Let’s be honest… You had us at “Miami.” Like Ken, our job is just beach. No one can take that away from us! U Miami has over 10,000 full-time undergraduates and offers over 100 majors, with programs ranging from Marine Science and Immunology to Music Engineering Technology. And, they’re test optional through 2025. It is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida with a 13:1 student-to-faculty ratio and 19% admission rate.
Luckily, UM only has one supplement question. We’ll break that down, and then you’ll be on your way to a 9-5 of sand, sun, and — okay, fine — definitely some class, too.
The Supplement Question
Located within one of the most dynamic cities in the world, the University of Miami is a distinctive community with a variety of cultures, traditions, histories, languages, and backgrounds. The University of Miami is a values-based and purpose-driven postsecondary institution that embraces diversity and inclusivity in all its forms and strives to create a culture of belonging, where every person feels valued and has an opportunity to contribute.
Please describe how your unique experiences, challenges overcome, or skills acquired would contribute to our distinctive University community.
This question seems like a mouthful, but the last sentence distills it to a core question: what makes you compatible with the University of Miami’s values?
We’ve seen values-based questions before (like UT-Austin’s app), and this prompt blends the classic “why us” essay with its mission statement. You’ve only got 250 words (so, less than half a Common App essay) to respond, but you should tell a personal story that gets across two salient points: that you would add to and enrich UM as part of its student body, and that you understand and align with its principles of diversity, inclusivity, and equal-opportunity.
The phrasing here casts a pretty broad net — “unique experiences, challenges overcome, or skills acquired” covers basically every second of your life, and you don’t have that kind of real estate here. You don’t need to address all of these topics, and it would actually be impossible to. Choose a single story (whether it falls into the experience, obstacle, or learning moment category) and use it to allow your readers to get to know you better, to draw connections to UM’s mission, and to illustrate how you would strengthen their community.
Your anecdote, like any good story, should have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning outlines a goal or ideal you live by, the middle addresses a conflict or moment of growth, and the end concludes your tale while summarizing key takeaways for the future.
Here’s what our example student, Kenneth Kennedy, might say. He grew up in a border state and spoke English as his first language, but as he got older he noticed that his city, like Miami, was increasingly bilingual. In high school, he sought opportunities to practice Spanish outside the classroom and achieve greater fluency so that he could converse easily with as many people in his community as possible. While this took extra work and meant he had to get outside of his comfort zone — being willing to make mistakes in public and speak with less proficiency as he acquired a second language — it let him participate in creating “a culture of belonging, where every person feels valued.”
Ken doesn’t want to be a Spanish major in college, but he does anticipate that this experience of broadening his own perspective will help him to create bonds with his classmates at U-Miami and to approach his field of study, Marine Biology, from a holistic, analytical, and open-minded viewpoint rather than just projecting his experiences as the default when working alongside other people and learning about other living creatures, like his favorite marine species found in Florida, the bottlenose dolphin.
U Miami’s supplement keeps it short and sweet, and you should too. Be brief, but be focused — make sure you’re getting your shared values and future contributions across. Then you can bust out your bathing suit and get ready for that sweet, sweet coastal lifestyle.
Have more questions about supplemental essays? Contact us here for additional help.