Pitzer is a small liberal arts school in Claremont, California. Students at Pitzer can take classes at Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, and Claremont McKenna. Most of the 5C’s stopped reporting their acceptance rates, but Pitzer’s acceptance rate for the class of 2024 was around 15.9%.
Pitzer provides three prompts, and you’ll pick one. Before you start writing, read through Pitzer’s core values. No matter which prompt you decide to write, you’ll need to show the admissions team that you align with the values of the school – so it’s crucial that you familiarize yourself with them before you start writing.
Moving on to their supplements:
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. Find out more about our core values.
The word count is 650 for all three prompts.
Describe what you are looking for from your college experience and why Pitzer would be a good fit for you.
The three big-ticket items that you should aim to hit with your response are academics, extracurricular activities, and core values. Let’s break them down individually:
Academics:
The goal here is to tell a story that explains your academic interests, and then prove that Pitzer is the only logical place to study them. Look through the list of majors and minors and decide what you want to study at Pitzer. Let’s say you choose Economics. Before you tell them that you plan to study Econ, tell them why. Maybe you started a club at school, did a summer program, or had a job that required you to familiarize yourself with economic concepts. Whatever the reason is, tell them. From there, find two upper-level classes that you want to take and include your reasons for wanting to take them. You should also find a professor who is conducting research that is interesting to you, and explain why you would be a valuable asset to their research team. Remain focused on specifics while fleshing out the link between your academic goals and Pitzer’s offerings.
Extracurricular activities:
You should also find a student group or organization at Pitzer that is related to your activities from high school. If you get in, you can branch out and join whatever club you want. But for this essay, you need to show Pitzer that you’ve honed a soft skill from an extracurricular activity, and that you’ll be contributing to the community on campus by continuing a similar kind of work.
Core values:
Which one of Pitzer’s core values speaks to you? Decide that first, and aim to include an anecdote about how you’re already engaged with Pitzer’s overarching goals. This seems like a big task but it can be achieved by telling small stories that prove that you’re committed to say, interdisciplinary learning.
But wait, there’s more! At this point, you have the data points. But 650 words is a lot of words, and you should take advantage of the space by telling a story. Read over the information that you’ve gathered and brainstorm ways that you can incorporate the details while keeping a narrative arc in mind. Your final draft should read as a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Reflecting on your involvement throughout high school or within the community, how have you engaged with one of Pitzer’s core values?
“Reflect” is a tough word in the college admissions process because it can cause students to focus more on takeaways from certain experiences rather than tell the actual story of what happened. If you’re familiar with our blog, you should know by now that the best college essays tell stories. And that is exactly what you should do should you choose to answer this prompt.
Again, read through Pitzer’s core values and find the one that you identify with most. If the value truly resonates with you, you’ll probably have a story that aligns with one of them. Let’s go with environmental sustainability as an example. Let’s say that you first learned about composting during your freshman year of high school. You thought it sounded interesting and went down a research rabbit hole, finding the best materials and tips and tricks on the internet. You then started composting at home, and the next year you helped your school begin the process of composting. There you have it; a fictional student who is quite literally engaged with one of Pitzer’s core values.
Bring the reader in and tell the story of your composting journey. If interdisciplinary learning is more your style, tell the admissions team about your independent project that was dually focused on biology and computer science.
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?
We would only suggest choosing this prompt if you’re already doing something meaningful to create change. On the one hand, Pitzer is asking you to dream big. But writing about aspirations only works if you’re already on the journey. We all have hopes and dreams, but if they are not rooted in reality, it does not say much about you right now.
The best way to identify causes that you’re passionate about is to focus on something close to home. A big part of this prompt is explaining why you’re so committed to say, equitable access to healthy food or improving the education system. A pitfall to avoid is exclusively writing a cause and not tying it to yourself. However, if you’re truly committed to a cause of some sort AND have done meaningful work in the space, use most of the word count to explain what you’re already doing. Then (and only then) should you start to flush out your goals for the future.
Pitzer’s supplement essays are the length of your common app essay. The content is extremely important, but your ability to tell a story is just as crucial. Be sure to spend a lot of time finding ways to tell your story.
We love helping students tell stories that matter. Contact us here if you need help.