Case Western Reserve University requires two supplemental essays only for applicants to the Pre-Professional Scholars Program, which has an acceptance rate of just 1%. How do you get in? By writing compelling essays that show exactly why you belong there.
To help you nail both essays, we’ll break down each prompt, explain what it’s really asking, and walk through examples to help you craft your own.
- Case Western Supplemental Essay Prompts
- How to Write the Case Western “Personal Achievement” Supplemental Essay
- How to Write the Case Western “Why This Profession” Supplemental Essay
- Writing Case Western Supplemental Essays That Work
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Takeaways
Case Western Supplemental Essay Prompts
Case Western requires all applicants to complete the Common App personal statement. But if you’re applying to the Pre-Professional Scholars Program, which gives you a spot for undergrad plus a conditional acceptance to Case Western’s School of Medicine or Dental Medicine, you’ll need to write two supplemental essays.
| Case Western Supplemental Essay Prompts |
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These two prompts work together to give Case Western a fuller picture of who you are. The first wants to see your character beyond your resume, asking you to share a personal moment that reveals your values. The second is about conviction and fit, pushing you to explain why you chose medicine or dentistry and why you’re suited for it. Together, they’re asking one big question: are you the whole package?
Up next, we’ll break down each prompt and show you how to write a compelling response.
How to Write the Case Western “Personal Achievement” Supplemental Essay
| Prompt |
| In the college application process, you are constantly prompted for a list of your achievements, awards, and accomplishments. While this information is useful to us, we are interested in hearing more about you. Describe an event, achievement, or experience of which you are particularly proud but that will not show up on a resume, may not garner any recognition, and does not appear anywhere else on your admission application. (max 750 words) |
This is Case Western’s version of the “personal growth” essay, but with a twist. They specifically want something that wouldn’t appear anywhere else on your application. Think of experiences that aren’t “impressive” in the traditional sense, such as an act of kindness, a private struggle you overcame, or a moment that never earned you a trophy but stayed with you nonetheless.
| Case Western “Personal Achievement” Supplemental Essay Example |
| I gave my grandfather my old phone for his 90th birthday. He looked at it like I’d handed him a live grenade.
“I don’t need this,” he said. He’d spent his whole life communicating just fine without a cell phone, thank you very much. But his hands had started shaking too much for long phone calls, the receiver slipping against his ear. And he was lonely. My parents worked long hours, I had school and extracurriculars, my aunt lived three states away. He’d sit in his armchair watching the same three channels, waiting for someone to visit or call. “I know,” I said. “But I do. I want to hear from you more.” That did it. I taught him how to text. We started with the basics: unlocking the screen and finding the messages app, and then typing a single letter without accidentally opening the camera, calling 911, or activating some mysterious feature that made the whole screen flash. His fingers, thick and arthritic from sixty years of construction work, kept hitting multiple keys at once. Autocorrect mangled everything. He’d try to write “good morning,” and it would come out “foodkorning.” He got frustrated and threw the phone on the table, declaring he was too old for this nonsense. I picked it up. “One more try,” I said. “Just write ‘hi.’” He sighed, took the phone, hunted carefully for H and I, and sent it. My phone buzzed. “Hi,” it said. “Now I write back,” I told him, typing quickly: “Hi Grandpa. How are you?” His phone lit up. He stared at it like I’d performed a magic trick. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s texting?” “That’s it,” I replied. I’d get random messages at school—single words at first, then short phrases. “Lunch ham sandwich.” “Weather cold today.” “Doctor appointment Tuesday.” The grammar was chaotic, and punctuation appeared randomly or not at all. Every message probably took him minutes to compose. Then he started asking questions. “What doing?” “How school?” I’d answer between classes and send him photos: a cardinal at the bird feeder, my ISEF project, a funny sign outside a restaurant. He’d respond: “Good bird.” “Looks nice.” Once, inexplicably: “Ha ha.” The biggest change came when I taught him emojis. Suddenly, his texts exploded with tiny yellow faces, hearts, thumbs up, and the inexplicable eggplant he definitely didn’t understand the subtext of. He’d send me a smiley face before school every morning, and I’d send one back. His record was 47 consecutive emoji-only messages. He started texting his sister in Florida, his old work buddies, the neighbor who checked on him. His world expanded beyond whoever could physically visit. But I also watched his health decline through those texts. I started recognizing patterns: the correlation between his medication schedule and his responsiveness, how certain treatments left him too exhausted to reach for his phone. This is what pulled me toward studying biology and public policy. Watching my grandfather navigate aging made me realize how few healthcare systems actually design for the lived reality of elderly patients. We treat diseases but often miss how treatment impacts daily life: the pill bottles with caps arthritic hands can’t open, the appointment schedules that assume reliable transportation, the discharge instructions written at eighth-grade level for patients with declining vision. A week before he died, he sent me a message at 2 a.m.: “Can’t sleep. Thinking about your grandmother. Miss her.” Still awake, I wrote back immediately: “I miss her too. Want to talk?” “No,” he wrote. “Just wanted to tell someone. Feel better now.” Then: a heart emoji. We never talked about that text, but I saved it. I have all of them, hundreds of messages, most grammatically questionable, many incomprehensible, all precious. Reading them now, I can trace his final days. They’re small records of an ordinary life, clinical data wrapped in love. He died with his phone on the bedside table. My last text to him, sent the night before and never read, said: “Love you. See you tomorrow.” Teaching him to text didn’t cure his loneliness or prevent his death. But it gave him a way to reach out at 2 a.m. when he missed his wife, and it gave me three months of daily messages from someone I loved. It taught me that the best healthcare fills us with connection, dignity, and daily moments worth living for. Also, somewhere in my phone, I have 47 consecutive emojis from my grandfather. That’s a kind of health data, too. (750 words) |
Essay analysis and tips
What makes this essay exceptional is how effortlessly it answers the prompt while revealing the writer’s character, values, and future aspirations through one small, unassuming story. Teaching your grandfather to text isn’t an award-winning achievement and will not appear on any resume. But that’s exactly the point, and the writer understood that completely.
Start with a personal experience and let everything grow from it. The personal experience is the foundation: a lonely grandfather, arthritic fingers fumbling over a touchscreen, and a grandchild patient enough to stay. Everything else grows naturally from that single moment. The writer’s interest in biology and public policy emerges organically from watching his grandfather’s health decline through text message patterns. The values learned crystallize toward the end, and the closing paragraphs land with purpose, calling out how few healthcare systems account for the lived reality of elderly patients.
As in all good writing, showing is more important than telling. Rather than saying “my grandfather was frustrated,” the writer shows him throwing the phone on the table. Rather than saying “we grew closer,” we get 47 consecutive emojis and a 2 a.m. text about missing grandma. Specific details also go a long way. Words like “foodkorning” and the eggplant emoji are small touches, but they make the grandfather feel like a real person rather than a character in an essay.
Finally, don’t underestimate the power of emotional contrast. When the tone shifts from warm and funny to quietly devastating, it lands hard, culminating in an unread text reading “Love you. See you tomorrow” that closes the essay with quiet devastation.
What ties everything together is that the essay never loses sight of the prompt. There’s no award for teaching your grandfather to text. But by the final paragraph, the reader knows exactly who this writer is and where they’re headed. You don’t need a major tragedy to write a powerful essay. Sometimes the most compelling stories live in the smallest, most ordinary moments.
How to Write the Case Western “Why This Profession” Supplemental Essay
| Prompt |
| By applying to the Pre-Professional Scholars Program, you are applying to gain admission to professional school earlier than students who apply in the traditional way. Please indicate why you’re interested in your chosen profession. How do you see yourself being particularly suited to this field? What events and/or experiences have led you to your choice? (250 to 500 words) |
Before writing, it helps to research the PPSP itself so you understand exactly what you’re signing up for. This essay is your chance to make a direct case for why you belong in this accelerated program. Cover what sparked your passion for medicine or dentistry, what specific experiences have prepared you for this path, and why you’re uniquely suited for it.
| Case Western “Why This Profession” Supplemental Essay Example |
| The kid in bed seven was refusing to take her medication again.
I was shadowing at the county hospital’s pediatric unit, mostly observing, occasionally fetching things. The nurse sighed, marked something on her chart, and moved on. But I noticed the patient, maybe six years old, staring at the liquid medicine with what looked like genuine terror. I asked if I could sit with her for a minute. “It tastes like throw-up,” she said, teary-eyed. “And it makes my tummy hurt.” The antibiotic had a notoriously bitter taste, and she’d been taking it three times daily for four days. No one had thought to ask the pharmacy if a flavored version existed or if we could give her a popsicle immediately after to mask the taste. I mentioned it to the nurse, who got both. The patient took her medicine. This moment made me realize how often we design healthcare systems that assume patients will simply comply, without accounting for the actual barriers they face: a six-year-old’s taste sensitivity, a parent’s work schedule that conflicts with medication timing, the fear that builds when no one explains what’s happening in words a child can understand. This interest deepened last summer at Stanford’s Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program (SIMR), where I worked in a lab studying early-life stress biomarkers in pediatric populations. The research was rigorous: running cortisol assays, analyzing inflammatory markers, and correlating biological data with developmental outcomes. I loved how we could quantify stress responses through salivary cortisol and behavioral assessments. But what stuck with me most happened during participant recruitment. We needed families with children ages 5–10 for our study. One participant, a mother with twins, kept missing appointments. The research coordinator was ready to remove her from the study; we had protocols, timelines, data collection schedules to maintain. I asked if I could call her. Turned out she desperately wanted to participate but couldn’t find childcare for her other three kids during our appointment times. She was embarrassed to admit this, so she’d just been missing appointments rather than explaining. I worked with our team to set up a small play area where her other children could wait during appointments, with a volunteer to supervise. She became one of our most consistent participants. Her twins’ data contributed to findings that might eventually help thousands of children, but it almost didn’t happen because our system wasn’t designed with her reality in mind. That tension between rigorous science and practical accessibility is exactly what draws me to pediatric medicine. I want to understand child development at the molecular level, but I also want to practice medicine that accounts for how families actually live. The Pre-Professional Scholars Program appeals to me because I’m certain about this path. I’ve spent two years volunteering in pediatric settings, a summer doing research at Stanford, and countless hours recognizing that the best healthcare bridges the gap between what we can do scientifically and what actually improves lives. (493 words) |
Essay analysis and tips
This essay is built on a simple but effective structure: two stories, one thesis. The writer lets two specific moments do all the work, and both point to the exact same conclusion about what good medicine requires.
Hook your reader with a live scene from the very first line. In the example, the opening drops the reader into the hospital immediately. There’s no preamble or introduction, just a six-year-old refusing her medication in bed seven. The dialogue that follows, “it tastes like throw-up,” is specific and unpolished, the kind of detail that could only come from a real moment. The second story at Stanford mirrors this approach, anchoring what could have been a dry research summary in another deeply human encounter with a mother missing appointments because she had no childcare.
Also worth noticing is how the writer handles the “why you are suited for this field” part of the prompt. Rather than listing personal traits, the reader infers everything through action. The willingness to sit with a scared child, the instinct to call a missing participant, the ability to find a practical solution under institutional pressure. All of these reveal compassion, resourcefulness, and genuine curiosity without a single self-congratulatory claim. That’s the lesson here: Don’t tell admissions officers you have what it takes, show them through your actions.
These experiences also point to something larger. The writer has learned that good healthcare requires paying attention to what others overlook, and that lesson threads naturally through both stories, connecting personal growth to a clear and convincing social mission. Emulate the writer and always connect your experiences to a larger sense of purpose.
This essay works because it trusts the stories to speak for themselves. By the time the writer states they’re certain about this path, the reader already believes them.
Writing Case Western Supplemental Essays That Work
The two supplemental essays for Case Western’s Pre-Professional Scholars Program are short but consequential. The first wants a personal, human story beyond your resume. The second wants proof of conviction backed by real experiences. Together, they’re asking whether you are ready for one of the most demanding accelerated programs in the country.
The best essays open with a vivid moment, let experiences speak for themselves, and connect personal stories to a larger sense of purpose. Writing at this level takes precise language and the kind of editorial instinct that comes from knowing exactly what admissions officers are looking for.
This is exactly what our Senior Editor College Application Program is built for. Our expert editors will work with you through every draft to make sure your essays are as sharp, specific, and compelling as they can be. With 10,000+ essays edited and 98% of our students getting into their top three schools, we know what it takes to stand out where nearly everyone is qualified on paper. If you’re serious about the PPSP, let us help you write essays that actually get you in.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does Case Western require supplemental essays?
Yes, Case Western has supplemental essays, but only for students applying to the Pre-Professional Scholars Program.
2. How many supplemental essays does Case Western require?
Pre-Professional Scholars Program applicants need to submit two additional supplemental essays.
3. What’s the word limit for Case Western supplemental essays?
The first essay has a 750-word limit, and the second requires between 250 and 500 words.
Takeaways
- Case Western requires a Common App personal statement, but Pre-Professional Scholars Program applicants must also submit two additional supplemental essays.
- The first essay is a personal growth story, while the second is a direct case for why you chose medicine or dentistry and why you’re suited for it.
- The strongest essays open with a vivid, specific moment and let real experiences reveal your character and conviction naturally.
- An admissions expert can help you consolidate your ideas and craft essays that give your application the best possible chance.
