Princeton Supplemental Essays: A Strategic Guide

Give Yourself An Unfair Advantage

How do you stand out from everyone else applying to Princeton? By having a deeper understanding of your audience than everyone else. Before you apply to Princeton, you should understand these two main ideas that the university is built around.

1. You learn by thinking in public.

That’s the core of the precept system, where you engage in weekly small-group discussions to test claims live and change your mind out loud.

1. Princeton invests heavily in original undergraduate research and service with real-world impact.

Every A.B. student completes junior independent work and a senior thesis (engineering does substantial independent projects). The University’s strategic plan doubles down on engineering, data/quantum, environment, human flourishing, and a deepened culture of free inquiry and inclusion.

How to Write Princeton’s Supplemental Essays (2025-26)

Princeton values community and encourages students, faculty, staff and leadership to engage in respectful conversations that can expand their perspectives and challenge their ideas and beliefs. As a prospective member of this community, reflect on how your lived experiences will impact the conversations you will have in the classroom, the dining hall or other campus spaces. What lessons have you learned in life thus far? What will your classmates learn from you? In short, how has your lived experience shaped you? (Please respond in 500 words or fewer.)

The intent of this essay is to understand the kind of student you’ll be and how you’ll show up on campus. Princeton wants to build a diverse class where each student has a unique perspective to offer, and they want to know that each student they admit is excited to learn and contribute to the community. This is how we suggest structuring this piece:

1. Think of a memory of one moment that forced an intellectual pivot in you. Then, trace that story and find a follow-through moment where you applied your new lens.
2. Walk us through your reasoning shift, precept-style. What was your initial claim? What was the evidence you gathered? How did this experience change your views? What is your view now? How have you applied that view since?
3. End by emphasizing your potential contributions to campus and the habit of mind you’ll bring to precepts and residential life. Maybe you’re the student who asks the follow-up question that reframes the entire discussion, the one who brings a perspective that challenges assumptions, or maybe the voice that connects diverse ideas across disciplines. Help the admissions officer envision who you’ll be on campus.

Here are some additional tips on this essay, as it is longer than the average supplement:

• If you believe your graded written paper (required for all applicants, see below for tips) is strong, reference a similar idea you wrestled with in this essay. Admissions will see the actual paper with teacher comments, and this essay will show how you bring that thinking into the public.
• Name one or two real Princeton resources you’d use early, like first-year research mentoring (ReMatch/ReMatch+), a certificate or institute, or a Seed project you’d prototype. If you’re a builder/artist, you could mention how you’d use the Keller Center.

Princeton has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

The intent of this essay is to understand the fit you’d have with Princeton, given their strong commitment to service and civic engagement. This is how we suggest structuring it:

1. Write one story well instead of listing many. Name the problem you tackled in concrete terms, your role, and at least one measurable outcome.
2. Include a self-critique or something a community partner taught you that changed your approach. That kind of humility and receptiveness to feedback is very Princeton.
3. You could end with a specific campus pathway that continues the same mode of work, like a Service Focus theme, a ProCES course you’d seek, or a Pace Center group or internship pipeline. Tie it to a question you’d keep asking once there.

As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests? (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

OR

Please describe why you are interested in studying engineering at Princeton. Include any of your experiences in or exposure to engineering, and how you think the programs offered at the University suit your particular interests. (Please respond in 250 words or fewer.)

The intent of this essay is to understand why you’re interested in your chosen field(s) of study, and to make sure that you have more than just a surface-level interest in it. They don’t want to hear that you’re studying something just because you got your best grades in that subject; they want to feel that you’re truly intellectually excited by it. This is how we suggest structuring it:

1. Think of the precise moment a question in your field of interest grabbed you, like in a failed experiment, a passage that wouldn’t let you go, or a coding bug you chased.
2. Explain how you’ve explored that question ever since, whether through independent study, or a structured program, or by starting a formal initiative. Why has it continued to fascinate you?
3. Map your experiences to the opportunities you’d take advantage of as a first- and second-year: ReMatch mentorships, a lab/studio you’d visit, a freshman seminar or intro sequence you’d use to improve your skills. Then show the independent-work path you’re excited to explore (junior work and senior thesis/project).

50-word shorts — new skill, what brings you joy, soundtrack

These are intended to be hints of who you are outside of school. Avoid vague or pretentious statements (“what brings me joy is striving to constantly be the best version of myself”) and instead describe things that an admissions officer could easily picture. Here’s a good rule of thumb for specificity: if your responses to these are printed on a page in a book, along with 100 other students’ pages, your parents and/or best friends should be able to flip through the book and pick out which page is yours.

How to choose the graded written paper

Princeton officially asks you to pick writing from an academic class, ideally English, history, or social studies, from the last three years. They also specify that it should be expository only, not creative writing.

Here are the steps we suggest to choosing this:

1. Pick the writing you’re most proud of, not the writing you got the best grade on. It should show a clear thesis, engage a counterargument, and/or use evidence precisely.
2. You could also use this written paper as a link to your 500 word supplement (see above) — if you show that you took your teacher’s feedback, it’s a strong positive signal and proves you actually use feedback to iterate on your thinking.
3. Short pieces that get to the point more quickly can be better. Two tight pages with a clean argument beat a 7-page piece that meanders. The official line is that 1–2 pages are sufficient, which shows you how quickly admissions officers need to assess your thinking.
4. If you’re STEM-leaning, don’t panic! Pick a humanities or social-science piece that shows you can argue with text and data. Princeton’s culture is “build and debate,” so even engineers end up doing discussion-heavy precepts and independent work. You need to show that you would be able to engage in these environments.
5. Formatting tip: add a simple header if it’s missing. Include your name, course + teacher, assignment title, due date. And again, make sure those teacher comments are visible!

Conclusion

Good luck on your draft! As long as you keep in mind the core principles that Princeton is built on, you’ll be able to write essays that shine.

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