How should I approach Princeton's supplemental essays for 2025-2026?

Princeton's essays ask you to show how you'll benefit from their offerings while enriching your peers' academic and social experience. Here's how to approach each prompt:

Essay 1a: Academic Interests - A.B. Degree (250 words)

Many applicants will want to study the same thing you do. To differentiate yourself, open with a personal anecdote that only you could write, one illustrating why you're drawn to a particular general academic area or revealing why a specific academic specialization prominent at Princeton personally appeals to you.

The key is establishing a unique personal connection to either your intended major or Princeton's academic offerings, grounded in your lived experiences. Once you've crafted a strong hook demonstrating this connection, begin naming professors, institutes, capstone projects, and experiential learning opportunities that align with your interests. Avoid listing classes that other universities also offer. Cite the curriculum's flexibility and how taking classes in multiple disciplines will broaden your horizons concerning your favorite academic subject.

For every academic opportunity at Princeton you mention, provide a personal reason (rooted in or building upon your initial anecdote) explaining why that opportunity appeals to you specifically. Many applicants will highlight the same programs, but only your personal reasoning can set you apart.

Conclude by demonstrating how you'll use Princeton's academic offerings to make a positive, tangible impact on the world, and explain why creating that change would mean so much to you on a personal level.

Essay 1b: Engineering Interest - B.S.E. Degree (250 words)

Everything discussed for Essay 1a applies here. Open with a personal anecdote connecting you to engineering, name specific Princeton programs, professors, and opportunities, provide personal reasons for each, and conclude with how you'll use Princeton's engineering resources to make meaningful impact.

Essay 2: Your Voice - Lived Experiences (500 words)

Princeton titles this section "Your Voice" intentionally. They genuinely want to hear your voice, your personality, not just your intellect or analytical mind. Write in the same tone and cadence you'd use speaking with a friend or someone you just met at Princeton, rather than addressing an admissions officer.

You can begin this essay in two ways. First is with a vivid personal anecdote, an experience that significantly shaped your perspective and how you see the world. Elite colleges like Princeton seek students with strong, well-formed viewpoints who enjoy expressing them. This ensures their campus remains a place where interesting conversations actively contribute to intellectual and personal growth. When describing your anecdote, use natural language, the way you'd retell it to a friend.
Alternatively, open with an imagined scene of yourself at Princeton, a student club, classroom, professor's lab, or institute talk. If you start with a personal anecdote, explain how that experience shaped the perspective you plan to bring to Princeton and how it will influence your contribution to a specific student space on campus. Think of this essay as the complement to your first Princeton essay: if that one is about why Princeton academics, this one is about why Princeton student life.

Name and cite specific student spaces and describe how you'll contribute to them. For instance, discuss challenging Eurocentric narratives in a history class, sharing entrepreneurial experience in a student organization, or talking about how you created your own academic opportunities because your household couldn't afford enrichment programs. Perhaps you've deeply engaged with a particular author's work and plan to share insights from those books with peers.
The key to acing this essay is showing how you'll actively enrich your fellow students' learning and growth in concrete, student-centric settings.

If you begin with your imagined Princeton day, continue narrating that day in detail. After describing each student space you visit or contribute to, give a personal reason for why that space matters to you and why you want to share your particular insights there.

The prompt asks, "How has your lived experience shaped you?" Answer that by showing who you are through the actions you'll describe yourself doing in this essay at Princeton.

To conclude, reflect on your day (or even first semester) at Princeton. Discuss what you personally hope to gain from sharing your insights and hearing others' in return, or create a full-circle ending by showing how attending Princeton and engaging in these activities will deepen or complete the perspective your experiences have given you.

Essay 3: Service and Civic Engagement (250 words)

Like the previous essay, use the same language and cadence you'd use when speaking to a friend or someone you just met at Princeton. Even if you've never done anything formally related to civic engagement, you can still write an excellent essay. We've all been affected by laws or policies in some way, long traffic jams caused by zoning decisions, political rhetoric that personally impacts you or someone you know, or changes in school funding that shaped your opportunities.

Once you identify a personal way your life has been influenced by civics, connect that experience to how you've served others (even in ways not directly tied to civic engagement), or how that experience will shape the ways you hope to engage in Princeton's civic opportunities.

Remember that service doesn't have to mean organizing a large community initiative; it can be as simple as taking responsibility in your household or being a supportive friend to someone going through a difficult time.

Conclude your essay by describing what you've gained from acts of service or civic engagement, or how you hope to make an impact through them, in light of how your story connects to these ideals.

Short Answers (50 words each)

Don't overthink these. As long as you avoid red flags, all that matters is that your unique voice shines through. Red flags include expressing political or moral hot takes, negativity toward others, deriving joy from anything mean-spirited (like pranks), and songs with NSFW lyrics or by controversial artists, or anything that contradicts what you've written earlier.