 Columbia University is a top tier Ivy League school in amazing New York City. I get this question a lot about how to answer their subs so stick around to find out how to answer each one effectively and thoughtfully. Thank you so much for joining me on my channel. This is Write Your Acceptance. Please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a video. So for Columbia we will go through all the short essay prompts and then the kind of longer full flash essays. So stick around. I am Dr. Josie. This is kind of Write Your Acceptance. It's all things personal statements and college application essays. So if you want any intel on that definitely check out all the videos I have available to you. I teach writing. I've been doing this work for many many years working with a ton of students and now it's your turn so let's get to it. So we start with all the kind of short prompts which are about 150 words max. So the first one is list the titles of the required readings from academic courses that you enjoyed most during your secondary or high school experience. This is definitely kind of one of the most straightforward prompts. They don't really want to kind of get you at all. So like ha you didn't read enough Shakespeare or ha you didn't read this or that. So it's not like that at all. What I tell students is kind of open up the parameters in which you consider what required reading was. It's not only your English or language arts courses right. So if you thought that a textbook for physics or a textbook for something else was really interesting or a collection of essays in kind of you know a rhetoric class. So really think about textbooks. Really think about not only novels but collection of short stories or articles a series kind of a sequence of texts that you read in courses that aren't just English and language arts. Number two is list the titles of the books essays poetry short stories or plays you read outside of academic courses that you enjoyed most during secondary or high school. Okay. So here I would think about this in two ways. First I would really kind of brain dumb and just really be honest with yourself and write a list of what you have read that has been memorable enough that'll kind of come up to mind right. So what comes to mind think about each category. So books short stories poetry right. So all of the categories that they kind of list off as options for you. And then what I would do is once you have kind of like a running or a rough draft of that list start thinking about texts strategically. So you want this list and kind of the previous one about required reading to kind of tell a story about yourself. And the idea is that each text that you put each book should be interesting in and of itself. It should say kind of reveal something about you that is pretty cool that is interesting that you have kind of an authentic curiosity about dystopian fiction. And then I can kind of see a couple of the texts. So that you are saying can you're kind of constructing a message with bringing all of these books together. But then each one kind of tells its own vibe right has kind of like a very interesting information to reveal about you. Also don't shy away from kind of popular culture and like references that would be from you know an everyday experience like Harry Potter is still very popular hunger games the Divergent series right. So like if they are honest to you and you can kind of speak about them in an excited and thoughtful way then absolutely. So don't think that this has to be super esoteric and intellectual and like look how amazing and obscure this text is that no one's really going to figure it out unless they look it up. So make sure that you are telling a story about who you are in your interests and that each one individually says something interesting about you and that collectively that the list is something interesting to you too. So the next list that you are doing and by the way these three are actual lists like you don't have to write an essay for these like a paragraph form. So these are actually your listing them. So this one is list the titles of the print or digital publications websites journals podcasts or other content with which you regularly engage. So here the most most most important thing that I tell students is really kind of take stock take a second and really take stock of the content that you are consuming right take a step back because too many times students will say oh but I don't read the newspaper but then they read you know a website that has news on it slate.com they read the Washington the journals magazine so they're engaging with news and newsworthy content they just kind of don't see it as like you know on Sunday morning they open up the newspaper. So really think about like what kinds of content you are engaging with I don't hear a lot of high school students listening to podcasts. I feel like that's more kind of a trend that picks up and undergrad for some reason or post undergrad like early 20s but if you are and it's interesting I have some high school students that love like the Joe Rogan show. So think about kind of how you position yourself what these publications and this content kind of would say about you because what their elevator pitch says about them is kind of what you were aligning with right and I would also say a lot of students that I will put very specific sections right so like the book section of the New York Times so don't just put New York Times put like an actual section that you are interested in that you kind of engage with. All right so the next list actually the last list list the movies albums shows museums lectures events at your school or other entertainment venues that you enjoyed most during secondary high school in person or online. I love that in person or online right especially this year. So here you want to show some smarts and some fun don't shy away from the actual kind of concerts that you frequent you know any kind of online presentation or discussion or panel that you sat in on that's always very interesting and it can show kind of your intellectual pursuits and academic interests beyond the classroom. So think about kind of really any you know talks or discussions or online museums or anything that has been kind of that you've consumed in high school right. So I've seen students talk about a photo exhibit a photography exhibit online I've seen students kind of take a one day seminar on coding online so really think about kind of what you're interested in what you're into but then also kind of like you know what typical shows or concerts that you've participated in. Step two the longer prompts are in essay format and these are about 200 words each so prompt one. Columbia students take an active role in improving their community whether in their residence hall classes or throughout New York City their actions smaller large work to positively impact the lives of others share one contribution that you made to your family school friend group or another community that surrounds you. So this essay gives you the opportunity to show leadership and it doesn't have to be kind of a really big gesture so it gives you kind of you know with your friend group with your community with your school with your family so really think about kind of any initiative that you've taken any kind of issue that you've seen you've taken the leadership kind of role to remedy that situation so you really want to think about no matter how big or small they I believe that they truly mean that very honestly so you really want to kind of think about an issue where you kind of really took charge examples from students I had a student who was hospitalized a few years ago now for like three weeks for appendicitis it was pretty bad I think and they realized that the kind of like children's wing although they were a teenager but the children's wing didn't have kind of a lot of games and they had in the corner like a broken pacman machine like those old school kind of like you know kiosks and then you can kind of like play yeah okay and so once they went back home they were healthy they were great they started a fundraising effort to raise money to donate one of those kind of new machines to the hospital and they did great like they took it to social media they pitched it at school and they ended up purchasing I believe two machines for that hospital so so that was an excellent essay I loved that essay another student I believe wanted to fundraise for a cause for local cause but the school for whatever reason didn't allow them to do it on property so they ended up fundraising like would set up a table next to basically a farmers market that would happen almost every Saturday or Sunday in their city and they would fundraise there and they would chat with people and kind of raise money there and so they talked about the the cause they talked about how they fundraised how they found a solution to their initial obstacle when they couldn't fundraise in the school and how they went from there prompt two for this section is why are you interested in attending Columbia University so here you go the typical why us essay right I will link above my video on how to kind of attack these why us essays it'll give you a format depending on length of essay you want to kind of foreground kind of more academic stuff beyond the classroom always interesting but of course your major and then also kind of like you know the longer it gets like the Cornell why us essay is like 650 right um so that's much longer than this one which is 200 but just kind of side note but the longer it is then the more kind of extracurricular and cultural social activities you can share right living and learning on campus so so this is your typical why us like I said I will link it above for more more information and if you really want much more guidance and kind of like a roadmap on how to write this I will link below my why us template which you have on my website so you want to think about kind of you know this is a very brand heavy school so you really want to do your research figure out a course that's within your major that you kind of you know put that as intended a professor you'd like to work with a research opportunity is there a colloquium or discussion panel or something that was really cool in the last couple years that you are interested in let's say you did you know I've had students who have participated in a science competition Eurovision I think it's called and then they kind of link that to like a climate change discussion panel that Columbia would have had a couple years ago and how they kind of want to continue this conversation and intellectual interest in climate change even though they're studying biology or English right so really kind of think about how you would very specifically with research driven evidence position yourself living and learning on campus so the next prompt is please tell us what from your current and past experiences either academic or personal attracts you specifically to the areas of study that you noted in the application okay so here think about this as like your why major and why discipline if anything you could consider the first why Columbia and then this one so 400 words basically the why essay but here you really want to focus on your academics so you really want to focus on kind of how you see yourself as a biology student as a math student as an economics major what course name the course or two name a professor and so be flexible with the content if you kind of put a lot of academics because you know I said the shorter you want to kind of put in the shorter why us essays you what kind of want to put more academics in but you want to do beyond the classroom academics in the first one right research projects kind of discussion panels and even a student organization a professional student or even a cultural one right and then here focus all on the major so yeah so I don't want to confuse that and I'm sorry if I kind of got a little crazy there so let's see the first why are you interested in attending Columbia University because you have the next one please tell us about current and past experiences that attract you to your area of study the why Columbia you can mention the major of interest so you can mention the major you can mention a course you can mention a research opportunity let's say you do those three right and please tell us what your current or past experiences and why they attract you to the area of study you want to think about it in two parts you want to think about maybe a story in story form a descriptive narrative about you know if you're going to study engineering about how you love to build popsicle stick bridges and you test the weight on them right and so you can tell the story about how you're building one how you need to get the angles precise this is from our student so this is why it's fresh and then you kind of put one way and you put another way and see until it collapses and there's this like eerie satisfaction of like when the bridge collapses and then you start talking about engineering right so the first one the why Columbia you can talk about a course and a professor and a research opportunity but here you would talk about why the major specifically so that's very interesting right so like you would have a personal experience with engaging with that academic subjects and then I would add in why that major at Columbia specifically and you can do a student or like one piece of new information that is not captured in the white Columbia if you have any questions on these two or any of the Columbia supplements definitely comment below I'd love to help you out and give you some feedback thank you so much for watching if you found this video helpful give us a like subscribe check out the ys template if you want more information on the why us essays and yeah good luck I'll see you soon bye