Northwestern 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 Northwestern supplemental essays and everything you need to keep in mind as you write.

Northwestern 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, Northwestern also requires that you complete a series of short additional essays about your personal or intellectual growth.

The Northwestern supplemental essays 2022-2023 allow applicants a certain amount of freedom when responding to their topics and there is no specific Northwestern supplemental essay word limit.

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

Northwestern supplemental essays 2022-2023

The Northwestern supplemental essays 2022 are divided into three categories that explore different aspects of your academic, personal, and community goals. The Northwestern supplemental essays for 2022-2023 are as follows:

Academic growth and intellectual curiosity

• What topics are you excited to explore? What kinds of questions drive you forward?
• How have you shown initiative in learning more about the world around you?
• How have you challenged yourself? Surprised yourself?

Involvement and community

• What role(s) have you played in the communities around you (e.g., family, school, religious, service organization)? What impact have you had? How have these communities shaped you?
• What types of involvement have been the most meaningful for you? Why?
• How do you envision yourself plugging into, learning from, and contributing to Northwestern’s community?

Personal Characteristics

• What are you proud of? What makes you awesome?
• What kind of friends do you hope to make in college? What kind of friend would you be?
• How do you overcome challenges or manage disagreements?
• What gives you joy?

How to write Northwestern supplemental essays?

The Northwestern supplemental essays 2022 are split into three sections. Academic and intellectual curiosity, involvement and community, and personal characteristics. This allows you to easily plan for responding to these prompts because they have been organized by subject.

Each section of the Northwestern supplemental essays 2022-2023 consists of three or four questions. While there is no Northwestern supplemental essay word limit, you should attempt to keep your answers to around two hundred words per essay. Now, let’s take a look at each category and discuss how to respond to each one.

This three-part category gives you the opportunity to tell the story of your intellectual curiosity in three steps. First, you are asked about the topics that interest you and the questions that drive you.

This is an excellent place to start because it lets you start with your interests. In this section, focus on your academic passions and what makes you excited about them.

We then move to the next prompt which asks you to further elaborate on your intellectual curiosity by asking what you have done with the passion you described in the first question. The best way to proceed with this first section is to see it as one big story about your intellectual journey.

Since every journey needs to have some sort of obstacle. Northwestern includes a question in this first category where you have the opportunity to talk about a time in which you challenged or surprised yourself.

This is a great place to talk about an experience in which you knew you would face a challenge but forged ahead anyway. This prompt lets you demonstrate your intellectual and academic integrity.

The second category is about service to your community and how this has had an impact on your life and your pursuits. Like the first category, you should approach this category as one narrative with three different sections.

The first prompt simply asks how you have been involved with your community and what impact that has had on you.

The second prompt allows you to elaborate on the first prompt by asking which of your community-based activities has been the most meaningful to you. Essentially, what did you take from your most valuable experience?

Finally, you can incorporate the first two prompts when responding to the third prompt which asks how you will become a part of the Northwestern community.

Your first two responses should lay the groundwork for the last prompt because you will have already established how community involvement has shaped you as a person.

The final category is all about you as a person. As with all of the other sections, there is no “right” way to respond. Instead, focus on using your creativity to tell your story in a unique way.

The category starts with a prompt asking what you are proud of. Many students assume that this needs to reflect some sort of academic or community honor, but that may not be the most interesting way to respond to this prompt.

Honors and awards are great, and they will help you during the application process, but this isn’t the place to list your awards.

Instead, think about the specific events in your life. The goal here is to dig deep into your experience and write about what truly brings you pride.

The great thing is that it can be something simple. Getting your little brother ready for school every morning because your parents had to work long hours.

Mentoring a student who everyone has given up on. A personal project that you did for the sheer pleasure of creating and learning. There are so many things you can write about in this section, but the most important factor is that it is unique to you.

The next prompt asks what kinds of people you would want to be friends with at Northwestern. This prompt gives you the opportunity to talk about how you value diversity and competing ideas. This signals to the reader that you innately value learning and critical thought.

The next prompt sounds like it come from a job interview, and it’s an important question. It asks how you deal with challenges and conflict. This is where you can demonstrate your leadership skills. Good leaders need to be able to listen to different points of view and manage conflict when it arises.

In preparation for this prompt, think about the times in your life when you had to be the one who stepped up to solve a problem under difficult circumstances.

The final Northwestern supplemental essay 2022-2023 simply asks what brings you joy. This prompt doesn’t need to be overthought. Just honestly consider what really makes you happy. Again, you don’t need to come up with an impressive-sounding answer.

Just craft an answer that is genuine. As with all of the questions in the Northwestern supplemental essays 2022, the main challenge is to be as authentic as possible. This is what the admission staff wants to see.

At AdmissionSight, our goal is to help you with every step of the college admissions process. The Northwestern 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 Northwestern 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.