Brown Supplemental Essays 2022-2023

When it comes to applying to the top schools in the country, your application is vitally important. In order to give yourself the best chance of gaining admission, you need to make sure all aspects of your application are top notch. In this post, we’re going to do a deep dive into how to write Brown supplemental essays, and everything you need to keep in mind as you write. 

Brown uses the common app, and this means that you will be asked to answer essay questions contained in the common app. But like many top schools, Brown also requires that you complete a series of supplemental essays. The Brown supplemental essays 2022-2023 allow applicants a certain amount of freedom when choosing their supplemental essay topic, but we’re going to look at each essay prompt and discuss the best way to respond to each topic. 

Brown Supplemental Essay Prompts 2022-2023

So, let’s start by looking at each supplemental essay prompt, and then we will discuss how to approach each one individually. 

When it comes to responding to the Brown supplemental essays 2022, you will have to give fairly short responses to three essay prompts. The prompts for the current application year are as follows: 

• 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)
• Brown’s culture fosters a community in which students challenge the ideas of others and have their ideas challenged in return, promoting a deeper and clearer understanding of the complex issues confronting society. This active engagement in dialogue is as present outside the classroom as it is in academic spaces. Tell us about a time you were challenged by a perspective that differed from your own. How did you respond? (200-250 words)
• Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words)

So, now let’s look at each essay prompt individually and discuss how to respond to each of them.

How to answer the Brown supplemental essays?

When it comes to how to answer Brown supplemental essays, there is no “correct” answer. Instead, you goal should be to apply as much creativity to your responses. Let’s look at the first prompt.

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)

Brown’s Open Curriculum refers to the fact that Brown students may take classes in different disciplines in order to fulfill their academic requirements. This means that students may choose to take courses which fall outside their field of study. The goal of this prompt is to learn more about what excites you about the field of study you’ve chosen, but also how you might be motivated to take courses outside of your comfort zone. This allows you to explore your intellectual curiosity while also discussing what led you to your chosen field.

Brown’s culture fosters a community in which students challenge the ideas of others and have their ideas challenged in return, promoting a deeper and clearer understanding of the complex issues confronting society. This active engagement in dialogue is as present outside the classroom as it is in academic spaces. Tell us about a time you were challenged by a perspective that differed from your own. How did you respond? (200-250 words)

As you can see, the Brown supplemental essay word limit doesn’t allow you very much room to go into depth, so you will need to be as efficient as possible when responding to all of these prompts.

This prompt is a bit more specific than the first and asks you to reflect on a time where your perspective was challenged. This does not have to be an educational experience, and the point is to highlight how you dealt with this challenge.

As an elite institution, Brown looks for students who have intellectual curiosity, but also academic integrity. This prompt gives you the opportunity to highlight a single experience in which you either changed your views based on a conflict, or you held tight to your convictions despite being confronted with another perspective. Regardless of the event you choose, be sure to detail how you reacted, and how this event has continued to be significant to your intellectual growth.

Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words)

You may have noticed that a lot of the schools you apply to ask you about joy, and specifically what brings you joy. There’s a good reason for this: schools want to know more about their applicants as people rather than students. This prompt allows Brown to get a better sense of you as a person. Brown already knows about the challenging classes you’ve taken and your excellent grades, but they also want to know what motivates you as a human being.

When responding to this prompt, try not to focus on academics. Instead, reflect on what truly makes you happy. It could be traveling to new and exciting destinations, or it could be spending time with your dog. The subject isn’t nearly as important as how it affects you, and why this is so important to you. If you have room, you can also discuss how the things that bring you joy may inform your direction in life. If, say, helping the less fortunate brings you joy, you can talk about the community service work you would like to do in the future.

At AdmissionSight, our goal is to help you with every step of the college admissions process. The Brown supplemental essays 2022 can seem daunting at first, but our experience and expertise will help you navigate the entire process with confidence. Hopefully, this guide to the Brown supplemental essays 2022-2023 has been helpful, but if you want more information about how AdmissionSight can help you realize your dreams, set up your free consultation today.