How to Answer the Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompts

Bonus Material: PrepMaven’s Supplemental Essay Spreadsheet

Many selective U.S. colleges and universities now require applicants to submit at least one additional essay. We discuss some general tips for approaching these supplemental essays in a separate post.

Harvard is one of these colleges. It actually requires students to respond to three supplemental essay questions.

What are these questions, and how should you respond to them?

In this post, we answer these questions and give you the feedback you need to generate successful responses. We also give you access to our Supplemental Essay Spreadsheet, which includes essay prompts for the 50 most selective U.S. colleges. You can grab it now!

Here’s what we cover:

The Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompts 2020-2021

Harvard has three supplemental essay questions for its 2020-2021 admissions cycle:

  • 2 150-word responses
  • 1 650-word response

Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompt #1: Extracurricular Activities / Work Experience 

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

Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompt #2: Intellectual Life 

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)

Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompt #3: Long-form Additional Essay

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. (650 words)

How to Respond to the 3 Harvard Supplemental Essay Questions

Prompt #1: Extracurricular Activities / Work Experience 

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

Students can feel free to approach this prompt quite literally. Yet many of our students struggle to pinpoint exactly which one of their activities or work experiences they should highlight here.

First, keep in mind that you’ll have a chance to discuss intellectual pursuits at greater length in Prompt #2. Focus on anything you’ve done that counts as an extracurricular activity or work experience in the last four years, and ones that aren’t predominantly academic or intellectual.

Secondly, identify those experiences that can showcase an aspect of yourself you have not fully elaborated elsewhere in your application, including your personal statement. Ideally, you’ll want to discuss an experience that hints at what is meaningful or valuable to you.

This is a great place, for example, to consider:

  • Public service or community engagement, including volunteering
  • A central passion (such as art, athletics, or a language club)
  • Work experience that has proved meaningful on some level
  • Internships

We also recommend selecting an activity or work experience that is significant in terms of timeline. This isn’t really the place to discuss a three-day volunteering experience, for example, or a one-week hobby, unless the impact was especially profound.

Remember that you only have 150 words to respond here! This means that it will be very important to be concise. The prompt itself uses the adverb “briefly.”

We recommend highlighting the relevant details of the experience, including:

  • Your role or level of commitment
  • Timeline (i.e., all of high school, last summer, etc.)
  • Organization or activity names, if applicable
  • Responsibilities, contributions, influences

It’s also important to demonstrate–even if it’s only a sentence–what is particularly meaningful about this experience. Does it relate to your career aspirations, values, or beliefs? Has it inspired or changed you in some way? Has it challenged you? Admissions officers want to get a sense here of what matters to you.

Here’s a sample abbreviated response to Prompt #1 that reflects this advice:

I began interning for artist Winona Smith as a freshman, when I was just building my own artistic skills. I spent every Tuesday evening for the next three years working at her studio, where I observed her process, helped with cleaning tasks, and documented her work. This experience has been transformative on several levels, most especially in what it has taught me about the dedication required of any artist when it comes to this vital craft. 

Prompt #2: Intellectual Life 

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)

It’s really important to note the details in this very specific supplemental essay prompt. Harvard is looking for “intellectual activities” that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. This includes your resume and/or list of activities.

The fact that the prompt mentions the notion of activities that have “not been described elsewhere” twice is very important. This should be the first time that Harvard is hearing about a specific intellectual pursuit of yours in the scope of your application.

The examples that the prompt provides are telling, too: self-directed or supervised projects, training, online courses, research programs, etc. These all gesture to your capacity to be independent in your intellectual life. They are also all quite literally examples that might not be so easily detailed in a resume.

What does this tell us?

Harvard admissions officers are interested in applicants’ potential for independent thought, research, and exploration. They also want to know more about what excites you intellectually outside of the usual lineup of pursuits (internships, courses, programs, etc.).

This is very much in line with Harvard’s vision, which specifies:

Beginning in the classroom with exposure to new ideas, new ways of understanding, and new ways of knowing, students embark on a journey of intellectual transformation. 

The prompt tells applicants to “list additional activities.” For this reason, students can feel fairly comfortable approaching this prompt literally. But there is always, always, always room for creativity!

Students should also consider incorporating any of the following, for example:

  • Why they chose to engage in these intellectual activities
  • What they learned through these experiences
  • How these might relate to future intellectual interests
  • What this says about them as a scholar or independent learner

Of course, 150 words is a tight word limit, so be sure to be concise and use short, declarative sentences. Make sure you include relevant details about the intellectual activity, including:

  • Your role/title and responsibilities
  • Timeline
  • Purpose or intent of the activity
  • Any relevant outcome
  • Supervisors, organization names, etc.

Here is an abbreviated sample of a Harvard Prompt #2 response:

In my four years of high school, I have prioritized honing my creative writing skills given my desire to pursue a career as a literary fiction writer. I’ve worked privately with a professional writer on crafting short fiction and, most recently, completed an online MasterClass course led by Margaret Atwood. I am grateful for these mentorship experiences and look forward to applying what I have learned to a collegiate-level creative writing program and/or minor.

Prompt #3: Long-form Additional Essay

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. (650 words)

This is a very long prompt that gives applicants plenty of options. For this reason, it can feel somewhat overwhelming.

Remember, however, that the prompt also states that students can “write on a topic of your choice.” This puts it right up there with the list of Common App prompts, which includes #7: 

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

In other words, you don’t have to write according to any of the prompts listed.

That being said, it’s important to note the wide range of suggested topics here. They encompass, generally:

  • Diversity
  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Travel experiences
  • Unusual circumstances
  • Your notion of education
  • Gap years and time off from college
  • Character and personality

 In other words, Harvard wants to know about who you are and what you have to offer their campus community outside of the following:

  • Your main college essay
  • 1 essay on a meaningful extracurricular activity or work experience
  • 1 essay on an intellectual activity that falls outside of your resume

Keep this in mind as you brainstorm topics.

It can also be helpful to return to any brainstorming you completed for your personal statement, especially those ideas that almost made the cut for your main essay’s topic.

Students should also think about the parts of themselves they’ve demonstrated in their Harvard application thus far. What else is missing? What else should admissions officers know? What else is essential to who they are? Are there any other skills they wish to showcase?

For examples of the kind of response that might be successful here, we actually encourage students to review these 11 college essays that worked. While these are personal statements, they reflect the quality, caliber, and personality that meet the standards of this third Harvard supplemental essay prompt.

In fact, approaching this essay like the personal statement is not a bad idea!

Download Our Supplemental Essay Spreadsheet

We’ve compiled the supplemental essay prompts for the most selective 50 U.S. colleges and universities in one FREE easy-to-access spreadsheet!

Here’s what you’ll get:

  • The supplemental essay prompt(s) for the most selective 50 U.S. colleges / universities
  • Word limits for each prompt
  • Application deadlines for each (early and regular)

Kate_Princeton Tutoring_AuthorBio Kate

Kate is a graduate of Princeton University. Over the last decade, Kate has successfully mentored students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay.

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