This post is one in a series of posts about the supplemental essays. You can read our core “how-to” supplemental post here.
What is a Diversity supplemental essay?
In the last few years, we've seen an increase in college supplemental essays that focus on diversity. These essay prompts usually ask the applicant to discuss a way in which they bring diversity to their community or have experienced diversity in their lives.
These supplemental essays can be tricky to write. Not everyone sees themselves as embodying diversity or engaging with it extensively. This may be partly because many writers may associate "diversity" somewhat narrowly with categories like race, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status.
Really, however, diversity can encompass much more. We've worked with students who have written compelling diversity essays about being a class clown, defining the diversity they add to their community in terms of humor.
If you're stressed about the diversity essay, this post is for you. We're going to go into the strategies we've used to help students write amazing diversity essays. We'll also provide some example essays to give you a sense of what a great diversity essay really looks like.
Diversity Essay Strategy
To write a good diversity essay, you first have to think through what schools are really after with these prompts.
Take the University of Washington's essay, which is somewhere between a diversity and a community essay:
Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW.
This prompt is a helpful one because it gives a very broad definition of what diversity might look like. It kind of defines diversity in reverse by pointing to all these different communities, then asking you to talk about how your place in one of them contributes to diversity.
But UW's prompt is helpful for another reason: it clearly shows that the underlying purpose of the prompt is for the admissions committee to get a sense of what you will add to the school community.
This is the purpose of most, if not all, diversity essays. By reflecting on a community you belong to, or a way in which you add diversity, admissions officers are getting a clearer sense of who you will be as a member of their school community. You can use your diversity essays to underscore important parts of your overall application narrative.
Remember that assessing "school fit" is a major part of an admissions officer's job. You can think of diversity essays as a way to show school fit in a less direct way than you might in a "Why Us" essay.
One more note. As we've emphasized over and over, college supplementals should focus on personal strengths. You don't need to brag, but you do need to show yourself in a positive light that helps an admissions officer understand the values you'll bring to their campus.
This gets us to a clearer sense of a strategy for Diversity essays. Your goal is three-fold:
- Hone in on a way in which you contribute diversity, even if it falls outside the traditional categories we might think of when we think of diversity.
- Show you understand the school community, making a case for school fit. This may be more or less important depending on the prompt. In the UW example, it's clearly paramount.
- Tell a story that showcases your strengths and the benefit you'll add to a school community.
If you can do those three things, you should come out the other side with a pretty solid diversity essay.
How to do Diversity Essay school research
Let's pretend that you're writing your diversity essay about your South Indian heritage. Maybe you grew up in a predominately white community and are a minority at your high school.
I bet you have a lot to say about what it was like to grow up in a community where you were outside the predominant racial group. If you feel comfortable writing about that experience, then go for it.
I want to pause here for a moment — a lot of our students will debate with themselves about writing essays that deal with that kind of topic. They usually have a sense that these topics are "overplayed" or "generic."
Nonsense!
If there's a meaningful story to tell there, if it feels important to write about, you should follow that instinct, especially for diversity supplementals. Writing about your experience as a minority in your community is a perfect way to address a topic that explicitly asks about diversity. I encourage you to lean into these stories if they feel accessible for you to write about.
Once you've settled on that story, however, you may want to do some research into the types of organizations and programs at the school that you could join that fit your story.
If you're writing about the difficulty of finding a sense of identity in a predominately white community, you could talk about how you can't wait to join the Indian Students Alliance. You could talk about helping to organize a student Diwali celebration. You could even take it into the academic realm, and pick out a course from the Asian Studies department that would help you get a better sense of Indian history.
My point is simple. Try to find programs, courses, or clubs that the school already offers that fit with the topic of your diversity essay. Then, make a case for how you would engage with those offerings. Give the school a clear sense of how you'll engage with their community if they invite you to join it. In other words, help them make a case for school fit.
Now let's pretend you're writing your essay about something that falls outside of the traditional ambit of diversity. Let's go with comedy!
You're a pretty funny person, and lacking a more traditional answer to diversity prompts, you decide to write about how you bring diversity by lightening any room with your sense of humor.
Tell your story, then write about how you would join the school's improv comedy club. Find a class on comedy screenwriting and talk about that.
Bottom line: even in a diversity essay, it can pay to do your research about the school and make a case for school fit. Where Why Us essays may often focus more on academic offerings, Diversity essays are a good opportunity to make a case for fit in a broader, more cultural sense.
