A lot of colleges ask you to get down to business on their application questions. Writing these essays can often feel like an endless and overwhelming stream of information. What extracurriculars do you do? What classes are you taking? What do you want to major in? The list goes on.
And while those details are important… we get it. It’s tiring.
Luckily for you, the University of Georgia gets it too. So they give you just one supplemental essay to write, and give you a chance to explore something more interesting: how a book has impacted how you’ve become who you are.
Want to get a better sense of what the University of Georgia is looking for? You’ll find an extensive, by-the-numbers look at its offerings, from enrollment and tuition statistics to student life and financial aid information on its Common Data Set. For deep insights into how this university envisions student success (and how it wants to grow and evolve), read its strategic priorities. Reading through this will give you a strong idea of UGA’s values.
What is the University of Georgia supplemental essay prompt?
University of Georgia Supplemental Essay Prompt #1
The transition from middle to high school is a key time for students as they reach new levels of both academic and personal discovery. Please share a book (novel, non-fiction, etc.) that had a serious impact on you during this time. Please focus more on why this book made an impact on you and less on the plot/theme of the book itself (we are not looking for a book report).
We are not restricting you to the exact years of 8th-9th grades, but rather the general timeframe of the middle to high school transition, which can extend somewhat further than one year on each end. Feel free to use your discretion in your choice of the timeline focused on the shift to your high school years. (200-350 words)
How to Write the University of Georgia Supplemental Essay Prompt
The transition from middle to high school is a key time for students as they reach new levels of both academic and personal discovery. Please share a book (novel, non-fiction, etc.) that had a serious impact on you during this time. Please focus more on why this book made an impact on you and less on the plot/theme of the book itself (we are not looking for a book report).
We are not restricting you to the exact years of 8th-9th grades, but rather the general timeframe of the middle to high school transition, which can extend somewhat further than one year on each end. Feel free to use your discretion in your choice of the timeline focused on the shift to your high school years. (200-350 words)
ge admissions process can create anxiety. In an attempt to make it less stressful, please tell us an interesting or amusing story about yourself from your high school years that you have not already shared in your application. (200 to 300 words)
It doesn’t matter if you’ve always got your Kindle by your side, downloading and reading the latest additions to the New York Times Best Sellers list, or you’re more of a casual beach reader. If you’ve got a favorite, impactful book, UGA wants to hear (well, read) about why. And that’s really the meat of the question—the why. Maybe reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue made you realize we shouldn’t underestimate the impact we can make on others (or that others make on us) after one singular, fleeting meeting. And now you’re more aware of how you interact with strangers, and you want others to be too.
In particular, think about works that have been meaningful to you. In other words, this essay should still be about you (the prompt explicitly says so), not simply an analysis of the artwork itself. What lessons have you learned from reading/hearing the piece that you’ve been able to apply elsewhere in your life? Did it challenge preconceived ideas or beliefs? Did it inspire you in some meaningful way?
This is the stuff of a great essay.
To choose a book, take some time to evaluate whether the rest of your Common App application as a whole—your personal statement, Activities List, and Additional Information section. Is there an important side of you, a critical experience, subject, or activity, that isn’t coming through as strongly as it should, or maybe at all? If your answer is yes, ask yourself: Can I demonstrate that in a meaningful way through a specific book?
Pro tip: Try not to write about widely popular or obvious choices—like, say, the classics or anything in the Harry Potter series. Not because they’re not wonderful reads (they’re well-known for a reason), but because other students are likely to write about them, which will make it more difficult for you to stand out. On top of that, note that this prompt specifies ‘living author’, so be sure to double check that information if you’re not 100% sure.
Here’s a strong example for this prompt that was written for an almost identical prompt for Boston College:
Example:
In history class, the dialogue surrounding the Civil Rights Movement often presents African Americans as a unified group fighting to resist racist policies. But James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, written in 1963, helped me understand that the nuances of African American resistance have often involved strained personal relationships within African American families.
Early in this book, Baldwin retells a childhood experience where his father discouraged him from staying in school because he thought a higher level of education didn’t help African Americans enter the professional sphere. Baldwin recalls encountering “too many college-graduate handymen,” but refuses to drop out of school, mostly as an act of defiance towards his father.
Baldwin continues to describe experiences that heightened the tension between him and his father—particularly regarding religion, parental control, and life on the streets.
Although resisting white oppression was difficult for Baldwin, resistance often caused divides in his personal relationships, which was more draining. Before reading this book, it had never occurred to me that overcoming the barriers perpetuated by racism in some cases involved taking a break from one’s traumatized community, which in this case was Baldwin’s own father.
I can relate. My father and I have differing methodologies for informing ourselves of current events and choosing to support a political candidate. My father makes his decision based on the political party, overall impact the candidate will have in the government, and major news headlines, while I believe in learning all the details about the candidate, doing extensive research on their speeches and personal history, looking at which influencers support them, and following their updates on social media. These small differences have caused my father and I to disagree in some political conversations. I used to doubt my own perspective when my father and I discussed politics, but Baldwin’s essay taught me to hold my own ground while also respecting my father’s opinion. It also taught me to critically reflect upon my own values.
Social problems play out in personal ways. The Fire Next Time has helped me find the balance between acknowledging strains in personal relationships while learning how to grow as an activist. Reading about Baldwin’s experience has helped me draw parallels to my personal struggles, and helped me combat my unconscious assumption that all African Americans have experienced the consequences of white oppression in the same way.
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Tips + Analysis
Show how the piece changed, broadened, or challenged previously held beliefs. The key to this essay is to show how the work of art you chose to write about contributed to your growth—how it gave you “insight or inspiration.” So, think about doing that in two parts: first by describing the belief or perspective you started with (the status quo), then by explaining how your viewpoint evolved. In her intro, this student starts right out with a summary of both: “In history class, the dialogue surrounding the Civil Rights Movement often presents African Americans as a unified group fighting to resist racist policies. But James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, written in 1963, helped me understand that the nuances of African American resistance have often involved strained personal relationships within African American families.” That’s a nice way to establish the essay’s theme from the beginning.
Make it personal. Remember, this is an essay about you, not so much the work you chose. You will, naturally, have to spend some of your word budget talking about the piece, especially as it relates to the idea or perspective that inspired or enlightened you. This student spent 100 words on Baldwin’s perspective—a quarter of the essay. We wouldn’t recommend using much more than that. But the student then quickly dives into the insight she gained, how “overcoming the barriers perpetuated by racism in some cases involved taking a break from one’s traumatized community.” Even more instrumental was showing how she related to Baldwin’s experience, through her political disagreements with her own father. But she doesn’t stop there. In demonstrating her growth, the student is clear about how she applied what she learned: “Baldwin’s essay taught me to hold my own ground while also respecting my father’s opinion. It also taught me to critically reflect upon my own values.”
Show how your growth has impacted your life in other ways. If you can demonstrate that the lessons you took away from the piece inspired you in multiple ways, all the better. For this student, in addition to having a new outlook on her political conversations with her father, she learned to “find the balance between acknowledging strains in personal relationships while learning how to grow as an activist,” while also learning to “draw parallels to my personal struggles,” and “combat my unconscious assumption that all African Americans have experienced the consequences of white oppression in the same way.”
Convey key values you want UGA to see. One of the most important goals of this essay is to show UGA what’s meaningful to you and why. That means conveying key values, especially those you share with UGA. This essay is teeming with strong values: empathy, compassion, social change, curiosity, accountability, diversity, quality relationships, respect, love.
Consider being vulnerable. Expressing vulnerability makes the essay more relatable, allowing the reader to connect with you on a more personal level. You can show vulnerability in multiple ways—with self-deprecating humor, by revealing embarrassing details, by sharing secrets or deeply personal information. This student is vulnerable in describing some over-generalized beliefs she had about the African-American experience, which some people may be shy about revealing for fear of judgment. Sharing that perspective makes her growth, and her willingness to embrace it, all the more meaningful.
Here’s another example:
Example:
Of all the books I've read, none left a bigger impact on me than Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. The book tells the stories of six North Koreans that lead very different lives but all eventually affected. When reading this book, I felt immense pity for these people and was reminded that, while North Korea is viewed only as a political aggressor, it is still comprised of people. I was shocked at how easily I saw North Korea as a conglomerate of individuals who are completely indistinct from their country—all villains.
By reading this novel, I was reminded how easy it is to judge or condemn people without truly understanding the reasons underlying who they are. These North Koreans did not choose their birthplace nor did they embody the ideology of their nation in the slightest—thinking this way changed my image of them entirely. Having read the book recently, I built upon this mindset during my Kairos (Catholic retreat), and I’ve been putting it into practice ever since.
I believe this novel would inspire similar revelations in many readers. A mindset like this is not only beneficial in the social realm, but the business one as well. (200 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Don’t be someone you’re not. It’s tempting to guess at what admission officers want to hear and craft a response based on a book that sounds good but that you have no connection to (or, even worse, didn’t actually read). Don’t. It’s not so much the actual book that’s important, but how (and why) a piece of literature changed the way you think or opened your eyes to something you’d never considered before—and how it might do the same for others. While we don’t know how this student happened upon this book, it’s clear what takeaways come from reading it.
Offer a fresh perspective. We often caution against writing about common experiences in college essays because they can make it harder for you to stand out. The same goes for common books. While you may feel very strongly that everyone should read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because it was the first book that got you excited about reading and you believe you can tell a lot about a person based on the house they’d belong to. But is it a truly standout topic? Probably not. But is there a deeper, more subtle insight you can tease out from your reading? We encourage you to give it a try. We doubt many others would be casually picking up Nothing to Envy, but knowing how it impacted this student, we now just might.
Sepcial thanks to Luci for writing this blog post
Luci is an audiophile and storyteller with a love of all things radio and writing. In the wild, you might catch her struggling through a NY Times crossword puzzle, snuggling her abnormally fluffy dog Oreo, or saying her favorite expression “cool beans.” Crosswords, cute dogs, cool beans. What more could you ask for?
Top values: Interpersonal connections | humor | openness to new experience
