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

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, a few helpful resources for the non-supplement parts of your application:

• Personal essay: you need a stellar Personal Statement for Harvard (as for most colleges). Here’s how to write a great personal essay. 
• Activities list: here’s how to write your activities so they really impress. 
• Common App or Coalition App: Harvard accepts both. We have a guide for acing everything to do with writing your Common App application. 
• Applying early or regular: Harvard offers “Restrictive Early Action” as well as “Regular Decision.” Read our guide to early/regular decisions — it's a great overview of this decision at any school.  
• Submitting tests: Harvard is test-optional through 2026. Here’s how to decide whether or not to submit your scores.

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

Alright, let’s move on to the actual supplemental questions. 

Think of your best “experiences” before you start answering any of these essays

Harvard’s wide-open questions mean you have to do the work of knowing exactly what is most valuable to say about your record before you get started. 

Most students make the mistake of going essay-by-essay. That’s a recipe for staring at a blank page, uncertain what to do. And it leads to strategic mistakes about what to write. 

As you’ll learn if you walk through our free brainstorming materials in our dashboard (create a free account), Prompt’s method is to first spend time writing down all the experiences you’ve had in high school — cast a very wide net to think of things you’ve done academically, extracurricularly, with your family, at a job, over the summer, and independently. 

Your experiences will each form the basis of your essays. As you develop those questions, start thinking about which of the 5 Traits That Colleges Look For each experience demonstrated in you. (The traits are: Drive, Initiative, Intellectual Curiosity, Contribution, and Diversity of Experiences.) 

The more you write with the traits in mind, the more you’ll add details that impress your admissions officers — and stay away from details that don’t add value.

By the end of this process, you should have a lot of valuable info to share. 

Next, take the best experiences you’ve come up with — the ones that most exemplify one (or more) of the 5 traits and slate them in your slots:

• Extracurricular
• Intellectual Curiosity
• [Open ended] 

(Obviously, your personal essay should use your best experiences, with these three slots taking up the next-best. If it doesn’t talk about your best experiences, re-write it now!)

Only by looking at your Harvard application in its entirety can you make the best use of each of these questions. Now that you have an idea what you should write about, let’s dive into the questions themselves.

Don’t take our examples too seriously — there are many “right” ways to answer Harvard’s prompts

Quick interruption: at Prompt, we’re on record as being against modeling yourself on influencers, New York Times college essay writers, and, really, anyone who isn’t you.

On the other hand, we know that you want concrete examples of what our brilliant but (we’ll admit it) abstract advice can actually look like in practice. So, we’re illustrating with some made-up examples.

Please read them with a big grain of salt. You can have a different writing style. You can go a million other directions. And if the example sounds too impressive, it just might be — our examples are generally loosely based on real examples, but still fictional. You’re working with reality, and that tends to be harder.

With that caveat out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

Ace the “extracurricular/work” essay by focusing on your actions and impact

The question is: 

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

With this short answer, you’ll likely expand on one of your most meaningful activities, putting more detail here than you could in that tight space. You’ll want to follow the advice we wrote for the activity list. 

Choosing which activity: prioritize based on —

• impact you had in the activity, 
• leadership roles you held (formal or informal), and 
• time devoted to it. 

There’s no hard-and-fast line, but those are the three most impressive factors.

Writing up the activity: Focus ruthlessly on the actions you took, and the impact you achieved. Minimize time describing your role or the situation. Remember, your aim is to show off 1 or more of the 5 traits, meaning the qualities you bring to things that you do.

Extracurricular example:

Babysitting brings me joy. Kids are tough, but I love overcoming their challenges. One of my tricks is bringing a bag of toys and books. Kids love novelty; it’s a fun way to break the ice and keep them entertained. I also love overcoming breakdowns — breakdowns are inevitable, but giving into them isn’t. I experiment with food, firmness, hugs, and distractions. It’s so satisfying when you figure out how to lead a child back to smiles. 

Last summer, I was able to make more money than I would have at my old cashier job, working fewer hours. I gained the devotion of five families — through reputation and word of mouth. When I asked for a raise to $25/hour, not a single family refused. Babysitting has made me more comfortable with adults as well as kids, and I’m proud of setting myself up for a meaningful and successful summer. 

Notes:

• This is an example of how you can shine even if you weren’t doing cutting-edge research. 
• The writer keeps the focus on impressive actions they took: coming prepared; being persistent; asking grownups for a raise (that’s a big skill!), and building a business.
• This example shows drive, initiative and contribution.

Ace the “intellectual curiosity” essay by (also) focusing on your actions and impact

The question is: 

Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere. (150 words)

This prompt is similar to the extracurricular prompt; it’s just asking about intellectual curiosity (one of the 5 traits, as you know) instead of things you’ve done. The approach is similar.

Choosing the “intellectual activity.” As with the extracurricular essay, pick the experience that best shows longevity and impact. The best answers will show off something with which you’ve had a deep involvement with, and maybe even had some impact with.

Writing the activity: Again, focus on your actions. It’s so easy with this essay to start waxing poetic about … whatever it might be: poetry, cancer research, Jane Austen. But Harvard doesn’t really care about those things — it cares about your relationship to those things; how you developed your interest and what you did with it.

Intellectual curiosity example:

Sometimes, a YouTube video is not just a YouTube video: sometimes, it’s a red flag to a bull. When I watched a video arguing that the 1995 Persuasion film was something short of perfection, you can imagine my outrage. I’d create a rebuttal: easy. But - why was Amanda Root the ideal embodiment of Anne Elliot, and what about the dialogue (or was it editing?) allowed the film to be so funny and profound at the same time? 

Today, no surprise that 1995 Persuasion tops my My YouTube channel discussing and ranking all (most) Austen film adaptations (Austentatious). What is a surprise is how much I’ve learned about film theory, acting philosophy, and the British regency period, not to mention video editing and essay-writing. (Book rec: “For Keeps,” by Pauline Kael.) Fittingly, my improved writing, research, and editing skills have made me much better at the art of persuasion. 

Notes:

• You learn that the student picked up books and did research in a lot of different subjects, though all related to their Jane Austen quest. 
• For the most part, the focus is on the students’ actions.
• You get a sense that the student has improved many skills (writing, research, editing). 
• In addition to intellectual curiosity, the student showed drive to marshal the evidence for a solid rebuttal, rather than going with a superficial treatment. 

‍Ace the “open-ended” essay by thinking about it like “Additional Info” and using your best experience to answer

The question is: 

You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics:

– Unusual circumstances in your life

– Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities

– What you would want your future college roommate to know about you

– An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you

– How you hope to use your college education

– A list of books you have read during the past twelve months

– The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to act with integrity and honesty.

– The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission?

– Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do?

– Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

‍Word count: While there’s no word count for this essay, good guidance is to keep it shorter than your personal statement (max 650). In fact, the shorter the better, as admission readers are busy, harried people, who love “short and sweet.”

Choosing your topic: Do not read through that long bulleted list of ideas hoping Harvard will give you the winning topic. Instead, start with your brainstormed list of experiences. What’s the best thing you’ve done that you haven’t found space to fit anywhere else? That’s what you’re going to work with here. 

Note: You must think about this in conjunction with the other two essays. If you have an amazing extracurricular experience, you might write that up here — using your longer word count. Then use your “second-best” extracurricular for the short essay. 

In addition, this space is pretty similar to the Additional Info space that is part of the Common App. We strongly suggest that you brush up on how to use that space, as you’ll likely want to think creatively (and carefully) here in the same ways. 

Writing up the open-ended essay: This is so open-ended, that it’s hard to give advice. If you go with an essay, though, think of it as a second personal essay. That does not mean that there’s anything wrong with a bulleted list of some kind. (Again, short and sweet.)

Warning: One essay we’d stay clear of is: 

“– What you would want your future college roommate to know about you.”

That’s because this essay really leads you close to the dreaded “getting to know you” trap, which is terrible for college essays. If you love it, though, read what we say about the Stanford roommate essay, which is the same. 

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