Adrianne is a Senior Admissions Counselor and TV/film director, producer, writer, and actress currently based in LA. She uses her experience in multiple disciplines to help students achieve their personal and academic goals.
Working on your Cornell application? Here’s how to write the Cornell supplemental essays you need to complete in addition to your Common Application.
Welcome to the Cornell supplement for the 2025-2026 application cycle! For Cornell, you only need to write two supplemental essays, but the “Why School” essay is a rather long one. The other one tackles community.
Table of Contents
Cornell University Essay Question
We all contribute to, and are influenced by, the communities that are meaningful to us. Share how you’ve been shaped by one of the communities you belong to.
Define community in the way that is most meaningful to you. This community example can be drawn from your family, school, workplace, activities or interests, or any other group you belong to. (350 word limit)
If you’re applying to many schools this year, this question (or similar iterations) is not unfamiliar to you. It’s no secret that schools are interested in community and what you’ll contribute to theirs, and asking you to define what “community” is to you allows them to understand how you’ll approach your time at Cornell. So, choose a community that has been formative in your development, whether it’s your family, your sports team, your friend group, your culture, your summer camp, or more.
What will set your essay apart is not so much the type of community you choose but how you speak about it. Choose a story or anecdote that clearly encapsulates how the community has influenced you. You want to use vivid imagery to describe your experience so you can catch your reader’s attention. And remember: you want your story to have a clear beginning, middle, and end — the beginning is how you were before you entered the community, the middle is your experiences in the community, and the end is how it impacted you (and, hint, how it would help you contribute to future communities!).
College- and School-Specific Essay Questions
Depending on what school or program you’re applying to (the College of Arts and Sciences, Dyson, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, etc.), the question is phrased differently. You can find a complete list of Cornell’s “College Interest Essays” here.
All of these prompts are essentially asking the same thing, however. Cornell wants to know why you are interested in X, and why you want to pursue it at Cornell and beyond. For you, X may be Heraclitus, or it may be hotel administration. We’re only going to tackle the prompt for the College of Arts and Sciences here, but our advice is fundamentally the same for all these prompts.
At the College of Arts and Sciences, curiosity will be your guide. Discuss how your passion for learning is shaping your academic journey, and what areas of study or majors excite you and why. Your response should convey how your interests align with the College, and how you would take advantage of the opportunities and curriculum in Arts and Sciences. (650 words max)
First, a word about word count. This piece of writing is just as long as your Common App personal statement. If you’re dreading writing such a long response, keep in mind that the admissions officers at Cornell are dreading reading a great number of long, unremarkable essays.
Your job is to stand out from the pack and hold your reader’s attention. To do this, tell a personal story. Narratives are compelling and hold our attention. It’s why more people enjoy Gone With The Wind than Un Chien Andalou. The first film tells a story. The second is a creepy, disjointed string of plotlessness. Even though Gone With The Wind is almost four hours long, we remain engaged. For most people, Un Chien Andalou, which lasts for only twenty minutes, seems interminable.
Crafting a narrative here means connecting your academic and extracurricular interests to a personal experience or anecdote. Begin your essay by telling us your intellectual/leadership origin story. Describe a formative experience that has informed your achievements. We had a student who wrote about humiliating himself in a political argument with an older student when he was in 9th grade. The experience led him to read the Federalist Papers in his free time and ultimately sparked his interest in politics. This anecdote conveniently relates to his most impressive academic and extracurricular achievements, but gives us a new perspective that’s not available on the activities list. The origin story serves as a guiding thread for the entire essay, and everything that you discuss (your prospective major, the organizations you want to join on campus, etc.) should relate to this story.
As with any “Why This College?” question, you need to do your research. You can’t recycle the essays you wrote for Brown or Penn. If your reasons for applying to Cornell are the same as your reasons for applying to Brown and Penn (i.e., it’s an Ivy League university), you need to dig deeper. Make sure you’re being specific: you’re declaring a major (even if you’re undecided), you’re listing some upper-level classes you’d like to take, some professors you’d like to work with, and some clubs you’d like to join. I can’t tell you what major, classes, professors, and clubs you should mention. You have to go see what opportunities are available and see what fits best with your profile.
When the prompt asks, “What areas of study or majors excite you and why?” Cornell is actually begging you to tell them what you’re going to major in. Highly selective schools like Cornell are not looking for students who are exploring their options, or even well-rounded students, for that matter. They want well-rounded classes made up of “pointy” students — students with one or two specific passions, and a clear direction. So you don’t want to say: “I really like biology, but I also really like Latin.” Choose a major (just for the sake of this essay — you can change your mind once you’re at Cornell) that aligns best with your past accomplishments.
Everything you write about here should be based on your past accomplishments. For college admissions officers, the best indicators of future success are past achievements. So whether you’re discussing your major, the classes you want to take, the professors you want to work with, or the student organizations you want to be a part of, make sure you’re discussing the experiences that inform these choices and aspirations.
Make sure everything relates to the origin story, and that you return to the origin story at the end of the essay in a creative way. Avoid: “In conclusion, my passions relate to my origin story.” Find an original way to recall your opening anecdote to remind your readers where we started.
As always, our Ivy League college consultants are here to help. Don’t hesitate to reach out.
