Acing Johns Hopkins’ 2024-2025 Supplemental Essays
Johns Hopkins has released its single supplemental essay for the 2024-2025 admission season. Like many other top colleges, they are striving to do everything they can to make applying to them seem as accessible as possible, encouraging as many applicants as they can. This is advantageous to them because it means they can reject a great many applicants, thus keeping their acceptance rate as low as possible and their placement on the U.S. News & World Report National University ranking as high as possible. Due to there being only one essay, many applicants will glance over the prompt and copy and paste an essay they've already written for another school that matches the prompt best, practically ensuring that they will be rejected. DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE. Read the prompt carefully. Better yet, join us as we go over the prompt and tell you how to best answer it so that you don't end up as another statistic.
How has your life experience contributed to your personal story—your character, values, perspectives or skills—and what you want to pursue at Hopkins? (350 words)
For this essay, it is key that you provide specific personal anecdotes and express them in a first-person perspective that will allow the reader to clearly visualize them. After introducing an anecdote, you want to explain to the reader how it contributed to your character, values, perspectives, or skills. Be very clear about what these are. If you are talking about your character, don't just tell them; show them your character being tested in a difficult situation. If it's a set of values or perspectives, be incredibly clear about what your perspective or values are. Then show the reader how these values or perspectives influence the choices you make. If it's a skill, show yourself using that skill in a meaningful and positive way.
Notice how in the prompt they use "or" for the first part and "and" for the second thing they want. This means you have to write about how your experiences contributed to one of the four qualities they listed in the prompt, but also must include how your experiences informed you of what major or program of study you wish to pursue at Hopkins. As a result, it's important to pick experiences that showcase either your innate curiosity or drive to excel in this field of study, or provide you with a strong personal reason to pursue this area of study.
If you decide to tailor an existing essay to address the prompt, make sure you read the prompt again very carefully and ensure that your essay doesn't exclude a core component of what Johns Hopkins is looking for.
If you would like a review of your Johns Hopkins essays by an admissions expert or have any further questions about applying to Johns Hopkins, or any other university, please schedule a free consultation with us below. We would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
