Last Updated on August 25, 2026
Quick answer: This page collects our supplemental essay guides for 25 selective US colleges. Each guide sets out that school’s 2026-27 prompts, the word limits the school itself prints, and what its readers are looking for. Start with the schools on your list, then draft in the order you plan to submit.
Every guide below was verified against the school’s own admissions site in August 2026. Where a school has not yet posted its 2026-27 questions, the guide says so.
Applications are open, and supplemental essays are the next thing on your list. Grades, test scores, and activities say what you have done. The supplements are where you say who you are and why this particular school suits you.
Every college writes its own prompts, and each one asks for something specific. InGenius Prep has published a guide for each of the 25 schools below. Each guide takes the prompts one at a time, shows what the question is actually asking, names the mistakes readers see most often, and says what a good answer does. [1]
Guides to College Supplemental Essays
- Princeton University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Harvard University
- Stanford University
- Yale University
- University of Chicago
- University of Pennsylvania
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
- Duke University
- Northwestern University
- Dartmouth
- Brown University
- Vanderbilt University
- Rice University
- Washington University in St. Louis
- Cornell University
- Columbia University
- University of Notre Dame
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Emory University
- Georgetown University
- University of Michigan
- Boston College
- University of California
- New York University (NYU)
Follow the links to see our supplemental essay guides for the listed U.S. schools. This list will be updated regularly with more schools, and each guide is written to that school’s prompts. Though each applicant’s answers will be unique, these guides will help students get into the right mindset to make an impact on college Admissions Officers. Two schools on this list do not run a conventional Common Application supplement: the University of California uses its own application with eight Personal Insight Questions, of which you answer four at up to 350 words each. [3] Georgetown began accepting the Common Application on August 1, 2026 for students entering in fall 2027, alongside its own Georgetown Application. [4]
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