Swarthmore College requires only two supplemental essays, each of 250 words. For the Class of 2029, only 977 students were offered admission out of 12,995 applications, resulting in an acceptance rate of 7.5%. The competition is fierce, and your essays are your best chance to stand out, so make them count.
In this blog, we’ll break down what Swarthmore is really asking in each prompt, share essay examples, and give you practical tips to help you write responses that stand out.
- Swarthmore Supplemental Essay Prompts
- How to Write the Swarthmore “Diversity and Community” Supplemental Essay
- How to Write the Swarthmore “Intellectual Curiosity” Supplemental Essay
- Writing Swarthmore Supplemental Essays That Work
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Takeaways
Swarthmore Supplemental Essay Prompts
In addition to the Common App personal statement, you must submit two Swarthmore-specific essays of no more than 250 words.
| Swarthmore Supplemental Essay Prompts |
All who engage in our community are empowered through the open exchange of ideas guided by equity and social responsibility to thrive and contribute as bridge builders within global communities. Our identities and perspectives are supported and developed by our immediate contexts and lived experiences—in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, communities of faith, and more. What aspects of your self-identity or personal background are most significant to you? Reflecting on the elements of your home, school, or other communities that have shaped your life, explain how you have grown in your ability to navigate differences when engaging with others, or demonstrated your ability to collaborate in communities other than your own. (max 250 words)
Tell us about a topic that has fascinated you recently—either inside or outside of the classroom. What made you curious about this? Has this topic connected across other areas of your interests? How has this experience shaped you and what encourages you to keep exploring? (max 250 words) |
Whew! Swarthmore’s supplemental essays can feel long at first, but there are only two prompts, and each has a 250-word limit. The first focuses on your identity and how you engage with communities, while the second asks you to explore a topic that recently sparked your curiosity.
Up next, we’ll discuss how to craft a compelling response to each of these prompts and give you some examples to inspire your own writing.
How to Write the Swarthmore “Diversity and Community” Supplemental Essay
| Prompt |
| Swarthmore College maintains an ongoing commitment of building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive residential community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry.
All who engage in our community are empowered through the open exchange of ideas guided by equity and social responsibility to thrive and contribute as bridge builders within global communities. Our identities and perspectives are supported and developed by our immediate contexts and lived experiences—in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, communities of faith, and more. What aspects of your self-identity or personal background are most significant to you? Reflecting on the elements of your home, school, or other communities that have shaped your life, explain how you have grown in your ability to navigate differences when engaging with others, or demonstrated your ability to collaborate in communities other than your own. (max 250 words) |
Swarthmore might have the longest supplemental essay prompt out there, but don’t worry. Once you break it down, it’s really just a “diversity” and “community” essay blended into one.
At its core, Swarthmore wants to know who you are and how your background has shaped the way you engage with others. Before writing, research what makes Swarthmore’s community truly distinctive, then draw from your family, culture, community, or school experiences to show how those shaped you into the kind of collaborator and bridge builder they’re looking for.
| Swarthmore “Diversity and Community” Supplemental Essay Example |
| How do you say “thank you” when someone says “I’ll pray for you” and you stopped believing in prayer?
I figured this out volunteering with the American Red Cross in a Christian Latino community remarkably similar to the one I grew up in. My parents are devoted Catholics: mass every Sunday, rosaries for every crisis. I’d stopped believing years ago, keeping it mostly to myself to avoid the inevitable hurt and disappointment. During Red Cross disaster relief work, however, I found myself back in church basements organizing supply distributions, listening to prayer circles before we started, watching congregation leaders frame service through scripture I’d once memorized. When Mrs. Ramírez said “Dios te bendiga” after I helped her fill out FEMA paperwork, I understood we were speaking the same language of care, just using different vocabulary. Organizing blood drives with pastors meant translating between Red Cross protocols and their frameworks of service, but the work itself—packing emergency kits, coordinating shelter logistics—transcended belief. I realized my parents’ faith and my atheism could lead to the same essential place: showing up for your community when it matters. I want to explore this through Comparative Literature at Swarthmore, studying how different cultures and belief systems narrate meaning, service, and moral obligation. I’m drawn to examining religious and secular texts side by side, understanding how they construct similar values through different frameworks. The goal: learning how people with fundamentally different worldviews can still build something together, how translation between perspectives creates understanding without requiring conversion. (250 words) |
Essay analysis and tips
Most applicants answer this prompt by listing everything that makes them unique. This writer does the opposite. They zoom in on a single contradiction at the heart of their identity, being raised Catholic, now atheist, and let that tension do all the work.
That’s the first lesson here. Instead of summarizing yourself, you have to reveal something real. And nothing feels more real than a belief you quietly carry alone, especially when it puts you at odds with the people you love most.
What’s clever about this essay is that the writer never resolves the tension between faith and atheism. They don’t arrive at some neat conclusion about religion being beautiful after all. Instead, they find a third thing entirely, the shared language of showing up for your community, and that’s where the genuine insight lives. Navigating differences doesn’t always mean finding middle ground. Sometimes it means finding a completely different ground altogether.
The writer also avoids one of the biggest traps of the “community” essay, making it about themselves. Yes, it’s a personal story, but the focus stays on Mrs. Ramírez, the congregation, and the work itself. That outward gaze shows maturity and exactly the kind of collaborative spirit Swarthmore values.
The bottom line? Don’t write about who you are; write about what you’ve discovered about yourself through others.
How to Write the Swarthmore “Intellectual Curiosity” Supplemental Essay
| Prompt |
| Swarthmore’s community of learners inspire one another through their collaborative and flexible approach to learning. Swarthmore students are comfortable with intellectual experimentation and connection of ideas across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and interdisciplinary studies through a liberal arts education.
Tell us about a topic that has fascinated you recently—either inside or outside of the classroom. What made you curious about this? Has this topic connected across other areas of your interests? How has this experience shaped you and what encourages you to keep exploring? (max 250 words) |
This prompt is Swarthmore’s way of asking “why liberal arts?”, not just “why Swarthmore?” They want to see a mind that naturally connects ideas across disciplines and moves fluidly between subjects.
Pick a topic that genuinely fascinates you. Maybe you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole studying how languages die or why folk songs keep resurfacing across eras. The best responses show a mind actively at work, making connections, asking new questions, and following curiosity wherever it leads.
| Swarthmore “Intellectual Curiosity” Supplemental Essay Example |
| I spent last summer in Delaware Bay at 3 a.m., watching comb jellies turn the water into liquid starlight.
Bioluminescence has fascinated humans since ancient times, yet we still understand surprisingly little about how and why most organisms produce it. For my Synopsys Science Fair project, I studied light production patterns in Mnemiopsis leidyi, asking whether their bioluminescence functioned primarily as predator deterrence, communication, or something else entirely. What hooked me was the paradox: bioluminescence is everywhere—in 76% of ocean species, across bacteria, fungi, insects—yet each system evolved independently, using completely different chemical mechanisms. While fireflies use luciferin-luciferase reactions, comb jellies use photoprotein systems activated by calcium. Dinoflagellates have their own entirely separate pathway. Evolution discovered the same solution—making light—at least 40 different times. That realization pushed me outward. I began reading about convergent evolution more broadly: how dolphins and ichthyosaurs independently developed similar body plans, how eyes emerged separately across dozens of lineages. From there, I followed bioluminescence into biomimicry research, where scientists use light-producing proteins for medical imaging, cancer detection, and neural mapping. Therefore, the same phenomenon I studied in jellies at midnight underpins cutting-edge biotechnology. At Swarthmore, I want to pursue biology with the flexibility to explore these connections: evolutionary biochemistry, marine ecology, and healthcare applications. The liberal arts approach allows me to trace ideas from ecological function to human innovation, asking how scientific discovery can serve public good, and learning how curiosity itself becomes a method for discovery across disciplines and communities. (247 words) |
Essay analysis and tips
There’s a classic rule in college essays: show, don’t tell. This writer takes it further. They demonstrate how a scientific mind actually works in real time.
Read the third paragraph again. The writer lays out a genuine paradox: bioluminescence is one of nature’s most widespread phenomena, yet every organism that produces it arrived there independently. That contradiction is doing all the emotional work of the essay, carrying the weight of curiosity, wonder, and intellectual drive, all without a single “feeling” word in sight.
This matters because Swarthmore’s prompt is essentially a test of proof. Anyone can claim to be a curious, interdisciplinary thinker. This writer proves it by letting the ideas move across disciplines on their own, from marine biology to evolutionary theory to medical imaging, without ever announcing that’s what they’re doing. The thinking is the evidence.
The science fair project detail also grounds the essay in something real and specific. The writer went to Delaware Bay at 3 a.m. and studied comb jellies firsthand. That kind of commitment communicates intellectual character more powerfully than any adjective could.
The takeaway: pick a topic you’ve actually lost sleep over. This writer went to Delaware Bay at 3 a.m. That’s your bar. That same restlessness, that need to keep following an idea, is exactly what this essay is really about.
Writing Swarthmore Supplemental Essays That Work
Swarthmore gives you two prompts and 500 words total. The first wants to know how your identity and background have made you someone who can genuinely engage across differences. The second wants to see a mind that follows curiosity wherever it leads and connects ideas across disciplines naturally. Together, they’re asking one bigger question: are you the kind of person who will thrive in and contribute to this community?
The students who answer that well share a few things in common. They write about something real, specific, and then connect their story directly to what makes Swarthmore distinctive, its commitment to intellectual rigor, social responsibility, and collaborative learning.
If you’re unsure where to start or want expert eyes on your essays before you submit, our Senior Editor College Application Program pairs you with experienced admissions specialists who have helped students get into some of the most selective schools in the country. We’ve edited and refined 10,000+ essays, and 98% of our students earn acceptance to one of their top 3 school choices. From brainstorming to final edits, we’ll help you write essays that sound like you at your best.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does Swarthmore require supplemental essays?
Yes, Swarthmore has supplemental essays on top of your Common App personal statement.
2. How many supplemental essays does Swarthmore have?
Swarthmore has two supplemental essays.
3. What’s the word count for Swarthmore supplemental essays?
Each essay has a 250-word limit.
Takeaways
- Swarthmore has two supplemental essays, each with a limit of 250 words.
- The first essay asks about your identity and background, while the second is about a topic that fascinated you recently.
- Before writing either essay, research Swarthmore thoroughly so your responses feel specific to their liberal arts community and not interchangeable with any other school.
- Work with a private admissions consultant to refine your essay and strengthen your application for Swarthmore’s competitive admissions process.
Eric Eng
About the author
Eric Eng, the Founder and CEO of AdmissionSight, graduated with a BA from Princeton University and has one of the highest track records in the industry of placing students into Ivy League schools and top 10 universities. He has been featured on the US News & World Report for his insights on college admissions.
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