The College of William & Mary (W&M) is a highly ranked public research university located in Williamsburg, VA. Chartered in 1693, W&M is the second-oldest university in the United States and accepts around 34% of applicants each year. Their accomplished alumni include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Jon Stewart, Mike Tomlin, and Michelle Horn. Hoping to join their ranks? First, you’ll need to nail the William & Mary supplemental essays. Let’s dive in.
William & Mary’s 2024-2025 Prompts
Choose up to two prompts from the list below to answer. Unsure of which prompt(s) to choose? Take a look at our General Tips below!
Optional Short Essay Questions (300 words or fewer)
- Are there any particular communities that are important to you, and how do you see yourself being a part of our community?
- Share more about a personal academic interest or career goal.
- How has your family, culture and/or background shaped your lived experience?
- What led to your interest in William & Mary?
- Tell us about a challenge or adversity you’ve experienced and how that has impacted you as an individual.
- If we visited your town, what would you want to show us?
General Tips
There are six William & Mary supplemental essays. Writing essays for W&M is optional, but we encourage you to respond to at least one prompt. You can respond to as many as two of the prompts, and each essay permits a maximum of 300 words. Writing an essay or two for W&M will demonstrate your interest in attending, as well as give you more opportunities to tell the admissions team about yourself. Moreover, the more time the admissions officers spend thinking about you and your application, the higher your chances of scoring an acceptance letter. Although you need not write any essays in order to be accepted, a strong essay or two can only boost your application.
That said, there are a lot of prompts here to choose from. Let’s go over why each one might be right for you—or not!
1. Are there any particular communities that are important to you, and how do you see yourself being a part of our community?
This prompt is a great choice for a community-oriented student. If you engaged in community service throughout high school, then you may want to bring that up here. Alternatively, if you have no evidence of community involvement elsewhere in your application, and yet community is important to you, then this is your chance to help your application feel a bit more well-rounded.
If community isn’t especially important to you, then don’t force it, and give this essay a pass. If you were never really connected to any communities growing up, or you have a negative or traumatic relationship with your community, then this also may not be the prompt for you.
2. Share more about a personal academic interest or career goal.
If you haven’t been able to thoroughly or comprehensively address a personal academic interest or career goal, then here’s your chance. If your career goal might seem obtuse to a reader—it’s not directly related to your major, for instance—then you may feel it is beneficial to explore this goal further in an essay.
On the other hand, if your academic interests are not particularly defined and/or you don’t know what you want to do with your career yet, then this may not be the prompt for you. Furthermore, if you have fully addressed these topics in, say, your Common App personal essay, you should not repeat that discussion here.
3. How has your family, culture and/or background shaped your lived experience?
Everyone has some family, culture, or at least background to speak of. Thus, this prompt is a strong option for most applicants. In addition, many other universities ask similar questions to this one. Thus, you may already have a fully formed idea in response to this topic. Similarly, you may have a completed essay that just needs a few edits in order to fit within the word count. If so, choosing this prompt could save you a lot of time.
That said, if one of the other prompts speaks to you more or you simply have more to write about with one of the other prompts, then turn your attention there. In addition, if you have the time, it can be beneficial to write a new and unique essay versus recycling another essay.
4. What led to your interest in William & Mary?
This prompt is also a strong choice for any applicant. Writing a response to this essay will demonstrate your interest in W&M more clearly than almost any other response. Furthermore, unless you make the fatal error of accidentally sending in an essay intended for another school, the admissions team will know that you spent extra time writing this essay and didn’t recycle the essay you composed for another school.
The only reasons against writing this essay are if you have compelling reasons for focusing on some of the other prompts in lieu of this one or you don’t have enough time to write a thoughtful and substantive response.
5. Tell us about a challenge or adversity you’ve experienced and how that has impacted you as an individual.
This prompt is also a great choice for most applicants. We’ve all faced challenges and adversity, and everyone’s experience is unique. Thus, writing a unique response to this essay and demonstrating your resilience can only benefit your application.
If you feel that the challenges you have faced in your life are not significant or compelling enough to warrant an essay, perhaps choose one of the other prompts (but don’t sell yourself short; ask a trusted adult for advice before you forgo your response for this reason). If you have already addressed all of the significant challenges you have faced in your life in your Common App personal essay or other William & Mary supplemental essays, then you have no need to write this essay.
6. If we visited your town, what would you want to show us?
This prompt is a good choice for the student who feels that their hometown represents who they are in some significant way. Even if this way is not obvious or only applies to one aspect, place, or tradition in your hometown, this prompt could still be right for you.
If you feel very disconnected from your hometown, you’ve moved around a lot and haven’t built connections to places, or you want nothing more than to get away from your town, then this might not be the prompt for you.
Now that you have a good understanding of what prompt(s) are right for you, let’s dive into how to answer them!
William & Mary Short Essay Questions (300 words or fewer)
1. Are there any particular communities that are important to you, and how do you see yourself being a part of our community?
This prompt asks you to consider who you are as community member. You should also address how you interact with the communities you belong to. There are few components to this prompt:
- List the communities that are important to you. We recommend no more than three communities, in order to give you the space to explain each one’s context and significance. You can even list just one!
- Explain how each community you listed is important to you. In order for the reader to understand why you’ve listed these communities, you’ll need to explain why they are important to you. Perhaps these communities have helped you personally. Perhaps you have learned lessons from these communities. These communities may also be part of who you are, and you can’t envision yourself without them.
- Note how you have contributed to these communities. This information may not be asked for explicitly, but it is no less important. The William & Mary admissions team hopes to understand how you have contributed in communities in the past and present, so as to predict how you will contribute in the future.
- Describe the ways you envision yourself fitting in and contributing to the William & Mary community. This part of the prompt should likely come at the end of the essay and not take up the majority of the words. That said, it is one of the most important components of your essay. Be as detailed as you can be by mentioning the specific clubs or community organizations you hope to join, the initiatives you imagine yourself founding, or however you intend to contribute to the W&M community.
After you’ve addressed each of these components, remember to proofread your essay and provide smooth transitions between the different ideas addressed.
2. Share more about a personal academic interest or career goal.
This prompt is open-ended and provides applicants with the opportunity to discuss whatever academic or career interests/goals that have not yet received attention in their applications. Whatever you decide to write about in this essay should be specific and important to you. This shouldn’t be any old interest you have, but rather one that will shape your college experience.
Remember to focus on one personal academic interest or career goal. The essay should provide plenty of detail regarding at least a few of the following topics:
- Why you are interested in this topic, or why you are pursuing this career goal.
- What the origin of this interest or goal is.
- When this interest began or you formulated this goal.
- Who has mentored you in this area and/or encouraged/inspired you toward this goal or interest.
- How you have pursued this interest or goal in the past, how you are currently pursuing it, and how you intend to pursue it in the future.
Having focused on some of these topics authentically, concisely, and precisely, your essay should be well on its way to leaving a positive impact on your reader!
3. How has your family, culture and/or background shaped your lived experience?
This prompt gives you the opportunity to discuss the person you are today, as a result of your experiences. To be specific, you should focus on the experiences that relate to your family, culture, and/or background. The latter is the least specific, and you can interpret it broadly. The word “background” in this context can refer to your socioeconomic background, academic background or context, gender or sexual identity, geography, the community(ies) you come from, etc.
Authenticity is the key to making this essay stand out. An authentic essay about where and whom you come from will necessarily be unique. If you feel like your essay in response to this prompt isn’t unique, then focus on writing a narrative that includes concrete, sensory details. These details are what will make your essay yours, versus anyone else’s. No matter what, your experiences are your own and unlike any other applicant’s. Especially if you have any unique interests, goals, motivations, or experiences, then there are many opportunities in this essay to let your difference show through.
A unique essay will stand out. An essay with personal touches unlike any other applicant’s will be unique. And an essay that stands out, whether because of its unique content or writing, will be more memorable to the reader. You want the admissions officers to remember your William & Mary supplemental essays the next day. Assuming they recall them positively, this can only help your application’s chances!
4. What led to your interest in William & Mary?
This is the “Why William & Mary?” essay. Universities ask this type of question for a few reasons:
- Students who are genuinely interested in a school are more likely to attend if admitted. This means that universities can maximize their yield.
- From reading responses to this prompt, admissions officers will be able to tell who the students are that have done thorough, comprehensive research on a university before applying. These students give the impression of being more hard-working, mature, and ready to attend college.
- By researching a university, you can better understand how you will fit in to their community, both academic and social. In turn, the college can see you fitting in at their school.
- A student who can envision themself at college with clarity and self-awareness demonstrates their maturity and preparedness for college.
In this essay, you’ll want to mention specific classes, professors, programs, clubs, and other opportunities at W&M that pique your interest. Explain the source of your curiosity. Will this class bring you closer to your career goals? Will joining this club fulfill a childhood dream of yours? Do you have a particular reason to want to live in Virginia for the next four years? Do you have a personal or historical connection to the university? Whatever your reasons, share them with the reader clearly and concisely.
5. Tell us about a challenge or adversity you’ve experienced and how that has impacted you as an individual.
This prompt shares similarities with the Common App personal essay. Although it needs to be a bit shorter, many students choose to focus on this same topic in their personal essay. If you were between two topics for your Common App personal essay topic, maybe you could turn to that other topic here.
Alternatively, you may have a specific eccentricity in your application that could do with some explanation. For instance, is there a drop in your grades that is reasonable and explicable? Does your application lack significant extracurricular time commitment as a result of your time-consuming familial obligations? If so, then here’s your opportunity to write about it. Remember, you are writing about one challenge or adversity that you have experienced.
Whatever you do, don’t rehash the same topic as addressed in your Common App essay. Make sure that this essay is totally new and different from your other William & Mary supplemental essays too. This essay should provide new insight as to who you are. In addition, make sure that the essay places heavy emphasis on your resilience and ability to overcome this obstacle. College is hard! Admissions officers want to see that you have the ability to meet future challenges with confidence, courage, and a problem-solving attitude.
Consider focusing the second half of your essay on the lessons you learned from this experience. Everyone has faced some kind of adversity in their life. What makes you unique is how you have grown and matured as a result of the experience. What were your takeaways? Clearly identify them for the reader. This is how you will effectively address the second half of the prompt.
6. If we visited your town, what would you want to show us?
This more prompt gives you the opportunity to let the reader in on your life. Consider the tourist attractions of your hometown, the local secrets, and the landmarks of your personal life. Remember that this essay is about you. The topic of your hometown is merely a lens onto you as a person.
There are many ways you could go about this essay. You could write an essay about the aquarium that sparked your interest in marine biology and draws in hundreds of visitors a day. You could take your reader on a tour of your high school, pointing out all the places where you’ve had important, formative experiences. Perhaps you could take your reader through the nature preserve where you seek peace. Or you could take your reader to the gravestone of your grandfather and write about what he meant to you.
Think creatively and expansively about how to approach this essay. If you’re stuck on what to write about, think about the topics you’d like to have written about in your application and haven’t yet had the chance to write about. Any gaps in your application story? You can likely fill them in here!
If you need help polishing up your William & Mary supplemental essays, check out our College Essay Review service. You can receive detailed feedback from Ivy League consultants in as little as 24 hours.
