If you’re reading this, chances are you’re familiar with the three-ring circus that is college admissions, and these Tufts supplements may feel like yet another hoop to jump through. You may not be familiar with the fact that ringmaster P.T. Barnum was an early founding trustee and benefactor of Tufts, or that the college’s mascot, Jumbo the Elephant, was his circus’ biggest draw in the late 19th-century.
Yup, The Greatest Showman co-founded Tufts.
We considered the circus life, but we’re better at taming college essays than lions.
Thankfully, you only need to respond to two short Tufts supplemental prompts, which you can complete by either a) pulling content from essays you’ve already written and customizing it for Tufts, or b) re-using what you write for your Tufts supplementals in other supplemental essays.
Want to get a better sense of what Tufts is looking for? You’ll find an extensive, by-the-numbers look at Tufts’ offerings, from enrollment and tuition statistics to student life and financial aid information, in its Common Data Set. For deep insights into how this private research university envisions its role and how it wants to grow and evolve, read over its Strategic Plan.
What are the Tufts supplemental essay prompts?
Applicants to the School of Arts & Sciences or the School of Engineering:
Prompt #1
Think outside the box as you answer the following questions. Take a risk and go somewhere unexpected. Be serious if the moment calls for it, but feel comfortable being playful if that suits you, too. Please respond to one of the following three prompts in 200-250 words:
- It’s cool to love learning. What excites your intellectual curiosity?
- How have the environments or experiences of your upbringing – your family, home, neighborhood, or community – shaped the person you are today?
- Using a specific example or two, tell us about a way that you contributed to building a collaborative and/or inclusive community.
Prompt #2
In addition, we will ask all applicants to complete this sentence in 100 words or less: “I am applying to Tufts because…”
Applicants to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) answer the following question:
Please respond to the following prompt in 200-250 words:
Art has the power to disrupt our preconceptions, shape public discourse, and imagine new ways of being in the world. What are the ideas you’d like to explore in your work?
How to Write Each Supplemental Essay Prompt for Tufts University
How to Write the Tufts Supplemental Essay #1
Think outside the box as you answer the following questions. Take a risk and go somewhere unexpected. Be serious if the moment calls for it, but feel comfortable being playful if that suits you, too. Please respond to one of the following three prompts in 200-250 words:
- It’s cool to love learning. What excites your intellectual curiosity?
- How have the environments or experiences of your upbringing – your family, home, neighborhood, or community – shaped the person you are today?
- Using a specific example or two, tell us about a way that you contributed to building a collaborative and/or inclusive community.
You can go with any of these you want, but depending on what other schools you’re applying to, we’d recommend choosing one that allows you to largely reuse essays for prompts from those other schools.
How?
As we mentioned in the intro, if you’ve written (or are writing) other essays for other schools that express important parts of who you are, you can probably re-use that essay for this prompt. Here’s a guide on how to re-use essays (and maybe save yourself 20+ hrs on this process).
Whichever questions you choose to answer, keep in mind that Tufts Assistant Director of Admissions Paz Pitarque advises that “admission counselors can see when you have dedicated a lot of your time to your supplement. It also helps us see what kind of community member you will be and just how excited you are about Tufts!”
Below are some well-crafted essay examples for this prompt.
Example:
It’s cool to love learning. What excites your intellectual curiosity? (200-250 words)
Diseases intrigue me more than anything. My interest started in sixth grade when I learned about a small Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Every day I would go straight home from school and Google news articles about the outbreak. Ebola both terrified and fascinated me. My sixth-grade self worried the outbreak would consume the entire region and never stop spreading. I was fascinated by how such a small virus could cause such irreparable damage. The methods Doctors Without Borders and the WHO employed to try and contain the virus also caught my attention. I took note of what worked and what didn’t. I was also very surprised by the lackluster global response to the outbreak.
My interest in Ebola led me to learn about other diseases. After studying Zika, MERS, Nipah, and hemorrhagic diseases such as Lassa Fever, I have realized that the world is grossly underprepared for the next pandemic. Other global issues such as climate change will only exacerbate disease outbreaks. For example, rising temperatures will allow mosquitoes to have a greater range and cutting down forests will expose us to zoonotic diseases. Even the richest nations do not invest enough in disease surveillance and many nations do not have the infrastructure to deal with a large-scale outbreak.
Whether I am petitioning world governments or researching new vaccines, I want to help prepare the world for the next pandemic. That's why my dream job is to study and raise awareness about diseases as an epidemiologist.
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Tips + Analysis
Share the origin story of your interest. This student takes us all the way back to the sixth grade to show where the curiosity began. Then we get vivid details that paint an image in our mind of the student Googling about this interest for the first time. Like this essay demonstrates, your goal is to SHOW us the journey of how and why you developed your intellectual curiosity. How old were you when your curiosity began? Where were you? What actions did you take that visually demonstrate that the thing making you curious had you hooked? Try to answer these questions to create a vivid origin story.
Connect your interest to something bigger. Curiosity tends to build by going from one thing to another, right? Next, you’ll want to show what problems or issues prompted you to explore further. This student delivers on this need by talking about how an interest in Ebola led to an exploration of how climate change influences disease outbreaks. This makes it easy for the reader to imagine how this student might draw connections from different academic disciplines while on campus. And that’s exactly the kind of thinking admission officers want to see in the incoming freshman class.
Bring it back to your goals at the end. Remember that every essay you write needs to answer the question, “So what?” For this prompt, the best way to do that is to connect your intellectual curiosity to one or more of your academic, personal, or professional goals. This student does exactly that by connecting her interest in diseases to her dream of becoming an epidemiologist who helps prepare the world for the next pandemic. So, in the end, we don’t just learn about a random curiosity, we learn about her aspirations for the future.
Example:
How have the environments or experiences of your upbringing – your family, home, neighborhood, or community – shaped the person you are today? (200-250 words)
The last sliver of the sun disappears over a perfect wave as I ride toward shore.
My beautiful home should have made me an idealist, but no…
I’m a pessimist.
I was raised on science, not faith, and pessimism is a possible side effect.
I brush my teeth, climb into bed, and think about our future rising sea levels and supervolcano eruptions. I can’t ignore the fish migrations caused by climate change that will ultimately doom my home and, eventually, our world. But, though I know the world is doomed, I love this world, and I’d do anything to prevent it from utter destruction.
I joined forces with my sworn enemies, the optimists, with Heal the Bay’s Pier Aquarium and MPA watch, spreading messages of environmental protection while teaching the community about ocean creatures and monitoring wrongdoing at local beaches.
I intensified my battle by interning with UCLA’s LCC Civil and Environmental engineering lab, which designs sustainable building materials. My project focused on the dissolution kinetics of calcite with organic ligands at high pH to simulate cementitious environments, and my results have applications for sequestering CO2.
Knowing the future doesn’t make me want to give up, instead it makes me want to test the limits of what I can accomplish. Unlike my optimistic counterparts, I have accepted what’s coming, so I’ll be ready, at least more ready than anyone else, to stop the unstoppable.
And if I fail, what does it matter? That asteroid was totally coming anyway!
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Tips + Analysis
Give a glimpse into your world. Using the 21 Details exercise, this particular student took a few carefully chosen details about his life and centered them around an unexpected reveal: “I’m a pessimist.” Wielding dark humor, the author lightens his subject matter with references to his “sworn enemies, the optimists,” and thoughts about supervolcano eruptions at bedtime. If humor isn’t your strong suit (we can’t all be funny), pick an interesting detail and tell the story around it in a way that spotlights a different part of the portrait you present of yourself in the personal statement. On an application packed to the brim with serious experiences and accomplishments, this essay can be a breath of fresh air.
Show a side of yourself that’s not already apparent in your application. Since pessimism is generally not considered to be a positive trait, we’re willing to bet this student didn’t mention it anywhere else. By taking that calculated risk and explaining how his world view connects with why he fights for the world he loves so much, however, he reveals a vulnerability that will make him a valuable peer at Tufts beyond his academic acumen and work ethic. Is your application full of focused long-term research? Share something spontaneous and creative. Is there another important value that’s not coming through elsewhere in your activities list or personal statement? Make sure it’s coming through in a supplemental essay. In short, what else could you show?
End with a clear “so what?” After showing he values humor, this author makes sure the reader leaves with a takeaway: “I have accepted what’s coming, so I’ll be ready, at least more ready than anyone else, to stop the unstoppable.” These supplementals are short, but don’t be afraid to show first, then tell the reader what’s important to understanding you and why.
Option #3:
Using a specific example or two, tell us about a way that you contributed to building a collaborative and/or inclusive community.
You can treat this as a “Community” prompt focusing specifically on collaboration/inclusivity.
Here’s a step-by-step guide that offers a short exercise to help you think through which communities you are a part of that might make a good topic for this essay.
Here’s the short version:
Step 1: Create a “communities” chart by listing as many of your communities as you can think of. Keep in mind that communities can be defined in a variety of ways, including place, culture, interests, political beliefs, hobbies, and even favorite sports team. Get creative.
Step 2: Use the BEABIES exercise to generate your essay content for 2-3 of these communities. Simply ask yourself and jot down notes to these questions:
What kinds of problems did you solve or work to solve (personally, locally, or globally) in that community?
What specific impact did you have?
What did you learn (skills, qualities, values)?
How did you apply the lessons you learned inside and outside of that community?
Step 3: Pick a structure for writing this essay and focus on the community that you feel is most compelling and reveals the most about you, and possibly connect those experiences to how you will impact the college’s community (for more on how to do this, check our “Why this College” guide.
Here’s a nice example essay written for a similar prompt from Colgate University:
Example:
Aside from my inherent love for bagels, my Jewish background has led me to become more embedded in my community, joining Jewish activists and building a website on Holocaust education.
In the 1930s, 36 members of my family were lost to the Holocaust, and that fact has led me to carry on the memory of my ancestors through tradition—with my Bar Mitzvah—as well as with an educational lens—teaching others about the Holocaust and about specific stories of survivors.
Feeling disconnected from Jewish activism, I decided to become an educator on the Student Leadership Board of the Seattle-based Holocaust Center for Humanity last year. Each week, we met to discuss present-day instances of oppression and discrimination across the world, and finished the year by building a website to share the story of a Holocaust survivor.
Being on the board connected me to a network of other passionate Jewish activists, and helped me to channel the pride for my culture and ancestors into visual media that reaches many viewers. At Colgate, I hope to find myself surrounded not only by like-minded Jewish students, but by a diverse group of people with whom I can learn and make connections. (196 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Highlight a core identity. In the example essay, the applicant highlights their Jewish heritage and the profound impact it has had on their life choices and commitments. This is a great way to approach this prompt—think of communities/identities that you claim, pick one that the college isn’t seeing elsewhere, and show how that aspect of you + your experiences will allow you to contribute to the school’s community. Ensure you shed light on the aspects of your background that have shaped your identity. This could be cultural, familial, or personal attributes that have molded you into the individual you are today.
Provide concrete examples of impact. Just as the sample essay vividly narrates the applicant's journey in Jewish activism, so you’ll want to offer specific instances that exemplify the impact your background has had on your decisions and pursuits. Whether through personal experiences, engagements, or projects, share specific moments where your background has led you to initiate meaningful actions. In short, show us.
Connect to the college's community. While not required, you have the option of adding some detail at the end of your essay regarding how you want to continue contributing to these kinds of communities. How can you do that? Address how your background, values, and commitments align with the school’s vision and how you intend to extend these connections on campus to foster learning and shared growth. For example, perhaps you plan on joining (or creating?) relevant student clubs, volunteering at a local museum, or finding innovative ways to connect with students who share a similar background.
And here’s another example, written for Yale, that word work well for this Tufts prompt:
Example:
“Well, they seem like normal people, I guess.” Putting down his phone, my dad conceded.
How much this moment means to me is difficult to describe.
As a volunteer at the Beijing LGBT Center, I’d shot and edited a video entitled “I Don’t Want to Work in the Closet”, exposing the discrimination queer Chinese employees face in workplaces. Aiming to raise funds for the center and create reverberation among employers, I scrutinized every detail in my video, from the subtitle fonts to the background music. Reorganizing the clips, I created an emotional arc providing a call for action. The video was eventually published on Chinese social media. As the number of views rose and supportive comments emerged, I was proud to have made an impact.
But I didn’t feel the weight of my contribution until I showed the video to my dad, who, despite his love for me, was unaware of my queer identity, largely disdained my work at the center and (as far as I know) the entire LGBT population.
Now, my dad’s comment let me know the video had altered his perception, even if just slightly. Using my directing and video-editing skills, I was able to help humanize the Chinese queer population. My dad is far from being supportive of the LGBT movement, as are many other Chinese people, but fostering a willingness to accept differences was already a significant step.
I produce videos to magnify the underrepresented voice of my LGBTQ community because, to me, diversity matters.
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How to Write the Tufts Supplemental Essay #2
This is a super short “Why us?” essay.
Because it’s so short, the key will be finding 2-3 reasons that set Tufts apart from all the other schools you’re applying to.
Here’s the “Why us?” essay guide—in this case, check out the Cornell example to understand the effect you want your short “Why us?” to have without all the length. We do talk a bit about possible approaches for tackling the shorter version of this essay, and there’s a nice older Tufts example as well.
Even though it’s short, this essay should focus on unique reasons that you and Tufts connect.
Try to avoid these common mistakes:
Mistake #1: Writing about the school's size, location, reputation, weather, or ranking.
Mistake #2: Simply using emotional language to demonstrate fit.
Mistake #3: Screwing up the mascot, stadium, team colors or names of any important people or places on campus.
Mistake #4: Parroting the brochures or website language.
Mistake #5: Describing traditions the school is well-known for.
Mistake #6: Thinking of this as only a "Why them" essay.
Below is a great recent Why Tufts essay, though it was written for when the max word count was 150, so yours will need to be shorter.
Example:
My interest in Tufts began with bubbles. On a campus tour, our guide talked about blowing bubbles with her roommate at 1am and watching them freeze. The tour was actually five years ago when I accompanied my sister on a campus visit. This story highlights what excites me about going to Tufts: the students share an intellectual curiosity that carries beyond the classroom into the friendships and memories they create. After imagining myself at Tufts for five years, I can clearly see myself there. I will use my own intellectual curiosity to research infectious diseases in Dr. Aldridge’s lab, learn about nuclear nonproliferation in Nuclear Weapons and International Politics, and teach Climate Action workshops on the climate change-social justice intersection. Although my interests are diverse, I know Tufts will not only support my freedom to explore, but encourage it. (139 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Paint a vivid picture. Bubbles freezing in midair is a memorable image, and memorable is exactly what you want. Bonus points that the story came from a campus visit five years prior, which shows the author’s demonstrated interest over time. If you choose to reference a college visit or tour, take the extra time to research the name of the admissions rep or guide you met and make a clear and specific explanation, or “so what?” as to why that information is relevant to your desire to attend. And heads-up: You totally do not have to visit campus in order to write a great “Why us?” essay, as you’ll see from the example below. If you can’t visit campus, you can search for virtual campus tours, webinars with admissions officers, or simply Google “a day in the life of a Tufts student” to find great short video clips and interviews that will help you visualize yourself there and provide great potential “Why us?” references.
Name one clear value. Even though this is an undergraduate prompt, intellectual curiosity happens to be #1 on the list of values for Tufts’ School of Medicine. This is no coincidence given her expressed research goals, and with such a small word limit, this student cleverly chose to ground her short essay in a value that’s shared by both Tufts and herself. Make sure to keep your whole list of core values handy as you peruse Tufts’ strategic plan, mission, and values statements to see what lines up for you.
Connect specific wants to specific resources. Despite the length, the author manages to name her desires to contribute to Dr. Aldridge’s infectious disease lab, learn about nonproliferation in a class on nuclear weapons, and teach extracurricular climate activism workshops. Use your internet research superpowers to find the most specific resources possible, and make sure they overlap with interests you’ve described elsewhere in your application.
Here’s another 150 word example essay (that’s not about visiting the campus) that also works well:
Example:
At Tufts, I will major in Environmental Studies, choose the track of Environmental Policy and research under Professor Ninian R.Stein to find out effective ways to use community resources for sustainable development. Afterward, I will participate in the Tufts Civic Semester under Tisch College at Urubamba, Peru to learn about how NGOs address sustainable development and community health issues. Back at Tufts, I will apply my classroom and study abroad knowledge to my Yuanyang project (see additional info), become a Tisch International Project Summer Fellow, and minor in Entrepreneurship to upscale the project into a mature social enterprise that can address the sustainable development issues at the villages. After all, Tufts is also the place I can have fun! With its close-knit community, Quidditch games and novel experimental college courses such as The Avengers and Beyond (seriously?), I cannot find a better place where I want to belong. (149 words)
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And if you want to see a 100 word Why Us, here’s a nice one written for Dartmouth:
Example:
As someone who aspires to become an economist fighting climate change, I believe Dartmouth will be the best place to start. I look forward to model policy-making projects in Environmental Problem Analysis and Policy Formulation (ENV 50), but also applying these experiences to the Sustainability Task Force, where I hope to explore renewable solutions to contribute to Dartmouth’s 50% renewable energy target by 2025. But when I’m not at the Irving Institute for Energy and Society or on an Energy Immersion Trip, I hope to dig into new dishes with Spoon members or write preposterous (yet meaningful) articles for Jack-O-Lantern. (100 words)
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Tips + Analysis
Be direct. With just 100 words, there’s little room for verbal bubble wrap. Just the goods. If you know what you want to study/be/do, consider clearly naming your dream or aspiration in the first sentence. This writer tells us that she aspires to be a climate change-fighting economist (cool) and alludes to a future major or double major (bonus). If you don’t know what you want to do/study/major in, don’t worry, just focus on the tips below.
List specific classes. This shows that you’ve done your research (and for one of the most research-intensive universities in the United States, maybe even the world, this matters). Listing specific, pertinent classes is the first rite of passage to make it into the “Why us?” essay hall of fame. This student takes it a step further, showing us how she’ll apply the knowledge she’s gained from “Environmental Problem Analysis and Policy Formulation (ENV 50)” to the “Sustainability Task Force,” where she’ll contribute to a university-wide goal (“50% renewable energy target by 2025”). Gold stars for days.
Imagine yourself at the college: Rather than writing, “I hope to participate in the Irving Institute for Energy and Society,” this student uses the present tense (“I’m”) as if she is already at the school. Paint a picture of yourself on campus: What are you doing? How are you engaged with the college’s community in and out of the classroom? Imagination is a powerful tool. Help the reader see you there.
Show a side of yourself that you haven’t elsewhere in your application. We know you’re smart and motivated by research and academics. But, what else? Remember that these super-short essays are the speed dating of college essays. In the last line, we learn that this student is not just a future climate change-fighting economist, but also a foodie and a writer who plans to write “preposterous” and “meaningful” articles for the school magazine. What’s not to love?
Here’s another great example:
Dartmouth’s abundance of trees reminds me of my local arboretum, a refuge which has nurtured my science enthusiasm and encouraged me to branch out into social sciences. In the Biology-Modified major, Disease, The Environment, and Human History will teach me about diet modifications and diseases that have intensified negative environmental changes. Advocating for H.Res.109 (Green New Deal) has expanded my interests in sociology and environmental science. Through Health Disparities, I would learn how race and social class affect health treatments,while expanding the practical knowledge I’ve gained at Community-Servings, a nonprofit that provides healthy food for impoverished families. (100)
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That’s all, folks! Come back and click deep into our blogs after checking out more application advice from the Tufts admissions team themselves.
Special thanks to Andy for writing this blog post
Andrew Simpson, CEG’s Editorial Director, has worked as an educator, consultant, and curriculum writer for the past 15 years, and earned degrees from Stanford in Political Science and Drama. He feels most at home on mountain tops and in oceans.
Top Values: Insight/Growth | Truth | Integrity
