Carnegie Mellon University, known for their School of Music, School of Computer Science, and interdisciplinary programs, is a competitive academic institution. Applicants seeking admission to Carnegie Mellon hope to join the ranks of storied alumni like Andy Warhol, John Nash, Kurt Vonnegut, and Leslie Odom Jr. If you’re interested in applying to Carnegie Mellon, then you might want some guidance on your supplemental essays. Let’s dive in.
Carnegie Mellon’s 2024-2025 Prompts
Carnegie Mellon’s admissions team asks three short answer questions, each of which needs to be 300 words or less. Although Carnegie Mellon requires more essays than many other schools, with a little bit of forethought, these essays can actually be to your advantage. Even if your CMU application require more effort to complete than some other applications, you can strengthen your profile by presenting your authentic self in your essays. Here are the prompts:
- Most students choose their intended major or area of study based on a passion or inspiration that’s developed over time—what passion or inspiration led you to choose this area of study?
- Many students pursue college for a specific degree, career opportunity or personal goal. Whichever it may be, learning will be critical to achieve your ultimate goal. As you think ahead to the process of learning during your college years, how will you define a successful college experience?
- Consider your application as a whole. What do you personally want to emphasize about your application for the admission committee’s consideration? Highlight something that’s important to you or something you haven’t had a chance to share. Tell us, don’t show us (no websites please).
General Tips
All three of these prompts seek to fill in the blanks of your application. A student’s passion for a certain subject is likely clear from their other application elements, but not necessarily the origin of that passion. A student’s vision for their college experience is typically not discussed comprehensively anywhere in their application. And the third prompt allows you to discuss any other topic that isn’t covered by the rest of your application materials. Because the admissions team has structured the Carnegie Mellon supplemental essays in this way, you may want to start your brainstorming process by considering what is missing from your current application profile.
For all of these essays, because they are so short, it is necessary to be concise. Therefore, before you start drafting (unless you’re free-writing to gain inspiration), you will want to know what topic your essay will focus on. You may even have an anecdote or a few examples in mind to add dimension to your essay. You can also consider which details from your experience will best illustrate your point(s) in the essay. Outlining beforehand isn’t a prerequisite to writing a strong essay. However, it is a strategy that can help keep such a brief piece of writing cohesive and focused.
You may also have a particular “message” or “takeaway” that you would like to leave your reader with. If this is the kind of essay you are hoping to write, it can be helpful to compose your first drafts with those messages or takeaways already prepared to make sure they are communicated throughout each of your Carnegie Mellon supplemental essays.
Lastly, if you’re already thinking about your engaging opening hook or thoughtful concluding line, this might stall your essay draft’s progress. Unless you have a wave of inspiration, elements of style like these are often hard to pin down during the drafting stage. Once you’ve got something on the page, though, it can be easier to come up with your opening hook. Therefore, don’t stress about these elements yet, just focus on defining your essay’s topic and keeping your essay well-organized.
Carnegie Mellon Short Essay Questions
Most students choose their intended major or area of study based on a passion or inspiration that’s developed over time — what passion or inspiration led you to choose this area of study? (300 words or fewer)
When beginning this essay, you may struggle to identify how you settled on your chosen major or area of study. Many students choose a major because they were good at the subject in high school. Or maybe it’s because their parents are pushing them toward that subject. Alternatively, a student might be pursuing the career associated with that major. Thus, these students may feel like there was no spark of inspiration leading them to this area of study. Given how many students change their major in college, this is not too surprising.
If that sounds like you, you may want to consider this question differently. Instead of trying to think of a magical moment when you determined your future college major, think of the moments when you have found joy or fulfillment in this area of study. These moments may have been in the classroom or elsewhere. The key is that these are moments when this subject area was important to you, no matter how big or small.
In your essay, you can dive into these moments and build your narrative around them. Think broadly: has there been an occasion when you have seen someone with a degree in your field of interest make a positive impact on the world? If so, that moment could be part of your essay. You could write about just one moment, or you could cover a few. Note that the prompt uses the phrase “developed over time.” Thus, don’t feel restricted to describing a single moment. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on a single source of inspiration, if that is true to your experience.
In sum, look into your past experiences, plural, to guide the progression of this essay. If you’re having trouble deciding which moment(s) to focus on, try free-writing to figure out which topics you find most meaningful to explore in your writing.
Many students pursue college for a specific degree, career opportunity or personal goal. Whichever it may be, learning will be critical to achieve your ultimate goal. As you think ahead to the process of learning during your college years, how will you define a successful college experience? (300 words or fewer)
It can be difficult to zoom out while in the thick of the college application process. But this prompt is asking you to focus on the fact that college is about learning and receiving an education, whatever that means to you. When you chose the area of study you explored in the last essay, what did you have in mind for your future? How will that vision of your future motivate you during your college years? While the last prompt asked you to look into your past, this one asks you to look into your future.
Note that this prompt does not restrict your response to career motivations or academic aspirations. You can also consider your social and personal development as you answer this question. It may be helpful to visualize yourself at college. Without getting too idealistic, what is the college experience you dream about? If that feels too intimidating to describe, you may want to get more specific.
What specifically would you like to have achieved before you graduate? You can even think of this as a bucket-list for your college experience. Of course, some items on this bucket-list won’t be appropriate for a college essay. At least some of those items should be, though, and you can discuss them in your response to this prompt.
Consider your application as a whole. What do you personally want to emphasize about your application for the admission committee’s consideration? Highlight something that’s important to you or something you haven’t had a chance to share. Tell us, don’t show us (no websites please). (300 words or fewer)
This supplemental essay can be your application’s golden ticket. There is a part of you that doesn’t appear elsewhere in your college application. If so, this essay is your opportunity to address it. If there is a topic you wanted to bring up in your personal essay but didn’t have room, here’s your chance to explore it deeply. And if there is a part of your academic journey that might not make sense to an admissions officer at first glance, you can explain those complexities here.
That said, you may feel like your application comprehensively captures you as a person and nothing is missing. If that’s the case, you can take this essay as an opportunity to “emphasize” an existing aspect of your application, as the prompt’s wording indicates. For instance, you may want to give some of your extracurriculars more depth than the Common App Activities section. Similarly, you may choose to explain how and why you received an honor or award mentioned on your Common App.
Another path you could take with this essay is to discuss something you’ve failed at or struggled with. College applications may look like highlight reels of students’ high school academic lives. But perhaps you really struggled to achieve that math grade last semester. Or perhaps you made a sacrifice in your personal life in order to pursue a certain extracurricular. Exploring the challenges you’ve overcome can provide nuance to your story. After all, these challenges may underlie the achievements highlighted elsewhere on your application.
If you need help polishing up your Carnegie Mellon supplemental essays, check out our College Essay Review service. You can receive detailed feedback from Ivy League consultants in as little as 24 hours.
