UChicago is looking for ability to succeed — just like every other selective college 

Certainly, UChicago is proud of its off-beat questions. But it’s important to understand that they’re still looking for the same thing in your essays as other colleges do: evidence that you’ll succeed in college and beyond. 

The way to show you’ll succeed in college is by writing about your experiences. Those experiences should showcase the 5 Traits colleges look for in applicants:

• Drive (grit)
• Initiative
• Contribution
• Intellectual Curiosity
• Diversity of experience

Essays play a bigger role in admissions than most students think: a strong essay (that demonstrates 1 or more of the 5 traits) can increase chances of admission by 10x. 

A strong essay is not one that lets students “tell us about themselves, their tastes, and their ambitions,” even if that’s what UChicago says on their admissions page. 

Indeed, we are on record stating that colleges tell you they’re looking for one thing, but are actually looking for another. The research bears us out.

So, even though we agree you can be playful with this and “have fun!” as UChicago says in option 6, why not also be smart about it?

Let’s get granular on how. 

Q1 — Why Chicago: Talk about your own wishes + show how they relate to UChicago   

‍The prompt is: 

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

Our advice:

We love the last sentence in this prompt. Follow it to the T, and you should do well here:

• “Please address with some specificity 
• your own wishes and 
• how they relate to UChicago.”

Yup. That’s what we want you to do, too.

There are two reasons that colleges ask “Why Us:”

• To see that you’ll actually choose their school if you get in — (read Demonstrated Interest for more on how powerful this can be), and 
• To see if you’ll be a good fit at the school — (read “Why Us” essays to get a full sense of how admissions readers assess “fit”). 

That’s why we advise students to do 2 pieces of research for this essay:

• Self-discovery — brainstorming your own college-related interests, and 
• Internet research — looking into what UChicago has to offer.

Then, match those two together. (Exactly what the prompt itself instructs.)

What we’re adding that’s not in the prompt is a practical note on the work you need to do. 

For the self-discovery part, we literally mean you should spend some time brainstorming your 1-2 top academic interests and maybe 1-2 extracurricular interests. 

Next, research UChicago’s academic, blog, and news web pages for opportunities that you’ll take advantage of.

If you visited the campus, absolutely work those experiences into your essay. Colleges love knowing that you went to the trouble to visit, and that you liked what you found there. 

After that, writing up the essay is just a question of describing your interests and naming a few UChicago resources that match well with them. One example is below.  

Word count note: While Chicago doesn’t give one, we suggest keeping to the 300-500 range.  

Q1 — Why Chicago: Example

Before we begin, please note that Prompt strongly believes influencers shouldn’t influence your college essays and that, for essays that get published in flashy places, you don’t know if the essay got that student in or if they got in despite what was maybe a bad essay. 

Take this example with a grain of salt:

Movies mean everything to me. I’ve been featured on three film podcasts — in one, I corrected the hosts, who claimed Marilyn Monroe had never written memoirs. She did. Naturally, it’s a book I own and have read avidly. Another podcast featured my voicemail defending Grand Budapest Hotel as the best Wes Anderson movie, and then again later defending Black Panther as the best Marvel movie.

That’s why I assess college by this metric: will their education allow me to graduate from leaving voicemails about movies to actually talking about them in an in-depth way — maybe as an academic in film studies, maybe as a podcast host, maybe simply to my friends as an avid fan whose job is something completely different. 

UChicago stood out to me as a place where I could major in cinema while also pursuing the broad, meaningful education that will arm me to explore the big questions in life — the ones I love exploring in the movies today. 

When I visited campus, Prof. Allyson Nadia Field had just made the news for identifying the first Black on-screen kiss. I sought her out because this discovery is in sync with my particular interest in showing film history as more diverse than our culture tends to remember it. (Did you know that Marilyn Monroe was one of Hollywood’s first female producers?) It so happened that Professor Field gave a short public lecture during my visit, and I was able to attend. 

During my visit, I spent time with another Cinema student, Jameson, who I found through a friend of a friend. I had a blast in his human biology class, with an exceptionally charismatic professor, and then got to see a clip of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and discuss it for 45 minutes. (When I got home, I rented the movie from the library and have now watched the entire trilogy, which has become one of my favorites). Like me, Jameson started a “student film school,” though his is for college students. Though I couldn’t be there for the screening (weekly on Thursdays), we spent an hour discussing how he should follow up his last showing of The 400 Blows, finally deciding that Linklater’s Boyhood would make a fun and illuminating sequel of sorts. 

At UChicago, I know I will keep being challenged, keep learning, and keep exploring the life questions that matter most. 

Notes:

• Word count: 398
• Note on links: we added them so you could see what programs they related to. You don’t need to link to UChicago sources in your essay.  
• The student comes across as dynamic — taking many actions that reveal 1 or more of the 5 Traits, including intellectual curiosity (their deep interest in cinema), and drive/initiative (seeking out a professor, seeking out a student with similar interests as themselves). 
• The reader is left with the clear sense that the student knows what UChicago has to offer and would do well there. 

Q2 — 4 tips for 5 “wacky” questions

Ah! Here we are at UChicago’s “fun questions” again. Let’s set down some ground rules so we can get our bearings. 

Tip #1 — Decide what you want to say first.

These “fun” questions are really excellent at distracting you from the 5 Traits, and we don’t want that. 

Yes, you should actually try to have fun with them — answer them in the playful spirit in which they’re asked. But also remember that they are a tool admissions officers are using to see if you’ll succeed on their campus. Show them something impressive!

So begin with a brainstorm (if you haven’t done it already) on your academic, extracurricular and just regular interests and the experiences you’ve had that showcase them. Then, decide which of these are most worth sharing. 

Then — and only then — read over these 5 options and see if one of them stands out as a good prospect for the experiences you’d like to share.

Tip #2 — Brainstorm a few lines on each question

After — only after — you’ve done the brainstorming above, another exercise might be to see where each prompt takes you. These questions can go in so many different, unpredictable directions, that it’s worth putting a small amount of effort into each, to see if one surprises you with what it inspires you to say. 

We say only to do this after your brainstorming because you want those experiences to be in mind as you tackle these questions.

Tip #3 — Word length is up to you, but in the past UChicago limited this essay to 650

We suggest aiming for 300-600 words. Definitely not more than 650. Edit, cut, get a little zippy.

Q2 — The “wacky” questions we like best (and why)

While we admit that these questions can take you to many unpredictable places — you might see value in a prompt that we’re missing — we think some will tend to lead to better essays than others. 

BEST:

Option 2 — wisdom tooth: What advice would a wisdom tooth have?

Why #2 is great:

• Wisdom is a great asset in a college student — UChicago is probably looking for it! And you’ve probably got some hard-earned wisdom you can share.
• Ex: wisdom learned from working as a cashier, observing tired people doing their mundane chores on a Friday night. What have you learned? How have you used that knowledge?
• Ex: for the film student from the Why UChicago? example above: what film has the most wisdom (bonus if it’s somehow tooth-related — Little Shop of Horrors perhaps)? How do they apply it in their life? Or, what did they learn trying to get a “film school” going within a high school? Was it hard? What did they do? What unique wisdom did they acquire? 

ALSO GOOD:

Option 3 — human race explained to Martians: You are on an expedition to found a colony on Mars, when from a nearby crater, a group of Martians suddenly emerges. They seem eager to communicate, but they're the impatient kind and demand you represent the human race in one song, image, memory, proof, or other idea. What do you share with them to show that humanity is worth their time?

Option 4 — new Nobel category: UChicago has been affiliated with over 90 Nobel laureates. But, why should economics, physics, and peace get all the glory? You are tasked with creating a new category for the Nobel Prize. Explain what it would be, why you chose your specific category, and the criteria necessary to achieve this accomplishment.

Why 3 & 4 are good — 

#3 - human race:

• This is a great one for showing off intellectual curiosity. If you have a “song, image, memory, proof, or other idea” that you particularly love, use this as your opportunity to talk about why you love it and what you’ve done to engage with it. (The second part’s really important, hence the bold italics. UChicago is more interested in what you’ve done to pursue your intellectual curiosity than per se being as enchanted with Little Shop of Horrors as you might be). 
• Ex: The film student could go on about Grand Budapest Hotel showcasing human worth (and how they know that), or Black Panther, or even How to Marry a Millionaire — as  long as they focus on their engagement with the film rather than just the film itself. 
• Danger — the “memory” in this prompt strikes us as potentially a bad idea. If your memory showcases why the human race is worth saving, it seems likely to be about someone else doing something good (not you because that might come off as too boastful). But you shouldn’t write your essay about someone else. Someone else isn’t trying to get into UChicago. You are. UChicago wants to read about you.

#4 - Nobel category:

• Again, this is good for showcasing intellectual curiosity. Use it to talk about the things you’ve done even if you’re not arguing you deserve a Nobel!
• Ex: The film student might talk about creating a Nobel for movies and argue why Marilyn Monroe should have won it for inventing a new comic language within the stale confines of sexpot roles; for adding lines that gave screwball movies depth; and for producing a new type of cinema. Naturally, the student should focus on the actions they took to learn these things about Marilyn, not just on how great Marilyn (aka: a person not trying to get into UChicago) might be. 

MIDDLE

Option 6 — invent your own

Obviously this is a great way to showcase an experience that really shows off your best attributes. On the other hand, you need to put thought and effort into some sort of clever question that leads you to that, and that seems both hard and risky. 

If this one appeals to you, and you think of something you love, go with it. But if you’re just trying to get the job done, our advice is go with 2, 3 or 4 above, and call it a day.

LEAST PROMISING

Option 1 — palindrome’s backstory: Was it a cat I saw? Yo-no-na-ka, ho-ka-ho-ka na-no-yo (Japanese for “the world is a warm place”). Może jutro ta dama da tortu jeżom (Polish for “maybe tomorrow that lady will give a cake to the hedgehogs”). Share a palindrome in any language, and give it a backstory.

Option 5 — history/tech: Genghis Khan with an F1 racecar. George Washington with a SuperSoaker. Emperor Nero with a toaster. Leonardo da Vinci with a Furby. If you could give any historical figure any piece of technology, who and what would it be, and why do you think they’d work so well together?

Why 1 & 5 are least promising — 

Disclaimer — both of these have almost certainly led to great essays already! We’re just saying we think they’re the hardest to nail, and the most likely to get you off-course. Do pursue these if they work for you, but do so aware of the potential pitfalls:

#1 - palindrome

• The issue here is that the question is asking you to give a backstory to a nonsense phrase. We don’t see any great ways to link that to your experiences that demonstrate 1 or more of the 5 traits. But if you don’t do that, you’re wasting space on your application that you should be using to boost your admission chances. 

#5 - history/tech

• In this case, it’s hard to square focusing on this unique pairing of historical person/piece of technology and also painting a compelling portrait of yourself. Again, why waste precious space on an application on anything but showing what an exciting contributor you’ll be to their campus?

Q2 — Examples

We’re giving just two examples — for prompt #2 (the best) and #3 (one of the 2 second-best prompts). That should be enough to get you inspired. 

#2 - wisdom example: What advice would a wisdom tooth have?

Wisdom teeth help us grind things up so we can digest them. They grow in late in life, sometimes painfully. Actually, mine were removed when I was a junior. 

However, I grew a different set of wisdom teeth when I decided to start a film club at my high school as a sophomore. I thought starting a film club would be an easy sell. Who doesn’t like movies? But like a grinding molar erupting in the back of your mouth, this experience was painful.

My goal was to introduce great movies to the student body that they might not otherwise see. I teamed up with a friend who loves Hitchcock as much as I do. She was game. After securing the necessary permissions to show the movie at 4pm on a Friday in the assembly room, we heavily advertised beautiful Grace Kelly and Jimmy Steward clinging to a window ledge in Rear Window. How could it fail? 

Yeah. A film from 1954 is not an easy sell to teenagers who can go home and watch TikTok all night, as it turns out. We tried again and failed again. My friend was out. 

But I still had my dream — injecting great movies into the bloodstream of our high school. And my first step was to switch from an “injection” metaphor into something a little gentler. I shouldn’t be imposing great movies into people’s lives. I should be inviting students to get to know great movies. I looked to chess for my next move — the Chess Club is surprisingly successful at our school. I asked its founders — two seniors at the time, which I found really scary — if they had any tips for me. 

They did! They also set me up with their teacher advisor, who became a huge asset for the film club. They also told me I had to recruit new co-founders before starting again — another huge part of the club’s eventual success. 

That week, I recruited broadly for co-founders. The club’s first meeting had 10 students eager to be a part of it! Our first discussion was about our mission and how to go about it. It took us three meetings before we decided we wanted to showcase movies that brought the school together — that were events. 

Our first “event” was a sing-a-long Frozen. We worked hard to get ~100 students to show up that night. (That’s almost a fifth of our school population!) It was a big hit, which we created with four “previews” during assemblies and lots of bold advertising — think: Elsa helium balloons and that kind of thing.

Since then, the movie club remains one of the most popular clubs. About a dozen full-time members discuss which movies to show, how they’ll bring the school together, how to promote them, and — of course there has to be one nerdy part — overanalyze them deeply at lunch the following Mondays. These analysis sessions generally have 20-30 students partaking. 

Our great successes have been sing-along Sound of Music, dress-as-your-favorite Marvel character Black Panther and dress-as-your-favorite Star Wars character Star Wars (the original). 

But I’m most proud of the fact that we got big(ish) audiences for come-with-a-bird The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963), dress-as-a-flapper/gangster Some Like it Hot (1959 black and white!!!), and, my crowning achievement: The Third Man (black and white, 1949). There was no gimmick on that one — we just advertised that everyone who made it through the movie would get a “cinephile snob” certificate, and we awarded them to 87 students at the end. 

Wisdom, I’ve learned, is that your best chance to achieve your goal is if you’re willing to be open and inviting on how you get there.  

Notes:

• Word count: 628 — a bit on the long side.
• This essay shows off initiative, intellectual curiosity and drive. 
• The student has clearly learned a lot about how to make things happen — bringing people in, as opposed to imposing something on people.  
• The student obviously cares deeply about old and unusual movies, a wonderful asset in a potential college student. 
• The student worked hard to make something interesting, unique, and lasting happen at their high school. Any admissions officer would be itching to get that student onto their own campus.

#3 — human race explained to Martians: You are on an expedition to found a colony on Mars, when from a nearby crater, a group of Martians suddenly emerges. They seem eager to communicate, but they're the impatient kind and demand you represent the human race in one song, image, memory, proof, or other idea. What do you share with them to show that humanity is worth their time?

The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson easily shows that humanity is worth Martians’ time. This movie honestly portrays the worst in humanity, which is the only way to make our redemption believable — if the idea doesn’t showcase us at our worst, Martians will just take a look at the Wikipedia entry under “Holocaust” (or many, many others) and toss it out.

But Grand Budapest draws on the writings of Stephan Zweig, an exiled Austrian writer who killed himself out of hopelessness during WWII. The movie itself shines light on “this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity,” in the form of Nazi-like fascists, the tragic, war-torn backstory of the protagonist, Zero, and an unjust prison sentence. 

However, it also shows us the power of love, poetry, and excessive perfume-wearing to serve as the “faint glimmers of civilization” that are all humanity needs to justify a Martian’s time.

In fact, the figure of M. Gustave inspired me in starting the popular film club that plays monthly, well-attended movies at our high school. I loved the idea of a man who packs a fancy bottle of wine (and an ice bucket!) for the train ride he is planning to escape the authorities. Similarly, I thought, high school is usually the province of Tiktok and Marvel movies, but why not try for something more?

Once I learned some tricks for being as gracious to guests as M. Gustave — not imposing my choices on an extremely un-interested student population, but instead working with a broad swath of students to choose and promote movies that will be meaningful to many — I found that I’d achieved a goal that brought the school together while also helping to bring undervalued movies to the attention of my peers. 

Notes:

• Word count: 289 — maybe on the short side for this essay. 
• This essay shows intellectual curiosity (description of the movie), as well as a little bit of drive/initiative (stuff about the club).
• This essay is less good than the wisdom tooth essay because it spends more time on M. Gustav — a fictional character not interested in admission to UChicago — and less time on the student writing it. 
• Nevertheless, the student’s description of the movie does show great attention to detail and analytic powers, which are always good assets. 

Helpful info on all the “other” stuff you’ll consider as you apply to UChicago (and other schools)

A few helpful resources for the non-supplement parts of your application:

• Common App: Since UChicago uses the Common App, read our guide to acing everything to do with writing your Common App application. 
• Whether to submit test scores: UChicago is test-optional for Fall 2023. Our test-optional article will guide you through the tricky waters of making this decision. 
• Early options: UChicago offers everything — Early Action, Early Early Decision I, and Early Decision II. Read our Early Admissions article so you know how to approach this decision. 

BTW, here’s our guidance for approaching any college supplement + here’s where you can find our guides for almost every college’s supplements. 

Feeling inspired? A great place to start is at our College Essay Help Center. 

More articles on Prompt.com’s admissions-boosting methods:

• Work with a college essay coach
• Strong essays increase your chance of admission by up to 10x
• Don’t let influencers influence your college essays
• Should I apply test-optional?
• Early admissions: Everything you need to know
• College Essay Help Center