 Hi guys! Today we are going to talk about the University of Michigan Supplemental Essays. I am going to offer an updated review on how to write these, on how to kind of consider what you should be thinking about and writing about thematically and content-wise. So we're going to break that down today. Hi, my name is Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. Thank you for stopping by. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of students by this point on their college essays, medical school personal statements. My thing is the writing and how to help you stand out in your application cycle. So let's get started. Michigan has two main essays, and the first essay is Everyone Belongs to Many Different Communities and or Groups Defined by, among other things, Share Geography, Religion, Ethnicity, Income, Quizzing, Interest, Race, Ideology, or Intellectual Heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong and describe that community and your place within it. This is 300 words. So when you are pre-writing, you want to consider for this first essay kind of to make a list of the quote-unquote easy communities and more challenging communities. Easy and hard in the sense of like, what are the communities that you kind of easily find the low-hanging fruit for you, right? Whether you are part of a team, a chess club, a cross-country team, whether you are an ethnic group, an immigrant group, a Cuban American, Spanish. So what are these kind of easily identifiable groups? And those are quote-unquote the easy communities, right? The ones that you can kind of easily find yourself in. And then the more challenging ones are the ones that you would have to kind of create the case as to one, how it's a community and two, how you belong in there. And so these kind of more creative ones are sometimes the more interesting ones, especially when thinking about your essays holistically. So let's take a step back and think about your supplements kind of in relation to all other aspects of your application. You're not writing these supplements in a vacuum, right? So you want to think about what you wrote in your common essay, and you want to think about are you hitting what I call all the pillars in one aspect of your application. So when you're thinking about all of your essays, right, what you wrote about in your main essay, and then kind of what you should be considering in these supplements, you want to think about have I in some aspect of my application, addressed intellectual curiosity, have I discussed identity in my identity in my place and how I define that identity, community engagement, my relationship to my community and social awareness that my actions impact others and that I know I affect others in positive ways. So those are the four pillars you don't have to hit all four in all of your essays. But if your let's say main essay is about your cross country theme or how you tried out for cross country four times until you made it, maybe you're not writing about you're definitely not writing about cross country in your supplements for community, right? Because you've already hit community engagement in a way in the main essay. So maybe for the community, you do an intellectual community or you do kind of something a little bit more creative, something that you've created yourself. So you want to kind of think about am I hitting the four pillars in some aspect in your application. So if your main essay is about your Indian American community and you start with a traditional holiday or how you tripped on the last leg of a cross country meet and that kind of brought upon or sparked some lessons and growth in your sense of character and self and self worth, then those are already easily identifiable communities, right? So then when you're thinking about the supplement from Michigan, you don't want to do another or I would say consider doing a more creative aspect of community. Maybe it's a VR club that you're a part of, or maybe you talk about kind of a grocery system service that you set up for the Elder League in your community during COVID. And that essay starts with I have 75 grandparents, and then you can kind of go into how you set up this kind of grocery chain with you and your buddies. And you would help Elder League that couldn't get out that shouldn't have gotten out of the house to be safe. And so then you built this community, you created this community that wasn't like easily identifiable beforehand. So think about these kinds of easy communities that are easily identifiable. And then the ones that you've helped build or you've kind of constructed or are creative in nature that you can kind of find your place in. This is just 300 words. So you want to take just a few lines about what the community is. Maybe you start with image driven so sensory and I have quite a few videos I'm going to put I'm a link videos above on how to tell a story how to drop in an anecdote, right? So kind of you want to have as if you had a camera over your shoulder you want to see here taste touch whatever appropriate. So image driven, drop me into kind of what is going on. And then maybe just a couple lines of how you identify this community or how you define this community and your role in it, right? So remember chances are that in one of your 10 common app activities, this activity or this community is reflected in some way in that list. So you don't need a ton of information because they're going to get information from that aspect of your application or resume, they're seeing your resume. What you really want to focus on is your role in that community that is super important, what you do and how you make a difference. Those are the three things that you want to focus on at least the second half of so like 150 words of that community essay. Are you struggling with your Michigan supplements or another supplement? If you are and want some feedback from me, drop a comment below and I'd love to help you out. I am also still working with students and accepting a couple of last minute students for those deadlines coming up. Definitely send me a note or comment below and I'll give you my email. All right, so let's dive into the second essay. The second essay is the why us basically. It is a hardy 500 to 550 words and the prompt exactly as it states is. Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate college or school, including preferred admission and dual degree programs to which you are applying to at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests? So honestly, I love the University of Michigan supplements because it has a little bit of everything. The community you can definitely recycle for other schools. And then this why us, once you have this kind of longer, more robust why us essay that is research intensive, but is kind of giving a little bit of you and a little bit of them, once you have this template, you can kind of recycle this template for other schools. If you have a number of why us essays, or you're really, really kind of in the muck and stuck with this essay, I do have a template that you can grab. I will link it in the description below and you can check that out. And I give you more content. I give you an actual template. I give you a word bank and kind of a phrase bank to kind of, you know, dress up the language and what you should be researching so that you can really kind of deepen your case and make your case as strong, most compelling as possible. So like I said, this essay is more research intensive. You are, you should be kind of really diving deep into their academic program, their courses, professors, research opportunities. And so what you want to think about is don't go for the kind of level one, very easy introduction classes, like so introduction to biology or introduction to philosophy. Don't go for the Europe, the undergraduate research opportunities, because while it may seem unique to them, those are for the most part opportunities and resources that are available in a lot of universities. So you really want to do kind of some diving deep into research for more higher level courses for specific professors, then kind of dip into their CVs, see what they're researching on, see a book that they published recently, look at the syllabus, what are the learning outcomes, maybe you can kind of talk about how you've been interested in learning or deepening your knowledge in XYZ and get very specific, look at very specific research kind of projects and student organizations, so intellectual pursuits beyond the classroom and name a couple of them, very specific ones to Michigan students. So make your case as detail oriented as possible. So because this why us in many ways is academic in nature, they want to know how you're going to guess, live, but most importantly, learn at the University of Michigan, you want to make sure that you are being very intentional with what information you share about yourself and when information you share about Michigan, so that you make a case that as soon as you step onto Ann Arbor and onto the campus, that you are going to take full advantage of all of the academic and social and community resources, right? You want to make sure that you're finding like I said, those upper level courses and maybe there's a way instead of just saying pursuing courses like and that you mentioned a course would be of interest because I would get to learn that you can mention that, but then you can say while studying or while creating a three armed robot in my engineering course in high school, I determines that and then talk about something that you learned in relation to the class that you're going to kind of learn more about and deepen your knowledge there. So take moments that are key kind of Michigan specific moments in your why us to kind of share a little bit about yourself, maybe the introduction. So think about those pillars again. Remember, you always want to be zooming into these essays and really giving them depth and detail, but you always want to be zooming out and look at your application as holistically as possible. What are you sharing about yourself? You want to share intellectual curiosity, you want to share social awareness, community engagement identity. So if you haven't really done community engagement or social awareness, maybe you start with something, maybe you start with an engineering competition, or you start with a philosophy debate or a model United Nations experience like competition that you did, right? And it's very kind of image driven and anecdote and story. And then you go into the second half of that intro would say something like pursuing a degree in public policy at the University of Michigan would be of interest because I would get to and then connect that to the story that you just shared. So you gave a little bit of you and then you start with key kind of content about Michigan. So I've seen fun kind of intros where students will have kind of like in code language hope to be a Wolverine or I love Michigan. I've seen fun intros about kind of cultural holidays or tradition that is kind of relevant to Michigan students and then how they kind of connected that to something that they've a tradition they started in their high school. So you don't always or I would say shy away from starting with pursuing a degree at the University of Michigan would mean that you could put that in somewhere in the intro maybe towards the second half of the introduction or the beginning of the paragraph too. But I would start with something that is unique to you or unique to how you would access resources at Michigan so that it is a little bit about you and a little bit about them. So like I mentioned, I have a YS template if you want more kind of guidance from me, you can grab that in the description below. If you have general comments or questions that you want to ask me, drop a comment. I'm happy to kind of guide you as best as I can. And thank you for watching. If you are applying to Ross, I want some guidance on that student artifact and the Ross essay comment below and I'm happy to kind of go back and forth and share some tidbits on that one. Thanks for watching. Take care. Bye.