Academic interest essays are extremely common across applications. They're important because they help schools understand the type of student-scholar you're going to be while on their campus. It's crucial to show curiosity, passion, and even collaborative values in these essays.
Academic Interest essays are a kind of supplemental essay. They ask you to expand on one of your primary academic interests. Since you’re going to college to be a student, colleges ask Academic Interest supplemental essay questions because they want to get a sense of your intellectual curiosity.
In fact, Academic Interest essays are one of the main places in your application for you to geek out about the topics you’re most passionate about.
Admissions officers want to know about the questions that keep you awake at night, the problems you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and solve, and the conversations you can’t wait to partake in.
But don’t worry. When a school asks you to describe your academic interest, you don’t have to stress about having your entire life planned out. If you say, “I want to create a robot to clean up litter in the ocean,” nobody is going to come knocking on your door when you graduate looking for a robot.
Your main goal when writing your Academic Interest supplementals? Show that you’ll be a great contributor to the learning community on campus.
In this post, we’ll walk you through how to do just that.
Let’s start by looking at a few examples of what Academic Interest prompts look like.
1: Stanford University
The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning. (100 to 250 words)
2: Pomona College
Academic Interest Statement: What do you love about the subject(s) you selected as potential major(s)? If undecided, share more about one of your academic passions.
3: Brandeis University
The Brandeis community is a diverse group of critical thinkers defined by their ability to dive deeper into their learning by questioning, analyzing, evaluating, creating, critiquing and seeking other perspectives. Share an example of how you have used your own critical thinking skills on a specific subject, project, idea or interest.
These examples should help you identify Academic Interest prompts when you come across them.
Now let’s move on to discussing three strategies you can use to answer any Academic Interest prompt colleges throw at you.
Great essays are strategic essays. Since supplemental essays exist to supplement the rest of your essays (like your personal statement), activities, and letters of recommendation, it’s important to write them with intention. These three strategies will help you write your Academic Interest essays with an eye toward showing admissions officers how your intellectual curiosity makes you a perfect fit for the intellectual community at the school in question.
Alright. With those three strategies in mind, it’s time to get to writing.
There are lots of ways colleges ask you to write about an academic interest. Take a look at the examples above. The Stanford prompt says that you can reflect on “an idea or experience,” but the Pomona prompt only asks for an “academic passion.” The Brandeis one is different yet, asking you to focus specifically on critical thinking and giving you the freedom to talk about a number of ways your academic interest has manifested.
The wording of the prompt will affect the options you have to choose from, so be sure to read it carefully.
After you’ve narrowed down your options based on the prompt, next you have to think about your application strategy.
If you’re applying to a particular college major, you should choose an academic interest that is related to your preferred major to emphasize your intellectual curiosity for that subject. Alternatively, you could pick an unrelated academic interest that shows your interdisciplinary inclinations (but that will probably be less effective). What you decide will depend on what kind of school you’re applying to and what other strengths you’ve strewn throughout the rest of your application narrative.
I. Introduction: Hook your reader into your topic with your first sentence, and expand on your academic interest throughout your introduction.
II. Body: Provide more details and introduce your reader to the problem, question, puzzle, or implications that keep you intrigued.
III. Body II: Connect your academic interest to an activity you've been involved in. Use this essay as an opportunity to show a connection between your resume and your academic interests.
IV. Conclusion: Reflect on why your interest matters and why your interest in the subject is personally meaningful
There are two frequent mistakes applicants make when writing Academic Interest essays, and they typically happen when students aren’t paying enough attention to their application strategy.
Brown: Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might use the Open Curriculum to pursue them while also embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar. (200-250 words)
"How was school and what do you want to be when you grow up today?"
My mom asked me this two-part question every day when she picked me up in second grade.
One day I wanted to be a chemist because of an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy. The next, I wanted to be a teacher like Miss Frizzle, or a paleontologist because of the dinosaur episode we'd just watched. Or maybe I wanted to produce cartoons for kids.
The idea of really learning something and trying to master it has always excited me. My only issue was that seemingly every subject was the next shiny thing I wanted to learn.
Brown's Open Curriculum is uniquely suited to satiate my broad interests–many of which I have maintained since I was a kid. I still love chemistry and have had the privilege of experiencing an advanced academic lab at UVA studying infectious diseases. I will certainly explore chemistry courses and seek out more research opportunities. I know I want to study abroad, and I'm most interested in the “Dinosaurs, Dry Bones, and Digs" course and trip that Brown archaeology professor Schultz hosts each spring to search for new dinosaur fossils in Brazil. Producing my school’s senior film with the help of my advanced filmmaking team has prompted me to also try on modern culture and media coursework at Brown and participate in the Campus Reel competition in the fall.
While my academic interests have evolved since I was seven, I look to college as a time to explore fields of interest, discover new ones, and maybe after four years have a better answer to that question, “what do I want to be when I grow up?”