georgetown essay guide

Georgetown Supplemental Essays 2023-24 – Prompts and Advice

September 11, 2023

The nation’s oldest Jesuit institution of higher learning is also its most selective, as Georgetown University welcomed just 13% of applicants to the Class of 2027 onto its historical and notably beautiful Washington, D.C. campus. Whenever you are applying to a school of Georgetown’s caliber, where the average admitted applicant has a 1470 SAT score and is at (or near) the top of their high school class, you need to find ways to set yourself apart from the pack. Toward that aim, prospective Hoyas need to take advantage of the Georgetown supplemental essays.

(Want to learn more about How to Get Into Georgetown? Visit our blog entitled:  How to Get Into Georgetown: Admissions Data and Strategies  for all of the most recent admissions data as well as tips for gaining acceptance.)

The goal is to write compelling, standout compositions. Your essays should showcase your exceptional writing ability and reveal more about who you are as an individual. Below are Georgetown’s essay prompts for the 2023-24 admissions cycle along with tips about how to address each one.

Georgetown Supplemental Essays – Prompt 1

Indicate any special talents or skills you possess. (250 words)

If you are a world-class athlete, you are likely already in the recruitment process. If you placed high in AIME or won a National Merit Scholarship, that is already stated in the awards section. Therefore, using the prized 250 words of real estate to merely rehash the fact that you won an award for something you are good at would not be an inspiring move. Instead, use this essay as an opportunity to offer a new level of depth and understanding about your talent(s). In addition to discussing the talent you possess, touch on the journey of how you developed your abilities.

A few years back, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that becoming an expert at anything takes 10,000 hours of practice. Consider talking about the grind and sacrifice it took you to become great at a given skill. Describe how you see that skill becoming even more finely-tuned/developed over time. If this skill fits into your future academic/career plans, all the better—share that too!

Georgetown Supplemental Essays – Prompt 2

Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (approximately 1/2 page, single-spaced) 

Perhaps you are the captain of a team, the editor-in-chief of your school paper, or the president of a club. On the other hand, you may simply be a valuable contributing member. Regardless of whether you are a leading man/woman or a still-essential bit player, make sure that you use your writing ability to show the admissions officer what type of involved team member you are rather than merely telling them.

You can also discuss how you have engaged with your high school local/community. Share what you have learned from interacting with people of a different ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual identity, etc. Draw on past evidence of your commitment to being a positive force in the context of your activity/activities. Also be sure to speculate how that is likely to manifest on Georgetown’s campus. Research and cite Hoya student-run organizations, local nonprofit groups, or anything else you are drawn to. The admissions committee wants to understand precisely how you will contribute to their campus community of 7,000+ undergrads. Drawing the link between your past efforts and future aims is critical here. For example, if you’ve done work with Habitat for Humanity throughout your teens, it will be most impactful if you express your commitment to joining Georgetown’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity in the future.

Georgetown University Supplemental Essays – Prompt 3

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you. (approximately 1 page, single-spaced)

Whether you decide to write about yourself in a way that is light, creative, humorous, personal, sincere, or vulnerable (any are perfectly fine), aim to reveal a picture of yourself that cannot be gleaned from elsewhere in your application materials.

Take note of the wide-open nature of this prompt. While there are no limits to the way in which you approach this essay, here are some angles to consider:

• A perspective you hold
• An experience you had
• A community you belong to
• Your cultural or family background
• Something you’ve had to overcome

The admissions officer looking at your essay is hoping to connect with you through your written words. So be open, humble, thoughtful, inquisitive, emotionally honest, mature, and insightful. No matter what type of story you tell, the goal is to have the reader come away saying, “I can definitely see this applicant as a contributing member of our talented and engaged student community.”

Georgetown Supplemental Essays — The School-Specific Essay

Depending on the College or School that you are applying to at Georgetown, you’ll need to write a separate school-specific essay. At their core, all of them are “Why Us” essays, so as you address each prompt (see below), be sure to include Georgetown-specific offerings and opportunities that support your reasoning, interests, and future plans.

Elements of a great Georgetown “Why Us?” essay

• Cite school-specific  academic programs , professors,  research opportunities ,  internship/externship programs , and  study abroad programs .
• Reference student-run organizations at Georgetown that align with your passions.
• Describe how you take advantage of Georgetown’s immense resources both inside and outside of the classroom.
• Make sure to touch on both a) why Georgetown is the perfect fit for you and) why you are the perfect fit for Georgetown. Covering both topics is essential.

Common mistakes on a Georgetown “Why Us?” essay .

• Fawning over the picturesque Gothic-style Georgetown campus (it is quite beautiful, but they already know that).
• Georgetown is top-ranked, prestigious, and has a great reputation. Again, they know!
• Too many generic expressions of feeling (e.g., It has been my dream since I was a toddler to be a Hoya…).
• Recycled statements from your other “Why Us?” essays that come across as stale, impersonal, or worst of all–irrelevant/inaccurate.

Georgetown College: A liberal arts education from the College of Arts & Sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. Describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc.) that changed your thinking. (Applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.).

Since you’ll be encountering all kinds of new topics and ways of thinking at Georgetown, the admissions committee is interested in discovering how you’ve interacted with new and surprising information in the past. Keep in mind that the ways in which your thinking changed are much more important than the class, book, or event you select, so choose something that allows you to demonstrate your open-mindedness, curiosity, and willingness to challenge yourself—this might be a book you read in English class, a lecture you attended, a summer course you engaged in, etc. Note that Georgetown encourages certain types of applicants to choose examples related to their prospective field of study.

Further, be sure to describe why you are interested in a liberal arts education from Georgetown specifically.

Georgetown Supplemental Essays (Continued)

School of nursing & health studies: describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. please specifically address your intended major (global health, health care management & policy, human science, or nursing)..

“A nurse is not what you do, it is who you are.”

This quote from an anonymous source captures the idea that becoming a nurse is a calling; not a profession you just stumble into. Healthcare in general is no different. Healthcare professionals are willing to work long shifts in the service of others, be on the frontlines of a pandemic, and deal with life’s toughest challenges (e.g., suffering and death) on a regular basis. Many applicants share stories of caring for sick relatives, experiencing a tough medical episode themselves, or observing the challenges faced by a particular community as inspiration for studying nursing or healthcare. In addition to your school-specific research, this essay is a chance to show the admissions committee that you are a passionate and mature healthcare or nursing candidate and that this field is genuinely “who you are.”

Walsh School of Foreign Service: The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?

International service is not something every 17/18-year-old in the country is dreaming about doing as a vocation. There is likely a very interesting story surrounding what motivated you to apply to the Walsh School of Foreign Service and this essay invites you to share this very narrative. You don’t need to look any deeper than today’s headlines to identify powerful and immensely challenging global problems. Whether you are aiming for a B.S. in Business and Global Affairs, a B.S. in Foreign Service, or a B.S. in Global, International, and Comparative History, you likely have a highly specific set of academic and career goals taking shape in your mind.

If you can communicate these goals and the motivations behind them while sharing a vision for how you will contribute to the betterment of humankind in one or multiple regions of the world, then you are likely to end up with an excellent Walsh essay. Moreover, you’ll want to be sure to discuss why Walsh in particular will be a great fit for you.

McDonough School of Business: The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown.

Before you start writing, you’ll want to do some McDonough-specific research and think about why a business education from McDonough in particular will be a great fit for your interests and goals. Further, to stand out, applicants need to connect the resources they’ve chosen to experiences they’ve had, demonstrating that they have availed themselves of every opportunity to dive into the business world during their high school years. Of course, not everyone has parents who hand them money to invest in the stock market or land them an internship at Goldman Sachs in 9th grade.

Relevant experiences can include high school investing clubs, participation in activities like FBLA, summer programs/courses in business/finance/economics, running your own local small business or e-business (Etsy, landscaping, etc.), or just a regular old retail job. The important thing to highlight is what you learned from your experiences, how you’ll bring that newly acquired knowledge to the classroom at Georgetown, and how your experiences have informed & influenced what you hope to continue learning in college.

How important are the Georgetown supplemental essays?

There are a whopping 8 factors that Georgetown considers to be “very important” to the evaluation process. These are: rigor of secondary school record, character/personal qualities, class rank, GPA, standardized test scores, recommendations, extracurricular activities, and most relevant to this blog—the application essays. The essays undoubtedly play a significant role in the admissions process at Georgetown. They can help the committee decide who to admit when choosing between similarly-credentialed (GPA, test scores, etc.) applicants.

Want personalized assistance with your Georgetown supplemental essays?

Interested in working with one of our experienced and knowledgeable essay coaches as you craft your Georgetown supplemental essays? We encourage you to get a quote  today.

• College Essay

Andrew Belasco

A licensed counselor and published researcher, Andrew's experience in the field of college admissions and transition spans two decades. He has previously served as a high school counselor, consultant and author for Kaplan Test Prep, and advisor to U.S. Congress, reporting on issues related to college admissions and financial aid.

• 2-Year Colleges
• Application Strategies
• Best Colleges by Major
• Best Colleges by State
• Big Picture
• Career & Personality Assessment
• College Search/Knowledge
• College Success
• Costs & Financial Aid
• Dental School Admissions
• Extracurricular Activities
• Graduate School Admissions
• High School Success
• High Schools
• Law School Admissions
• Medical School Admissions
• Navigating the Admissions Process
• Online Learning
• Private High School Spotlight
• Summer Program Spotlight
• Summer Programs
• Test Prep Provider Spotlight

“Innovative and invaluable…use this book as your college lifeline.”

— Lynn O'Shaughnessy

Nationally Recognized College Expert

College Planning in Your Inbox

Join our information-packed monthly newsletter.

I am a... Student Student Parent Counselor Educator Other First Name Last Name Email Address Zip Code Area of Interest Business Computer Science Engineering Fine/Performing Arts Humanities Mathematics STEM Pre-Med Psychology Social Studies/Sciences Submit

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 top tips for writing exceptional georgetown essays.

College Essays

With an acceptance rate of less than 12 percent , Georgetown is ranked as an extremely competitive school . If you want to be a part of the student body, you need to impress, and one of the best opportunities you have to do that is in your Georgetown essays.

Don't let the Georgetown essay prompts intimidate you. Though they may look complicated at first—and they do ask complex questions—some foresight and planning will help you write essays that are sure to impress.

This guide will walk you through the Georgetown essays, giving you a look into the expectations and thought process behind each of the essay prompts .

Feature Image: Patrickneil /Wikimedia Commons

What Should You Know About the Georgetown Essay Prompts?

Georgetown doesn't use the Common or Coalition Application . Instead, you'll be filling out an application tailored specifically to their desires, though it may cover most of the same information.

Because of that, you'll want to pay extra close attention to what you discuss in your essays. Your essays should be tied specifically to Georgetown rather than the more general approach of the Coalition or Common Application .

The Georgetown essays include one short essay of about a half-page, single-spaced, one longer one-page essay required of all students, and a second one-page essay specifically tied to one of Georgetown's four schools: Georgetown College, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, Walsh School of Foreign Service, and the McDonough School of Business.

Students in the arts—specifically music, dance, theater, and studio art—may submit additional portfolios as part of their application, but it isn't required.

What Are the Required Georgetown Essay Prompts?

Because Georgetown's application is only for Georgetown, you'll immediately notice that they're a lot more specific than the Common or Coalition prompts. You should keep that specificity in mind as you answer the questions, thinking not just about why you want to go to a good school, but why you want to attend Georgetown specifically .

How to Answer the Georgetown Short Essay Prompt

Discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (One half-page, single spaced.)

This question is pretty straightforward. Though you've no doubt discussed your extracurriculars throughout your application, this question asks you to think deeper about one of them . Ask yourself why you do those activities, and what they personally mean to you.

"Why," not "what," should be the question you're answering . Flesh out your mentions of extracurriculars in your application with discussions of why you do them and what you've learned. The activity you discuss should be significant to you—not something you do purely for fun or something you do because your parents make you.

As with the first question, don't inflate things to look more impressive. If you spent most of your summer watching TV, that might be relevant if you're an aspiring screenwriter, and you can mention it—but again, answer the question of why . Why did you choose the shows you did? What did you learn from them?

That said, watching TV isn't the best choice. You'd be better off discussing how you spent your summer working on an original short film or participating in a workshop for aspiring screenwriters—but no matter what your preferred activity, there is a way to discuss why it's significant to you and what you learned from it.

This prompt gives you space to discuss your interests, particularly the things that can't be represented by numbers as grades and test scores can. It gives Georgetown a clearer picture of you, which helps in their decision.

This is also a space to expand on participation. Maybe you never became captain of the swim team and you've been worried that the lack of leadership might count against you. In this essay, you can explain that though that was your goal, you didn't quite make it—but that you learned a lot anyway.

This essay really is about what's significant to you, so there are no wrong answers—it's your execution that matters . Avoid being too general, or focusing too much on picking the most impressive thing from your roster if that thing didn't actually matter to you. Be genuine with what's significant to you and your essay will be stronger for it.

How to Answer the Georgetown Essay Prompt for All Applicants

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you. (One page, single-spaced.)

Notice how the emphasis on this question is on you. This is called a "Why You?" style essay — though the application is for Georgetown, the admissions office wants to know why you'll be a good fit for the college and what you in particular will bring to the student body .

What this means is that Georgetown doesn't want to hear about how they have the best program or the greatest campus. They want to know about you and what makes you unique .

When answering this question, think about what makes you a good fit for Georgetown's student body. Consider their mission statement , their origin as a Catholic and Jesuit college , and what that means today.

That doesn't mean that you need to identify yourself as Catholic if you aren't (please don't do that), but that you should consider the role that faith plays in Georgetown's approach to education . How does their mission statement connect to your own life and educational goals?

Demonstrating that you understand the school's mission and how you can contribute to it as a student is one of the most important parts of this question.

But "Why You?" is only part of the question . The specific mention of diversity is important, too. Its inclusion in the question means that it's important to Georgetown, and they want you to demonstrate that it's important to you, too.

Don't get too fixated on typical meanings of "diverse." We often use the word to refer to the variety of genders, sexualities, races, socio-economic statuses, and so on that exist in the world, but diversity of thought is worthwhile, too. Of course, you should write about your gender, sexuality, race, and so on if it's relevant to what you'll bring to campus—and it often is—but don't feel like it's all you have to offer.

Think about what your experience has taught you, and how those lessons will contribute to Georgetown's diverse student body. That can mean discussing overcoming socio-economic hardship, or it can mean relating how you and your seven brothers used to squabble until you realized working together got chores done faster. Everybody has a unique story to tell, and this is Georgetown offering you space to tell yours .

Georgetown invites you to get creative here, but if you want to take a more embellished approach than a traditional essay, be sure that that creativity comes through in your writing and language rather than in the events . Don't inflate things to look more interesting or diverse than you are—this is your chance to flesh out the grades and test scores with your personality, so be sure it's your personality that the admissions office sees.

How to Answer the Georgetown College Essay Prompt

Georgetown College is the largest undergraduate school at Georgetown University, and contains many of the school's arts and sciences programs.

What does it mean to you to be educated? How might Georgetown College help you achieve this aim? (Applicants to the Sciences and Mathematics or the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics should address their chosen course of study.) (One page, single-spaced.)

This question is asking about your personal relationship with education and learning. But more than that, it's asking you why you want to attend Georgetown, making it a "Why Us?" essay .

When answering this prompt, think about your goals and how Georgetown fits into them . They don't need to hear about how they're a good school and you've always wanted to attend a competitive college—they already know that, and most other students also want to attend a good school. Why Georgetown specifically, as opposed to all the other possible schools you could apply to?

This is a good place to demonstrate familiarity with their mission and curriculum. Are there particular classes or faculty driving your decision to attend? Mention them!

Think holistically here. How will attending Georgetown enrich your education and help you reach your career goals? Keep their mission statement in mind as you write—consider the ideas of diversity, service to humanity, and community and how those fit into your goals.

Again, avoid generalities. Your essay should have enough concrete connection to Georgetown that you couldn't easily swap another school's name in and still have it make sense. Of course, there will always be some overlap with other schools, but be sure that the true spirit of Georgetown comes through in your essay.

How to Answer the Georgetown School of Nursing & Health Studies Essay Prompt

Georgetown's School of Nursing and Health Studies is exactly what it sounds like. This is where you'll be applying if you're interested in any of the health care fields, which is reflected in the prompt.

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, Human Science, or Nursing). (One page, single-spaced.)

This question isn't quite a clear-cut "Why Us?" or "Why You?" question, unlike the previous ones. Instead, it's asking "Why Health Care?"

Again, always keep in mind Georgetown's mission as a college: diversity, discussion, and the well-being of humanity. All of these things can factor into your essay in a meaningful way.

Think beyond health care being a reliable and well-paying field. Why do you want to care for people? Why the health field, specifically? Tying Georgetown's mission into this question is a great way to demonstrate your interest in the field, but also in the specific ways that this school teaches.

In this question, Georgetown wants you to demonstrate your interest in the field. If you're invested in health care, you're more likely to succeed in the program. The admissions office also wants to know what passion and interest you'll bring to the school, making you a student they want to invest in.

If you don't already know why you've chosen to pursue health care over other fields, now's the time to start thinking about it. Health care can often be thankless, difficult, and even frightening if you're working in emergency situations. What drives you to do it anyway?

Maybe you've struggled with illness yourself, and you want to commit to researching cures. Or maybe you're fascinated by the ways that disease impacts society, and you want to learn more about prevention and how to enact it on an individual basis. No matter what your career goal is, it's important that you can explain why you've chosen this field over all others.

However, be sure you can tie your interest to Georgetown specifically. Your essay will be even stronger if it explains not just what appeals to you about health care, but why Georgetown is the right college to help you achieve your goals.

How to Answer the Walsh School of Foreign Service Essay Prompt

If you're interested in international relations, Wash School of Foreign Service is likely where you'll be applying.

The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world? (One page, single-spaced.)

This is a perfect example of a  "Why Us?" question. Of all the schools out there, and all the programs, what led you to apply to Georgetown's school of foreign service? 

The trick to this question is being specific. Sure, the Walsh School of Foreign Service has interesting classes, great professors, and a strong track record for job placements, but so do a lot of other schools out there. What does it offer that other schools can't? In your response, be sure to mention specific courses/internship opportunities/professors who will give you opportunities unique to Georgetown.

We give more advice on how to answer this question under the next prompt, which is also a Why Us question!

How to Answer the McDonough School of Business Essay Prompt

The McDonough School of Business is exactly what it sounds like. If you're attending Georgetown with an interest in business, you'll need to answer the following prompt:

The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown. (One page, single-spaced.)

Like the Walsh School of Foreign Service, the McDonough School of Business prompt is a classic "Why Us?" question , asking you to identify not just that Georgetown is a good school, but why it's the right school for you and your interests.

To answer this question, consider the university's ethos and curriculum. Look at their course offerings and consider those as well as whatever reasons you have for applying. Think specifically, not generally— beyond it being a well-respected university, what does Georgetown have to offer you that other well-respected universities do not?

Georgetown wants to hear that you're committed to their program specifically, so answer in specifics. Identify features of their program in particular, and be sure to answer the question of why those features draw you to Georgetown.

If you have a personal anecdote about Georgetown, such as a moment on a tour, a personal connection to the campus, or admiration for a particular alumni, this essay is a good place to discuss it. If not, it's always a good idea to use concrete specifics, such as classes and extracurriculars that appeal to you. Fold those into a discussion of Georgetown's mission and your own career goals to paint a complete picture of why this is the right school for you.

What Does a Successful Georgetown Essay Look Like?

Planning an essay can be difficult as you try to weigh what the school might want against everything you could possibly cover. Thankfully, there's at least one successful Georgetown essay out there you can read in its entirety :

"Listen, girl. He's over 60 and speaks no English. There is no way we would hire him." His tone was rude, but I sadly understood why my dad wasn't hired. I faced my hopeful dad and watched his smile drop as I told him that Dave just remembered that they hired someone yesterday and that they really couldn't afford to hire anyone else. My dad was disappointed, but nonetheless he graciously shook Dave's hand and thanked him for his time. Job searching is difficult for everyone, but in a world full of Daves, it's almost impossible. Daves are people who look at my family and immediately think less of us. They think illegal, poor and uneducated. Daves never allow my dad to pass the first round of job applications. Daves watch like hawks as my brother and I enter stores. Daves inconsiderately correct my mother's grammar. Because there are Daves in the world, I have become a protector for my family. I excuse their behavior as just being a "typical American." I convince my mother that they are only staring at her lovely new purse. I convince my dad they are only shouting about store sales to us. Aside from being a protector, I am also an advocate. As an advocate, I make sure my family is never taken advantage of. I am always looking out for scams and discrepancies. I am the one asking the questions when we buy or sell a car. I make sure all details are discussed and no specifics are left unanswered.

It's not hard to see why the writer was accepted to Georgetown. This essay clearly demonstrates her experience and understanding of the world. The last paragraph is a great example of how to turn that experience into something actionable—she wants to go into public service, politics, or diplomacy because of how she's helped her parents and the bigotry she's witnessed as she's done so.

We know from reading exactly what the writer will bring to Georgetown: an understanding of the world and the way it's treated her and her family. She demonstrates her understanding of diversity clearly, which answers the first prompt—it shows what makes her unique as well as what she'll contribute.

The essay shows her personal story and how that's influenced her lifelong plans. Because the admissions office understands where she comes from and the essay finishes with where she hopes to go—as well as covering some of the obstacles she's overcome—they have a complete picture of her as a student.

One area the essay could be improved is strengthening the connection to Georgetown specifically. This essay is quite strong—she did get into Georgetown with it—but spending a little more time reflecting on how her life experience connects to Georgetown's mission would give it a little extra oomph . As it is, this could be an application essay for pretty much any school. Drawing a clear connection from your experiences to the college you're applying to demonstrates a stronger degree of interest, making your essay stand out.

Key Points of Advice for Georgetown Essays

No matter which prompts you're answering, it's a good idea to follow general advice for your Georgetown essays, too. Though the application for Georgetown is unique to the school, it still follows most of the common rules of college applications, so be sure to read up on some common tips for college applications .

#1: Read Prompts Carefully

Don't just answer the surface-level question. You have quite a bit of space to answer each of these, so read each one carefully, understand the deeper questions it might be asking, such as "Why You?" and be sure to answer those as well. Brainstorming will be a huge help here, as you can get all of your ideas out and select the ones that support your point the best.

#2: Connect Your Story to Your School

When you're writing "Why Us?" essays, think about your story—the things that have made you who you are, your ambition, your goals—and add in how Georgetown is the next step on your journey. Think beyond that it has a good reputation or that lots of impressive people have graduated from there. Draw a clear line between you and Georgetown by tying your experience in with its curriculum and mission statement. This will demonstrate that you're not just reusing the same essay for a bunch of schools, and that Georgetown is your real goal.

#3: Edit and Revise

Editing and revision are your best friends when it comes to a polished Georgetown essay. Don't just fire off a draft and call it good. Spend some time planning, writing, editing, and revising , being sure to start early so you can let your drafts rest between readings.

Spending more time will take some of the stress out of writing and let you put in more effort to get it into shape. The longer you have, the more thought you can put into it, so start early!

What's Next?

Give yourself plenty of time to get your Georgetown essay done by staying on top of all the deadlines for your application .

What else do you need to get into your dream school aside from stellar essays? This guide has all the requirements to get into Georgetown .

Even if you're not going to Georgetown, you should understand the college application process from start to finish. This helpful guide will walk you through applying to college starting from your freshman year of high school!

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

Sample Essays

The breadth of Georgetown’s core curriculum means that students are required to write for a wide variety of academic disciplines. Below, we provide some student samples that exhibit the key features the most popular genres. When reading through these essays, we recommend paying attention to their 

1. Structure (How many paragraphs are there? Does the author use headers?) 

2. Argument (Is the author pointing out a problem, and/or proposing a solution?) 

3. Content (Does the argument principally rely on facts, theory, or logic?) and 

4. Style (Does the writer use first person? What is the relationship with the audience?)

Philosophy Paper

• Singer on the Moral Status of Animals

Theology Paper

• Problem of God
• Jewish Civilization
• Sacred Space and Time
• Phenolphthalein in Alkaline Solution

History Paper

• World History

Literature Review

Comparative Analysis 

Policy Brief

• Vaccine Manufacturing

White Paper

Critical Analysis

• Ignatius Seminar

Add Project Key Words

A Guide to the Georgetown Essays 2023-2024

October 23, 2023

Georgetown University continues to hold its place as one of the country's top universities. Securing admission to this esteemed school is no easy feat, as Georgetown boasts an acceptance rate of just 12%. Whether you aspire to join their renowned undergraduate business program or envision yourself achieving the same level of success as notable  alumni Bill Clinton and Bradley Cooper, one hurdle stands in your way: the Georgetown essays 2023-2024.

Unlike many other universities, Georgetown University does not utilize the Common Application or its personal statement prompts. Instead, they provide their own unique set of essays, designed to gain insight into your character and passions. Whether you're applying to Georgetown College, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, the Walsh School of Foreign Service, or the McDonough School of Business, crafting compelling responses to the Georgetown essays 2023-2024 is essential to setting yourself apart from the competition and positioning yourself as an indispensable candidate.

Georgetown Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

Please elaborate on any special talents or skills you would like to highlight. (250 words).

If you are really proud of one of your abilities, now is the time to show it. Georgetown wants students who bring a variety of backgrounds and interests, this essay is a good opportunity to show a new side of yourself. Your talent doesn’t have to be an external ability such as playing the piano or writing sonnets. Neither is it required that you have received an award for this talent!

You can write about an internal characteristic such as an easy facility for making friends with new people. Or it can be something quirky like being a phenomenal cartoonist. In fact, it is better if the skill you mention is unique because your Georgetown essays 2023-2024 need to establish you as a memorable candidate. For questions like this, you don’t want to answer with a typical talent, or an ambiguous characteristic. We can assure you that many of your peers are going to be talented writers, musicians, and singers. You need to bring your own exceptional spin. As for personal characteristics, asserting that a trait like kindness is your greatest asset is frankly boring and vague. Think about what differentiates you.

The main point of your essay should emphasize why this talent or skill is meaningful to you. Why are you particularly proud of this talent? Make sure you’ve addressed all parts of the prompt. Is it a natural skill, or did it take time to develop? Will you continue to use this talent in your future goals and career? What have you learned about yourself while pursuing this skill? Let the reader understand why this talent matters so much, and exactly why it’s an admirable ability.

Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (approximately 1/2 page, single-spaced) 

Each year, Georgetown receives thousands of applications from students with stellar grades. By asking such a question through the Georgetown essays 2023-2024, the school is interested to know the kind of impact you’ve made in your community in order to distinguish you from the rest of the applicants. The school wants to know what part of your current high school career holds the most significance to you and how that in turn will influence the way you contribute to the Georgetown community. By asking this question, Georgetown wants to know the type of leader you are, how you collaborate with others, and what you care about the most.

To think about the activity you want to elaborate on, take a look at your activities list. A question like this should highlight one of the extracurriculars listed at or near the top of your activities list. In the activities section, you only had 150 characters, including spaces to describe what you did. But if it truly is an activity that has mattered, there’s far more to say. Reflect on what kind of leader you were while participating in the activity, if it’s an initiative that you started, why it is important to you, and the people you connected with. Half of a page is about 250 words, so really focus your answer on the impact rather than spending too much time describing what you did as part of the activity.

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief personal or creative essay which you feel best describes you and reflects on your own background, identity, skills, and talents. (approximately 1 page, single-spaced)

While the previous question highlights what you’ve done and how you’ve made an impact, this question attempts to get more to the core of who you are. Alongside evaluating your academic achievements, Georgetown especially considers your “accomplishments outside of the classroom, demonstrated commitment to the broader community, and personal qualities such as resiliency, motivation and, ambition are certainly considered.” They want to see whether you possess qualities that can not only uniquely add to the Georgetown community but benefit from it as well. 

It can be difficult to figure out where to even begin brainstorming this question — you can probably name a few different points or facets of your life that you consider core to your personality and character. To write this essay, it would be wise to write about the same topic as the Common App personal statement . Since Georgetown admissions officers won’t be looking at your Common App, it’s absolutely okay to draw from your personal statement, as that essay is also about a story that is completely unique to you. This prompt provides you with a chance to tell a story that doesn’t apply to 99% of other students. Your response could also focus on a part of your background that has shaped you or it could highlight an experience that you believe distinguishes you from your peers. The prompt also says you can get creative with your essay, so don’t be afraid to think out of the box. Unlike the Common App, which isn’t school-specific, you can even add a sentence or two at the end of this prompt as you’re only submitting this response to Georgetown!

School-Specific Prompts

Applicants to georgetown college:, a liberal arts education from the college of arts & sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc.) that changed your thinking. (applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.).

In order to create a powerful and impactful response that truly captures your insatiable thirst for knowledge and unwavering eagerness to explore new ideas, it is essential to carefully select a class, book, or event that embodies these qualities. Reflect on an experience that not only challenged your preconceived beliefs and assumptions, but also compelled you to reassess your perspective and actively seek fresh approaches to problems. Use this opportunity to showcase your openness to intellectual growth and your ability to critically analyze your own viewpoints.

When reflecting on your experience, make sure to establish a strong connection between that encounter and the education you hope to receive at Georgetown's College of Arts & Sciences. Explore how this experience aligns with Georgetown's focus on nurturing critical thinking, interdisciplinary studies, and engagement with innovative ideas. Emphasize the ways in which this encounter has expanded your knowledge and enhanced your ability to think critically and creatively.

Remember to utilize vivid details and personal anecdotes to make your story compelling and unforgettable. By painting a vivid picture of your journey, you will engage the reader and allow them to connect with your transformative experience on a deeper level. Delve into how this transformative experience has impacted you as an individual. Reflect on the valuable insights you gained about yourself and how this change has influenced your goals, aspirations, or values. Express how this experience has shaped your character, broadened your perspective, and ignited a desire for personal and intellectual growth. This reflection will demonstrate your self-awareness and your ability to learn and grow from your experiences.

Georgetown highly values intellectual curiosity, a commitment to personal growth, and a desire to engage with novel ideas. Your essay should vividly demonstrate these qualities and illustrate how you would be an invaluable asset to their academic community. Showcasing your passion for learning, your ability to think critically, and your eagerness to contribute to the academic discourse will make you a standout candidate for admission.

Applicants to the School of Nursing and Health Studies:

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. please specifically address your intended major (health care management & policy, human science, global health, or nursing)..

Georgetown knows that all students applying to the School of Nursing and Health Studies have a passion for medicine, want to help people, and imagine a career for themselves in healthcare. This question asks you to dig deeper. What makes your specific interest in the field unique? The school wants to see that you have done your research on Georgetown’s nursing school specifically and understand the resources that make the college unique. 

In this essay — without overlapping with the previous question about who you are — you have to expand on a story related to your love for medicine that only applies to you. Lots of students may have been inspired by their own or their relatives’ illnesses, while others might have realized their calling for the profession through an internship junior year. Since you have about 500 words you can write in detail about how your interest in medicine originated, the ways in which you explored the interest further both academically and through extracurriculars, and then delve more into how your choice of major at Georgetown can help you reach your aspirations. Why Health Care Management & Policy, and why at Georgetown? Make sure the reader understands that you understand the school’s offerings and resources and that you’re ready to make the most of them.

Applicants to the Walsh School of Foreign Service:

The walsh school of foreign service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. what is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world.

The Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown is one of the best known schools in the world for studying international affairs. Admissions officers use this prompt to understand both your personality, character, and values. The School of Foreign Service wants to see where your priorities lie, what your goals are, and how an education in one of the school’s unique majors such as Regional and Comparative Studies and International Political Economy can help you get there. The school is looking for ambitious, open-minded, and curious individuals, and using this prompt among the Georgetown essays 2023-2024 can be an effective way of doing so.

If you’ve answered the 4th prompt among the Common App personal statement essays ( Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve.) , you can write a similar response here. Remember that while this question asks for a current global issue, you’re still writing supplemental essays for your application. This prompt is less about what problem you’ve chosen, and more about getting to know what’s important to you and how you react when faced with one. Moreover, since it doesn’t have to examine a problem the world has already solved, you can use this prompt to delve deeper into your academic interests, specifically within the Walsh School. Is your desire to end climate change connected with your selection of the college’s Science, Technology & International Affairs major? Carefully choose an issue that shows your personal stake, as well as conveys you as an individual aware of the world around them.

Applicants to the McDonough School of Business:

The mcdonough school of business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. please discuss your motivations for studying business at georgetown..

As one of the top undergraduate business schools in the United States, the McDonough School wants to know how you hope to benefit from a business degree from Georgetown specifically. They want to know what you want from a business degree at this stage — how will you take advantage of Georgetown’s hands-on opportunities? What impact have you made on your community and what are you bringing to the classroom? How will you add to the diversity of your cohort?

The word limit allows you to go into details about discovering your love for not just business — but your specific interest in the discipline. Whether it’s marketing or accounting, ask yourself questions to start brainstorming exactly what motivates you. Was there one instance that catalyzed your passion and goals? How have you explored the subject of your interest since then? How has your curiosity about the topic grown? The majority of your essay should be dedicated to tying your interest in with what McDonough has to offer. Note which professor you can’t wait to learn from or a class that stands out to you on your way to becoming a future entrepreneur.

Additional Tips for Writing the Georgetown Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

Now that you’ve taken a look at the prompts for the Georgetown supplemental essays , here are a few tips to help your brainstorming process: 

• Don’t underestimate the power of your extracurriculars : Admissions officers want to know what makes you tick outside the classroom. Don’t just shrug off the first essay and repeat information word for word from what you’ve already included in your activities list. They want to know about your perspective and identity. Your activities could have shifted your views in a way that you might not have even realized before sitting down to write the essay. And you won’t be able to analyze their impact properly if you don’t look at them from a more nuanced angle.
• Research both the college of your choice and the university as a whole: While you definitely have to go in-depth to understand what makes the college of your choice within Georgetown special, it’s also essential that you understand what makes Georgetown unique. This means understanding its identity and values , researching its unique opportunities, and really knowing why you think you would be a good fit. The fit automatically shines through in your writing if you’ve worked to authentically connect your research to your interest in the school.

Georgetown University is a dream school for many students. Naturally, the competition is not easy. To help admissions officers understand what you can bring to campus and how the school can help you grow and thrive, take advantage of these prompts to explain what makes you unique. With the right amount of research, the extracurriculars and grades to back it up, and passion for your field of interest, you can give yourself a fair shot at this well-esteemed university.

If you are looking for a college admissions counselor to help maximize your chances of getting into your dream school, we can help! InGenius Prep has helped more than 6,000 students around the world gain admission into the most competitive schools including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, NYU, and more. Sign up for a free strategy call today and join the 6,000+ students we've helped get accepted into their dream school.

Tags : Georgetown University , applying to georgetown , georgetown supplemental essays , georgetown essays

Schedule a free consultation

to find out how we can help you get accepted.

The Ultimate Guide to 2022-23 Georgetown Essays

The recording will load in a moment., the admissions process is hard - alexander is here to help, schedule a free consulation to meet alexander and get your questions answered, get help with:.

Interested in working with Alexander?

Learn about the entire admissions process from a top expert, about this livestream.

Join college consultant Alexander Oddo and CollegeVine co-founder Vinay Bhaskara to learn how to write effective, compelling, and admission worthy responses to the 2022-2023 Georgetown essays!

This stream will be interactive so be sure to drop all your questions in the chat below.

Alexander Oddo

Specialties, other recordings by alexander oddo.

How to Create a Compelling Application Theme

How to Get into Georgetown

How Being a First-Generation College Student Affects your Application

Stand Out: Strategies for Resume Building

Tips for Getting into Harvard from a Harvard Graduate

Popular recent recordings

Try Before You Buy - The Benefits of Pre-College Residential Experiences

How to do research in high school

Teaching Text and Image

Make the Most of Your Summer Break with the NSLC!

• Search All Scholarships
• Exclusive Scholarships
• Easy Scholarships to Apply For
• No Essay Scholarships
• Scholarships for HS Juniors
• Scholarships for HS Seniors
• Scholarships for College Students
• Scholarships for Grad Students
• Scholarships for Women
• Scholarships for Black Students
• Scholarships
• Student Loans
• College Admissions
• Financial Aid
• Scholarship Winners
• Scholarship Providers

Student-centric advice and objective recommendations

Higher education has never been more confusing or expensive. Our goal is to help you navigate the very big decisions related to higher ed with objective information and expert advice. Each piece of content on the site is original, based on extensive research, and reviewed by multiple editors, including a subject matter expert. This ensures that all of our content is up-to-date, useful, accurate, and thorough.

Our reviews and recommendations are based on extensive research, testing, and feedback. We may receive commission from links on our website, but that doesn’t affect our editors’ opinions. Our marketing partners don’t review, approve or endorse our editorial content. It’s accurate to the best of our knowledge when posted. You can find a complete list of our partners here .

How to Respond to the 2023/2024 Georgetown Supplemental Essay Prompts

Cece Gilmore is a Content Writer at Scholarships360. Cece earned her undergraduate degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from Arizona State University. While at ASU, she was the education editor as well as a published staff reporter at Downtown Devil. Cece was also the co-host of her own radio show on Blaze Radio ASU.

Learn about our editorial policies

Bill Jack has over a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. Since 2008, he has worked at Colby College, Wesleyan University, University of Maine at Farmington, and Bates College.

Maria Geiger is Director of Content at Scholarships360. She is a former online educational technology instructor and adjunct writing instructor. In addition to education reform, Maria’s interests include viewpoint diversity, blended/flipped learning, digital communication, and integrating media/web tools into the curriculum to better facilitate student engagement. Maria earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Monmouth University, an M. Ed. in Education from Monmouth University, and a Virtual Online Teaching Certificate (VOLT) from the University of Pennsylvania.

The Georgetown University supplemental essays are an important part of the overall application. Georgetown has a 12% acceptance rate , so your very best writing is required here. Remember, you are not alone in this Georgetown supplemental essay writing process! Keep reading our guide to learn more about how to best respond to the Georgetown supplemental essays. 

Breaking down the Georgetown supplemental essays

Georgetown requires all applicants to respond to three prompts. 

Here is a breakdown of the word count for the Georgetown supplemental essays: 

• Short Essay – approximately ½ page, single spaced
• Essay 1- approximately 1 page, single spaced
• Essay 2- approximately 1 page, single spaced, response based on intended school

Georgetown Supplemental essay questions for all applicants

Short essay.

Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved (½ page, single spaced)

This is an opportunity to expand on an extracurricular activity that you are passionate about and have participated in the most. 

Some questions to help brainstorm your response could include: 

• Did you receive any leadership roles in this activity? 
• Why do you love this activity? 
• When did you become interested in this activity? 

Once you establish your main activity, write a story surrounding this event and detail a narrative! Do your best to connect back to Georgetown. Think of Georgetown clubs you want to become involved in to continue to pursue your interests. For example, if you love participating in track and field, but do not want to participate at the college level, discuss joining the Georgetown University Running Club. Additionally, try to really show not tell how significant this activity is in your life. For example, you could detail a narrative of how going for a run allows you to clear your mind and helps you cope with stress! Ultimately, this is your time to expand upon a passion you have and why you are passionate about it! 

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief personal or creative essay which you feel best describes you and reflects on your own background, identity, skills and talents. (1 page, single spaced)

Although this is one of the first questions asked by Georgetown, it may be smart to save this question for the end. This is because there are a lot of prompts that Georgetown asks that reveal many of your interests and skills. 

Therefore, to ensure you are not repeating yourself in your responses, answer this question last. Every essay you are responding to should reveal something new! 

Once you are ready to answer this question, brainstorm some of the following questions: 

• What is missing from your application that you want to highlight about yourself? 
• Are there any skills you possess that have not been touched upon? 
• Is there a leadership position you were involved in that you want to detail? 
• What would you do if you had to go on stage at a talent show? 

It is important to use this question as an outlet to showcase your skills, talents, and interests. 

Some examples of some skills, talents, or interests can be: 

• Playing an instrument 
• Participating in a sport
• Speaking a different language
• Mastering a video game
• Able to do something others cannot

You should be not just stating what talents you have, but also a short narrative or story surrounding each skill. Describe how you discovered this skill or how long it took you to become the expert you are today. 

Therefore, it is important to be short and thoughtful with your word choices. Eliminate any filler words and only describe the important parts of your story.

This prompt is quite broad, which can make it challenging to respond to. It is important to try and come up with a topic for this essay that has not been discussed in your application thus far. Remember, Georgetown has most likely already read about your academic and athletic achievements. So, try to be more creative in your response!

So what should you write about? 

To help you brainstorm creative topics for this essay, think of the following questions: 

• What are you known as in your friend group? (Exp: the artsy one, the funny one…) 
• Are there any quirks you possess? 
• Do you belong to any communities? 
• What kind of background did you come from? 
• Have you ever had to overcome anything? 
• What are you passionate about? 
• Is there anything that makes you stand out from other applicants? 

If you are still having trouble coming up with a topic idea for this essay, do not fret. Remember, Georgetown does not use the Common App . This means that you could potentially use your response to the Common App as an answer to this essay.

If you are going to use your Common App essay response to answer this question make sure you are: 

• Not repeating yourself in your application
• Answering the question entirely
• Revealing a new piece of information about yourself

Essentially, Georgetown wants to be able to connect with your application and your personal and unique experiences. Therefore, be yourself and always reveal new things!

Essay #2: Georgetown school-specific essay questions

Each school-specific prompt should not exceed one-page, single-spaced. 

Georgetown College essay

A liberal arts education from the College of Arts & Sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. Describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc) that changed your thinking. (Applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.) 

Georgetown College admissions wants to hear all about your way of thinking! Try to brainstorm a time in which your mind was changed – this can be anything from reading a book to seeing a TED Talk to having a conversation with a teacher. Whatever event, be sure you are picking one that most closely aligns to your intended major such as mathematics or public policy. Remember, you want to show, not tell! So describe this change of thinking through a story! Try to include details to bring your experience to life such as reading your book while driving through the mountains or seeing a TED talk in class and immediately having millions of ideas rushing through your brain. Additionally, it may be wise to describe your thinking prior to the event and then after the event. This will show how exactly you have changed and how much. Now, go one step further and connect back to Georgetown! Doing so will impress the admissions officers and truly demonstrate how you are a perfect fit for the Georgetown community. It’s a good idea to allude to how you will continue to take this new way of thinking to the Georgetown community. 

Questions to consider

• What is a time in which you changed your thinking on a topic? 
• What did you learn from changing your thinking? 
• How will you take what you have learned and apply it while at Georgetown? 

School of Health essay

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care at Georgetown University. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, or Human Science).

This essay question should be fairly easy if you have a passion for studying health care. Ultimately, you just need to explain why you want to study health care! And specifically, why you want to study health care at Georgetown. So, write a story describing your interest in global health, healthcare management & policy or human science! After detailing this narrative, go into detail about why Georgetown is a perfect fit for you. Describe any specific classes, professors, clubs, or the location of DC to demonstrate your interest in Georgetown. The most important thing is that you are tying your response back to Georgetown! 

• Why do you want to major in your chosen major?
• What do you aspire to do with your degree?
• Why did you choose to apply to Georgetown? 

School of Nursing essay

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. Please specifically address your intended major Nursing. 

If you are considering the School of Nursing, then you obviously have a passion for helping people. Therefore, you should not focus on this fact in your response. Remember, these Georgetown supplemental essays are an opportunity to make yourself stand out from other applicants – so try to really think about this question. 

In order to avoid any cliches, try thinking of the following questions to help you brainstorm your response: 

• What has been an eye-opening experience you have had that has influenced your decision to apply to the School of Nursing? 
• Why the Georgetown School of Nursing? 
• Why do you want to help people? 
• Was there a specific instance in which you realized nursing was your calling? 
• Is there anyone close to you who works in the medical or nursing field? 

After brainstorming, begin your response by describing a narrative. Tell your story about why you became interested in nursing and studying in the medical field. Whatever your story may be, use that as the backbone of your response for this essay. 

Try to answer the following questions in your essay: 

• What have you learned from this passion? 
• What change do you hope to bring to your future profession? 
• What do you hope to do with this degree? 
• What will you become involved in while at Georgetown? 

The most important thing is that you are tying your response back to Georgetown. Specify how and why Georgetown’s program and resources are the best fit for you. 

See also : Top nursing scholarships

Walsh School of Foreign Service essay

The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?

International service is a rather uncommon major and profession to go into. Therefore, there is most likely a story behind your decision to choose this school. 

Start by brainstorming the following questions: 

• What inspired you to pursue this major? 
• Is there someone who inspired you to pursue this particular degree? 
• What do you want to do with this degree? 

Now that you have a good idea of what you want to write about, detail exactly what degree you are intended to pursue. Communicate what your goals are for this degree. What do you hope to accomplish? 

In addition, describe how you plan to contribute to change the world for the better. 

Afterwards, connect back to Georgetown by writing about the programs, clubs, and/or opportunities you hope to take advantage of while studying there. 

McDonough School of Business essay

The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivation for studying business at Georgetown.

In order to stand out from other applicants, begin by detailing any background you may have in business. This could be anything from taking a business class in high school to creating your own brand that went viral. Once you describe your business background, connect back to the McDonough School of Business specifically. 

There are a lot of business schools out in the country, so why Georgetown? In order to accurately answer this question, you should have done adequate research on the following aspects of the McDonough School of Business: 

• Class sizes
• Travel opportunities
• Clubs and organizations

Becoming familiar with these aspects of the school allows you to write about the factors that are most important to you. Be open and honest–which factors appeal to you most,  and why? 

Final thoughts on responding to the Georgetown supplemental essays

The Georgetown supplemental essays are quite challenging, but they are completely worth the effort.  Georgetown heavily relies upon the supplemental essay responses to select applicants, so it is important that your application is well-rounded. Make sure that you are not repeating anything when writing your essays. In addition, always connect your experiences back to Georgetown by detailing what you want to become involved in on campus. 

Additional resources

Are you curious about how many colleges to apply to , how to choose a college , or when to take the SAT/ACT ? Do not worry because Scholarships360 has you covered! In addition, we have numerous resources to help you through the rest of your college essays. Check out our guides on how to write an essay about yourself , how to write a successful admissions essay , and how to write 250 or 500 word essays. Throughout your college application journey, make sure that you apply to all the scholarships you qualify for! 

Start your scholarship search

• Vetted scholarships custom-matched to your profile
• Access exclusive scholarships only available to Scholarships360 members

Scholarships360 Recommended

10 Tips for Successful College Applications

Coalition vs. Common App: What is the difference?

College Application Deadlines 2023-2024: What You Need to Know

Trending now.

How to Convert Your GPA to a 4.0 Scale

PSAT to SAT Score Conversion: Predict Your Score

What Are Public Ivy League Schools?

3 reasons to join scholarships360.

• Automatic entry to our $10,000 No-Essay Scholarship
• Personalized matching to thousands of vetted scholarships
• Quick apply for scholarships exclusive to our platform

By the way...Scholarships360 is 100% free!

The Ivy Coach Daily

• College Admissions
• College Essays
• Early Decision / Early Action
• Extracurricular Activities
• Standardized Testing
• The Rankings

September 9, 2023

2023-2024 Georgetown University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Georgetown University has released its 2023-2024 admissions essays for applicants to the Class of 2028 . The Jesuit institution, which has for years bucked the trend of joining The Common Application , asks applicants to respond to three essays in addition to one essay that is school-specific within the broader university. So, what are this year’s essay prompts? Let’s dive in!

2023-2024 Georgetown Essay Topics and Questions

Essays for all georgetown applicants.

All Georgetown applicants must answer the following three essay prompts

1. Please elaborate on any special talents or skills you would like to highlight (250 words) .

Applicants should focus on a skill related to the hook they’ve showcased in the activities section of their Georgetown application. After all, Georgetown’s admissions committee doesn’t care if an applicant can juggle. Even if the skill doesn’t relate to the student’s hook, the talent must showcase intellectual curiosity or it’s a wasted opportunity.

2. Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved (approximately 1/2 page, single-spaced) .

Applicants should shine a spotlight on one of their more meaningful activities. And, yes, this activity should relate to the student’s hook. If a student is interested in studying political science, the activity they write about for this essay prompt should not relate to physics. Georgetown’s admissions committee wants to see how applicants are going to make the world better in a small but meaningful way. As such, this is an opportunity to show rather than tell how they’ve done that to date through the prism of a specific extracurricular pursuit.

3. Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief personal or creative essay which you feel best describes you and reflects on your own background, identity, skills, and talents. (approximately 1 page, single-spaced)

It’s unsurprising that unlike many of its peer institutions, Georgetown has made few changes to its application in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing Affirmative Action. After all, Georgetown’s longtime Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon is well known for his aversion to change. For example, it took a worldwide pandemic for the man to finally switch to notifying applicants of their decisions via the Internet rather than snail mail.

While this essay is similar to last year’s third essay prompt required of all applicants, the wording is slightly different. Unlike last year’s prompt, Georgetown has included “background” and “identity.” Last year, the prompt read, “As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you.”

Now, keep in mind that some schools, like Johns Hopkins University , included bold language that very much capitalized on the loophole Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts penned in his majority opinion outlawing Affirmative Action , allowing schools to continue to consider a candidate’s race in context: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” Georgetown, unsurprisingly, didn’t go nearly as far in its language under its reluctant-to-modernize admissions czar — but it’s a step nonetheless.

Students need not be underrepresented minorities to answer this prompt powerfully. Students can instead write about their faith, community, or experiences, but we do encourage applicants who are underrepresented minorities to subtly make it clear since Georgetown, like all highly selective universities, continues to wish to admit a diverse class of students.

Georgetown School-Specific Essays

For the school-specific essay, irrespective of the school, the essay should not exceed one page, single-spaced.

Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences

A liberal arts education from the College of Arts & Sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. Describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc.) that changed your thinking. (Applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.)

Georgetown’s admissions committee wants to understand how an applicant thinks. Through a specific anecdote or anecdotes (no matter a student’s chosen field of study) — be it via a book, event, classroom discussion, lecture, or anything — it behooves applicants to shine a light on how they are filled with conviction. Yet, they’re also malleable to change when presented with better ideas. And, of course, it wouldn’t hurt to pepper — by showing rather than telling — the importance of the Jesuit tradition and, in particular, Cura personalis, in their storytelling.

McDonough School of Business

The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown.

This essay prompt presents applicants with an opportunity to share an origin story — as high schoolers rather than as children — for their interest in business. Ideally, the origin story traces to an activity featured in the student’s Georgetown activities section. And, of course, McDonough isn’t looking to admit future business titans just out for money. They want to understand how applicants will make the world better in a small but meaningful way. As such, McDonough applicants should infuse their essays with Jesuit traditions — and why they matter to them in business. And, yes, this essay should also be infused with Why McDonough and Why Georgetown specifics (and, no, name-dropping professors and listing classes don’t count as genuine specifics).

Walsh School of Foreign Service

The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?

Walsh is looking to learn the origin story of an applicant’s interest in foreign service — as high schoolers rather than as children. Through a specific anecdote or anecdotes, which ideally trace back to the student’s activities so they’re showing rather than telling, applicants should highlight how they hope to leave a mark on the wall in a way that can be actualized. Stopping climate change can’t be actualized. Incentivizing countries to be greener — based on specific research and insights — is much more doable.

School of Health

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care at Georgetown University. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, or Human Science).

Georgetown’s School of Health seeks to understand a student’s origin story, as a high schooler, for their interest in the disciplines under the School of Health’s umbrella. A grandparent becoming ill with breast cancer is not the way into such an essay since it’s all too common and doesn’t say enough about how a student thinks and how they wish to leave a mark on their field.

Instead, applicants should tell a small story that ideally relates to an activity they’ve participated in during high school, that showcases precisely why they want to contribute to the health field and how they hope to make a difference — and always in a small but deeply meaningful way.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance with Georgetown Essays

If you’re interested in submitting essays that will wow Georgetown’s admissions committee, fill out Ivy Coach ’s free consultation form , and we’ll be in touch to outline our college admissions counseling services for seniors.

You are permitted to use www.ivycoach.com (including the content of the Blog) for your personal, non-commercial use only. You must not copy, download, print, or otherwise distribute the content on our site without the prior written consent of Ivy Coach, Inc.

Related Articles

Using A.I. to Write College Admission Essays

October 13, 2023

Word and Character Limits in College Essays

September 27, 2023

What English Teachers Get Wrong About Writing College Essays

Bragging in College Essays: Is It Ever Okay?

September 26, 2023

What Not to Write: 3 College Essay Topics to Avoid

September 24, 2023

2023-2024 Caltech Supplemental Essay Prompts

September 14, 2023

TOWARD THE CONQUEST OF ADMISSION

If you’re interested in Ivy Coach’s college counseling,
fill out our complimentary consultation form and we’ll be in touch.

Fill out our short form for a 20-minute consultation to learn about Ivy Coach’s services.

Georgetown University Essay Guide 2020-2021

In this Georgetown University Essay Guide, CollegeAdvisor.com Admissions Experts and Georgetown graduates Brynlee and Tamara will cover how to approach the 2020-2021 Georgetown University supplementary essays. For more guidance on personal essays and the college application process in general, sign up for a monthly plan to work with an admissions coach 1-on-1.

Applying to Georgetown University

Located in Washington, D.C., Georgetown University is a top choice for students interested in public service, justice, and engagement with people around the world. Ranked 24th among national universities, it is highly selective, admitting approximately 15 percent of applicants in 2018. Its undergraduate program comprises four schools: Georgetown College, Walsh School of Foreign Service, McDonough School of Business, and School of Nursing & Health Studies. When you begin your application, you will need to select one of these four schools to apply to. Each school conducts its own admissions review, and you may not apply to more than one school.

Georgetown University does not use the Common App or Coalition App. Instead, it maintains its own application portal. This shouldn’t stress you out, though. While it is structured slightly differently from these shared application systems, Georgetown’s application asks for very similar information and requires essays that you will likely encounter in a similar form for other schools. You are required to create an account through their website , where you will fill out the Georgetown Application and the Application Supplement, and submit your recommendations.

When applying to Georgetown, you will have to respond to three general prompts (varying in length from about 150 to 650 words) as well as write one school-specific essay. Read on to learn more about the best strategies to respond to each one.

Tamara: When faced with a highly competitive admissions process, crafting strong essays fueled by personal experiences and self-reflection can help you greatly to stand out among many qualified candidates. As with any college admissions essay, the key is to personalize each essay in a way that explains why Georgetown University is the best place for you to spend the next four years of your academic career.

Brynlee: Before we begin, start thinking about your audience. As the oldest Jesuit university in North America, Georgetown looks for people who exemplify the “Jesuit values” — in short, people who are thoughtful, well-rounded, and community-oriented. As you write, you may find it helpful to pull up the list of Jesuit Values on Georgetown’s website and think about how you can reflect some of these traits in your application.

Tamara: As a graduate of Georgetown University, I cannot stress enough how important it is to research and understand the core values of the university before you begin your application. As a Catholic institution, Georgetown prides itself on incorporating its Jesuit identity into its teaching and sharing it with the campus community. You don’t have to be Catholic or even Christian to adhere to some of the ethical principles that shape Georgetown, such as service to others, inter-religious understanding, and community in diversity.

As you read on for specific tips for answering every 2020-21 essay prompt Georgetown requires, I advise you to keep this overarching importance of ethical, moral, and personal values in mind.

Essays for All Applicants

Prompt 1: indicate any special talents or skills you possess (250 words).

Brynlee: This prompt is intentionally broad, so feel free to get creative! Many students write about hobbies or extracurricular activities that they have been involved with throughout high school. This is a perfectly fine approach — just remember that Prompt 2 asks you to write about your most meaningful extracurricular activity, and you don’t want to be repetitive.

For example, when I applied to Georgetown, I wrote about playing the piano. It helped me de-stress after long school days, and I could use my skill to bring happiness to others when I played publicly. If you choose a similar kind of topic (such as music or sports), make sure that you show the significance and specificity of that talent or skill . Can you use that talent to help others? Does that hobby help you to maintain balance in your life? Are you known on your team for being the best at a particular skill?

Hobbies may be a popular choice for this prompt, but they’re far from the only one. You may have some goofy or unique skills to share — like speaking in perfect ubbi dubbi for a whole day, or having a sixth sense of when your suitcase is at the maximum weight. Or, your skills could be more serious — you know how to stabilize your diabetic brother’s blood sugar, or you are a good listener for your friend in distress. Any of these could make wonderful essays. No matter your topic, it is best to connect it to a broader communal or personal impact.

Tamara: This prompt is very easy to overlook as you fill out the Georgetown Application Supplement. It’s hidden between your standard biographical information questions and questions about your choice of school and major within Georgetown — and it’s separate from the official essay section. Though it may be tempting to simply skip over this prompt, I highly recommend taking the time to respond. Your answer need not be more than 150-200 words or so, but it will signal to the admissions committee that you pay attention to detail and committed to putting your best foot forward as an applicant.

Don’t be disheartened if you don’t have the kind of special talent that you think is needed to stand out. The important thing is to highlight something that makes you unique and has contributed to your intellectual or personal growth.

Make sure not to revisit the same experiences you will describe in your activities, general essay (more on those below), or your school-specific supplement. This is a chance to talk about interests that may not otherwise fit as neatly with your application narrative. Have you self-taught yourself a foreign language? Are you a moderately successful YouTuber? Do you garden or bake elaborate cakes for your loved ones to destress? Are you the sibling your family turns to for moderating family disputes? Anything goes, as long as you can explain what skills you’ve acquired through this talent/hobby and how they can be applied to your academic and professional life going forward.

Prompt 2: Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (1/2 page, single spaced)

Tamara: This prompt is an opportunity for you to highlight your most formative extracurricular experience. Think about the experience that has most impacted your academic interests and inspired you.

Don’t get too bogged down on which activity you believe the admissions officer may deem the most impressive or the most rare. It is true that, if you were to write about your experience as president of your MUN club or quarterback for the football team, you’d likely be one among dozens, if not hundreds, of students to describe this activity. However, that doesn’t mean that your story or the skills you’ve acquired aren’t unique.

In this essay, don’t concentrate so much on the accolades you’ve earned as a result of your activity; instead, talk about how the lessons you learned can be applied in your future college career. For example, when I wrote this essay, I discussed my time in my school paper and how the pressures of ever-present deadlines really opened my eyes to the importance of teamwork and cooperation to find common ground among personal differences and produce the best final product you can.

Only you know what extracurricular or summer experience most contributed to your interests and your unique perspective. Pick an activity that can help Georgetown admissions understand what makes you tick and where you are likely to apply yourself on campus.

Brynlee: You should be considering two factors when deciding what extracurricular activity to write about. First and foremost, it should be something meaningful to you beyond your participation in the activity itself. Secondly, it is usually best if this is an activity you have done for a long time. For example, one student wrote a wonderful essay about her growth over the four years she was on her high school’s lacrosse team, and how that motivated her to start a summer camp for incoming freshmen to practice lacrosse skills before they joined the team.

These rules are not hard and fast, however. If you’ve played a sport or been in a club for a long time, but you don’t have a connection to it beyond participation, it is probably not the right choice. Alternatively, if you participated in an activity for a short amount of time, but you engaged with it in profound ways, that could be a great topic. Perhaps you interned with a local Senate campaign over the summer, and because of that internship, you completed an independent research project about a controversial issue in your state. The time you spent on the actual internship was probably less than three months, but it had a massive impact on the rest of your high school education and your future goals.

In short, while it is best if your response has both of these factors, the impact of the activity is more important than the time you spent on it.

Prompt 3: As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you. (1 page, single-spaced)

Brynlee: Georgetown may not be on the Common App, but many students reuse their main Common App essay here. By all means, save yourself some time and do that! There are, however, a few things to keep in mind.

First, you will notice that this essay has a page limit, rather than a word limit. In my experience, 650 words tends to be just slightly over 1 page, single spaced. Since you will submit this essay via a text box, not a document upload, don’t worry too much if you’re three or four lines over. Anything beyond that, and you will want to make some cuts so the essay is as close to a single page as possible.

Second, if your Common App essay is primarily about your academic interests, I would suggest adapting it for the school-specific essays instead and writing a new essay for this prompt.

Tamara: This essay is most similar to Common App’s first prompt: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story.” If that’s the one you chose, you can copy/paste it into your Georgetown application and feel confident that it responds to this prompt just as well. If you’ve opted for one of the other six prompt options when writing your Common App, your response may need some tweaking before you submit it to Georgetown to better address the prompt as it is worded here.

The ultimate goal of this prompt, however, is identical to the Common App questions: Tell the admissions committee something about you, your life experiences and/or challenges you’ve encountered that has been central to shaping the person you are today and the values you hold .

In keeping with its commitment to the university’s Jesuit values, Georgetown’s prompt really focuses on diversity and how its incoming class will uphold that value. Remember that diversity doesn’t necessarily refer to race, ethnicity, or religious affiliation — rather, it’s about the unique experiences and perspectives each student can bring to campus. Perhaps you are someone who has lived in multiple countries and whose views are shaped by various cultures. Perhaps you’re an activist in your local community, working to expand access to academic opportunities for socioeconomically disadvantaged students or lobbying your local Board of Education to include conversations about race into your school’s curriculum. Amid hundreds of applicants with similar academic profiles and test scores, it’s your job to tell the admissions committee what makes you stand out.

School-Specific Essays

Georgetown College

What does it mean to you to be educated how might georgetown college help you achieve this aim (applicants to the sciences and mathematics or the faculty of languages and linguistics should address their chosen course of study.).

Brynlee: No matter your intended course of study, make sure to answer both parts of the prompt. As a math, science, or language major, you should be as specific about your program as you can . Similarly, if you are a humanities or social science major and you already know what you want to study, pick a few courses, professors, programs, or other opportunities at the university to support your answer.

For example, if you are applying as a Chinese major, you could write about how being educated means being able to meet new people and adjust to cultural differences. Then, you could list some aspects of the major that would help you achieve this goal. Practically speaking, becoming fluent in Chinese will enable you to converse with millions of people. Looking a little deeper, you could also talk about how practicing your language skills on campus will help you become comfortable talking to strangers, how reading non-Western literature will help you become more empathetic, or how becoming bilingual will help you to creatively solve problems.

If you don’t know what you want to study yet, don’t worry! Georgetown’s liberal arts curriculum is designed to help you explore and try new things. If you are undecided, I recommend two strategies. First, you can arrange your essay around a higher-level skill or characteristic that you hope to develop. For example, if you felt that the true mark of education was using your knowledge to help others, you could research and describe ways that you could link your classes to service opportunities in the DC community. Alternatively, you could pick one major that you may want to pursue, and write as if you’ve already decided that it is what you will study. You can always change your mind!

Tamara: This essay seeks to understand what education means to you in a global sense, beyond solving equations and writing book reports. How will a Georgetown education help you grow, allow you to give back to your community, enable you to understand the world around you? Why is Georgetown the best place for you to achieve your goals?

Do your research. Before you begin writing, I strongly encourage you to browse the university’s website and familiarize yourself with Georgetown University’s core values and principles . Then, think about how those values align with your own and how Georgetown’s approach to education fits with your goals.

It is not enough to praise the diverse cultural offerings of Washington, D.C. or the university’s high rankings. There are numerous top tier colleges within the District, and it’s your job to explain to the admissions committee why Georgetown is best suited to your needs . Find out what programs, service opportunities, student organizations, and community outreach schemes Georgetown offers that could further your education and serve as a stepping stone to your dream career. Be as specific as you can.

School of Nursing & Health Studies

Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care. please specifically address your intended major (global health, health care management & policy, human science, or nursing)..

Brynlee: Any essay about academic interests should demonstrate your interest in a major, as well as the broader impact of studying that subject. Personal stories and connections to your major will help you stand out. For example, one student I worked with needed surgery to repair a brain abnormality during her junior year, and she hoped to study human science so she could become a neurosurgeon. Or, perhaps you are interested in the political battles over the Affordable Care Act, and you want to study Health Care Management & Policy so you can go to law school and become an advocate for health care justice.

One thing to note: the recent coronavirus pandemic will, understandably, spark an interest in healthcare careers for many students. It is not a bad thing to write about this, but if possible, connect it to either a personal experience with the virus, or to a longstanding interest in medicine, healthcare, or service. Admissions officers understand that the pandemic is uprooting many aspects of our lives, but they will also likely be dismissive of essays that don’t demonstrate a personal connection to health studies beyond the present moment.

Tamara: In this essay, you have the opportunity to tell the admissions committee how and why you became interested in health care and to explain why Georgetown offers you the best opportunity to pursue this passion. It’s really important that you provide specific, personal anecdotes and explanations that clarify your choice of major. It’s not enough to tell the reader that you care about helping others; you need to show them why.

For example, are you someone who suffers from a chronic illness and who wants to use their experience to help others with similar conditions to lead full lives? Did your community’s lack of resources in supporting children with special needs inspire you to become a policy maker and fight for greater access to medical care? Do you want to study viral diseases that devastate developing countries and help to eradicate them?

Ultimately, the admissions committee is seeking applicants whose academic, extracurricular, and personal experiences convey dedication to their chosen field of study. Writing an essay that demonstrates why you want to study health care, grounded in personal experience, can be more powerful than a long list of impressive leadership and extracurricular credentials.

Walsh School of Foreign Service

Briefly discuss a current global issue, indicating why you consider it important and what you suggest should be done to deal with it..

Brynlee: The strongest essays I have seen for the SFS are those that analyze a narrow situation but put it within a larger global context. Describing how you would end world hunger, illiteracy, or climate change in a single page would be impossible. And attempting to do so would demonstrate that you haven’t thought critically about your issue of choice. But if you can think of a way to deal with the issue on a small scale, you can write a very strong essay.

One student wrote about a series of programs he hoped to institute in order to strengthen educational opportunities in the Dominican Republic. This essay was successful because the student was familiar with the country in question, the policy suggestions he made were specific and realistic, and the essay was direct and concise. The SFS trains students to be successful diplomats and policymakers, and they value students who can convey a great deal of information in just a few words. While in most essays, personal stories and reflections are key, in this essay you should limit those to your explanation of why you consider the issue important, and spend the bulk of your time writing about your policy proposals.

Tamara: I applied, attended, and graduated from the School of Foreign Service. I distinctly remember that this essay was one of the hardest I had to write during my own college admissions cycle. I was worried that I was not educated enough on any global issues to discuss them intelligently, let alone propose suggestions. With advice from teachers and college counselors, I ultimately wrote an essay that earned me a spot in Georgetown’s Class of 2015. If you, too, are seeking admissions to the School of Service, here are some of the key tips to keep in mind as you begin writing your supplements:

1. Don’t pick a global issue simply because it’s making headlines when you sit down to write your essay. The relevance of the subject matter to current events is less important than your personal connection to the topic. The admissions committee doesn’t want to read a generic essay about global poverty or a MUN-style position paper arguing for intervention in an ongoing crisis. They want to know why and how you came to care about the topic.

In my essay, I discussed the issue of domestic violence in Russia (my native country) that I was aware of from first- and second-hand accounts among relatives and friends. As a solution, I argued for increasing female representation in local and national governments that would allow crucial issues such as this to be addressed more urgently. So when you pick your topic, think about why it matters to you — why you wish to solve this particular problem among the numerous challenges the world faces today.

2. No one expects you to solve a public health crisis, resolve a decades-long borders dispute between nations, or eliminate violence against women with one essay. When the prompt asks you to propose a solution, it is to allow the admissions officer a glimpse into your thought process. The reader wants to see that you can be compassionate as well as realistic. At the School of Foreign Service, you will learn what it takes to make policy decisions under real-world constraints, so it is a good idea to demonstrate your awareness that the world is not always black-and-white in your answer.

McDonough School of Business

The mcdonough school of business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. please discuss your motivations for studying business at georgetown..

Brynlee: Like the NHS essay, the MSB essay is a fairly straightforward academic interests essay. The Georgetown business program embodies many of the same features that characterize the university’s other undergraduate schools, such as international engagement and service to others.

Like with the other academic interests essays, you should talk about why you chose your intended major for intellectual reasons, as well as the broader implications of choosing that major. For example, perhaps you enjoy the structure and clarity of math, and you hope to use your Accounting degree to help small businesses get on their feet. Or, perhaps you see business as an important way of maintaining international cooperation, and you are interested in the Business and Global Affairs joint degree program with the SFS. No matter what major you choose, make sure that you address your interest in the major for its own sake, as well as your goals for the future.

Tamara: Georgetown’s core ethical values are an important component of its teaching methods, and the admissions committee seeks out students who are inspired by those values. In this essay, you should focus on explaining why Georgetown’s approach to educating future business leaders resonates with your professional and academic goals.

For example, do you aspire to one day build a start-up that uses technology to empower disadvantaged students? Do you want to apply your business prowess to manage a non-profit organization? Before you begin writing, think about how you will use the knowledge and skills you gain at Georgetown’s business school to improve your community, solve problems, and uphold your values. Remember, being financially successful or reaching a top leadership position in a renowned company are not sufficient motivations to list in your response. Do your best to explain why studying your chosen major at this university will aid your intellectual and personal development.

This essay guide was written by Brynlee Emery (Georgetown University ‘19) and Tamara Evdokimova (Georgetown University ‘19) . If you want to get help writing your Georgetown application essays from Brynlee, Tamara, or other CollegeAdvisor.com Admissions Experts , register with CollegeAdvisor.com today.

Personalized and effective college advising for high school students.

• Advisor Application
• Popular Colleges
• Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice
• Student Login
• California Privacy Notice
• Terms and Conditions
• Your Privacy Choices

By using the College Advisor site and/or working with College Advisor, you agree to our updated Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy , including an arbitration clause that covers any disputes relating to our policies and your use of our products and services.

Georgetown University 2023-24 Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 10

You Have: 

Georgetown 2023-24 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 1 essay of 250 words; 1 half-page essay; 2 page-long essays

Supplemental Essay Type(s):  Activity , Why, Diversity

Prompt 1: Please elaborate on any special talents or skills you would like to highlight. (250 words)

This prompt may come first on the list, but we think you should save it for last! For the other essays on the Georgetown application, we ask you to dig deep and share personal stories that showcase talents and interests. Don’t dry the well by listing all of your (many!) skills and talents too soon. Every essay should reveal something new to admissions. So once you finish polishing your other pieces, ask yourself: what’s missing? Is there some critical puzzle piece that will help connect your other three essays? Or have you been dying to get something off your chest that didn’t fit anywhere else? This essay could be the perfect outlet for you to showcase your more personal skills, interests, and quirks. If the rest of your essays showcase your drive to work in international relations, perhaps your answer to this prompt could showcase a lighter side: your love of experimental cooking (and impressive knife skills!). Or maybe explain how learning a new language helped you learn how to whistle! While you should aim to showcase genuine skills that you have put effort into cultivating, you can also have a little bit of fun. This prompt is the most open-ended one on the application, so show admissions something they won’t find anywhere else on your application.

Prompt 2: Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved. (approximately 1/2 page, single-spaced) 

Next up is a fun twist on the classic activity essay, which asks you to expand on an extracurricular endeavor that you care about. For starters, we’d give you basically the same advice the prompt does: focus on one of the activities “in which you have been most involved.” Although we usually urge students to write about items that haven’t appeared elsewhere on their application, the activity essay is an exception since it specifically asks you to address an item on your resume. So, pick something with meat! When have you had the opportunity to take on a leadership role? How has four years of debate club shaped the way you communicate? Was it difficult coaching pee wee soccer as a freshman, and what motivated you to stick with it?

Prompt 3: As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief personal or creative essay which you feel best describes you and reflects on your own background, identity, skills, and talents. (approximately 1 page, single-spaced)

Though it seems straightforward, this may be one of the hardest prompts! (What do you mean, tell you about myself in my own words?) Don’t fret. You can treat this essay just like the Common App’s prompt #1 , which asks students to write about a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. (Even better: if you’ve already written an essay in response to the Common App’s first prompt, you can recycle that essay here since Georgetown has its own application platform!)

If you’re approaching this essay from scratch, take some time to brainstorm. What about your background, talents, or identity might be worth highlighting for an admissions officer? Don’t worry about cramming every aspect of the wonder that is you into one essay; they will naturally reveal themselves along the way as you write. Whether you want to write about a facet of your identity that few people know about or a passion you’ve been dabbling in (and telling everyone about) for years, you can’t go wrong with authentic reflection and an engaging hook!

Georgetown University School-Specific Prompts.

(each school-specific prompt should not exceed 1 page, single-spaced), georgetown college of arts and sciences: a liberal arts education from the college of arts & sciences involves encounters with new concepts and modes of inquiry. describe something (a class, a book, an event, etc.) that changed your thinking. (applicants to the sciences, mathematics, public policy or languages are encouraged to include examples related to that field.).

Admissions wants to learn about a time when your mind was changed. If you’re an active reader or information seeker, you probably have a few ideas already. But if nothing comes to mind immediately, don’t panic; instead, think about the times in your life when you’ve had an “Aha!” moment that forced you to drastically re-examine one of your beliefs or understandings. Admissions wants to know that you are open to new ideas and can reflect in order to see things from a different perspective. As you tell your story, include sensory details to bring your experience to life, whether you’re sitting in the back of a classroom, head in your hands, trying to wrap your brain around the truth-bomb your teacher just dropped; or curled up in a blanket by the fireplace with your nose in a gripping book. If you’re deciding between “Aha!” moments to write about, pick the one most closely related to your intended field of study. Applicants who can articulate their thoughts and feelings while showcasing malleability and a willingness to thoughtfully consider new ideas will likely stand out as valuable additions to the Georgetown community. 

School of Health: Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying health care at Georgetown University. Please specifically address your intended major (Global Health, Health Care Management & Policy, or Human Science).

If we know anything about applying to medical programs, it is this: everyone wants to help people; everyone wants to make the world a better place; everyone wants to make a meaningful contribution. Few fields lend themselves to service-oriented clichés and platitudes as readily as medicine does, so to safely navigate the minefield of hackneyed generalizations, start with something personal! What’s one eye-opening experience that made you believe healthcare could be your calling? Perhaps it was a single moment, like accidental eye contact with a concerned mother at the ER. Or maybe it was something more long-term, such as navigating your school in a wheelchair after knee surgery and realizing you want to improve patient outcomes through researching physical therapies. Whatever the case, use your personal story as the backdrop for your argument. What did you learn? What problems do you hope to tackle? What change do you hope to help create? As we said, it’s not enough to just want these things; your job is to show admissions why medicine interests you personally. Once you’ve accomplished that, be sure to address the role Georgetown will play in your plan for the future. In other words, why do you want to study healthcare at Georgetown in particular? Do they have a research lab that’s at the forefront of innovation? A wise applicant will do some research so they can infuse their response with specific details that demonstrate meticulousness and drive.

School of Nursing: Describe the factors that have influenced your interest in studying your intended major, Nursing.

Well, this is about as straightforward as prompts get! Our advice is much the same as it is for students applying to the School of Health (see above). Set yourself apart from other applicants by not only discussing the factors that led you to pursuing a career in nursing, but by also connecting those experiences to your larger goals for the future. If there are elements of a Georgetown education that will support your particular interest or connect to your past experiences in some way, you should dig into that in your response, while also revealing new information to admissions about your character, motivations, and aspirations.

Walsh School of Foreign Service: The Walsh School of Foreign Service was founded more than a century ago to prepare generations of leaders to solve global problems. What is motivating you to dedicate your undergraduate studies to a future in service to the world?

The Walsh School of Foreign Service wants to know what fuels your fire. What is driving you to dedicate your undergraduate studies (and maybe even your life!) to a path of service? Maybe you are incredibly passionate about combating climate change before it’s too late. What do you hope to achieve and how? Perhaps you’re following in the footsteps of a trailblazer you look up to—how do you hope to continue fighting the good fight in their honor? If you’re feeling stuck, ask yourself: what kind of mark would you like to leave on the world? How do you think you can positively contribute to a cause that is important to you? If you had the power to make a lasting impact in any area at all, what would it be? While building the personal connection is key, you’ll also want to leave yourself some space to spell out at least a few steps you might take to address your global issue of choice.

McDonough School of Business: The McDonough School of Business is a national and global leader in providing graduates with essential ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives. Please discuss your motivations for studying business at Georgetown.

If you think we’ve never seen an essay with the line, “I love money,” you would be wrong. Spoiler: this does not make a great first impression. Studying business is about so much more than dollars and cents, and the prompt offers a few other aspects of business you’ll learn about in this program including “ethical, analytical, financial and global perspectives.” In order to get some perspective, we’d recommend doing your homework. Like any classic why essay, the best answers are personal and specific, so go beyond your general interest in business and try to figure out specifically why Georgetown could be the right fit for you. Is it the location? The professors? The travel opportunities? Allow yourself to follow every lead and fall down every rabbit hole as you root through the program website. Your essay should paint a picture of the kind of student you will be at Georgetown, from the classes you’ll take to the activities you’ll pursue. How will this education prepare you for your dream career?

About Kat Stubing

View all posts by Kat Stubing »

We're here to help.

Contact us for information on rates and more!

• I am a * Student Parent Potential Partner School Counselor Private College Counselor
• Name * First Last
• Phone Type Mobile Landline
• Street Address
• Address City State / Province / Region Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czechia Côte d'Ivoire Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Macedonia Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestine, State of Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Réunion Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Sweden Switzerland Syria Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania, the United Republic of Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Türkiye US Minor Outlying Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Åland Islands Country
• Which best describes you (or your child)? High school senior High school junior College student College grad Other
• How did you find CEA? Internet Search New York Times Guidance counselor/school Social Media YouTube Friend Special Event Delehey College Consulting Other
• Common App and Coalition Essays
• Supplemental Essays
• University of California Essays
• University of Texas Essays
• Resume Review
• Post-Grad Essays
• Specialized Services
• Waitlist Letters
• Private School Essays
• General College Counseling
• School list with priorities noted:
• Anything else we should know?
• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

School Stats:

• Agnes Scott College
• Alvernia University
• American University
• Amherst College
• Babson College
• Bard College
• Barnard College
• Baylor University
• Bennington College
• Bentley University
• Berry College
• Bethany College
• Bishop’s University
• Boston College
• Boston University (BU)
• Bowdoin College
• Brandeis University
• Brown University
• Bryn Mawr College
• Bucknell University
• Butler University
• California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
• California Lutheran University
• Capitol Technology University
• Carleton College
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Catawba College
• Centre College
• Chapman University
• Claremont McKenna College
• Clark University
• College of Mount Saint Vincent
• College of William and Mary
• College of Wooster
• Colorado College
• Colorado School of Mines
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• Culver-Stockton College
• D'Youville University
• Dartmouth College
• Davidson College
• Drexel University
• Duke University
• Earlham College
• Elon University
• Emerson College
• Emory University
• Flagler College
• Fordham University
• George Mason University
• Georgetown University
• Georgia State University
• Georgia Tech
• Gonzaga University
• Harvard University
• Harvey Mudd College
• Haverford College
• Hillsdale College
• Hofstra University
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Illinois Wesleyan University
• Indiana University Bloomington
• Ithaca College
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kalamazoo College
• Lafayette College
• Lehigh University
• Lewis and Clark College
• Linfield University
• Loyola Marymount University (LMU)
• Lynn University
• Macalester College
• Malone University
• Manchester University
• Marist College
• Mary Baldwin University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Meredith College
• Monmouth College
• Moravian University
• Morehouse College
• Mount Holyoke College
• New York University (NYU)
• North Park University
• Northwestern University
• Occidental College
• Oklahoma City University
• Olin College of Engineering
• Pepperdine University
• Pitzer College
• Pomona College
• Princeton University
• Providence College
• Purdue University
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Rice University
• Saint Elizabeth University
• Santa Clara University
• Sarah Lawrence College
• Scripps College
• Seattle Pacific University
• Smith College
• Soka University of America
• Southern Methodist University
• St. John’s College
• Stanford University
• Stonehill College
• Swarthmore College
• Syracuse University
• Texas A&M University
• Texas Christian University
• The College of Idaho
• The George Washington University
• The New School
• Trinity College
• Tufts University
• Tulane University
• University of California
• University of Central Florida (UCF)
• University of Chicago
• University of Cincinnati
• University of Colorado Boulder
• University of Florida
• University of Georgia
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• University of Maryland
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Miami
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)
• University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• University of North Carolina at Greensboro
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Oklahoma
• University of Oregon
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Richmond
• University of San Diego
• University of San Francisco
• University of Southern California (USC)
• University of Texas at Austin
• University of Tulsa
• University of Vermont
• University of Virginia (UVA)
• University of Washington
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Vanderbilt University
• Vassar College
• Villanova University
• Virginia Tech
• Wake Forest University
• Washington and Lee University
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Wellesley College
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
• Yale University

Want free stuff?

We thought so. Sign up for free instructional videos, guides, worksheets and more!

One-On-One Advising

Common App Essay Prompt Guide

Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

• YouTube Tutorials
• Our Approach & Team
• Undergraduate Testimonials
• Postgraduate Testimonials
• Where Our Students Get In
• CEA Gives Back
• Undergraduate Admissions
• Graduate Admissions
• Private School Admissions
• International Student Admissions
• Common App Essay Guide
• Supplemental Essay Guides
• Coalition App Guide
• The CEA Podcast
• Admissions Stats
• Notification Trackers
• Deadline Databases
• College Essay Examples
• Academy and Worksheets
• Waitlist Guides
• Get Started

• Share full article

The Essential Joan Didion

Her distinctive prose and sharp eye were tuned to an outsider’s frequency, telling us about ourselves in essays that are almost reflexively skeptical. Here’s where to start.

Credit... John Bryson/Getty Images

Supported by

By Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at The Times. Her book “We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine” will be published by Liveright next year.

• Published April 26, 2024 Updated April 28, 2024

The Joan Didion many people know is constructed from a few artifacts the real writer left behind when she died in 2021 . There’s her much-imitated (and sometimes parodied) 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That,” about leaving New York. There’s the packing list enumerated in her essay “The White Album,” written between 1968 and 1978, which is sometimes cited as aspirational , even instructional . There are the iconic photographs of Didion taken by Julian Wasser in 1968, commissioned for a profile in Time — particularly one in which she’s smoking while leaning against her Stingray, cooler than anyone has ever been, a vibe echoed in the 2003 ad Didion shot for the fashion brand Celine . And, of course, there’s her most famous line — “We tell ourselves stories in order to live” — which opens “The White Album” and is frequently invoked, wrongly, for inspiration.

Didion was not really out to inspire us. She was looking at us and telling us what she saw, including our compulsion to weave myths for survival. Her distinctive prose and sharp eye were always tuned to an outsider’s frequency, even when she was actually an insider (as with most of her writing on Hollywood). Her essays are almost reflexively skeptical; she wrote with authority borne not so much from experience as from a refusal to give in to dogma.

And her work, which spanned well over a half-century, reads like an account of a country careering toward a cliff. Didion may be best known as the California writer who chronicled midcentury cultural decay, but her body of work is much wider and deeper. She wrote on Hollywood and Washington, New York and Sacramento, Terri Schiavo and Martha Stewart, grief and hypocrisy and Latin American politics, and somehow it all drove toward the same point: Narratives are coping mechanisms. If we want to truly understand ourselves, we have to understand not just the stories we make up together, but the tales behind them.

In the years since her death, Didion’s star has only risen, with a museum exhibit , revivals of her play , a buzzed-about estate sale and the New York Public Library’s forthcoming unveiling of her joint archive with her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, who died in 2003. In the meantime, the state of the world has felt ever more confusing, and the line between reality and make-believe more blurred. So there’s never been a better time to dip your toe — or plunge your whole self — into the work of one of the finest, most perceptive writers in American letters.

I want to start with the foundational text.

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968) was Didion’s second book — her first was the 1963 novel “Run River,” written in her 20s as a Vogue staffer in New York. But even though 13 books of nonfiction and four novels followed it, “Slouching,” published when she was 33, remains fundamental to Didion’s oeuvre, and helped establish her reputation as a practitioner of the New Journalism.

Like all of her collections, the book consists of essays written on assignment for a variety of outlets: The New York Times Magazine, The American Scholar, Holiday, Vogue and The Saturday Evening Post. Taken together, they start to convey a portrait of the cultural critic as a young woman, and especially her sense, nurtured from a very young age, that the world was coming apart at the seams.

The book’s title comes from one of its essays, about the decaying vibes in late ’60s Haight-Ashbury. That’s in turn plucked from a Yeats poem, quoted as an epigraph. In the preface she writes that the essay was reported and drafted in an attempt to beat a despairing writer’s block: “If I was to work again at all,” she writes, “it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.”

Didion often spoke of writing as the way she figured out what she thought, which makes the title essay a must-read for understanding the author. But “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” is a jewel chest, and the shiniest gem inside it might be “Goodbye to All That,” Didion’s classic essay about falling in and out of love with New York City.

The often-quoted “On Self-Respect,” which also appears in this collection, has a funny origin story: Didion wrote it as a Vogue staffer because the editors had put the headline on the cover without assigning a writer, and she happened to be around.

Was there a sequel?

Not exactly. But “The White Album” (1979) is kind of a follow-up to “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” though it also works all on its own. The book’s title essay is somewhat autobiographical, an account of Didion’s life in Los Angeles during the 1960s, when she and Dunne were raising their daughter, Quintana Roo, and spending a great deal of their time with movie stars and rockers. Written as a series of vignettes, the essay floats from Didion’s psychological trouble to her encounters with familiar figures — the Black Panthers, the Doors, the Manson family. There’s a sense in which the essay is responsible for the way many of us born later “remember” the late 1960s; you could spot its DNA, for instance, in certain seasons of “Mad Men,” or in Quentin Tarantino’s film “ Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood .”

On the whole, the essays in “The White Album” feel more descriptive of Didion’s life than earlier writings, but she expertly toed a fine line that made her readers (especially women) feel they knew her, even though she never really revealed a lot about herself in her writing. Other standouts in the collection include “The Women’s Movement,” which will give you a sense for Didion’s reluctance to call herself a feminist, and “Holy Water,” which becomes a personal history by way of California history.

I want to read Didion at her most vicious.

The cattiest (and thus maybe the funniest) essay Didion ever wrote was “Pretty Nancy,” a portrait of Nancy Reagan when she was the first lady of California. Didion, part of the fifth generation of a well-off Sacramento family, had absolutely no use for either Reagan from the moment the Gipper stepped into politics. For her, the Reagans became the prevailing metaphor for everything that was wrong with the American political scene, because she believed they thought, acted, campaigned and governed like Hollywood figures. “She has told me that the governor never wore makeup even in motion pictures, and that politics is rougher than the picture business because you do not have the studio to protect you,” Didion writes near the end of the profile, when the tone of irritated disdain is practically dripping off the page.

Despite inflicting a significant sting — Nancy Reagan mentions the essay in her own memoirs — “Pretty Nancy” wasn’t collected in any of Didion’s books until the final one, “Let Me Tell You What I Mean” (2021). It’s a perfect glimpse into a young, irritated writer who knew exactly what she was doing.

Did she ever get swoony?

Words like “unsparing” and “cleareyed” are usually applied to Didion’s cultural analysis, but if you want to see her in full weak-kneed mode, read the essay “John Wayne: A Love Story.” (It’s collected in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”) In 1965, she finally landed a pitch she’d been longing for: The Saturday Evening Post commissioned Didion to travel to northern Mexico, where “The Sons of Katie Elder” — a western she’d later brush off in a paragraph-long review in Vogue — was shooting. The star was John Wayne, whom Didion had worshiped since watching him in a converted aircraft hangar on the Army base where her father was stationed during World War II. He became her idea of manhood, safety, strength.

Wayne-like characters pop up across Didion’s fiction, as does her longing for the kind of security this line represented to her. But Wayne as an actual person was important to her, too. When she finally met her hero on set, he was just coming off a lung cancer scare; she mentions his “bad cold and a racking cough, so tired by late afternoon that he kept an oxygen inhalator on the set.” Famously, he’d used his diagnosis, and his tough-guy stature, to encourage people in the smoke-filled era to get screened for the disease.

John Wayne is key to Didion’s story for more than just entertainment reasons. Her political views, until well into adulthood, were sternly conservative, not as right wing as Wayne’s but nearly so — she used to announce at Hollywood dinner parties, seemingly for shock value, that she had voted for Barry Goldwater. She switched affiliations after the California Republican Party embraced Richard Nixon, but as late as the 1990s she was still saying she’d have voted for Goldwater in every election since, had he run.

Didion also ended up working in the movie industry, in one way or another, for her entire life, and it’s not hard to believe she was hooked on the business by her love of Wayne.

How much of a Hollywood insider was Didion, really?

Didion and Dunne considered themselves novelists first and journalists second, but they really paid their bills by writing and doctoring scripts. Their first produced movie was the 1971 addict drama “The Panic in Needle Park,” starring Al Pacino in his first leading role, and Kitty Winn, who won Best Actress at Cannes for the role. The pair wrote a number of scripts together, including “Play It as It Lays,” “A Star Is Born” (the Barbra Streisand one), “True Confessions,” “Up Close and Personal” and the HBO short film “Hills Like White Elephants.” If you really want a great overview of Hollywood through their eyes, you can’t do better than two of Dunne’s books: “The Studio” (1969), about life on the back lot at 20th Century Fox, and “Monster” (1997), about the travails they experienced getting “Up Close and Personal” made.

But Didion wrote about Hollywood, too. One of her most astute essays, “Hollywood: Having Fun,” was first published in The New York Review of Books in 1973, then lightly revised and published as “In Hollywood” in “The White Album.”

“Hollywood: Having Fun” is a careening tour through the wheeling and dealing of the movie business, and also a way for Didion to take out-of-touch East Coast movie critics to task. (She specifically names Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, with whom Didion had briefly shared a movie review column at Vogue. By 1973, Kael was arguably the most powerful movie critic in America; Didion airily suggests she’s full of hogwash.) Didion believes that “much of what is written about pictures and about picture people approaches reality only occasionally and accidentally,” because if you don’t experience Hollywood directly then you can’t possibly understand how the sausage gets made and, thus, understand what you’re really seeing up on the screen.

What’s clear is that, having worked as a movie critic herself for a while, she’s not particularly interested in critics’ thoughts anymore, which leads to this brilliant line: “Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lecture fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.” You said it, Joan.

What about Didion’s fiction?

Most people will tell you to read “Play It as It Lays” (1970), her second novel, and they’re not wrong. Like the screenplay version she and Dunne later wrote, Didion’s novel is a bleak tale of a melting-down actress in a tumultuous 1960s Hollywood.

But of her five novels, the best is “Democracy” (1984). Occasionally I think it might be the Great American Novel. Narrated by a journalist named Joan Didion, it’s mostly the story of Inez Victor, the wife of a Kennedy-style senator who ran a failed campaign for president. But Inez has been in love since she was a teenager with a man named Jack Lovett, whose occupation is unclear (C.I.A. agent? War profiteer?) but who, for her, represents safety. He is the John Wayne figure in the book. He can’t keep bad things away, but he can fix them.

“Democracy” ends tragically — all of Didion’s novels end tragically — yet with a note of romantic hope that turns the whole thing into a sweeping epic. You can almost hear the strings swelling.

I want to understand Didion’s politics.

Good luck. She did start out very conservative, and trended leftward into adulthood after getting fed up with Nixon and Reagan. Yet she remained very difficult to pin down. Her early work is full of takedowns of idealism on the right and the left, as if she is always looking at these matters through narrowed eyes.

But if you want to see, roughly, where she landed, then the place to go is her book “Political Fictions,” a collection of essays that had the misfortune to be published on Sept. 11, 2001. They’re mostly reporting from campaigns of figures like Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, or the travails of an impeached Bill Clinton, and the eye she casts is clearly one that wears Hollywood-colored glasses. Everything in a campaign or a presidency, she writes, is carefully choreographed in much the same way as a movie set. This is a sign, to her, of political decline, a category error that renders politics as flat, useless and commodified. The candidate is a product being sold to the public, just like a movie star. Don’t miss the review of Newt Gingrich’s work in “Political Fictions,” which she manages to take apart by simply listing his metaphors and references.

Once you’re done with “Political Fictions,” pick up “Where I Was From,” published a few years later, in which Didion retreads her own work and life story. It’s a re-evaluation, after both her parents’ deaths, of the myths and ideas she absorbed as a young girl in California, and thus a re-evaluation more broadly of American myths and legends. (She does some of the same work in the slim book “Fixed Ideas: America Since 9/11,” which fiercely questions dogma that arose in the wake of the attacks and, in particular, ideas and articles published by The New York Times.)

What is one Didion essay that can’t be missed?

Didion’s most consequential essay may be “Sentimental Journeys, ” first published in The New York Review of Books in 1991 and later collected in “After Henry” (1992). It concerns the infamous case of the Central Park jogger and the railroaded confessions of the so-called Central Park Five, five teenagers wrongfully accused of the crime and sent to prison. In a full-page ad he personally paid to place in four local papers, Donald J. Trump, then a local businessman, called for their execution . In 2002, their convictions were vacated. (One of them, Yusef Salaam, is now a New York City councilman.)

In “Sentimental Journeys,” Didion comes at the case sideways, examining the stories that New Yorkers tell themselves about the city and its inhabitants. She writes about how racism distorts this story, and questions whether the jogger’s name should have been released to the public. And she explores how a single case such as this one, though hardly the only of its kind, can be wound up by the news media, politicians and opportunists into representing something much bigger and much less logical.

Her diagnosis has aged breathtakingly well. “In a city in which grave and disrupting problems had become general — problems of not having, problems of not making it, problems that demonstrably existed, among the mad and the ill and the underequipped and the overwhelmed, with decreasing reference to color — the case of the Central Park jogger provided more than just a safe, or structured, setting in which various and sometimes only marginally related rages could be vented,” she wrote. In typical Didion fashion, that could have been written yesterday.

What was she thinking about near the end of her life?

Didion’s final two decades were filled with loss. On Dec. 30, 2003, Dunne and Didion returned home from visiting their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, in the hospital, where she was in a coma. Dunne suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack. Didion told the story of her year of grief in “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005), which won the National Book Award. Just before the book was published, Quintana died. Didion toured in the midst of her grief, then wrote a theatrical adaptation, which opened on Broadway in March 2007, starring Didion’s longtime friend Vanessa Redgrave as the author.

“The Year of Magical Thinking” is intense and cyclical, evoking the mind caught in a state of grief as much through its form as its content. Many who have read it in the middle of grief (including me) have found it profoundly cathartic. It’s representative of a writer who has turned her famously perceptive gaze upon herself, something she continued in “Blue Nights” (2011), which reflects on her daughter’s life.

It’s often overlooked, but as a supplement to reading these late Didion books, don’t miss her essay “ The Case of Theresa Schiavo ,” published several months before Quintana died. In it she wrestles fervently with the fate of Schiavo, a woman on life support who had become a source of national political debate. Once you know from her books what she went through while Quintana was on life support, the essay takes on a whole new meaning. Didion made the personal both cultural and political — a practice she’d honed over a storied career.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the woman known as the Central Park jogger. She survived the attack; she was not murdered.

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of a screenplay Joan Didion wrote with her husband. It was “The Panic in Needle Park,” not “The Panic at Needle Park.”

How we handle corrections

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

Get to Know the Literary Greats

Expand your literary knowledge of some of the world’s most accomplished authors with our essential guides to their work..

James Baldwin: He   wrote with the kind of clarity that was as comforting as it was chastising. His writing — pointed, critical, angry — is imbued with love. Here’s where to start  with his works.

Henry James: A patron saint of exquisite verbosity, James made a career examining the clash of American innocence with European cunning. Here are his best works .

Larry McMurtry: A wildly prolific son of Texas, the novelist was a tangle of contradictions. This guide can help you navigate his bulging bibliography .

Vladimir Nabokov: Clever and dexterous, the author’s writing delights in puzzles, puns and lepidoptera. Here’s where to start .

J.M. Coetzee: His spare, icily precise books explore humanity’s most serious themes, including South Africa’s legacy of apartheid. And not all of them are downers .

Ursula K. Le Guin: Her powerful imagination turned hypothetical elsewheres into vivid worlds governed by forces of nature, technology, gender, race and class a far cry from our own. Here’s where to dive in .

Advertisement

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

4 Tips for Writing the Georgetown Supplemental Essays

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Alexander Oddo in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

• Use Your Space Wisely

Focus on You

• Balance Creativity and Content

Georgetown University requires all applicants to respond to two supplemental essay prompts. This article will review tips on how to craft stellar essays and how to apply this advice to your writing. 

1. Be Concise

One of Georgetown’s supplemental prompts has a half-page word limit, which translates to about 200 words, while the other prompt has a one-page, or 350 word, limit. Since these essays are short, you will want to be concise with your language without sacrificing writing quality. 

An effective way to convey personality and reflection with your essays is to write a draft, set it aside for a day or two, and then reduce the word count with a fresh pair of eyes. Once you revisit your writing after a break, you will catch more areas that are longer than necessary or could be said in fewer words. 

2. Use Your Space Wisely

Another tip to keep in mind when writing shorter essays is that your introduction does not have to be as attention grabbing as it does when you’re writing a 650 word essay. In those essays, you can take a bit of time to build up to your first paragraph, while you ideally want to get right to the point in shorter essays. Aim to grab your reader’s attention immediately in your two Georgetown supplemental essays with just a few sentences of narrative. 

Furthermore, using long paragraphs is an effective way to give yourself more words to work with. Since these essays have a page limit rather than an exact word limit, writing with longer paragraphs than you usually would will allow you to fill your document with words rather than blank spaces. However, make sure that you do not make your paragraphs too long. You don’t want to fit your entire 350 word essay into one single paragraph. Your main goal should be to avoid very short paragraphs — especially those that are only a sentence or two.

3. Focus on You

Think of your Georgetown essays as a portfolio. The essays need to explore different aspects of who you are and why you are applying to Georgetown. These can include your academic interests, personal interests, specific resources that draw you to Georgetown, and your values.  

Essentially, you want to talk about what makes you tick inside the classroom and what you are passionate about outside of the classroom. The goal of your essays is to creatively and captivatingly explain to the admissions committee who you are as a person and student. 

4. Balance Creativity and Content

One thing to note is that Georgetown’s essay prompts are about relatively serious topics. In order to avoid making your essay too plain, you should inject some personality, levity, and humanity into your essays to balance out the serious parts. An effective way to do this is to take a few creative risks, such as crafting a snazzy introduction or even writing your essay as a poem if you feel inspired. So long as your creativity is authentic rather than forced, it will make your essays stand out without adding too many words. 

If you found this article helpful and are looking for more information on Georgetown’s supplements, check out this in-depth article on all of Georgetown University’s essay prompts and how to approach them.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts