The University of Chicago supplemental essays are designed to test your creativity, reveal your curiosities, and highlight your unique spark. Known as the quirkiest prompts on the college essay circuit, the UChicago essays strike fear into the hearts of many aspiring Chicagoans. But in reality, the UChicago supplemental essays are one of the few places in a college essay where your personality can truly shine.
There are two UChicago supplemental essays. For the first essay, you’ll select from a series of prompts created by current students or create your own. For the second essay, you’ll explain why you want to attend UChicago and feel that it’s the right school for you. This blog post will guide you through answering each prompt so that you can approach your UChicago essays with confidence.
UChicago’s 2025-2026 Prompts
Essay Questions (1-2 pages)
- In an ideal world where inter-species telepathic communication exists, which species would you choose to have a conversation with, and what would you want to learn from them? Would you ask beavers for architectural advice? Octopuses about cognition? Pigeons about navigation? Ants about governance? Make your case—both for the species and the question. – Inspired by Yvan Sugira, Class of 2029
- If you could uninvent one thing, what would it be — and what would unravel as a result? – Inspired by Eitan Fischer, Class of 2027
- “Left” can mean remaining or departed. “Dust” can mean to add fine particles or to remove them. “Fast” can mean moving quickly or fixed firmly in place. These contronyms—words that are their own antonyms—somehow hold opposing meanings in perfect tension. Explore a contronym: a role, identity, or experience in your life that has contained its own opposite. – Inspired by Kristin Yi, Class of 2029
- The penny is on its way out—too small to matter, too costly to keep. But not everything small should disappear. What’s one object the world is phasing out that you think we can’t afford to lose, and why? – Ella Somaiya, Class of 2028
- From Michelin Tires creating the Michelin Guide, to the audio equipment company Audio-Technica becoming one of the world’s largest manufacturers of sushi robots, brand identity can turn out to be a lot more flexible than we think. Choose an existing brand, company, or institution and propose an unexpected but strangely logical new product or service for them to launch. Why is this unlikely extension exactly what the world (or the brand) needs right now? – Inspired by Julia Nieberg, Class of 2029
- Statistically speaking, ice cream doesn’t cause shark attacks, pet spending doesn’t drive the number of lawyers in California, and margarine consumption isn’t responsible for Maine’s divorce rate—at least, not according to conventional wisdom. But what if the statisticians got it wrong? Choose your favorite spurious correlation and make the case for why it might actually reveal a deeper, causative truth. – Inspired by Adam DiMascio, Class of 2025
- And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!
“Why UChicago?” Essay (1-2 pages)
- How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.
General Tips
We need to address the elephant in the room. The UChicago supplemental essays do not have a word limit. Instead, you need to upload a document for each question with a 1-2 page answer. This raises a lot of questions for students. Is the page double- or single-spaced? Or 1.5-spaced? Times New Roman font or Comic Sans? How big should the margins be?
Relax. Unless formatting is essential to your essay in some way, just keep your margins, spacing, and font standard. Double-spaced is generally advised. Again, unless your formatting is part of the essay itself, you’ll want to make it so ordinary that it isn’t noticed.
Essay Questions
In an ideal world where inter-species telepathic communication exists, which species would you choose to have a conversation with, and what would you want to learn from them? Would you ask beavers for architectural advice? Octopuses about cognition? Pigeons about navigation? Ants about governance? Make your case—both for the species and the question. – Inspired by Yvan Sugira, Class of 2029
This prompt invites you to showcase your intellectual curiosity while revealing your values and interests. The key is to move beyond surface-level fascination and demonstrate genuine thoughtfulness about what wisdom different species might offer. When selecting your species, choose one that genuinely intrigues you and connects to your broader interests or experiences, then research the animal’s actual behaviors, abilities, or social structures to ground your essay in reality. Frame your “conversation” around a meaningful question that reveals something about your worldview, and consider what the animal’s perspective might teach humans about problems we face.
The strongest approaches will connect the animal’s abilities to a field you’re passionate about, such as asking crows about problem-solving if you love puzzles, or dolphins about echolocation if you’re interested in physics. You might explore philosophical questions by asking elephants about grief and memory, or octopuses about distributed intelligence. Alternatively, you could address contemporary challenges by asking bees about collaboration in the face of environmental threats. Avoid choosing an animal just because it’s unique, or asking obvious questions that don’t reveal depth of thought.
If you could uninvent one thing, what would it be — and what would unravel as a result? – Inspired by Eitan Fischer, Class of 2027
This prompt tests your ability to think systemically and understand interconnectedness. The most compelling essays will choose something thoughtful rather than obviously harmful inventions, and trace unexpected consequences. Consider inventions that have both positive and negative impacts, think about second and third-order effects of what would change as a result of your uninvention, and use this as an opportunity to critique modern society or highlight values you care about.
Strong approaches will choose something that reveals your perspective on technology, society, or human nature, while tracing both positive and negative consequences of your uninvention. Connect your choice to personal experiences or observations, and consider inventions in any field including social, technological, or cultural innovations. Examples to consider might include social media algorithms, standardized testing, the 40-hour work week, fast fashion, or even more abstract concepts like the idea of “productivity.”
“Left” can mean remaining or departed. “Dust” can mean to add fine particles or to remove them. “Fast” can mean moving quickly or fixed firmly in place. These contronyms—words that are their own antonyms—somehow hold opposing meanings in perfect tension. Explore a contronym: a role, identity, or experience in your life that has contained its own opposite. – Inspired by Kristin Yi, Class of 2029
This is essentially a personal narrative prompt disguised as a linguistic exercise. You’re looking for experiences in your life that embody contradictions or opposing forces. Focus on a role, identity, or experience that genuinely contains contradictory elements, using the contronym concept as a framework without getting bogged down in the linguistic aspect. Show how you’ve navigated or embraced these contradictions, and reflect on what these opposing forces have taught you about yourself or the world.
Strong approaches might explore leadership roles where you had to be both authoritative and vulnerable, cultural identities that put you between different worlds, experiences where success required both confidence and humility, or situations where you had to be both independent and collaborative. Avoid forcing a contronym where it doesn’t naturally exist, or choosing something that doesn’t reveal meaningful personal growth.
The penny is on its way out—too small to matter, too costly to keep. But not everything small should disappear. What’s one object the world is phasing out that you think we can’t afford to lose, and why? – Ella Somaiya, Class of 2028
This prompt allows you to advocate for something you value while demonstrating your ability to think critically about progress and preservation. Choose something that’s genuinely disappearing but not obviously important to everyone, then make a compelling case for why this “small” thing matters more than people realize. Connect your choice to broader themes about human connection, culture, learning, or values, and use personal experience to illustrate your point.
Strong approaches might focus on physical objects that represent craftsmanship, tradition, or human connection, practices or rituals that are being digitized or automated, skills that are being lost to technology, or spaces and experiences that are disappearing due to modernization. Examples to consider include handwritten letters, independent bookstores, film photography, analog instruments, neighborhood gathering spaces, or traditional crafts.
From Michelin Tires creating the Michelin Guide, to the audio equipment company Audio-Technica becoming one of the world’s largest manufacturers of sushi robots, brand identity can turn out to be a lot more flexible than we think. Choose an existing brand, company, or institution and propose an unexpected but strangely logical new product or service for them to launch. Why is this unlikely extension exactly what the world (or the brand) needs right now? – Inspired by Julia Nieberg, Class of 2029
This creative prompt lets you showcase innovative thinking while demonstrating understanding of business, culture, or social needs. Choose a brand you know well and understand deeply, then find an unexpected connection between the brand’s core competencies and an unmet need. Make your extension creative but genuinely logical, and address why this would benefit both the brand and the world.
Strong approaches will connect the brand’s unique expertise to contemporary problems, consider what the brand’s values or mission could address in a new domain, think about underserved markets or overlooked opportunities, and use humor while maintaining genuine insight. Examples might include IKEA offering divorce mediation with assembly instructions for relationships, Patagonia starting a climate change lobbying firm, or Duolingo creating a service for preserving endangered languages!
Statistically speaking, ice cream doesn’t cause shark attacks, pet spending doesn’t drive the number of lawyers in California, and margarine consumption isn’t responsible for Maine’s divorce rate—at least, not according to conventional wisdom. But what if the statisticians got it wrong? Choose your favorite spurious correlation and make the case for why it might actually reveal a deeper, causative truth. – Inspired by Adam DiMascio, Class of 2025
This prompt tests your ability to think creatively about causation while demonstrating analytical skills and perhaps poking fun at how we interpret data. Choose a genuinely amusing spurious correlation, which you can find through online research, then create a plausible but creative explanation for why the correlation might reflect real causation. Use this as an opportunity to critique how we think about data, society, or human behavior while balancing humor with genuine insight.
Strong approaches will find correlations that reveal something about human psychology or social structures, use your explanation to comment on broader societal trends, connect your analysis to your own interests or expertise, and maintain a playful tone while showing sophisticated thinking. Look up “spurious correlations” online to find datasets showing amusing statistical relationships with no real causal connection.
And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!
Like the open-ended Common App essay question, this prompt presents both opportunities and challenges. Unlike the rest of the UChicago supplemental essays, this prompt doesn’t require you to discuss anything in particular. That said, like the rest of the prompts, you can and should still focus on yourself, your interests, your background, your worldviews, your opinions, and so on. Remember, your college application is the opportunity to show who you are to an admissions team so that they’ll fall in love with you as a thinker and human being, and then admit you to their prestigious academic institution. Thus, your supplemental essays should ultimately function in service of that goal.
Note that this prompt gives you the opportunity to dive into past UChicago supplemental essays, if any of those speak to you. Therefore, if none of the prompts officially set for this year’s applicants feel fitting for you, but you’d still like a bit of structure when approaching this essay, you can read through past prompts to see if you can find inspiration in one of them instead.
Regardless of what approach you take when writing this essay, remember to keep things organized. The hardest part about writing an essay without a prompt is staying on topic. Pick your topic, identify the message you’d like to communicate to the reader, and/or outline your intentions for the essay. It’s essential that either before or after you draft this essay, you organize it. The essay can be about anything you like, but it must say something specific and meaningful, and it should be cohesive. But don’t afraid to be bold!
“Why UChicago?” Essay
How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.
Like many colleges and universities, UChicago’s admissions officers want to know why you specifically want to attend UChicago. What programs, courses, professors, clubs, or opportunities are available to you only at UChicago? What aspects of the campus culture speak to you? Why do you see yourself as a part of UChicago’s community?
Note that prompt’s emphasis on specificity. Use concrete details and sentences which could apply to no other institution than UChicago. Indicate how your unique future plans would be best served by learning and studying at UChicago. If you’re stuck, read through their website, watch videos about UChicago, and visit the campus if you’re able. Good luck!
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