Wake Forest University, founded in 1834, fosters leadership, altruism, and international exchange in their student body. With campus buildings all around the world and an NCAA Division I football team, Wake Forest provides many unique opportunities for their students. If you’re hoping to cheer on the Demon Deacon, you’ll need to nail your Wake Forest supplemental essays. Let’s dive in.
Wake Forest’s 2024-2025 Prompts
The four Wake Forest supplemental essays may look intimidating, but two of them are only lists. Moreover, all of the Wake Forest supplemental essays are optional. In other words, with some forethought and intention, these essays don’t have to monopolize your time during a busy college application season. That said, you’ll have the best shot at writing a strong essay if you fully understand what each prompt is asking before beginning your drafts. So let’s break those prompts down.
- List five books you’ve read that intrigued you.
- Tell us what piques your intellectual curiosity or has helped you understand the world’s complexity. This can include a work you’ve read, a project you’ve completed for a class, and even co-curricular activities in which you have been involved. (150 words or fewer)
- Dr. Maya Angelou, renowned author, poet, civil-rights activist, and former Wake Forest University Reynolds Professor of American Studies, inspired others to celebrate their identities and to honor each person’s dignity. Choose one of Dr. Angelou’s powerful quotes. How does this quote relate to your lived experience or reflect how you plan to contribute to the Wake Forest community? (300 words or fewer)
- Give us your Top Ten List. (The choice of theme is yours.) (100 characters or fewer per line)
General Tips
All four of these prompts seek to understand who you are as a person. Moreover, your Wake Forest supplemental essays most likely can’t be reused easily for another school’s application. For this reason, you’ll need to set aside some extra time to answer these prompts and revise your drafts. This being said, here are some tips to make that revision process go just a bit faster.
- Free-write before you start drafting. This might sound like it’ll just make the process go slower, but many students’ writing processes are stalled by using the drafting process as a brainstorming exercise. Instead of taking the time to explore different essay ideas, they jump directly into writing. As a result, that writing turns out directionless and takes longer to edit. By giving yourself a 10-minute free-writing session before you begin drafting, you can get all those messy ideas out on the page. Although a 10-minute session doesn’t sound like much, it will feel pretty long if you make yourself write the whole time. Afterward, you should have a much better sense of what you’d like to focus on in in your writing.
- Start with intention. Following on that last point, you’ll want to start your essays with intention. For prompts 2 and 3, this might look like composing an outline. Alternatively, you can come up with a thesis statement or guiding idea to reference as you write. Regardless of your methodology, starting with intention will help you accelerate your revision process by producing a stronger draft the first time around.
- Be specific. Perhaps the number one issue students face in college essays is a lack of specificity. Essays that use generalizations or rely on abstract language instead of concrete details tend to be less vivid and personal. Remember, these are personal essays. That means that any essay you write should sound like you. With each sentence, think to yourself, could someone else have written this? If so, perhaps a different, more specific sentence would be better. Ultimately, specificity will help your essays stand out from the crowd.
Wake Forest Short Essay Questions
List five books you’ve read that intrigued you.
This is a very open-ended short essay question, but you’re not expected to write anything about the books you choose to list. Nor are you expected to explain why they intrigued you. There is no official maximum word count, but don’t take that as license to write whatever you please. For this prompt at least, the assignment is as simple as it seems. A list of any five books that have intrigued, for whatever reason, will suffice.
Can it really be that easy? Many students worry that their list has to be especially intellectual or diverse. If the books that have intrigued you happen to be especially intellectual or diverse, then that’s great. But if not, it’s best to be authentic. All the admissions team is looking for in this response is to learn more about you. There’s no secret trick or unspoken expectation.
Again, authenticity is key here. Having combed through the rest of your application materials, possibly conducted a virtual interview with you, and read your teacher recommendations, the admissions team will have a pretty good sense of who you are. If your list of books doesn’t sound quite right given everything else they know about you, it’s not a good look. In other words, it’s in your best interest to list five books that you have actually read and found intriguing. Don’t stress about it! This should be one of the easiest college essays you have to write.
Tell us what piques your intellectual curiosity or has helped you understand the world’s complexity. This can include a work you’ve read, a project you’ve completed for a class, and even co-curricular activities in which you have been involved. (150 words or fewer)
This essay question follows the prior question by digging deeper into your interests and pursuits. More than the prior question, your response to this question should have an intellectual element. You can write about a book you’ve found engaging (including one from the list above), and explain how you learned about the world in the process of reading it. Alternatively, you can discuss something you’ve accomplished or pursued, whether as a personal project or an assignment for a class.
The prompt also provides room for “co-curricular activities” as a topic for your essay. Unlike extracurricular activities, co-curricular activities are complementary to your school’s curriculum. That said, extracurricular activities that are important to you might still fit in this prompt’s purview. The prompt uses the word “includes,” so it clarifies that a flexible interpretation is encouraged.
The important part is in the first sentence of the prompt: “what piques your intellectual curiosity or has helped you understand the world’s complexity.” Therefore, whatever you choose to discuss must fit this description. Whether the topic of your essay is extracurricular or co-curricular, pursued individually or with in a group, read or seen or heard, is less important. Most important is that you name something that has intellectually engaged you and briefly explain that engagement to the reader.
Dr. Maya Angelou, renowned author, poet, civil-rights activist, and former Wake Forest University Reynolds Professor of American Studies, inspired others to celebrate their identities and to honor each person’s dignity. Choose one of Dr. Angelou’s powerful quotes. How does this quote relate to your lived experience or reflect how you plan to contribute to the Wake Forest community? (300 words or fewer)
This prompt has the highest word limit of the four Wake Forest supplemental essays. Therefore, it will likely take the longest time to compose and polish. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to work on your response, and consider writing this essay response first to get it out of the way. Note also that there is a bit of research required. You will need to identify a quote by Maya Angelou that speaks to you.
While researching your quote of choice, be sure to only use reputable sources. The internet often lists false quote attributions, and if you’re not paying attention, it can be easy to fall for them. Consider taking a Maya Angelou book out from the library (or e-library) to read. You may not have time to read the book thoroughly, but you can focus on a particular passage or section and choose a sentence or two that speaks to you.
Make sure that whatever quote you choose, you understand the context behind it. Again, it can be helpful to read some of Dr. Angelou’s work in conjunction with your quote, even if the quote itself is brief. Doing so will allow you to better understand what Dr. Angelou meant when she wrote the quote.
Ultimately, though, this essay is about sharing your life experience with the reader. This experience could be past, present, or future. For instance, you could explain that you resonate with your chosen quote because of a specific past experience. Alternatively, you could describe how the philosophy behind the quote reflects your choices and behavior today. Or, if you prefer, you could focus on how you hope to take in this quote’s message to guide who you hope to become at Wake Forest.
However you choose to approach the second part of the prompt, be sure to devote at least half of these essay to discuss your relationship with the quote. Although this essay is ostensibly about Dr. Angelou’s words, ultimately, her quote is just another avenue through which the Wake Forest admissions team hopes to get to know you.
Give us your Top Ten List. (The choice of theme is yours.) (100 characters or fewer per line)
This prompt is perhaps the most open-ended of all the Wake Forest supplemental essays. You’ll need to compose ten lines of writing, each line limited to 100 characters or fewer. This means you have 1,000 characters to work with total, or approximately 140-250 words. That looks like a half to a full page of writing double-spaced. However, you might not need (or want) to fill out all of those lines completely.
This prompt seeks to understand your interests, preferences, what you find fun, and/or what intellectually engages you. Like the first prompt, there is no hidden agenda here. You can go in a variety of directions with this prompt. List your top ten movies, your top ten quotes, your top ten national parks, or anything else that comes to mind.
Consider the parts of your personality that aren’t otherwise coming through in your application. What passions, interests, or hobbies are important to you? If they’re a part of who you are, then they may be worth delving into here. If you’re having trouble coming up with topics, try researching top ten lists online to get some inspiration. Good luck!
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