracelets?
• Do you have siblings, and does your role in the sibling hierarchy affect your life?
• What’s a weird story of yours? A spontaneous thing you’ve done or something that happened to you and the way you reacted to it?
• What’s a value you were raised to have?
• What’s something you like doing, regardless of whether you’re good at it or not?
• On that subject, what’s something you’re bad at but do anyway?

Brainstorm as freely as you can and leave no stone unturned; nothing is too stupid or frivolous to make it into your essay! The important thing in any college essay is rarely the subject itself, but what the subject reveals about you. 

For example, you can write about how, as the most skilled hair-braider on your cross-country team, you’ve gotten to know all of your teammates better through being the unofficial “team braider”. Or maybe, as a middle child, you’ve developed dual penchants for observation and conflict resolution. Perhaps you once went hiking with your family and got separated, and had to rely on your instincts and a map you didn’t know how to read to find your way back.

You only have a few words and it’s implied in this prompt that this essay can be an off-the-resume one, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be deep. But it should still be revealing in some way!

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