Tufts University is a renowned research institution located in the Greater Boston area. With an acceptance rate around 10%, Tufts is a highly selective university. Known for having a strong engineering program, diverse and collaborative research opportunities, and an impactful Classics department, among other robust academic offerings, Tufts attracts many highly qualified applicants every year. Their accomplished alumni include Shashi Tharoor, Tracy Chapman, William Hurt, Anthony Scaramucci, among others. Hoping join their ranks? First, you’ll need to nail your Tufts supplemental essays. Let’s dive in.
Tufts’ 2026-2027 Prompts
Tufts sets two prompts for each applicant. The first prompt is required for all applicants. The second prompt depends on which school or program you are applying to: the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Engineering, the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, or the Combined Degree (BFA+BA/BS) program. Each school or program has one prompt set for you.
Now, let’s break the prompts down.
Required Essay Question
- Please describe how you have learned about and engaged with Tufts during your college search process. (75-150 words)
School of Arts & Sciences Essay Question
- Tell us about one of your favorite school assignments in the past two years. What was the assignment and why did you enjoy it? (100-200 words)
School of Engineering Essay Question
- Tell us about an engineering or science-related project that you have helped build, design, create, or iterate in the past two years. What was the project and what was your role? (100-200 words)
School of the Museum of Fine Arts Essay Questions
BFA applicants respond to the first prompt below. Combined Degree (BFA+BA/BS) applicants respond to the second.
- Tell us more about a specific piece in your portfolio. What were the ideas you intended to explore, and how did those ideas inform the process of making the piece? (100-200 words)
- Tell us more about a specific piece in your portfolio. How did an academic course, project, or interest inspire the ideas that you explored in this piece? Or, how did making this piece influence your academic interests? (100-200 words)
Tufts Required Essay Question
Please describe how you have learned about and engaged with Tufts during your college search process. (75-150 words)
This is Tufts’ new take on the “Why Tufts?” essay. Rather than asking why you want to attend, the admissions officers want to know how you have gotten to know Tufts over the course of your college search. Tufts considers demonstrated interest in its admissions process, so this prompt is your chance to show that your interest is real and that you have done your homework.
Start by making a list of every point of contact you have had with Tufts. Did you take a campus tour or sit in on an information session? Did you join a virtual information session or explore the virtual tour from home? Have you read the admissions blogs, watched a mock class through Tufts For You, chatted with a current student, or spoken with an admissions officer at a college fair or during a visit to your high school? Even reading through course listings and faculty pages on the Tufts website counts. Some examples:
- A campus visit where a particular building, class, or conversation stuck with you
- A virtual information session for the School of Engineering or SMFA that clarified your academic plans
- A student blog post or Jumbo Magazine article that changed how you pictured life at Tufts
- Research into a specific department, professor, or program that you now hope to join
Don’t just list these experiences, though. In 75-150 words, you only have room for two or three, so choose the ones that taught you the most and explain what you learned from each one and how it shaped your decision to apply. If a tour guide’s offhand comment about the Tufts community made you want to be a part of it, say so. If you haven’t been able to visit campus, that’s completely fine. Be honest about how you engaged from a distance, and be specific about what you discovered.
Finally, keep the tone genuine. The admissions committee reads thousands of these responses, and generic praise for Tufts’ “vibrant community” won’t stand out. Concrete details about your search process will.
Tufts School of Arts & Sciences Essay Question
Tell us about one of your favorite school assignments in the past two years. What was the assignment and why did you enjoy it? (100-200 words)
This prompt replaces Tufts’ previous menu of choices for Arts & Sciences applicants, and it’s a fun one. At its core, it’s asking what excites your intellectual curiosity. The difference is that Tufts now wants you to anchor your answer in a specific assignment from the past two years, so your response should be concrete rather than abstract.
Before you begin writing, try brainstorming a list of assignments from your junior and senior years that you genuinely enjoyed. These could be research papers, lab reports, creative projects, problem sets, presentations, or anything else a teacher asked you to complete. Some examples:
- A history research paper that sent you down a rabbit hole of primary sources
- A physics lab where your group’s experiment failed the first time and you figured out why
- A creative writing assignment that let you experiment with a new form
- A statistics project analyzing data you collected yourself
The second part of this question is the “why,” and that is where you should spend most of your words. After you’ve briefly described the assignment (a sentence or two is enough), explain what made it enjoyable. Did it let you connect two subjects you thought were unrelated? Did it raise a question you’re still thinking about? Did it change how you see the world outside the classroom? You should feel empowered to show, instead of tell, the reader why this assignment excited you. Describe an occasion when you lost all track of time or made a discovery.
Keep in mind that “favorite” doesn’t have to mean “easiest” or “highest-scoring.” An assignment you struggled with and eventually cracked can make for a more compelling essay than one you aced without effort. Whatever you choose, let your passion for learning shine through.
Tufts School of Engineering Essay Question
Tell us about an engineering or science-related project that you have helped build, design, create, or iterate in the past two years. What was the project and what was your role? (100-200 words)
If you’re applying to the School of Engineering, Tufts wants evidence that you have already started doing engineering, not just studying it. Notice the verbs in the prompt: build, design, create, iterate. The admissions officers are looking for hands-on experience, and the word “helped” signals that collaborative projects are welcome. You don’t need to have led the project or invented something from scratch.
Brainstorm the projects you’ve worked on over the past two years, inside and outside of school. Some examples:
- A robotics competition entry your team built and rebuilt over a season
- A science fair or research project with a hypothesis you tested and refined
- An app, website, or program you coded to solve a problem for yourself or others
- A woodworking, 3D printing, or electronics project you tinkered with at home
Once you’ve chosen a project, be precise about your role. If you worked on a team, what specifically did you contribute? Did you handle the mechanical design, write the code, run the tests, or manage the timeline? Then, describe the process itself. Engineering rarely works on the first try, so don’t be afraid to discuss what went wrong and how you responded. The word “iterate” in the prompt is an invitation to share how your project evolved.
In 100-200 words, you won’t have room for every technical detail. Prioritize the details that reveal how you think, and keep any jargon to a minimum so that a reader without your background can follow along. Finally, spend a sentence or two reflecting on what this project taught you about the kind of engineer you hope to become.
Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts Essay Questions
Tell us more about a specific piece in your portfolio. What were the ideas you intended to explore, and how did those ideas inform the process of making the piece? (100-200 words)
This prompt, for BFA applicants, asks you to write something akin to a short artist’s statement, but focused on a single piece from the portfolio you are submitting to SMFA. Rather than describing the ideas you hope to explore someday, you need to look closely at work you have already made. The admissions officers will have your portfolio in front of them, so choose a piece that rewards a closer look and that you can speak about with real insight.
The prompt has two parts. First, what were the ideas you intended to explore? These could be personal, political, formal, or conceptual. Some examples:
- A series of self-portraits exploring how your identity shifts between home and school
- A sculpture made from discarded packaging that questions consumption and waste
- A set of drawings testing how line weight alone can convey emotion
- A short film about a neighborhood that is changing around you
Second, how did those ideas inform the process of making the piece? This is the part many applicants skip, so give it real attention. Did your idea determine the medium you chose, the scale, the materials, or the color palette? Did the piece change direction partway through as you learned something new about your subject? Walk the reader through a few specific decisions and connect each one back to the idea driving the work.
The SMFA admissions team seeks to build a well-rounded, thoughtful, and ambitious class of artists and creatives. In your courses, you will be encouraged to take risks and try new techniques and styles. By explaining the thinking behind one piece, you show that you already approach your art with intention, which is exactly what a challenging studio curriculum demands. Remember, the piece doesn’t have to be your most polished work. A piece with an interesting idea and an honest process often makes for a stronger essay than a technically flawless one.
Tell us more about a specific piece in your portfolio. How did an academic course, project, or interest inspire the ideas that you explored in this piece? Or, how did making this piece influence your academic interests? (100-200 words)
The five-year Combined Degree program pairs a BFA from SMFA with a BA or BS from the School of Arts & Sciences, so it makes sense that this prompt asks you to connect your art to your academic interests. Like the BFA prompt, it centers on a specific piece in your portfolio. The twist is that you need to show how your studio work and your academic work feed each other.
The prompt offers two directions, and you only need to choose one. In the first direction, an academic course, project, or interest inspired the piece. Maybe a biology unit on cellular structures shaped a series of prints, or a history class on the civil rights movement drove a documentary photography project. In the second direction, making the piece influenced your academic interests. Perhaps building a kinetic sculpture sparked your interest in physics, or a painting about your grandmother’s migration led you to want to study anthropology.
Whichever direction you choose, be specific on both sides of the connection. Name the course or the academic question, describe the piece and the choices you made while creating it, and explain how one shaped the other. Since Combined Degree students spend five years moving between the studio and the classroom, the admissions officers want to see that this kind of cross-pollination is already part of how you think and work. Keep your explanation concrete and within the 100-200 word range, and let your curiosity in both worlds come through.
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