How to Write the UNC Chapel Hill Supplemental Essays (with Examples!) [UPDATED FOR 2024-2025] (Copy)
Let’s talk about how to write University of North Caroline (UNC) Chapel Hill supplemental essays (with examples!)...
How do you write the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) Chapel Hill’s supplemental essays, Lisa? I don’t understand what these essays prompts are asking, and I don’t know where to start!
The Early Action deadline for the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill is coming up! And I am getting questions on how to write the UNC supplemental essays left and right!
Since UNC is such a popular school and I get so many questions about their supplemental essays, I’ve put together this guide to help you as you start tackling the UNC essays, with examples to help you along the way as well.
But first, a little on the University of North Carolina (or “UNC” as it’s often called)…
Why Should You Apply to UNC Chapel Hill?
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) is one of the oldest public universities in the United States, founded in 1789. Nestled in the picturesque town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, it boasts a vibrant campus that blends historic architecture with modern facilities. Renowned for its commitment to academic excellence, UNC offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs across various disciplines, including liberal arts, sciences, business, and law. The university’s distinguished faculty and extensive research initiatives contribute to its reputation as a leading institution in higher education.
We'll also be taking a look at examples of UNC's supplemental essays...
A cornerstone of the university’s identity is its strong emphasis on research and public service. UNC is home to several research centers and institutes that address critical issues such as health, environment, and social justice. The university consistently ranks among the top institutions for federal research funding, enabling groundbreaking studies that benefit both local communities and the global population. Students are encouraged to engage in research from their early years, fostering a culture of innovation and inquiry that prepares them for future careers.
In addition to its academic prowess, UNC is known for its spirited campus life and rich traditions. The university hosts a variety of student organizations, cultural events, and athletic programs, most notably the Tar Heels, whose basketball team has achieved national acclaim. The vibrant arts scene, combined with a commitment to diversity and inclusion, creates an enriching environment for students. Whether participating in a spirited debate, attending a performance, or cheering on their teams, students at UNC experience a dynamic and fulfilling college life that extends beyond the classroom.
What Is the Acceptance Rate at the University of North Carolina (UNC)?
Getting into UNC is tough! UNC accepts only 17% of its applicants, but that number is very deceiving. UNC accepts a whopping 40+% of its in-state applicants but only about 8% of its out-of-state applicants which makes it a challenging college to get into for most people!
Now that I’ve set the stage, let’s start taking a look at UNC’s supplemental essay prompts…
What are the UNC Supplemental Essay Prompts?
For the 2024-2025 admissions cycle, UNC has two required supplemental essay prompts:
UNC Supplemental Essay Prompt #1: Your Personal Quality + Community Essay
The first UNC supplemental prompt asks you to tell a story one of your personal qualities and how it’s helped you make an impact on your community:
Discuss one of your personal qualities and share a story, anecdote, or memory of how it helped you make a positive impact on a community. This could be your current community or another community you have engaged. (250 words)
UNC Supplemental Essay Prompt #2:
Discuss an academic topic that you’re excited to explore and learn more about in college. Why does this topic interest you? Topics could be a specific course of study, research interests, or any other area related to your academic experience in college. (250 words)
Let’s start unpacking UNC’s supplemental essays…
Let's take a look at how to write UNC's supplemental essay on your personal quality and community impact (with an example!).
How to Write the UNC Essay on Your Personal Quality and Community Impact (with an Example!)
Okay, the first UNC supplemental essay, the one about “discuss one of your personal qualities” and “how it helped you make a positive impact on a community” is one I get a lot of questions on!
A lot of students struggle with how to effectively talk about a personal quality and then link it up to a positive impact on a community, and end up spending way too much time on this essay.
Let me make this A LOT easier for you…
Why Does UNC Ask the Personal Quality/Community Impact Question?
What is the most critical piece of answering this supplemental essay prompt?
Well, this essay prompt is a little misleading. As you read along, it seems like it’s asking you to describe one of your personal qualities with a story, and that’s how a lot of students approach it. (Spoiler alert: this is the hard way to try to answer the question).
if you take a step back and think about it, while UNC definitely wants to know about all your good qualities (e.g. hard-working, creative, resourceful, etc.), the crux of this supplemental essay prompt is the actually the impact you make on a community.
Really, this is a bit of twist on a pretty standard “community” essay, of the type which many colleges ask for. Admittedly, UNC’s is a slight variation on it in asking for you to connect to a personal quality, but at its heart, this essay wants to know to about how you interact with a community, the impact you’ve made and how you think of your place in it.
As I’ve said before, colleges and universities are are communities. Yes, they’re institutions, but they’re communities of students, faculty, and staff coming together under the big college community umbrella. So UNC, like most colleges and universities, really want to find out about you is how you interact as a member of a community, contribute to your community, and how you think about your role in a community.
In UNC’s case, they’re adding a slight variation to it in that that’s asking for you to connect it to a personal quality of yours, but really, you can pick any personal quality and relate it to what you’ve done for your community.
Now that that’s clear, let’s talk about how to write this essay!
Let's breakdown how to write the UNC personal quality and community impact essay (and I'll show you an example!)...
How to Write the UNC Personal Quality + Community Impact Essay (with an Example!)
Now, to be clear, you may have already written a “community” essay for another school, and if that’s the case, you may just want to tweak that essay to suit this question.
But whether you already have a community essay that you like that you’re going to work with or if you’re from scratch, there are 5 major points to hit in your answer:
UNC Supplemental Essay on Community/Personal Quality Point #1: Your Community
At heart, this is a “community” question. UNC wants to know about how you think about your community, your place in it, and how you interact with your community.
So, right off the bat, you need to identity the community you’re writing about. Of course, there’s the obvious communities you belong to: your hometown, your school, your church, your neighborhood, and/or the racial, ethnic, or religious groups you belong to.
But you may also want to write about a community in a more expansive sense, such as a community you belonged to in the past, a community that’s formed around an activity you participate in, or even an online community. One student of mine grew up in a family that had moved internationally several times in his childhood, and he wrote about the beachside communities his family frequented as a collective “community” in this expansive sense.
In writing the UNC supplemental essay on community, it's important to discuss how you made your community better. Here are examples!
UNC Supplemental Essay on Community/Personal Quality Point #2: The Issue You’re Solving For Your Community
This is an “impact” essay, and to me, whenever I see an essay that asks for your impact on your community, it automatically means that you need to write about how you made your community better in some way.
In other words, there needs to be a “before” and “after”: Here’s what my community was like before. Then I did [something], which made this impact.
So, for your essay, a key point that you need to make is that there was an issue that you wanted to solve for your community. That does not mean that you’ve solved a global issue. UNC does not need to know that you’ve climate change or global hunger. But to answer this supplemental essay prompt well, you need to show you recognized that there was a problem and you decided to do something about it.
UNC Supplemental Essay on Community/Personal Quality Point #3: What You Did and the Personal Quality You Used
The next key point in writing about your impact is what you did to fix the issue: Did you lead a fundraising drive? Join a group doing beach clean-up? Organize a conference addressing climate change issues?
UNC’s does add its own spice to this “community” supplemental essay prompt by asking you to connect it to a personal quality, so whatever you did, think about your personal qualities that were involved in this. You may want to ask a parent or teacher what qualities they saw coming out of you in addressing this issue.
Now, as I mentioned, a lot of students read the prompt, come up with a personal quality they want to talk about and then start racking their brains to come up with something they did in the community that illustrates that quality.
I think that’s the hard way to write the essay, and it ends up being a frustrating and time-consuming exercise that way.
I think it’s much easier to think about the things you done in your community, come up with one that shows a strong community impact, and then identity the personal qualities that it demonstrates, and go from there:
I had to think creatively to solve this problem…
Leading our food and clothing drive was a test of my organizational skills…
In launching our climate change conference, I developed my skills as someone who builds relationships in our community…
For the UNC supplemental essay on your personal quality and community impact, relfect on how you made your community better! (Here are some examples1)
UNC Supplemental Essay on Community/Personal Quality Point #4: What Was the Impact?
As I mentioned, with “impact” essays, there needs to be a “before” and “after”. At this point in the essay, you need to address the “after”: So what was your impact on your community?
Sometimes this can be something tangible (“We raised $X in our campaign for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society”), but it may be something smaller or intangible as well (“We’ve been able to start having those difficult conversations at our school now…”).
For this essay, the impact doesn’t have to be big and it doesn’t have to be measured in money. What matters is that there a change of some kind and that you’re able to identify it!
Okay, but what does an example of this UNC essay look lie? Let’s take a look…
Example : UNC Community/Personal Quality Essay
Serving on my city’s Youth Commission, I have championed opportunities that would directly impact my peers in my hometown of _________.
One challenge that we had to address this year was whether we could continue funding a scholarship program for local students to help with college expenses. The scholarship fund was launched out of an unexpected budget surplus during COVID when many events and programs were canceled, and with programs returning, the money just was not there.
I fiercely advocated for its continuation, recognizing the value that the scholarships bring, but understood the concerns about costs. I thought creatively about our spending, and proposed a new budget, stretching each dollar, one that would make the scholarship fund sustainable.
After a lot of persuasive chats over boba, the city council embraced the vision and approved the proposal unanimously. Applications poured in, and we had to quickly sift through them all to make our deadline. Each application was a window into a student’s life, struggles, and dreams. It took a lot of work from the entire council and the team at city hall, but the heartfelt letters of thanks from our award recipients were powerful affirmations of our efforts and purpose.
On to UNC Supplemental Essay #2!
Let's talk about how to write the second UNC suupplemental essay, the academic topic that excites you (with an example1)
How to Write UNC’s Supplemental Essay #2: The Academic Topic that Excites You
As a reminder, here’s the second UNC supplemental essay prompt:
Discuss an academic topic that you’re excited to explore and learn more about in college. Why does this topic interest you? Topics could be a specific course of study, research interests, or any other area related to your academic experience in college. (250 words)
This is a pretty straightforward “Why this major?” kind of an essay. and a rather short one at that. If you’re still relatively early in your college essay-writing process, you’ll probably be writing more than a few of these types of essays and if you’ve already been at, you may already have one that’s written that you’ll want to re-use.
Still, let’s take this apart for a minute…
Why Does UNC Ask This Question?
Well, as I’ve said, this is a pretty common and straightforward question. In this question, UNC wants to get an idea of why you’re interested in what you’re saying you want to study.
How did your interest in this subject come about? What are you intellectual motivations and aspirations in this area? What are you curious about? And do you already have an idea of how you’d like to pursue it in college?
How to Write UNC’s Supplemental Essay #2: The Academic Topic that Excites You (Why this major?)
This is a pretty straightforward question that many colleges ask, and there are 3 key points that you need to make to write a successful essay…
UNC “Why This Major?" Point #1: Origin of Your Interests
The first question that you need to answer for this essay is all about you: How did you get curious about this subject?
Tell the origin story of your interest in this topic. And to help you along with this (because the deadlines are approaching!), there are generally 2 ways for this to go:
The first likely possibility is this is something you’ve always been interested in. As long as you can remember, you’ve been interested in this topic. Think:
I’ve been bringing home sick puppies and kittens as long as I can remember. I would patch up their wounds and nurse them back to health and that’s why I want to become a veterinarian…
(Please don’t write that as an essay. It was for illustrative purposes only).
The second likely possibility is that there’s a specific moment in which you knew that this was what your interest was. Think:
… my grandfather suffered a heart attack, and as I was watching the doctors saving her life, I knew my calling in life was to become a cardiologist…
(Again, please don’t write that for your essay).
So, do think back. How did you become interested in this area? Were you the child always starting businesses in your neighborhood that now dreams of going to school to study finance? Was there a moment on a field trip to a NASA lab where you knew you wanted to study aerospace engineering?
What sparked this desire to study this particular subject?
Above all, UNC needs to know that your curiosity comes from you as opposed to your parents, teachers, coaches, etc.!
UNC's second supplemental essay prompt is really a "Why this major?". (I have an example below).
UNC “Why This Major?” Point #2: How Have You Pursued the Interest?No
Okay, now that you’ve established where your interest comes from and that it comes from you, how have you demonstrated that interest over time?
This could come in a variety of ways: taking college classes, doing research, shadowing professionals, interning and/or paid work, volunteering in the area, organizing a student conference, etc.
What’s important is that you can show that you can show that you’ve put in time developing the interest. It’s not something you thought sounded cool a week ago and/or you’re putting this down as your intended major because you heard it was less competitive.
UNC “Why This Major?” Point #3: Your Conclusion, The Big Picture or How UNC Fits In
After establishing where your interest comes from and how you’re pursued it this far, it’s time to finish off this short essay, and you have two options:
The first way to conclude the essay is by giving he Big Picture: Can you put this into a framework of where this is going?
I often tell students that this is not a question of signing your life away for the next fifty years, but UNC does want to get some sense of how you think of this subject as a whole. For example, is your interest in Classics leading you to one day working on archaeological digs in Greece?
Or are you interested in biomedical engineering because you think that this is an are that is going to revolutionize medicine?
Whatever it is, think about how your interest fits into the greater scheme of you!
The second option for the conclusion is give a concluding sentence or two of how UNC fits into your continued pursuit of this interest. Think: “UNC would be the ideal place for me to continue my studies because…”
If there something really specific and unique about why UNC is a good fit for your studies, this is the place to mention it! So if UNC is the only place that offers a specific language that you want to study or if UNC is one of the only places in the country that has a research lab in this topic that you’re really interested in, this is the place to say something!
An Example of the UNC “Why This Major?” Essay:
Again, this is a short essay, but here’s an example of what one could be like:
I have been passionate about history since childhood. Driving through the French countryside to visit my grandparents as a child, I would imagine what it had been like to be on the battlefield in 1940 or to fight alongside the French Resistance.
Eventually, my curiosity evolved into a deeper exploration of that war: its causes, consequences, and the figures involved. As I started studying history in school, my interest expanded beyond the borders of World War II to the Romans, the Aztecs, the Chinese Civil War, and others.
By the time I was in middle school, my passion for history was insatiable. If there was a book to read, a documentary to watch, or a museum to visit, I did.
When choosing the topic for my International Baccalaureate Extended Essay (EE), I made the decision to choose a lesser-known topic and provide the most comprehensive analysis possible.
I chose to write my EE on the internal domestic policies of Pakistan during the 1960s. Besides reading all available books and articles on the period, I was also able to reach out to individuals with firsthand knowledge of the period and people involved. Conducting these interviews was an invaluable experience, and I gained unfiltered insights into this period of Pakistan’s history that I would never have learned from any book or classroom.
It also introduced me to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of history which transcended what I had learned previously, and which I desire to continue to explore in college.
Need more help with your college essays?
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Are you applying to NYU? Check out my blog on How to Write the NYU Supplemental Essay (with an Example!).
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