NYU recently changed its essay prompt for the current application cycle. Students applying as freshmen before the January 5 deadline face a new prompt.
This time, it’s an unusual question with a lot of flexibility.
But, before we explain how to approach the new NYU essay prompt, let’s discuss some important points. Specifically, we must discuss why this new prompt is so… problematic.
Below you’ll find NYU’s Common Data Set
Okay, that sounds pretty fair. The NYU essay is important. After all, they’re 35th in US News and World Report’s ranking. But, NYU has given us a meager 250 words to stand out.
That’s… pretty bad.
While NYU heavily values the essay, you’re only offered a little bit of space to write. Sounds pretty unfair.
Additionally, you can see NYU’s admissions rate and yield rate (how many students attend once accepted.) Based on the chart given by NYU, the admissions rate has significantly decreased in time; yet, students are attending more once accepted. This roughly indicates that demand for spots at NYU is rising, yet supply is falling.
So, not only is the NYU essay important. But, they don’t give you much space to write a compelling essay. Additionally, the demand just keeps getting higher for spots at NYU whilst admissions rates are plummeting.
In other words, if you want to truly stand out, you’re going to need a very, very strong and unique NYU essay that blows everyone out of the water.
Yikes.
Fortunately, we’re here to help. This article is going to deconstruct the new NYU essay prompt and guide you step-by-step on how to answer it. There are multiple options available; so, we’ll cover each one. Additionally, if you think you still need help writing a solid NYU essay that beats the competition, we can help over a free consultation call.
Table of Contents
How to Answer the New NYU Essay Prompt “Pick a Quote”.
In the new NYU essay prompt, you can pick 5 quotes to write about. Alternatively, you can write about your own quote.
Also, we reposted the quotes in each respective section below for your reading convenience.
We are looking for peacemakers, changemakers, global citizens, boundary breakers, creatives and innovators – Choose one quote from the following and let us know why it inspires you; or share a short quote and person not on our list who inspires you, and include why. (250 word limit)
● “We’re used to people telling us there are no solutions, and then creating our
NYU Essay Prompt “Pick a Quote”
own. So we did what we do best. We reached out to each other, and to our
allies, and we mobilized across communities to make change, to benefit and
include everyone in society.” Judith Heuman, 2022 NYU Commencement
Address
● “I encourage your discomfort, that you must contribute, that you must make
your voice heard. That is the essence of good citizenship.” Sherilynn Ifill, 2015
NYU Commencement Address
● “If you know how to fly but you never knew how to walk, wouldn’t that be
sad?” Lang Lang, 2015 NYU Honorary Degree Recipient
● “You have the right to want things and to want things to change.” Sanna
Marin, Former Prime Minister of Finland, 2023 NYU Commencement
Address
● “It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair.” Taylor Swift, Change, Released
2008, 2022 NYU Commencement Speaker
● Share a short quote and person not on this list, and why the quote inspires you.
Now, let’s discuss what Billy Sichel, Assistant VP of Undergrad Admissions has to say about the new changes to the essay prompt. Specifically, why go from “Why NYU” to “Pick a Quote?”
“…we already know why NYU is a great place to spend your 4 years, so we thought: if you want to tell us more about your passion for NYU, let’s make the question about you.”
Billy Sichel –Assistant Vice President of Undergraduate Admissions
NYU Essay Quote 1
“We’re used to people telling us there are no solutions, and then creating our own. So we did what we do best. We reached out to each other, and to our allies, and we mobilized across communities to make change, to benefit and include everyone in society.”
Judith Heuman, 2022 NYU Commencement
Address
Judith Heuman’s quote on carving one’s own path resonates with millions of others worldwide. It’s a testament to the human proclivity to pursue success even in the face of overwhelming adversity.
Yet, in some ways, there’s something subtly entrepreneurial about this quote.
Consider the fact that the entrepreneurs of the old world carved their legacy in undertaking the unconventional. Cornelius Vanderbilt (yeah, yeah; we know: we’re referencing a Vanderbilt in the wake of an NYU essay) took massive risks that changed the face of American industry today. Hidetaka Miyazaki left a comfortable office job to pursue his dream of creating his own video game, ushering in a new genre of game design.”
Yet, in the second half of the quote, it pivots from creating one’s own solutions to achieving solutions through working alongside allies.
The first NYU essay quote therefore works best for students who have both a self-starter and collaborative temperament. Students with a desire to revolutionize industries or change the way we see the world while enjoying the process alongside peers or cofounders would find this quote helpful.
If you’re answering the essay using this quote, we would recommend using the essay to connect Heuman’s philosophy to your own. Try to bridge her ideas with your entrepreneurial temperament and your own experiences working alongside others. If you can tap into these two themes, you’ll connect with not just the admissions officers, but the NYU community and self-starter culture.
NYU Essay Quote 2
“I encourage your discomfort, that you must contribute, that you must make your voice heard. That is the essence of good citizenship.”
Sherilynn Ifill, 2015 NYU Commencement Address
Sherilynn Ifill‘s quote requires some extra context. You may infer this is about advocating for what you believe is right in the world. But, we feel it’s better to give the whole quote for background info before you start writing.
“There was nothing less, she said, than a “crisis of confidence in the rule of law and in our justice system,” and it required action. “I encourage your discomfort, that you must contribute, that you must make your voice heard. That is the essence of good citizenship, that bone-deep sense of obligation that you must work to improve our democracy, and to improve it especially for those who are most marginalized and most in need.”
NYU Law Magazine –Sherilynn Ifill
In the full context of the quote, Sherilynn is talking about encouraging discomfort for the sake of a democratic society.
So, that makes this quote perfect for students who have experiences where they had to fight for what they thought was right despite discomfort. Sherilynn’s quote works especially well for students who had to do the right thing despite other people’s discomfort.
But, if you really want to answer the NYU essay prompt using Sherilynn’s quote, we heavily recommend zeroing in on the discomfort section. Why? Well, that’s because it’s often in moments of discomfort that we truly find value in what we’re fighting for. The battles where we can advocate for freedom and liberty in safety are great. Fair! But, it’s often the ones that make yourself or others uncomfortable that are truly challenging and a testament to your sense of justice.
For instance, let’s say you feel uncomfortable speaking up about the narcissistic abuse you see from Asian American families. It’s very common for Narcissistic Asian American families to use their cultural heritage as a reason for their abusive behavior. So, speaking against them can be uncomfortable and difficult for everyone involved, especially with the subtle insinuation of racism. Experiences such as these will hold the most value.
Additionally, try to find value in nuance. Often, students look for the biggest, loudest experiences to write about for their college essays. But, the embracing of discomfort for the sake of intellectual liberty is a nuanced and sophisticated approach. So, don’t be afraid to dig into the underlying themes and motifs in your NYU essay.
NYU Essay Quote 3
“If you know how to fly but you never knew how to walk, wouldn’t that be sad?”
Lang Lang, 2015 NYU Honorary Degree Recipient
Before we tackle Lang Lang’s quote, we wanted to paste below some background context. The quote comes from an interview Lang Lang had with The Focus.
Specifically, Lang Lang is a pianist who discussed their experience with playing hard music vs what they called “inward-looking” music.
“The Focus: You once said that as a musician you liked to tackle the most difficult pieces first. What were the rewards of music when you were a boy, and what gives you most pleasure as an artist today?
Lang Lang: When you start with a difficult piece, it’s like a big leap forward. It’s extremely difficult to play pieces like Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto when you’re twelve. Fortunately I was also playing the complete Chopin Etudes at that time, and that helped me to work on the hard passages. But it’s good to start early, too. Then you won’t be afraid of these pieces later, when you come to play them on stage. But you can’t depend only on Rachmaninov’s Third or Tschaikovsky’s First or Third. Very soon everybody will be wanting you to play artistically more important pieces like the Mozart or Beethoven concertos. I began my career in grand style, playing virtuoso pieces. After two years I started to draw fire from the critics. This guy, they argued, only plays loud, quick, fast, and challenging music. So then I switched to Beethoven and Chopin, to the more intimate, more inward-looking music. This is how I have developed. I learned the early Beethoven Sonatas, which was really difficult in the beginning because it’s not only a totally different technique, but it calls for a different kind of knowledge. If you know how to fly but you never knew how to walk, wouldn’t that be sad?”
Interview with Lang Lang –Friedrich Kuhn
Funnily enough, this quote can actually be applicable as an analogy to many different walks of life.
For some, it works for people who grew up too fast in life. For others, it may apply to their experience as a gifted student who never learned the fundamentals of basic work ethic. It could even apply to students who have a passion for the loud or exciting but never learned to appreciate the simpler until later in life.
Whatever your background, this is a fantastic topic for students answering the NYU essay prompt.
One thing to keep in mind when choosing Lang Lang’s quote is that the quote is particularly symbolic. This can make it a hard quote to choose since the other quotes are comparatively more straightforward. We can use “flight” and “walking” in different analogies depending on your individual experience.
In effect, you’ll essentially need to dedicate at least a bit of the word count to associating the symbols with your own experience.
So, when using Lang Lang’s quote for your NYU essay, remember to be very conservative with your word count. That way, you can save a lot more space for the actual content of your essay. Remember: the reason WHY the quote is significant to you should make up a majority of your word count. So, don’t be afraid to be stingy.
Additionally, we recognize that while Lang Lang’s quote is strong, it can be hard to write about within 250 words. So, if you do need additional help with writing this and making it stand out, consider speaking with us for a free consultation! We can help you craft a solid NYU essay to maximize your acceptance rate!
NYU Essay Quote 4
“You have the right to want things and to want things to change.”
Sanna Marin, Former Prime Minister of Finland, 2023 NYU Commencement Address
Sanna Marin’s quote for the NYU essay is a fantastic one for students who have an activist streak! This is obvious enough; but, you can also use this quote if you’re someone who has yearned for rights and change for a long time without being an activist.
For instance, the NYU essay for Sanna Marin’s quote is great for students who were children of abuse. This is because the first half recognizes the right to yearn for things and the second half addresses the right to yearn for a shift in the status quo.
Students who are children of abuse are often told they don’t have a right to… well, anything in life. It sounds banal and simple for Sanna to tell students “you have a right to want good stuff.” But, this statement is a very, very profound contradiction to what children of abuse are told.
This runs as the antithesis of everything a disempowered student feels; yet, it’s invigorating and empowering at the same time!
The best way to make the most of this quote when writing the NYU essay is to reference the quote’s seemingly simple phrasing. Although it sounds obvious and simple, it’s a fantastic and profound statement that runs opposite of what many students have been told all their lives.
Women have been told they don’t have a right to want a better partner in life. Men have been told they need to “suck it up” in life. Young millennials were told they needed to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, and that they could never rely on others such as their own government for help.
In short, Sanna Marin’s quote is deceptively complex. If you can draw from it the profound meaning it has for disempowered students, you can make this a fantastic NYU essay.
NYU Essay Quote 5
“It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair.”
Taylor Swift, Change, Released 2008, 2022 NYU Commencement Speaker
Do you feel the heavy shackles of discrimination, generational trauma, and oppression pulling your feet? Perhaps you too know the pain of inequality. Maybe it’s the crushing weight of capitalism.
Of course you do! That’s why quote 5 caught your attention!
Or, maybe you’re just a Swiftie. *It’s okay, we love her too.*
The great thing about using quote 5 for the NYU essay is that Taylor Swift’s quote is very versatile. Most if not everyone has been the victim of or at least been exposed to unfair battles. These battles can be unfair popularity contests from student council elections, unfair physical competitions in sports, unfair comparisons of wealth and privilege, unfair cultural disadvantages such as those from socially restricted Asian Americans, and many more.
So, just about anyone can use the Taylor Swift quote for this NYU essay prompt.
However, if you want to truly stand out in this prompt, you must not presume the unfairness can stand on its own. That is, you need to be descriptive about your “unfair battle” and why that quote is meaningful to your experience.
Most students simply answer this by describing what their experience of unfairness is. But, they fail to actually connect that with the quote and why it was profound to them.
Here’s a rough example.
Wrong:
“Taylor’s quote truly resonated with my own experience with unfair fights. Quite literally, I was engaged in a fight because a student named Kevin assumed that I was homosexual. Despite trying to ignore him, he assaulted me from behind. However, after the dust had cleared and we were both pulled into the principal’s office, Kevin and I actually got along. He told me of his religious background and being told how being homosexual was an act of evil against God’s own creation. And, this one-sided fight led to both our mutual agreement and unlikely friendship.
New NYU Essay Example for Taylor Swift’s Quote —Done Wrong
Nonetheless, Kevin was let off scott-free whilst I was taken away from campus for weeks. It wasn’t until high school that I discovered Kevin’s mother had threatened the school to segregate me from him due to my “uncleanliness.”
Right:
“Taylor’s quote truly resonated with my own experience with unfair fights. Quite literally, I was engaged in a fight because a student named Kevin assumed that I was homosexual. Despite trying to ignore him, he assaulted me from behind. However, after the dust had cleared and we were both pulled into the principal’s office, Kevin and I actually got along. He told me of his religious background and being told how being homosexual was an act of evil against God’s own creation. And, this one-sided fight led to both our mutual agreement and unlikely friendship.
New NYU Essay Example for Taylor Swift’s Quote —Done Right
Nonetheless, Kevin was let off scott-free whilst I was taken away from campus for weeks. It wasn’t until high school that I discovered Kevin’s mother had threatened the school to segregate me from him due to my “uncleanliness.”
Ultimately, Taylor’s quote spoke to me at an unconscious level. I feel her quote gives me a voice despite my injustice never being heard. I’ve always felt my experience with discrimination and unfair office politics made me alone in this battle; yet, a celebrity, someone so far removed from me, can provide comfort to my situation. “
These are not perfect examples of answering the new NYU essay example. This simply is an example depicting the main principle: connect your instance of unfairness to the main prompt!
Note: you do NOT need to have been slighted or treated unfairly to a very severe degree in order to answer this question. Inequality and unfairness —no matter how big or small— are insightful experiences that tell us a lot about the world. Use the lessons gained from inequality too, not just the actual event in and of itself.
NYU Essay: Picking Your Own Quote
Share a short quote and person not on this list, and why the quote inspires you.
NYU Essay Prompt: Pick Your Own Quote
Now, let’s say you don’t want to cover any of the quotes provided by NYU. Instead, you want to use your own quote for NYU’s essay prompt.
One of the things you’ll need to keep in mind is that all 5 of NYU’s available quotes are profoundly important from a political, philosophical, and spiritual level. To some degree, they hold important themes and motifs that may be important to applicants.
So, if you want to choose your own quote for the NYU essay, we heavily recommend that you write the essay using a profound quote with many strong themes and motifs that you can draw from. These don’t have to have “academic” contexts such as famous works of literature. You can still use quotes from movies, television, etc. Just make sure that you can actually draw from the quote important themes and ideas. Then, connect them to WHY they’re important and significant to you.
One suggestion we give is to find a topic to write about for all quotes including one you choose on your own. (So, 6 in total.) Then, when you have all the topics in front of you, you can pick which ones are going to be the best to write.
Why is this a good exercise, you may ask?
Well, it’s because you may be surprised just how strong the available quotes provided by NYU can be for the essay! Most students opt to choose a quote of their own because it gives them more flexibility. However, this freedom could be limiting. When you’re given the freedom to choose any quote you want, you could be misguided into believing you should find the absolutely perfect-est (that’s not even a word, we know, we’re being hyperbolic…) quote.
But, this is a fool’s errand. If you spend too much time trying to find the absolute best quote, you’ll spend more time browsing quotes than actually describing more about yourself.
Remember: the goal of the essay is to just show more about yourself and how that part of you would be a great addition to the school. If you choose to go down the path of choosing your own quote for the NYU essay, don’t be too focused on scanning the horizon for better quotes. You won’t be judged too heavily for your quote of choice; rather, you’ll be judged for what you say ABOUT it and its relevance to you.
If you are still struggling to answer the NYU essay questions, consider speaking to our experts for a free consultation. We will stay with you on the phone to discuss the best ways you should answer the NYU essay questions based on your background information and initial interview.
