Princeton is an Ivy League university that offers its 5,500 undergraduate students one of the best liberal arts educations in the world. The campus is brimming with talent, and there are 31 faculty and staff Nobel Prize winners and 24 alumni winners of the Nobel Prize. Two alumni have become President of the United States, and three current Supreme Court Justices are graduates. There are 400+ international internship opportunities for you to explore, but the college remains grounded in its New Jersey campus. Since the founding of Princeton in 1746, the university has only had 20 presidents, and this continuity has led to a culture that deeply values tradition, history, and legacy. Part of this legacy is an intense commitment to free speech and promoting complex dialog — even when it’s comfortable. Princeton has recently withheld admissions statistics, but The Daily Princetonian estimates the acceptance rate at a little under 6%.
If you visit Princeton, you’ll undoubtedly hear about how close-knit the campus is, with 96% of undergrads living on campus. At the core of the residential program are their food services. For underclassmen, there is residential house-specific dining, and for older students the eating clubs form the backbone of social life. Princeton thinks of each student as an individual contributor to the community, and they are currently test optional for the 2023-24 application cycle. Students who don’t feel their ACT or SAT scores represent their potential are free to withhold them from consideration as part of their application.
If Princeton is your dream college, send us an email. We help the best students in the world get into the best colleges in the world.
Princeton has a pretty long supplement, but before you dig in it’s important to know that the first prompt listed below will populate differently in the common application depending on how you answer this question: “Which degree would you most likely pursue at Princeton? Your choice is not binding in any way.” We’ve outlined how to answer both of the possible prompts that you’ll be shown, but you will only actually see one of them on the application.
Which degree would you most likely pursue at Princeton? Your choice is not binding in any way: Then select from the drop-down menu to reveal which of the following prompts you’ll need to answer.
If you select A.B. or Undecided, the question you have to answer is: As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer)
This is an academic “why us?” essay, and you need to do research before you start brainstorming how you want to answer. Your response should be shaped by what you learn about your prospective academic program at Princeton, so having that information first is crucial. Start by finding:
Your prospective major
Two classes in your major that you’re excited for
A potential minor
A class in your potential minor that you’re excited for
Two professors in different departments and disciplines that you’d like to study under — and why
Princeton wants to know how you intend to take advantage of all that they have to offer, not just your major program, which is why it’s important to find classes and professors that illustrate a breadth of opportunities.
Before you turn your research into a response, though, you need to identify (and tell) a story that illustrates why you’re a good fit for Princeton academically. Given the emphasis on a holistic education that they state in the prompt, we recommend following their lead by writing an intro that is focused on an experience you’ve had in school or in an academic program where you had to draw on a variety of fields in order to find success.
From there, go into what it is that you want to study, and why, and how. This will reinforce that you are a perfect fit, and that you really know the Princeton program.
If you select B.S.E., the question you have to answer is: Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at Princeton. Include any of your experiences in, or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the University suit your particular interests. (Please respond in 250 words or fewer)
This is fundamentally the same question as above, with a few words changed to “engineering” except for one thing: experience and exposure. Whereas for the A.B. and Undecided prompt Princeton doesn’t ask applicants to enumerate what they have done already in the pursuit of a specific subject, for this one they do. This shows how important they consider experience and exposure to be for engineering applicants, and should direct your extracurriculars in the time before submitting your application if you haven’t had experience or exposure yet. For example, you could find a fall after-school internship.
Most applicants will already have experience and exposure to share, but be sure to do it in a narrative format, telling the story of your journey towards a degree in engineering. Then, go into the details of how you’d like to pursue your education at Princeton: your prospective focus, at least two classes you want to take, and at least one professor you intend to study under. Be as specific as you can be mapping your interests onto what Princeton will offer you, because they want to see that you are a perfect match.
Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (500 words or fewer)
As we said in the intro, Princeton really prioritizes free speech and believes it’s better for people to be uncomfortable than unheard. If this prompt makes you uncomfortable, though, you are not alone It is a massively wide-ranging prompt – so the only way to answer it really is with a constrained, zoomed-in story. The story could relate to more than one lesson, but we don’t recommend telling more than one story.
Pick something from your life that has shaped your perspective on life, community, education, or friendship — it doesn’t have to be a ‘big’ thing. In fact, it most likely shouldn’t be. The story you focus on could be from a particular relationship, place, or program, but instead of writing about that thing as a whole, you need to zoom in further. For example, if you went to a hippy camp as a young child where you stayed up until midnight playing cards with fellow eight-year-old tentmates and listening to rain pelt your tent roof, that’s a good story for talking about friendship, togetherness, resiliency, and self-sufficiency.
Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (250 words or fewer)
This could be an essay about volunteering, but it doesn’t have to be. What you write in response does, however, need to be about a specific experience. As you’ve probably realized by now, we believe in specificity and in telling stories, so you’ll need to do both here. The experience should be in your primary community (where you spend most of your time), and be long-term. See how they say “commitment” and “longstanding”? They want to hear about something that you are committed to and engage with in a long-term way — perhaps you’ll even continue with that same activity or a similar one in college. For example, if you spend time once a month at a nonprofit reading letters from prison inmates and packing boxes of books to send to them based on their written requests, write about it.
Please respond to each question in 50 words or fewer. There are no right or wrong answers. Be yourself!
Before you dig into these, remember that every prompt should be paired with a story. Give each of these micro-supplements as much thought as any other part of the application, and treat them as mini essays.
What is a new skill you would like to learn in college? (50 words)
Ok, let’s make one thing clear before you try to come up with something clever for this one: you are not a comedian. Even if you are, this is not your stage. It is extremely hard to craft a joke sans context and without knowledge of your audience. This is why we do not advise trying to tell jokes in your application, including for this prompt. Instead, be earnest. Earnestness always wins. We also recommend considering focusing on something here that is relevant to academia, but that isn’t strictly academic. Look through on-campus activities and clubs for inspiration, and, again, be honest. What do you want to learn outside of the classroom that will help you lead a great life.
What brings you joy? (50 words)
You’ve spent a lot of time trying to sound fancy and adult, so let yourself be a teenager here — and not your highest-achieving, only ever is studying, straight-A achieving, I’ll sleep when I’m dead self (also, that’s unhealthy, go to bed). A normal teenager does things other than school. If you’ve forgotten that, you’ve been working on applications for too long and need to get outside. Tell them about what you do when you have 45 minutes and not a care in the world.
What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment? (50 words)
This is not a trick question, so don’t try to be super cool and esoteric by mentioning something no one knows and that you’ve only listened to once. Pick something that really resonates with you right now, in this moment, on a deep level, and then tell a micro-story connecting it to your life.
Princeton requires you to submit a graded written paper as part of your application. You may submit this material now or any time before the application deadline. If you choose not to upload the required paper at this time, you may mail, e-mail, or upload your paper through the applicant portal. Detailed instructions for our graded paper requirement can be found here.
The last piece of your application for Princeton is a graded written paper. They have very clear specifications for what type of paper they want you to send (here), and you must follow those instructions. Being different is good, but flagrantly ignoring instructions won’t make you stand out in a good way even if you think your best paper is outside the scope of what they want to see. You need to follow the rules. Seriously.
In the specifications, they say they want a humanities paper, preferably English, but not creative writing. This is because they want to see how you think, and how you process information. They expect the teachers grade and, if given, comments, to be on the paper, and it shouldn’t be less than a page or more than a couple of pages. Bonus points are not given for sending in something monstrously long.
While Princeton does let you submit the paper later by email or mail, we highly recommend scanning it with your phone (Genius Scan is an easy app for this) and submitting it with the rest of your application. That may mean waiting to submit the application until close to the deadline so that you can include a paper you wrote recently — and that’s ok. Submitting your application early doesn’t give you a boost, and submitting a very recent paper with a high grade is what we like best.
The Princeton application is extensive, and they ask a lot of you. That’s because they really want to know you. Take advantage of the opportunity by giving them a diverse range of stories that highlight different aspects of who you are as a person, student, and community member.
If you are applying to Princeton, send us an email. We are experts at getting into the Ivy League.