One of the things you’ll realize about the Syracuse supplemental essay is that there really isn’t a lot of room to say anything at all. Before we get to the guide on how to write it, we need to discuss why the prompt’s short word limit is important.
The entire point of the Syracuse supplemental essay is to help the university have a deeper understanding of each student. This is important to the admissions process because it helps them differentiate between Bob, Joe, Glen, Jessica, and Amy who all have 4.0s and strong extracurriculars. If you have a strong academic background and fantastic extracurriculars, it’s still necessary to have a writing supplement to help the school differentiate. How else would they know which student is better if all students have a 4.0?
Because the Syracuse supplemental essay is so short and has a maximum of 250 words, it essentially defeats the entire purpose of this holistic admissions process. 250 words make it next to impossible to differentiate between all the other students. We’re not happy with this.
Thus, unlike many of our college application essay guides, this one is going to be a much shorter one. There is only so much that can be done with the Syracuse supplemental essay to help you stand out amongst the rest of the application pool with 250 words.
But, don’t lose hope. The writing supplement is still an asset to help show your unique character and help stand out. So, we’ll still show you what to do to squeeze the most juice out of this orange.
Table of Contents
- Syracuse Supplemental Essay Prompt
- The Syracuse “Why Us” Essay Format
- How to Write the Syracuse Supplemental Essay
Professional College Application Help.
Contact us. We'll get to you within 24 hours.
Syracuse Supplemental Essay Prompt
Please be sure to respond to both parts of the following question:
“Why are you interested in Syracuse University and how do you see yourself contributing to a diverse, inclusive, accessible and respectful campus?”
Word Limit: 250
Common App Website, Syracuse University Section
Let’s deconstruct all the parts of note here.
The parts that are most important to pay attention to here are the following…
- Why are you interested in Syracuse University?
- How do you see yourself contributing to a…
- Define: Diverse
- Define: Inclusive
- Define: Accessible
- Define: Respectful
You can’t fully answer this question or have a sufficient supplemental essay ready for submission unless you can write with all the following elements in mind. (Number 1 and 2, but not defining all the terms) Let’s go over each one.
When talking about why you are interested in Syracuse University, it’s important not to fall for the common trap of regurgitating what is on the website. So, don’t write about the empty platitudes you see on its brochures, advertisements, and slogans just to show your interest in the school. This can come across as trying to game the system and demonstrate a lack of genuine honesty in why you want to go to the school. Oftentimes, you’ll need to talk about how your intended major cannot succeed unless you attend Syracuse. We’ll cover this more in-depth in the next section.
In the second half of the Syracuse supplemental essay, it’s important to define HOW you will contribute to the school’s diverse, inclusive, accessible, and respectful community.
First, you need to write in much detail what exactly the steps are in contributing to the school’s community. This means being very specific and perhaps even down to the exact steps, you’ll take. This also means you shouldn’t be using a vague answer to this question. It helps to show the admissions office that you have a plan for how you can support and contribute to the school, instead of just vague goals.
Next, define what diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, and respect in a community mean to you. You may not be able to contribute to all of these elements in the school and write it in a 250-word essay, and that’s fine. However, zero in on at least one of these elements and think of how your experience or background can help contribute to this.
If you have experience in your internship collaborating with people of different backgrounds to work together as a team, your experience may translate to Syracuse University’s inclusive community. If you learned how to actively listen as an aspiring psychologist and mental health practitioner, your background experience can help add to the accessibility and respect in the community. No matter what you write about, remember to be specific about how your topic will help you contribute to the school. Be as detailed as possible within the 250 word limit.
The Syracuse “Why Us” Essay Format
The Syracuse supplemental essay is also another version of the “Why Us” essay format seen in other colleges.
As such, the conventional rules of “Why Us” essays still apply. To write a strong “Why Us” essay, the following mental exercise works very well: If you were accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT, or any top school for your particular major of choice, why would you still choose Syracuse?
Well, it’s not exactly an easy question to answer. In fact, despite Syracuse’s strong emphasis on research, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to attend a university at the 99th percentile.
Nonetheless, asking yourself this question will help you better understand how important Syracuse is to you and your future.
More often than not, people have a future with their desired school that is connected with their major and therefore their aspiring projects. They plan to conduct a personal project with their major and collaborate with other like-minded students in the community to create a product, service, or entity that would better the society as a whole. Think about how Syracuse comes into play with this and perhaps how the school can help you fulfill such ambitious goals if you have them.
How to Write the Syracuse Supplemental Essay
Despite the short 250 word limit, there are still a few points you will want to consider when writing the Syracuse supplemental essay. Be sure to keep these in mind very carefully when writing your essay, and don’t forget to do a lot of reviewing.
More often than not, students and clients come to us with final drafts that they believe to be strong. Although some of them are acceptable, we would say many essays have a lot of potential to be much stronger. In fact, some essays may even be subpar or underperforming; some needed much revising despite how much editing the clients did on their own.
Thus, even if you’ve edited or revised your essay well, we would highly recommend signing up for at least one of our free college essay consultations to iron out any insufficiencies in it. The Syracuse supplemental essay only allows for one essay with a small word count. So, it’s crucial to make the most of it by perfecting it before submission.
Connect Your Intended Major With the School’s Resources
When answering the Syracuse supplemental essay, it’s somewhat improbable to write it well without proving your point. Most people choose Syracuse, or any college for that matter, for the sole reason that their intended major is aligned with the opportunities that Syracuse can provide.
Maybe there are clubs or activities that give you a strong community to build you personal project there. Or, some of the resources for startup types such as the Blackstone Launchpad interest you because you believe that it can best optimize your chances for success.
Whatever you choose to write about, make sure you prove to the admissions officers why Syracuse is the right choice for you. Point to the resources that will directly correlate with what you want to do in the future as well as the projects you want to conduct. If there’s a professor there who is conducting research in a field that you’re interested in and were hoping to build a potential startup off of, that is a strong reason to choose Syracuse.
Use the resources available at the school to connect with what you want to do with your intended major. These resources should be serious, and you must write in detail how exactly these details would come into play in maximizing your chances of success in your future major.
Now, this brings up a problem. You can’t write the Syracuse supplemental essay without knowing why it helps you with your major. Thus, you can’t write it without knowing what you want to do with your career in the future. So, what do you do if you’re just like any other 18-year-old who doesn’t know what to do with their future?
What do You Plan to do With Your Major? Career? Projects?
Let’s be real. There are not many people out there between the ages of 18-25 who have any idea what they want to do with their future, let alone whether they’ve majored in the right thing.
It’s okay to not know what to do in the future or be undeclared in major. If this is you, consider writing the Syracuse supplemental essay by showing that it is a place of discovery and learning to help you discover what you want to do in the future.
In addition, Syracuse is full of potential. If you don’t know what you want to do as a personal project or what you want to major in, you can write that Syracuse is still a place or collaborate with other fellow conscientious people looking to contribute to the world with sophisticated research and business.
You don’t have to know precisely what you want to major in if you’re undecided in major. But, it’s still useful to know what you generally want to look for in the university.
If the university’s hard working culture binds well with its culture in research and personal business projects, maybe that temperament is something that will qualify your experience in the university. You may be someone who is smart but confused with what you truly have an interest in. So, you can use the wide array of potential majors and industries available at the school as a reason why the school is the perfect fit for you. You simply need to find the elements of the school that would make you successful as an undeclared major.
Once you know the elements of the school that will help you succeed in your future career, whether you have a major in mind or not, you’ll be ready to write the essay.
Segregate Paragraphs; Diversify Sentence Structure
Even with a maximum of 250 words in the essay, it’s wise to segregate your paragraphs and diversify sentence structure.
The short nature of the essay makes it easy for applicants to think that they can just write one big blob of text. After all, it’s so short! So, the admissions officers won’t mind if it’s just a short block of text, right?
Well, not really.
Remember that the nature of the admissions process is not to do what is easy, but what will help you stand out positively amongst the rest of the admissions pool. So, that means you’ll need to segregate your entire essay into separate paragraphs and diversify the sentence structure to ensure the admissions officers reading your essay will be able to read through your text easily and in a streamlined manner.
“But, one block of text in 250 words is simple and straightforward, right? Shouldn’t that be better?”
If you’re asking yourself this, well, it’s not true.
The admissions office receives countless stacks of applications and essays to process. It takes an eternity and a half to truly get to your particular essay. And, even then, they’ll be most probably sleep deprived and tired from the thousands of other generic essays.
Simply diversifying the text by separating your one block of text into multiple paragraphs, and changing the sentence structure by making some sentences vary in length or using different punctuation goes a long way. This ensures that the admissions office can hold an interest in your essay, and not just skim through it.
If you have any other questions about how to write the Syracuse supplemental essay, don’t be afraid to ask us for help. This is a very short essay, so you only have a small chance of writing it well enough to stand out amongst the rest of applicants. Don’t risk falling behind with the rest of the admissions pool. Schedule a free consultation so our team may advise and provide suggestions on how to write your essay whether you’ve already started it or haven’t written it yet.