Scripps is an all-women’s college and part of the Claremont Colleges system in California, just east of Los Angeles. It is also a top liberal arts college in the country, with just over 1000 undergrads and only a handful of graduate students, making it a predominately undergraduate college. The acceptance rate is 34%. If it’s a top school, why is the acceptance rate so high? Well, as an all-women’s college they have a smaller pool of potential students and a smaller pool of applicants. So, the higher acceptance rate is most representative of the popularity of all-women’s colleges in the US. We highly recommend any eligible student who is even considering an all-women’s environment to apply, as these colleges (including Smith, Barnard, and Bryn Mawr) offer an exceptional education with a higher acceptance rate.
If you are considering the college, you should also know that Scripps is test-optional, meaning that you aren’t required to submit an ACT or SAT score. That said, 43% of admitted and enrolled first-years in the fall of 2023 had submitted scores. This isn’t an overwhelming percentage by any means, but it’s also nothing to shrug off. If you can score above a 1480 on the SAT, or above a 33 on the ACT, it’s well worth submitting your scores.
In this post, we’ll talk about the piece of your application you have to do, though — the supplements.
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The Scripps supplement consists of two questions, with a few options. We’ll break down every single avenue to help you decide which route is right for you, and how you’ll be able to build the best possible application for the highest chance of acceptance.
Why have you chosen to apply to Scripps College? (200 words)
This is the classic “why us?” prompt, and is the most common supplement we see across all of college admissions. After helping students through thousands of these supplements (literally), we’ve figured out a formula that leads to the highest chance of acceptance while also allowing for creativity, flexibility, and at least a little bit of fun.
First, you need to identify what it is that you like about Scripps. This may sound obvious, but it’s not rare to get to this point in an application and not have many specifics to go on. Sure, you like that they offer a certain major, or that they are all-women’s, or that it’s a liberal arts college, but that’s all really general big picture stuff. Set a timer for 45 minutes and dig into the website, especially the department section that your prospective major (or majors) fit into. And take notes! What’s a course you’d want to take, a professor you’d like to study under, or a program you’d hope to take part in? Find at least one of each.
Once you’ve compiled your research, it’s time to tell your story.
Because you haven’t just chosen Scripps for a major — numerous colleges (or even most) offer that major, no matter which one you pick. There’s something about Scripps that connects to something within you, and they want to see it. Show them by starting with a story.
We recommend that all students start their “why us” essays with a short story that speaks to your interests and passions academically. This should be about four sentences, so it’s super short. That may mean writing a longer version, and then cutting it down to size.
Next, you need to speak specifically to your interests at Scripps. This is the ‘obvious’ part of the supplement, so be straightforward. It’s okay (and even great) to simply say, “I hope to study X at Scripps…” Take 5-6 sentences to outline your proposed future at Scripps, from major to academic programs to a club or two you hope to join.
Close out the supplement by envisioning your future at Scripps in a way that builds upon the initial story at the beginning. For example, if you started the supplement in a classroom breaking down a historical event to get to the truth, maybe you place yourself in a Scripps study group going even deeper into an event or issue. This is a nice way of tying the supplement up neatly without it feeling cheesy.
The next supplement gives you three options of prompts to answer, so we’ll break each down to help you pick.
Pick one of three options (150-300 words)
Option 1: If you could trade lives with someone (fictional or real) for a day, who would it be and why?
Ok, so this is super fun but it’s also a bit of a trap if you aren’t careful. We want you to write supplements about you, not about someone else. It’s really easy to take this prompt and write an amazing short essay that doesn’t really work as an application supplement. What do we mean? Well, a strong supplement needs to be a good essay — no matter the length — but a great essay doesn’t necessarily make an acceptance-winning supplement.
So, if you want to tackle this prompt, you need to keep yourself at the middle of it even as you take on the identity of someone else. To do this, make sure to pick someone who isn’t so famous that the reader is likely to know a lot about them. You want to be able to educate them a little on someone (fictional or real) who excites you, and who they won’t have lots of preconceptions about. This also gives you creative bandwidth to drop into a time and a place without them fact-checking you too rigorously, offering room for the flexibility and narrative storytelling that this prompt demands for it to pay off.
Option 2: You’ve invented a time machine! When and where is your first destination and why?
This prompt is super similar to Option 1 in concept, but very different in execution. Whereas in Option 1 you become someone else, here you get to be yourself — just somewhere else. We love this prompt as a way of emphasizing your interests and passions, and encourage students to focus more on the why than the what here, but to do it through carefully chosen details.
What we mean, in short, is that you need to write a scene that embodies why you want to study what you want to study, without you actually saying much of anything about studying at all. To kick yourself off, take a few minutes to read the first few pages of one of your favorite novels. What pulls you into the story? Try using some of those same narrative devices in your first draft of this supplement.
Option 3: You have just been invited to host your own podcast. What will you talk about and why did you select that topic?
Once upon a time podcasts were rare, and now it feels like everyone and their mother is starting one. You may even have one already! (And, if you do, definitely pick this supplement). If you decide on this prompt, though, it’s really important — and sorry if we sound like a broken record here — to keep reminding yourself to tell a story, not simply explain your answer to a simple question. You have up to 300 words. That’s a lot of space! So, there is no excuse not to use it to the best possible advantage.
Try writing this supplement as an episode of the podcast you’d make. You can set the stage by describing the recording set-up, or jump right into your introduction. You can begin with the first question, or even start at the closing of the first episode, reflecting on how it went. Wherever you begin, you need to be in it, and you need to show them why you selected the topic rather than telling them outright. This supplement should be immersive, and ideally make them wish the podcast was real.
Scripps is a college for exceptional women looking for an outstanding education. You’ve done the work getting the grades; when it comes to the supplements we can help.
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