Johns Hopkins is a private school in Baltimore, Maryland. The acceptance rate is about 10% and the university has about 6,100 undergrads. JHU is known for its renowned Bloomberg School of Public Health and the research it put out amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. This is our recommendation for tackling the supplement:
Founded in the spirit of exploration and discovery, Johns Hopkins University encourages students to share their perspectives, develop their interests, and pursue new experiences.
Use this space to share something you’d like the admissions committee to know about you (your interests, your background, your identity, or your community), and how it has shaped what you want to get out of your college experience at Hopkins. (300-400 words)*
This is a straightforward one as far as supplements go and you can read it as “Why Johns Hopkins?” Our first piece of advice is to identify your academic area of expertise. In other words, over the last few years of high school, you should have been building a brand in a particular niche academic area. Science is not specific enough. Microbiology is better. Put yourself in the shoes of the admissions committee. They want to build a freshmen class with a number of experts in various niche subjects who will grow up to become the very best in their respective fields and make them look good. So, take some time to reflect on what exactly you’ve been cultivating these past several semesters and what your resume says about your expertise.
Begin your response with an origin story of how you got interested in your area of expertise. This doesn’t need to be (and in fact should not be) grand or existential. This should be a simple tale. Perhaps you discovered a microscope in your classroom closet in the sixth grade and spent a week collecting samples from puddles at recess to examine.
Then you should identify the program or major at Johns Hopkins that is mostly closely connected to your area of expertise. Don’t worry, you’re not actually declaring a major. No one’s going to hold you to it. If you get to Johns Hopkins and want to go in undecided, you can! BUT, the way to get accepted is to show Johns Hopkins that you’re a perfect fit because you’ve been becoming an expert in a particular field and they offer the best academics in that field. So, do a deep dive. Identify two higher-level courses offered in that major. Do research on the professors that teach them. Talk about how you’re interested in the research they’re conducting outside of the classroom or the books they’ve recently published.
Next, you should identify an extracurricular or organization offered at the school that’s also closely linked to your area of expertise. Finally, end with a sentence about what’s appealing about the location.
Applying to college is extremely competitive these days. To get ahead in this climate, we highly recommend students get very specific about their academic journey. Showing a school that you’ve been focused throughout the last few years of college and that you’re on a trajectory toward professional success is a great way to get their attention.
Need help writing a school supplement? Call us. We’re experts at helping students craft stand-out essays.