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

MIT'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 1: Why This Field at MIT? (100 words)

You have 100 words to explain why you want to major in your chosen field and pursue it at MIT. Every word must count. Use sincere, heartfelt language. There are two effective approaches.

First approach: Begin by describing what you love about your intended field, then briefly recount a vivid experience engaging in that field (one showing you were in your element), and finally explain how specific opportunities at MIT (name professors, labs, institutes) and MIT's hands-on culture will help you achieve a concrete goal.

Second approach: Write as if describing a hypothetical day at MIT focused entirely on academics. As you mention classes you'll take, professors you'll research with, labs you'll join, and campus events you'll participate in, connect each to a small personal reason rooted in your lived experience that explains why that opportunity matters to you.

Essay 2: Something You Do for Pleasure (150 words)

The strongest responses are written in first person, giving the reader a front-row seat into your mind and allowing them to see the world through your eyes as you engage in the activity. Don't be misled into thinking you shouldn't mention your main academic interest, you absolutely should. MIT wants students so committed to their intellectual passions that those interests naturally blend into daily life, decision-making, and recreational activities. For example, if you're strong in math and enjoy card games like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Magic, you might describe how you use probability to construct optimal decks.

Essay 3: Doing Something Unexpected (225 words)

Demonstrating agency is key. Show you're not afraid to take on new challenges or step into the unknown. Vividly describe challenges you faced engaging in this new activity and how you overcame them.

For example, if you were primarily a pen-and-paper math student who suddenly did something hands-on, you could describe what it felt like to initially struggle with something you could easily model mathematically but that felt physically unfamiliar. If you're a STEM-heavy student who pursued a humanities or arts-related extracurricular, that's also excellent.

Highlight risks you took, such as how the activity required time and focus away from your main academic interest. Conclude by explaining how, despite diverting time from your primary passion, this experience broadened your horizons and enabled you to think differently about your main interest in a way that inspires you to pursue it even more creatively and enthusiastically.

Essay 4: Collaboration and Community (225 words)

Give the reader a vivid picture of yourself in a community that, based on your abilities and experiences, resembles as closely as possible the peer groups you'll encounter at MIT. Ideally, write about how being part of this community helped you learn something essential related to the field of study you discussed in the first essay. MIT should see you'll thrive when surrounded by fellow MIT students.

If you focus on contribution, give the reader a clear before-and-after picture. They should be able to visualize the specific impact you had on your community. Vividness is key, the reader should be able to picture you in the community you describe and clearly imagine your social interactions within it.

Essay 5: Managing an Unexpected Challenge (225 words)

Don't talk about challenging classes that many other MIT applicants will have taken and could have aced while half asleep. Your answer shouldn't suggest you might struggle to keep up with peers at MIT.

Instead, aim for something like researching and discovering an error in published papers (perhaps a misprinted equation). Alternatively, talk about having disagreements with peers and how you resolved them. Another strong topic is writing a persuasive essay on a position you hold dear, only to find, as you researched counterarguments, that you began to lose faith in your stance.

If you can write about doing something hands-on, dealing with tools breaking, parts that were supposed to be compatible not fitting, or similar obstacles, that works very well.

The key is that the lesson you learned should clearly demonstrate how it has better prepared you to tackle your chosen area of study.

Essay 6: Open-Ended Question (300 words)

Unlike the Common App's Additional Information section, MIT expects most students to write a response. They genuinely want to learn more about you and don't want a narrowly defined question to limit what you can share.

You can trim your Common App personal statement to 300 words and use that, assuming you haven't recycled its content elsewhere in MIT supplements. Alternatively, reflect on what MIT actually values: intellectual curiosity, team players, applicants who elevate peers' social and academic experience, students who hold well-thought-out compelling perspectives that enrich classroom discussions, and character, social skills, and willingness to learn by doing. MIT favors people who like to get their hands dirty when creating, building, or understanding something.

Identify moments and experiences in your life that align with one or more of these qualities, then choose the trait you haven't yet highlighted in other essays. Write a vivid, first-person narrative showing how your actions and experiences demonstrate that quality.