Introduction

Ahh, Pitzer College: one of the Claremont Consortium and ranked #35 in the US News National Liberal Arts Colleges. It also accepted only 10 percent of transfer applicants. Despite this competitive admissions rate, this also means that getting in will ensure a small student teacher ratio.

Pitzer’s transfer supplemental essay requires you write only one 400-500 word piece. You get to choose which prompt you would like to respond to out of three. Here, we’ll show you which supplemental essay prompt is the best fit for you and how to answer them.

“At Pitzer College, five core values distinguish our approach to education: social responsibility, intercultural understanding, interdisciplinary learning, student engagement, and environmental sustainability. As agents of change, our students utilize these values to create solutions to our world’s challenges.

You will only respond to one of the following prompts. You are limited to 2500 characters (about 400-500 words.)

Prompt 1: Reflecting on your involvement throughout school or within the community, how have you engaged with one of Pitzer’s core values?

Prompt 2: Describe what you are looking for from your college experience and why Pitzer would be a good fit for you.

Prompt 3: Pitzer is known for our students’ intellectual and creative activism. If you could work on a cause that is meaningful to you through a project, artistic, academic, or otherwise, what would you do?“

So you probably already guessed that Pitzer’s reminding you about their core values probably means something. They’re looking for people who are a good “fit” for the school. That means that having a good GPA and impeccable letters of recommendation may not be enough to get accepted at Pitzer. If your personality and philosophy doesn’t align with their school’s, you’ll have a harder time getting accepted.

Okay. Let’s take a look at which prompt is the best fit for you and deconstruct a game plan for each option.

Table of Contents

Prompt 1 Guide

Pitzer Prompt 1 Example Essay

Prompt 2 Guide

Pitzer Prompt 2 Example Essay

Prompt 3 Guide

Pitzer Prompt 3 Example Essay

Conclusion

Prompt 1 Guide

“Reflecting on your involvement throughout school or within the community, how have you engaged with one of Pitzer’s core values?”

This would be a good choice for those who have personal experiences that directly align with their core values. This experience should involve your influence with high school or a community that you’re in, but remember: not everyone has the capability –or privilege—to make large ripples in the world. Pitzer, and many other colleges, recognize this; that’s why they’re not expecting you to make great leaps for your community or school.

Raised enough money to support the homeless community in your city? Fantastic!

Planted some trees with your friends to beautify the streets? Totally fine!

Note: You’re only limited to 400-500 words for this transfer application. Writing about how you ran a project in your school to help save the bees may relate to Pitzer College’s environmental sustainability core value, but you’ll hit the word limit faster than you’d expect!

You probably won’t be able to fit in multiple topics in this one, and you wouldn’t want to anyway! Besides, having multiple topics will only stretch out your content too thin. Keep your essays narrow and pointed at one topic, not many.

This also happens to be one of those essays that happen to work better as a narrative. If you’ve done something that demonstrates your engagement with one of the core values, it would have to follow the (first this happened, then that happened) format by default. This allows you to spread your experiences thoroughly without being too vague about just exactly how your personify one of their core values.

Pitzer Transfer Prompt 1 Example

Here’s an example of how you can write a successful Pitzer transfer essay that reaches all the directions and keeps the admissions officers interested.

Core Value: Environmental Responsibility

Topic: Making a sculpture for your school out of recyclables.

Intro + Hook: “I’m going to make a bet: This school is so boring that I can put literal trash in the front library, and it would look better.”

Body: background info and deeper imagery of how you developed the project to make a recyclable and decorative sculpture for your school.   

Conclusion: Tie back to how this project embodies Pitzer College’s core value of environmental responsibility.

The key to a good hook, and any hook or introduction for that matter, is the way the writer frames the climax of the events. It needs to be specific yet vague –yes, we know that’s an oxymoron but bear with us here—in that it needs to laser in on one detail so much that it makes it unclear what the big picture really is yet. We recommend checking out our introduction and hooks guide for more extensive details.

The body and conclusion are a little more straightforward: clarify the content of the hook and use descriptive imagery and writing techniques to let your experiences shine. The conclusion paragraph will describe how your experiences relate to the core values (or in more technical terms, how you answer the prompt.)

Prompt 2 Guide

“Describe what you are looking for from your college experience and why Pitzer would be a good fit for you.”

Well, you’re going to have to have done a bit of research on Pitzer college to be able to answer this properly.

If you applied to the school because you saw it was a member of the Claremont Consortium and sported a low acceptance rate, you’re going to have to think more about this.

Why is Pitzer right for you? It’s a literal arts college and that demands an open personality. We don’t mean open as in open to socializing –though that’d also be a plus. Specifically, you have to have a temperament that makes you open to the idea of exploring new areas of study and implementing their mediums to what you do.

You’re a literary analyst? Great! You’ll also be learning about women’s rights and art history.  

Remember as we stated in the last prompt, all of these prompts demand that you’re a good “fit” for their school. It’s even stated plainly on prompt 2.

The best way of tackling this prompt is stringing two concepts together: What you want out of Pitzer and how the resources or culture of Pitzer will help to provide what you’re looking for.

It’s understandable that many college students would say the thing they’re looking for is parties and alcohol and girls. Not only is that not a sophisticated answer, but it’s also something that can be achieved at any school.

Chances are, what Pitzer can provide you that you’d want is related to a dream career, connections, or personal development.

We’d also recommend straying away from talking about how you want to get an education out of Pitzer. Anyone can get a high quality education from any college. There has to be something about this school specifically that builds on your goals and plans.  

In short, it’s about how they’re special and how they’re a goof fit for you because other schools won’t have the same correlation with your goals.

Pitzer Transfer Prompt 2 Example Essay

Here’s another transfer essay sample.

Core Value: Intercultural Understanding

Topic: How your goal of publishing novels on culture wars parallels what one of the professors had worked on before.  

Intro + Hook: “swirling the glass in the air, Aiden watched the wine coat the edges of the glass before making webs and descending back into a velvet-red lake. And then…” then I stopped. I didn’t really know how to continue the novel, only that the next few pages had to involve a car chase and windows breaking.

Body: Elaborate on the project / novel you’re working on and talk more in depth about how it came to be. Emphasize imagery on how much you worked on it and less on the actual content of the story (because it’s not relevant to the main prompt). You will, however, have to talk about how this project correlates with the core value of intercultural understanding.

Body 2: How you discovered the work of a professor from Pitzer and how it related to your novel on cultural wars and intercultural understanding. Be very specific in talking about how this work relates to your work; don’t just say it “seemed cool”.  

Conclusion: How does Body 1 and Body 2 answer the question? How doe it show what you’re looking for from your college experience and why you think Pitzer would be the best fit for you?

The intro, as stated before, should be something that starts with a bit of out-of-context elaboration. It should be vague enough yet specific about one detail so that it remains unclear yet interesting to admissions officers. You don’t want to give everything away in one sentence. That’s for the body and conclusion.

Speaking of the body and conclusion, this section may be more difficult than the first prompt’s body and conclusion. This is because it focuses on two aspects in 400-500 words: What you’re looking for, and why Pitzer is a good fit. You’re essentially going to be fitting two answers into one prompt instead of fitting only one answer.

Nonetheless, if this prompt works better for you than the other ones, do this one. Don’t be discouraged by the negatives; the rule on picking a prompt is always this: whichever you feel like is easiest to talk about.

Prompt 3 Guide

“Pitzer is known for our students’ intellectual and creative activism. If you could work on a cause that is meaningful to you through a project, artistic, academic, or otherwise, what would you do?”

There are a lot of causes to fight for, but there’s a lot that people feel entirely helpless about. Yeah, we know: most transfer applicants to Pitzer are still sophomores in university. It’d be impossible to expect a university student to make changes that can shape the world drastically.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write this, though.

This prompt would work best for those who feel like they have an identity or cause that is meaningful to them that they would want to protect or strive for.

Most of everyone could relate to this, but there are some who are more passionate about this than others. We’d recommend the passionate here.

Also remember that the third prompt specifically states “what would you do?” This means you don’t have to have a group assembled already or blueprints developed. This could be something hypothetical.

Note: This is one of the exceptions where we would recommend not talking about a topic or cause you’re passionate about if it is cliché.

The problem with topics that are too broad is not that they’re bad topics. It’s just that they’re so wide that any projects tackling the problem would be stretched too thin to be realistic. You won’t be able to have a strong essay if your project is far too unrealistic.

More importantly, it would also be competing with many other Pitzer transfer essays with the same topic. What may be a fantastic essay may only be a good essay when paired with the rest of the fantastic applicants with the same topic, so the more competition you face, the higher the bar is for getting accepted.

Pitzer Prompt 3 Example Essay

This is our last transfer essay example.

Core Value: Social Responsibility

Topic: Talk about both what is meaningful to you and your project on said meaningful thing. For instance, you can write about an Asian American rights rally that you form in your area due to the mistreatment that a lot of Asian Americans get.    

Intro + Hook: One of the things they don’t tell you about hosting a rally is just how nerve-racking giving a speech can be. Sure, everybody is on the same team, but what if I slipped and said something stupid? I know I certainly did when…

Body: What happened in the rally? Why was what happened so meaningful to you and how did it relate to your passion for the Asian American rights cause? Be sure not to answer these questions directly as you would an interview. Answer these questions through implication and strong imagery that demonstrates what you’re saying.

In other words, the value of this section is “showing don’t tell.” This is related to the first prompt because the narrative format may benefit a “show don’t tell” structure.

Conclusion: Wrap up this essay by saying how your passion for Asian American rights and your activism for it demonstrates your affinity for Pitzer College’s core value of social responsibility.

Conclusion

Let’s face it: even with good grades, impeccable letters of recommendation, and valuable experiences, its difficult to stand out in competitive schools. We don’t want to shower you in platitudes about “attitude” and “hard work” and all that stuff you already know, so we’ll leave you with a college admissions story as old as time.

There were two students, both with the same fantastic grades and marks and all the perfect clubs and sports. One was accepted into MIT; the other was not accepted into any of his choices.  

MIT isn’t Pitzer, we know. But this story repeats itself year after year after year. We would know; the angry parents rave about it all the time.

What was the difference?

One had pride and one didn’t.

It is far too often that smart applicants –and they certainly are smart, believe us—tend to get too arrogant. They think that their grades can carry their weight and that they’re good enough a writer to break through the college admissions essay sections.

The students who get into MIT; the students who get accepted into Berkeley, or LA, or any of their dream schools, all show humility.

They ask for help on admissions essays and take a second ear even if they think they know what they’re doing (which most don’t because admissions essays are a completely different beast with its own set of rules.)

We’re not asking you to throw money at college admissions counselors and have them do the work for you. We’re also not undermining your intellect. We ask only that you find as much advice and experienced proofreading from one as you can.

PenningPapers offers free first-time admissions essay consulting and review. Our team will run through all the attributes of your admissions essay and pick at the things that need to be improved for free. You can find more information about our services here, or simply fill out the form on the side bar to schedule a free consultation and admissions essay review.

Lastly, remember that admissions essays have their own rules that most applicants are not used to answering properly. It doesn’t always have to be our free service, but remember to ask for professional advice and proofreading whenever you can: not from your school counselor, not from your friend’s dad, but from a professional in the industry.