The undergraduate college at Harvard University is a mid-sized liberal arts school within a massive private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard is the oldest university in the United States and is widely recognized as one of the world’s best schools. With an endowment that makes it financially comparable to a small country, Harvard is a mammoth institution that wields enormous power. Last year, Harvard received 43,330 applications for first-year admission. The acceptance rate was 4.6%, and 1650 students enrolled.
The supplement hasn’t changed since last year, but our advice has shifted on some of the prompts because the world has shifted. Please refer to this blog post for our best and most up-to-date advice on how to write the Harvard supplement for the 2020-2021 application year.
The first question in the supplement is in the “Academics” section of the college-specific questions:
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 schoolwork, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere. (150-words)
This is a great place to include 3-4 activities that are academic or academic-adjacent with ultra-short explanations or go in-depth on one activity. However, you need to be sure not to reiterate anything that is already listed in your activities section. Focus on new information that falls into the category of “intellectual activities.”
The next question is in the “Activities” section (no, we haven’t even made it to the supplement section yet).
Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (150-words)
This question is very similar to the previous one, except that they want to learn more about something that isn’t academic, and they only want to hear about one thing. If at all possible, we like to focus on a job or paid internship for this section. Whatever you choose to highlight, you need to include a story at the center of your response. There must be an anecdote to ground your answer. Whether it’s a complicated ice cream order, a project gone momentarily awry, or a leadership role you weren’t quite ready for, this is a great place to spotlight your flexibility, creativity, and strength.
If you are a student applying from a school outside of the US or Canada, even if you are a citizen of the US or Canada, you are asked to answer another short prompt before progressing on to the actual supplement.
What specific plan do you have, if any, for using the education you hope to receive? (50-words)
For this prompt, you should offer a logical and likely career trajectory or professional goal. Keep it short, sweet, and grounded. Having big dreams is great, but starting a pit bull rescue doesn’t quite match with an intended major in economics.
So, what is the supplement for 2020-2021? It’s an additional full-length 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:
Before we get to the topics on offer, it’s important to set one thing straight: This is not optional. It’s also not a free-for-all. They do not give a word limit, and you upload a doc or PDF, but please do not convince yourself that this is an opportunity to go wild and crazy. If you are thinking, “But I could do something so cool! Pictures! Graphs! Charts! Bulleted lists! Fifteen pages about how awesome I am! Why wouldn’t I use as much space as I can?” we understand the impulse but please don’t do it. College applications can feel profoundly limiting, and any opportunity to expand on yourself can feel like a game-changing opportunity.
Despite the logic behind this urge, you need to overcome it. We’ve seen students submit 15-page supplements that they feel are genuinely representative of everything they have to offer, and we’ve seen them fail. Every. Single. Time.
Exhaustive and obtuse supplements fail because applications are a project in curation. If you try to throw everything at a wall in the hopes that something will stick, the application readers aren’t just getting all of the information (including some you probably almost certainly didn’t need to share), they’re also learning that you are the type of person who likes to throw everything at the wall. You don’t want to be that person.
We’re not trying to make your squish your creativity. It’s Harvard; you need to show off that you are a creative person with a well-developed perspective if you want any chance of getting in, but we also advocate for restraint. If you submit writing, do not go over 650 words — single or double-spaced, in a standard font (Times New Roman, Cambria, or Arial), and with standard margins. If you submit images, do not go over five pages. If you submit images and words, do not go over 5 total pages with a maximum of 650 words, including captions.
Now that we have the specs out of the way let’s look at the topic options.
Unusual circumstances in your life
We advise skipping this prompt. Unusual circumstances that are unusual enough to pop into your mind when you see this prompt should be addressed in an additional information section, not in the Harvard supplement.
Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities
This can be an excellent prompt, with a few exceptions. Do not write about traveling, especially any travel that could be categorized as “I went to a poor country/city/town/village and learned X.” If you were hoping to write about volunteering in South Africa, you’re going to have to leave that out of your supplement — and hopefully, your entire application. Travel is a privilege. Traveling to less economically secure areas amplifies that privilege. Highlighting your privilege for an application reader is not a good route towards acceptance.
Do write about any experience you have living (more than 6 months, or so) in different places. Do write about your experience working in your community. Do write about a place that is particularly special to you. They want to know you, not where you’d been.
What you would want your future college roommate to know about you
This question was poached from Stanford, but okay.
This can be a fun prompt, but only if you take a creative approach. Do not just write a series of statements about yourself or how you are a good person to live with. Write a letter, tell a story, share a piece of your heritage or culture, share a moment, strive to connect.
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
We love this prompt, but if you choose it you need to show your creativity, share your passion, and fall into obsession, pivoting outwards to welcome readers in. This must be authentic to you. You absolutely cannot pick something to focus on because you think it will sound good. You need to truly feel attached to the subject, no matter how small (and, in fact, the smaller, the better).
How you hope to use your college education
This prompt is too much about what and where you hope to be, not where you are now. We recommend skipping this one.
A list of books you have read during the past twelve months
If you want to show off that you are well-read, incorporate that passion into a more developed response than this list.
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.
We really like this prompt, but it can also be a trap for students who have a few scuffs on their record they’re hoping to polish out. This is not a place to address a disciplinary issue. If you need to do that, you should use the dedicated discipline section or, if less serious, the additional information section. Whether or not your disciplinary record is clean, this is a great place to address something that is complicated, but that doesn’t come with a suspension or other disciplinary action.
Whatever you choose to focus on should you pick this prompt, it needs to have real stakes that apply directly to you. We believe students should stand alongside their peers as allies, but writing about being an ally can feel a little like putting on someone else’s coat. If you choose this prompt, wear your experiences with pride.
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?
We don’t love this prompt. It’s not the worst, but it’s not one of our top choices. If you want to use it, you’ll need to ensure that your response doesn’t become about other people — it needs to be about you.
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?
Last year, we recommended this prompt if you were planning to take a gap year. We still believe strongly in gap years and wish more of our students took them, but we don’t think this is a great prompt for 2020 — and it has nothing to do with whether a year off is a good idea. While we haven’t seen the stats yet, we expect a significant surge in the number of students looking to take gap years in the hopes that they can wait out the pandemic and have a more ‘normal’ start to their collegiate experience.
While most colleges have historically been quite receptive to gap years, the number of students requesting them was minuscule. Each student on a gap year is one fewer seat in next year’s first-year class, and colleges don’t want to hand out a large number of seats a year in advance. Answering this prompt signals to the school that you are considering deferring enrollment, exacerbating the potential gap year problem. For this reason, we recommend skipping this prompt.
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.
We love this prompt! If you pick it, welcome the reader into your life. This is an excellent opportunity to share a unique aspect of your background, heritage, or culture. As always, tell a story.
If you’re looking at this list of topics and totally lost on where to start, send us a message. We help make the college application process simple.