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Essays About Curiosity: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Are you writing essays about curiosity? Then, read our guide of helpful essay examples and writing prompts.

Curiosity refers to the strong desire and active interest to learn something. It could start with a burning question that leads to more questions. This series of questioning can evolve into a pursuit that paves the way for discoveries. Curiosity can change how we perceive life and our world. While everyone is inherently curious, how we use our curiosity, for good or bad, shows who we are as people.

Check out our essay examples and topic prompts for your curiosity essay , and stay curious till the end. And when your essay is complete, check out our best essay checkers and take the slog out of proofreading.

1. Curiosity: Why It Matters, Why We Lose It, And How To Get It Back by Christy Geiger

2. did curiosity really kill the cat by mario livio, 3.  why curiosity, diversity, and inclusion are the secrets to successful business transformation by beatriz sanz saiz, 4. the five dimensions of curiosity by todd b. kashdan et. al, 5. curiosity: we’re studying the brain to help you harness it by ashvanti valji and matthias gruber, 1. how has curiosity helped you in life, 2. the benefits of curiosity, 3. how does curiosity lead to scientific discoveries, 4. encouraging curiosity in the classroom, 5. diverse vs. specific curiosity, 6. can curiosity be practiced, 7. curiosity in early civilization, 8. curious animals: what are they thinking, 9. the curiosity rover, 10. negative effects of curiosity.

“…[A]s an adult, we can reach a learning plateau. We feel good to get to a point of understanding and knowledge, but begin to lose our curiosity. We find it easier to live as the expert who knows than the student who grows.”

Adulthood can have a negative impact on our levels of wonder and curiosity. Geiger believes it’s time to regain our childlike curiosity as we move to a tech-driven industrial world where constant innovation and adoption of technologies are required. You might also be interested in these essays about critical thinking.

“Curiosity is the best remedy for fear. What I mean by that is that often we are afraid of the unknown, of those things we know very little about. Becoming curious about them, and making an effort to learn more, usually acts to relieve that fear.”

Who would’ve thought an essay could be weaved out from a common expression of curiosity? This curiosity essay finds that the saying “curiosity killed the cat” started quite differently than we know it today. Its meaning now evolves to echo parts of history when conventional and extremist ideologies would silence inquisitive minds to avoid being challenged and overturned.

“To be a leader in a context of superfluid markets, where everything is connected, an organization needs to constantly explore which are the new “needs,“ which technologies exist, how they can be maximized and where they can be used to innovate boldly to create new experiences, goods and services.”

Curiosity will drive businesses to survive and thrive in this digital age. But, they also need to seek assistance from diversity and an inclusive organization. With these two, businesses can stimulate new thinking and perspectives that can feed into the curiosity of the organization on the ways it can reach its goals and be the market’s next disruption.

“Rather than regard curiosity as a single trait, we can now break it down into five distinct dimensions. Instead of asking, ‘How curious are you?’ we can ask, ‘How are you curious?’”

Kashdan builds on existing curiosity research to identify five dimensions of curiosity : joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill-seeking. Once you’ve assessed the right curiosity type for you, it might do wonders in catalyzing your curiosity into progress and development outcomes for your goals and well-being.

“It might seem obvious that if you are curious about something, you pay more attention to it, making it easier to remember later – but the effects of curiosity on memory are more complex than this.”

The essay presents new research on how a type of curiosity aiming to bridge information gaps connects with brain functions associated with enhanced learning. As far as education is concerned, the discovery strongly supports the need to create an environment to encourage students to ask questions rather than just give children a set learning program to consume.

10 Writing Prompts For Essays About Curiosity

Narrate an instance in your life when curious questions led to positive findings and experiences that helped you in life. Whether it was acing an exam, learning a new language, or other aspects of everyday life. Elaborate on how this encouraged you to be more interested and passionate about learning. See here our storytelling guide to help you better narrate your story. 

Research shows that curiosity can stimulate positive emotions. Many research studies outline the other benefits of curiosity to our health, relationships, happiness, and cognitive abilities. Gather more studies and data to elaborate on these advantages. To create an engaging piece of writing, share your experience on how curiosity has influenced your outlook on life. 

Albert Einstein is renowned worldwide as a famous theoretical physicist. Throughout his research, he used curious thinking and openmindedness to write his theoretical papers, changing the world as we know it. Curiosity is an essential attribute of scientists, as they can look for solutions to problems from a whole new angle. For this essay, look a the role of curiosity in the scientific process. How does a curious mindset benefit scientific discoveries? Conduct thorough research and use real-life examples to show your findings and answer this question.

School classrooms can be the playground of a student’s imagination and curiosity. In your essay, write about how your school and teachers encourage students to ask questions. Next, elaborate on how the learning prompts promote curiosity. For example, some teachers tell students that it is okay to fail sometimes. This assurance helps students think with new perspectives and solutions without the fear of failure.

When researching the different kinds of curiosity, you will find two categories- diverse and specific curiosity. Look into the different attributes of these curiosity types, and identify which one, in your opinion, is the better type of curiosity to foster. For an interesting argumentative essay, you can research which kind of curiosity you have and discuss whether you have a better or worse approach to curious thinking. Pull facts from online research to support your argument and include personal anecdotes to engage your readers.

Curiosity is an inherent human trait. We are all curious. But like any trait, we can practice being curious to improve our thinking. In this writing prompt, provide your readers with strategies that enhance curiosity. For example, meditation can help stimulate more curious thoughts. 

In early civilization, people answered many of life’s questions with religion. How did humanity shift from heavily relying on gods to believing in science? What part does curiosity play in this shift? Try piquing your curious mind and answer these questions in your essay for an exciting piece of writing. 

Essays about curiosity: Curious Animals

If animals solely relied on their basic instincts and functions, there is a high chance they would not survive in our world. According to Primatologist Richard Bryne in his paper Animal Curiosity , some animals can demonstrate curious behaviors that lead to new learning and survival skills. For this writing prompt, peer into curiosity in the animal kingdom and cite animals known to have high intelligence. Is curiosity at the foundation of their high IQs? Discuss this question in your essay.

This essay prompt is about the car-sized Curiosity Rover of NASA. The rover was designed to navigate the Gale crater on Mars and collect rock and soil samples for analysis. In your essay, research and write about why it was named “Curiosity” and its significant contributions to the Mars exploration mission.

Curiosity can have negative undertones from the expression “curiosity killed the cat.” Get to the heart of the matter and look through existing literature on the adverse outcomes of curiosity. One example to cite could be this study which concluded that one kind of curiosity is associated with errors, confusion, lack of humility, and vulnerability to fake news and so-called pseudo-profound bullshits. 

Curious to learn more about effective writing? Check out our guide on how to write an argumentative essay .  If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, read our guide on how to write a five-paragraph essay .

curiosity college essay

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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curiosity college essay

The What, Why & How of Intellectual Curiosity

One crucial aspect of engagement during high school is intellectual curiosity—when a student goes above and beyond the requirements of a class or dives deep into a subject on their own time. Here's how adolescent psychologist Michael W. Austin defines intellectual curiosity:

The intellectually curious person has a deep and persistent desire to know. She asks and seeks answers to the "why" questions. And she doesn't stop asking at a surface level, but instead asks probing questions in order to peel back layers of explanation to get at the foundational ideas concerning a particular issue.

Intellectually curious students spend their free time learning just for the fun of it. They dive deep into topics and subjects in which they're interested. They routinely seek knowledge and often engage with others in the pursuit of understanding. Intellectual curiosity makes learning a lot more organic—and much less of a chore. Universities want academically curious people – some colleges even ask specifically about it. For example, on their Common Application supplement, Stanford asks applicants: "Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging."  Intellectual curiosity can be demonstrated in academic records, the application essay, the resume, and other items in your admissions application.

curiosity college essay

The College MatchPoint Guide to Engagement In High School

The most successful college applicants have engaged in activities that are based on their interests, aptitudes, and motivations. This guide presents our i4 framework and walks you through how your student can optimize their interest, involvement, initiative, and impact to successfully engage during high school and develop into a strong college applicant.

How do you awaken and nurture your student's intellectual curiosity? Here are 3 steps for parents to focus on with their children:

1. Encourage them to embrace intellectual challenges 

Encourage your teen to explore subjects that interest them when selecting high school classes. Students who love math should challenge themselves with AP, IB, or other honors courses that will prepare them for advanced math in college. If your student enjoys languages, encourage them to choose one and study it to the highest level offered. And if your teen is curious about elective high school courses—from Philosophy or Psychology to Macroeconomics or Film—support them in diving into these subjects. High school is the perfect time to explore areas of interest while taking as challenging a course load as the student can handle while still earning excellent grades. Extracurricular and summer activities can also provide avenues for students to deepen their interests.

2. Figure out what makes them tick

Many high school students need a bit of time—and perhaps some guidance—to explore potential interests. In middle and high school, make space for your student to experiment with different possibilities for intellectual engagement. Encourage them to notice which activities or questions spark their interest, and then feed their curiosity with books, podcasts, documentaries, YouTube videos, music, projects, or any other medium that lets them plunge into their topic of choice.

Strive to be enthusiastic about your student's interests. You may have a vision of your child's future college, major, or career, but true intellectual curiosity ignites when a student has the chance to explore—in their own way—a subject that resonates with them. One of the most exciting things about nurturing your middle or high schooler's curiosity is that you never know where it may lead them. 

"I personally have never seen a student that was not curious about something. I have seen many students who have suppressed their curiosity when they enter school to such an extent as to be nearly undetectable, but it is still there. Human beings are hardwired to be curious and being curious is a major activity of childhood and young adulthood." – Ben Johnson, author of Teaching Students to Dig Deeper

3. Support them in becoming an active learner

Being intellectually curious doesn't mean spending high school with your nose stuck in a textbook. Your teen may be the kind of person who learns best through participation in projects, experiments, or other hands-on activities. Active learners dive into hands-on activities that bring the concepts they're studying to life. Once they've found a topic they think about endlessly, help them find ways to engage—through classes, clubs, mentorship, research, volunteering, or a job—with people who share their interest. 

Here are a few examples of active learning:

  • A student who excels at physics may nurture a budding interest in mechanical engineering by taking a summer job in an auto repair shop and learning how to revamp an internal combustion engine. 
  • A book lover with a passion for education might start a club that teaches literacy skills to underserved children. 
  • A student who is curious about diseases could do an independent research project with a mentor from their school or participate in research at a local university. 

Students who challenge themselves intellectually, figure out what makes them tick, and engage in their fields of interest in high school gain a deeper sense of their priorities and values. This is excellent preparation for helping them choose a college and their eventual career.

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curiosity college essay

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What Makes Successful College Essays… Successful?

Alex Collaza, Admissionado

How To Write a College Essay, Part 1 of 2

Learn the sparc method, and see college essays that worked.

You’ve probably read a sample college essay before. Applicants are bombarded with “essays that worked”—in purpose-built essay collections, English class, and even  the newspaper ." These essay examples can be invaluable, but also somewhat misleading. Your goal is not to get your essay published. It’s not even to write a good essay per se. It’s to write an essay that will get you into the college of your dreams.

The application essay examples most often seen in the wild are those that appeal to English-major types: essay collection editors, English teachers, journalists, etc. (Full disclosure: the author is guilty on all counts.) They are often well-written stories with lyrical prose that say something meaningful about the world and “what the kids are thinking.” No doubt, that kind of essay can unlock the door to an elite university. But it’s not the only way—in fact, only a tiny minority of successful college essays fit that profile.

What Do Colleges Look For in Essays?

To an audience that reads literally hundreds of application essays every year, your story is unlikely to stand out on writing skill alone. There are probably more published writers in the reject pile at Harvard than the admitted class (they need some scientists too!). A unique story won’t cut it either, because there really isn’t any such thing.

Here’s an extreme example of what I mean: In my eight years’ experience, I have read THREE application essays in which the writer survived a failed assassination attempt on them or their family. Each of those folks was totally confident that they had a story so unique and interesting that it would guarantee admission. But by the third essay, it’s not hard to think “Well sure, this is a pretty rare topic, but I've seen it done better…”

Start from the assumption that your essay will be one of many in terms of topic and writing quality. So how do you stand out? It’s not what you say, or even how you say it, but everything encoded in what you say. Think about it: If the school cared about what you wrote… wouldn’t they follow up at some point to make sure you actually took the major you said you would, or hold the beliefs you argued for, or joined XYZ university club you said you were interested in joining?

The reason no one ever follows up, is because after it fulfills its purpose, your essay goes into a permanent dead letter memory bank of “who cares?” The admissions committee is looking for applicants with maturity and the ability to excel on campus—a future student who has the gumption to navigate the abrupt transition to college. If you can recognize what traits the admissions committee is looking for, and show evidence of them, your essay will succeed.

How to Write a Good College Essay

The sparc method for writing a college essay that works.

The good news? You can convey the traits the admissions committee is looking for in an unlimited number of ways!

The bad news? You can convey the traits the admissions committee is looking for in an unlimited number of ways!

When applicants write what they think the reader wants to hear, it often doesn’t end well. Applicants who focus on certain achievements or values often don’t come across as they hoped to. For example, “I want to be seen as a leader, but I’m actually coming off as a pompous jerk who thinks an adult will be impressed that I organized a bake sale.” Or, “I want to be seen as valuing diversity, but the way I keep mentioning my friend’s racial identities is giving off a really weird vibe.”

Our approach is to not sweat values and achievements. You come to the essay writing stage of the application process having done certain things and holding certain values, and you likely can’t or shouldn’t change those at this point. Instead, the task is to frame your existing life story to show that you have desirable attributes for a university student: that “spark” of maturity and future success that gets the adcom excited.

We like to capture some of the many paths to a successful college essay through a framework we call––fittingly––SPARC:

These five occasionally overlapping ideas, taken together, capture the “special sauce” that makes one college application succeed while another fails. You don’t need to showcase all of these traits in your essays, but hopefully a few resonate with your view of yourself and give you a sense of how to pitch your candidacy.

It’s possible to have impressive achievements, but what if you never did anything unless someone asked you to? Are you the type of person who goes the extra mile, even when the task is already completed? Are you doing things because you’re propelled by some inner drive?

That ability to seize, or self-motivate, is absolutely essential on a college campus and beyond. In high school, if you’re falling behind, it’s the teacher’s job to notice that and help you get back on track. In college, it’s YOUR job to stay on track. You have to identify the problem, and you have to ask the professor for help (which most—but not all—will gladly give). Adcoms want to see that you’re the type of student who will handle this transition smoothly, because you already have a history of seizing opportunities in an independent, self-motivated way.

College Essay Example 1: Seize

This essay writer was admitted to princeton, duke, and uc berkeley.

Here’s a real example of what this can look like, from a student we worked with who recently got into Princeton, Duke, and UC Berkeley, among other schools. Details and names in all of the examples in this articles have been changed to protect our clients’ anonymity, but they are otherwise exactly as the adcom read them:

“The movement of each blade illuminated a musical harmony, and each insect scurrying around the grass was an instrument of the orchestra. When it was time to leave, the pleasant music in my head faded into a simple, unpleasant, dissonant noise as I encountered an exhibition on how climate change was destroying thousands of species of grass. That’s when I decided to dedicate my life to saving those special plants.

The next day, I built myself a garden bed out of wood and plastic that I found leftover in my uncle’s car dealership to begin researching how grasses adapt to challenging thermal scenarios. I read classic books on grass like Charles Veron’s Grasses of the World . I looked at my research from a strictly rational, mathematical and logical perspective. After months of tracking the growth rate of Chloris gayana grass under elevated temperatures, my results reflected my biggest fear: grasses will never be able to evolve that fast.”

This excerpt is powerful because it shows that the applicant’s interest in botany goes far beyond classroom assignments and the expectations of the adults in his life. He will need that motivation to succeed in Princeton’s rigorous science programs, far from home and with limited oversight.

Here are some other essay angles to consider:

  • When has something succeeded ONLY because you took it upon yourself to see it through to the end (when no one else would)?
  • What’s a belief or ideal that many others nod in agreement to, but you took ACTION on?
  • Was there ever a stalemate situation that you resolved by taking control?
  • Is there an example of an achievement or win that was only made possible because you wanted it more than others?
  • Have you ever cleaned up someone else’s mess, not sought credit for it, but did it because it simply needed doing?

Pursue is all about going after stuff that is just outside your reach. You need to give chase. And that requires putting in the work, with no guaranteed outcome.

You know what’s hard and has no guaranteed outcome? College. The worst thing an adcom can do is accept a person who then drops out part-way through. It’s their job to make sure that never happens, with tens of thousands of tuition dollars at stake. By showing persistence, determination and grit in your application essays, you can assuage these doubts.

Addressing this point is particularly important if you’re going to move somewhere far from home, are proposing to pursue a particularly tough program (i.e., pre-med), or have a history of quitting things or regularly changing your extracurricular activities.

College Essay Example 2: Pursue

The student who wrote this essay got into u of chicago, georgetown, and brown.

Here’s an example of pursuit that got a student into the University of Chicago, Georgetown, and Brown, among others:

A magical portal from the future--though perhaps not so distant in the future as we once thought. In every Star Trek ship, there’s a room with the power to change the world. It’s called the Transporter Room, and it has the ability to teleport people and equipment thousands of miles in an instant. … Meanwhile, new technological advancements are even beginning to resemble the infant phases of a teleporter. In 2017, scientists in China teleported photons 1,400 km from a satellite in orbit, and a team in Switzerland is working on a device which, once completed, may allow quantum teleportation of thousands of atoms at the speed of light through fiber optic cable. Teleportation captured my imagination completely…

It wasn’t easy to join the Anderson lab as a high school student. I reached out without any references, and it took weeks to get on the phone with one of the investigators. He was skeptical that I would be able to contribute, but my answers impressed him enough to arrange a second interview. It took four rounds, with hard studying before each interview, but I landed the internship. [...] I am determined to build on my experience at the Anderson lab and make practical teleportation a reality within my lifetime.

The big (if slightly outlandish) ideas are part of the charm here, but the real meat is the applicant’s persistence in securing her internship. That’s exactly the kind of work she’ll need to do to get lab positions on campus and impressive research internships in the summers. This is a person who understands what’s necessary to succeed in the job market.

Here are some other facets to consider with writing your essay:

  • Have you ever almost quit something? But––something compelled you to persevere?
  • Ever start something you thought would be easy, found out it was much harder than you realized… and then kept at it?
  • Have you ever developed a hunger for something precisely BECAUSE it would prove to be challenging?

Some folks are satisfied when an objective is met, or a question is answered. Others are restless, always leaning forward, never satisfied. It’s not enough to get the right answer, they need to know why. If they don’t understand something, they ask questions.

It’s this curiosity “gene” that is exciting to adcoms because it suggests a kind of intellectual restlessness. The Western college classroom is a place for debate, discussion, and disagreement. An essay that showcases you intelligently questioning conventional wisdom helps the adcom envision you as an active participant in their school’s intellectual life. While this kind of essay is valuable for everyone, it can be particularly useful for students coming from an academic tradition where classroom debate is not as encouraged.

College Essay Example 3: Ask

This sample essay's writer got into upenn, bu, and uc-berkeley.

The following example got this student into Penn, Boston University, and UC Berkeley, among other schools:

“The participatory budgeting process, allocating resources individually, intrigued me. I was excited to be doing something tangible for my community. […] In initial outreach discussions, with a goal to involve more participants, we were told to emphasize altruism, telling teens to consider other Austin communities too, since the fund is limited and must be allocated fairly across communities.

But then I asked myself, “Will this really work?” As a voracious reader of philosophy, history and economics, I had a gut feeling that it wouldn’t. I had just read John Locke’s theory that “general interest is achieved with the advancement of individual interests.” I thought about Adam Smith’s idea that “self-interested competition could benefit the society.” I decided we should tell people to be "selfish" and focus on their own needs.

I hesitated to propose this idea to my team however. As I was about to say it out loud, I realized it sounded “unnatural.” I sat and thought about it, knowing that “being selfish” could be misunderstood and come off wrong if I presented it in the wrong way. I didn’t speak up during our next meeting out of fear of rejection. However, feeling guilty about my reticence and truly concerned about the program, I went home and wrote my thoughts down. I felt compelled to tell the team my idea.

I presented my idea at the next meeting. I carefully defined “selfishness” as self-focus, a driving force to involve more teens and eventually benefit more of them. Addressing questions from my teammates, I felt great relief to hear people’s enthusiasm. Teaching teens to be “selfish” does not sound very forward-thinking, but people are more willing to participate in programs that benefit them directly.

The particular politics may not be every adcom member’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest to an admissions professional. The magic here is all in the applicant’s relationship to the group: the way he challenges his peers and is willing to put in the work to develop a well thought-out, substantial argument. This is the kind of intellectual leadership that makes a student valuable to their classmates.

Here are a few other approaches to get your creative juices flowing:

  • Have you ever been told a truth, presented a fact, etc., but not been satisfied with it?
  • Have you ever asked a question few others have asked about a particular subject?

It’s easy to “say yes” when there are no consequences to failure. The person who cares more about “the thing” than “not failing” is incredibly exciting. This person will be less vulnerable to vanity, peer pressure, etc. This is also the kind of person who might be willing to make the bold career moves (founding a company, discovering something no one else is willing to research, creating a work of truly revolutionary art) that can land an alumnus on the cover of a magazine and reflect well on the alma mater.

Of course, wanton or unwise risk taking could be a sign of immaturity. Generally the proof is in the results: a situation where the risks of failure were high, but not realized because you succeeded. Play up what could have gone wrong, then show that it ultimately didn’t, because you soberly and accurately evaluated the situation.

College Essay Example 4: Risk

This student was accepted at princeton, duke, and uc berkeley.

Below is an example of a client who found himself in a dangerous situation and decided to take a calculated risk to salvage it. This essay earned him admission to Princeton, Duke, and UC Berkeley, among other schools.

We decided to tack the sails and head further offshore, so that the gusts of the cold front emanating from the shoreline and preceding the storm would propel us home. However, as the other two were significantly smaller and lighter than us, they caught the updrafts far more easily than Harry and I, rocketing them several hundred yards in front of us. My concern grew as the moments passed. If they moved incorrectly during a strong gale, their inexperience and light weight could cause the boat to tip and throw them overboard.

And, of course, that is exactly what happened.

At first sight of the capsized children, we cranked to full speed, ditching extraneous lines and equipment to the ocean’s depths—my favorite lawn chair now rests inside Davy Jones’s Locker. I manned the rudders, the tiller, and the back ropes, while Harry controlled the jib and the boom. Harry circled them as I jumped into the waves to flip the catamaran.

Climbing atop and falling off that skiff repeatedly filled my heart with despair and my lungs with saltwater. After righting the fallen vessel, I swam back to Harry, whose circular sailing reminded me of the sharks that infest those waters. This was ample motivation for my best Michael Phelps impersonation.

The writer saved his friends’ lives by taking a risk at sea in bad weather. The stakes don’t need to be nearly that high, however! Creating a new club, taking a difficult class, choosing a particularly difficult topic for an assignment––all of these things could be risky in the way adcoms appreciate.

Consider these questions when brainstorming essay topics:

  • Ever want something, but sense that you would more likely than not FAIL, and then… do it anyway?
  • Have you ever risked your personal reputation for something you believed was right, or helpful to a greater cause?
  • Have you ever been told by the majority of folks around you “don’t do it, take the easy road, there’s too much at stake” but you chose to ignore that advice?

It’s easy to build shelves when they come in a kit. It’s much cooler when you’re starting from scratch, and need to think laterally, build something from … the resources at hand, whatever they may be. Sometimes those resources amount to nothing. If you are able to succeed “wherever you are, whatever the circumstance, whatever your resources,” it bodes well. How well can you “create” when pushed?

A common trap is considering creativity solely the domain of artsy applicants. If you can paint, play music, or write excellently, that’s a great thing to highlight, but it’s not the only way to “create.” An engineering type could create a device, a coder could create an app, but many of the most successful “creativity” essays involve applicants creating new organizations, programs or IDEAS. This type of essay is powerful because it showcases your ability to have an impact on your community, and speaks to your ability to have an impact on your college campus.

College Essay Example 5: Create

The student who wrote this sample essay got into five ivy league schools.

Here’s an excerpt from a student that scored admits at Yale, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Brown and a bunch of other schools:

Parliamentary debate has always been a search for the truth in round, but it has also become for me a search for truth on a personal level. At my first tournament, I noticed that I was the only girl and person of color in the room; I soon learned this is normal. A few disparaging remarks from judges about my “feminine” voice peppered otherwise positive feedback. To better appeal to judges, my first instinct was to mimic my successful male peers. But I soon realized that it was much more fulfilling to enhance my existing strengths.

When I realized I wasn’t the only one in this situation, I sought opportunities to mentor girls across the state. Through practice rounds, we empowered each other to build upon our strengths and preserve our diverse identities. Not only was I able to recruit more minorities to my team, but I also helped girls in Wisconsin begin small debate teams at their schools. Creating new forums for discourse has resulted in a more understanding student population, and I look forward to encouraging dialogue on campus[...]

This form of creativity has clear and direct applications to college life.

Here are some questions to consider when writing your essay:

  • Ever been deprived of certain “essential” ingredients for something, and figured out a clever solution with the resources at hand?
  • Ever find your way out of a tricky situation where there was no obvious answer by thinking outside the box?
  • Ever been stuck on a problem, and almost given up, but needed to solve it so badly that you found a new way to view the problem itself?

College Essay Ideas

Use the sparc method for essay inspiration.

Hopefully some of the essay samples and questions above have resonated with you. Pursue those ideas and imagine how they could map to a specific element of your experience. Worries like “do I have enough leadership?” or “did I win enough awards in XYZ to stand out?” are not worth considering. By the time you’re putting hands to keyboard on your application essay, it’s too late to make significant changes to your background. People who are not Olympians or valedictorians or published researchers get into top colleges every day. What matters is your ability to show your SPARC, whatever it may be.

In our next post, we’ll get into more detail about how to put your ideas on the page. In the meantime, if you’d like a free consultation with our team of admissions experts, or to take the SPARC Quiz , visit us at admissionado.com .

Read part 2 in this series on writing a successful college essay

Read on for more essay writing tips , common mistakes and examples of essays before and after revision.

Alex Collazo

Alex is the Managing Director of Systems & Content at Admissionado , a top admissions consultancy. Since graduating from Columbia University in 2013, he has worked with hundreds of MBA applicants on thousands of essays, helping his students maximize their MBA potential. From his base in New York City, he has written a wide variety of education-related reports, case studies, and articles, many of which can be found on Admissionado ’s website and Amazon store.

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Schools Are Missing What Matters About Learning

Curiosity is underemphasized in the classroom, but research shows that it is one of the strongest markers of academic success.

A boy builds a dinosaur robot; his teacher assists him.

When Orville Wright, of the Wright brothers fame, was told by a friend that he and his brother would always be an example of how far someone can go in life with no special advantages, he emphatically responded , “to say we had no special advantages … the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

The power of curiosity to contribute not only to high achievement, but also to a fulfilling existence, cannot be emphasized enough. Curiosity can be defined as “ the recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to explore, novel, challenging, and uncertain events .” In recent years, curiosity has been linked to happiness, creativity, satisfying intimate relationships, increased personal growth after traumatic experiences, and increased meaning in life. In the school context, conceptualized as a “ character strength ,” curiosity has also received heightened research attention. Having a “ hungry mind ” has been shown to be a core determinant of academic achievement, rivaling the prediction power of IQ.

Yet in actual schools, curiosity is drastically underappreciated. As Susan Engel has documented in her book, The Hungry Mind , amidst the country’s standardized testing mania, schools are missing what really matters about learning: The desire to learn in the first place. As she notes, teachers rarely encourage curiosity in the classroom—even though we are all born with an abundance of curiosity, and this innate drive for exploration could be built upon in all students.

Curiously (pun intended), curiosity is also virtually absent from the field of gifted-and-talented education. A recent survey of required identification methods across all states found that only three considered motivation a part of giftedness. IQ, on the other hand, is required by 45 states, while 39 require standardized tests of achievement.

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A recent feature story in Scientific American further punctuates this point. Misleadingly titled “ How to Raise a Genius ,” the article summarized the results of a 45-year study of children who at age 12 scored in the top 1 percent on the SATs and were subsequently tracked and then supported. At least 95 percent of the participants experienced some type of educational acceleration as a result of their identification, and most participated in enrichment programs such as Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY). The CTY program—which counts Mark Zuckerberg and Lady Gaga as alumni—was initiated to “find the kids with the highest potential for excellence in what we now call STEM,” and to figure out how to support them to increase the chances of them reaching this expected potential.

Much to the researchers’ delight, the results confirmed their expectations. Their “profoundly gifted children” indeed grew up to be an impressive group . The majority completed doctoral degrees from some of the best universities in the world (which require high test scores as a gating mechanism), and many boasted impressive literary and scientific-technical achievements, including patents and published books.

These findings suggest that early advanced test scores are an indication of one’s readiness for more enhanced resources, and this should certainly be supported. But what other conclusions can be drawn from these findings? That if you’re a parent and you want to “raise a genius” but your child isn’t precocious on academic tests at an early age, you’re out of luck? Or worse, that these are the kids, and only these kids, who the country should bank on? One of the lead authors of the study, David Lubinsky, was quoted as saying: “When you look at the issues facing society now—whether it’s health care, climate change, terrorism, energy—these are the kids who have the most potential to solve these problems. These are the kids we'd do well to bet on.”

But is this really true? The researchers selected students based on a single criterion—advanced test scores—and supported these precocious youth throughout their schooling, failing to select for some other variable and thus disregarding all the other children.

The Fullerton Longitudinal Study (FLS) , a 30-plus year study of the development of giftedness across various points in time conducted by Adele and Allen Gottfried of California State University, takes a different approach. Instead of relying on teacher nominations— recent research suggests that nominations miss at least 60 percent of gifted students—the researchers started by assessing a group of 1-year-olds, long before any of them had a chance to be officially labeled as gifted. The only criteria for inclusion in the study were that the infants had to be full term, of normal weight, and free of visual and neurological abnormalities.

They initiated their study in 1979, and have been assessing the participants based on a wide range of variables (e.g., school performance, IQ, leadership, happiness) across multiple contexts (laboratory and home) since. During infancy and the preschool years, the participants were assessed every six months, and then they were assessed annually from the ages of 5 to 17.

One of their findings supports the work of Lubinsky and colleagues: Cognitive giftedness matters. Using the standard cutoff of 130 IQ resulted in 19 percent of the 107 children identified as “intellectually gifted” at the age of 8. While intellectually gifted children were not different than the comparison group with respect to their temperament, behavioral, social, or emotional functioning, they did differ in regards to their advanced sensory and motor functioning starting at age 1.5, their ability to understand the meaning of words starting at age 1, and their ability to both understand and communicate information thereafter. They were also more goal-oriented and displayed a greater attention span. By the time they began kindergarten, they performed at a higher level across diverse subject areas. Teachers rated intellectually gifted children as more competent in the classroom.

Parents of intellectually gifted children reported similar observations and were more likely than those of average children to say that their kids actively elicited stimulation by, for example, requesting intellectual extracurricular activities. (Intellectually gifted students tended to come from families that valued intellectual and cultural pursuits.) Children who become intellectually gifted, the Gottfrieds concluded, “are more environmentally engaged and may benefit more from their environment.”

These results provide a window into the development of intellectual giftedness in relation to cognition. But they only demonstrate part of the picture. The researchers also measured what they described as academic intrinsic motivation and identified the top 19 percent of the 111 adolescent participants as “motivationally gifted,” displaying extreme enjoyment of school and of learning of challenging, difficult, and novel tasks and an orientation toward mastery, curiosity, and persistence.

Interestingly, they found very little correspondence between intellectual giftedness and motivational giftedness. While the intellectually gifted students tended to show greater intellectual curiosity from infancy through adolescence, only eight children were both intellectually gifted and motivationally gifted. Also, the overwhelming majority of the differences on the academic intrinsic-motivation test could not be explained by differences in IQ scores, and academic intrinsic motivation predicted high-school GPA independently of IQ. The takeaway: Those with gifted curiosity are gifted in their own right.

Students with gifted curiosity outperformed their peers on a wide range of educational outcomes, including math and reading, SAT scores, and college attainment. According to ratings from teachers, the motivationally gifted students worked harder and learned more.

These findings have deep implications for gifted-and-talented education, as well as for education more generally. For one, they suggest that gifted curiosity is a distinct characteristic that contributes uniquely to academic success. As the Gottfrieds put it, “motivation should be considered as a criterion in and of itself to augment the selection of students into programs for the gifted and talented.” For another, they’re evidence of the benefits of programs that engage all students in the learning process—not as a means to developing other forms of giftedness (e.g., IQ, standardized test scores), but as an important characteristic all on its own. “Motivation should not be considered simply a catalyst for the development of other forms of giftedness, but should be nurtured in its own right,” note the Gottfrieds.

Stimulating classroom activities are those that offer novelty, surprise, and complexity, allowing greater autonomy and student choice; they also encourage students to ask questions, question assumptions, and achieve mastery through revision rather than judgment-day-style testing.

But these experiences happen outside of the classroom as well. The Gottfrieds investigated the role parents play in fostering in their children an affinity for science by exposing them to new experiences that make them curious, for example, like taking them to museums. They found that such activities helped children develop an intrinsic motivation for science (e.g., “I enjoy learning new things in science; I like to find answers to questions in science”) and teacher ratings of student academic performance. In turn, both of those factors predicted the number of advanced courses taken and interest in a science career, among other outcomes. This finding has strong implications for the development of STEM considering that curiosity is a fundamental predictor of the aspiration to become a scientist.

All in all, the Fullerton study is proof that giftedness is not something an individual is either born with or without— giftedness is clearly a developmental process . It’s also proof that giftedness can be caused by various factors. As the Gottfrieds write in their book Gifted IQ: Early Developmental Aspects , “giftedness is not a chance event … giftedness will blossom when children’s cognitive ability, motivation and enriched environments coexist and meld together to foster its growth.”

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What is “intellectual curiosity” and 3 places you’ll find it.

curiosity college essay

Intellectual curiosity is one of those Yale™ phrases—it’s one of our core values, plastered all over the admissions website, reiterated every year during speeches and welcomes… In fact, for the class of 2023, president Peter Salovey dedicated his entire opening address to celebrating Yale’s “culture of curiousity.” He encouraged students to embrace their humility and admit that they have a lot left to discover. But what is intellectual curiosity,  really?  Are Yale students just natural intellectual curiosity monsters, dedicated to always searching for more information, more reading, more debate? 

The answer is no. We are normal college students (mostly), but there is something about loving the process of learning that binds us together. And it isn’t that we love readings, problem sets, or writing essays! Intellectual curiosity is a big phrase for something that’s actually very simple—the passion for hearing each other out, learning from each other, and wanting to know more. We are all curious. At Yale, you are allowed to be. So, where can you find this coveted “intellectual curiosity” on campus?

1. In the dining hall

Dining hall conversations can go in pretty much any direction. When I sit down at Saybrook’s long table—a row of tables pushed together in Saybrook’s dining hall—I never know where our “intellectual curiosity” will land us. One day we might be talking about the hidden messages in Taylor Swift’s Instagram posts and whether she is going to surprise drop another album (my money is on December 26th, 2021, but let’s check back in about it). The next the conversation might be about prison abolition and what alternatives to incarceration are most likely to be implemented first. 

2. On the walk home 

Whether you’re walking from class to the Schwarzman center, from the LGBT co-op to your residential college, or from the shops around the New Haven green to your section in the Humanities Quadrangle, you will probably pass through Cross Campus. Cross Campus is the area of campus located right in front of Sterling Memorial Library. It is a big courtyard with lots of paths that intersect with each other. Functionally, this means that Cross Campus is the perfect spot for student groups to set up their information tables. On the walk home, you can stop and learn about the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project (YUPP), Sustainability at Yale, or Dwight Hall’s Volunteering efforts. Be curious and don’t shy away from the pamphlets!

3. In the classroom

This one’s a no-brainer. The seminar table is like an intellectual curiosity rap-battle. 

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Most friends chuckle when I tell them that my favorite TV show is Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its host, the Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is my hero. They get startled knowing that I spend Friday nights at the observatory of a local university, peering through a 20-inch telescope at the moon, globular clusters, planets, nebulas, and galaxies. They gave up listening on knowing that I usually spend several hours a night watching YouTube clips on the double slit theory, the effect of gravity on time, subatomic particles, and other mysteries related to the very essence of the universe.

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The Importance Of Being Curious

curiosity college essay

“Why do I feel cold and shiver when I have a fever?”

I knew the day would come when my little girl would learn to talk and inevitably start asking those much-anticipated questions. The questions themselves weren’t worrying me.  I was actually looking forward to seeing where her curiosity would lie.

What was bothering me was whether or not I would know the answers.

In the age of the smartphone, this may seem like a silly worry.  Surely, the answers to almost everything would be just one Google away.

Still, I struggled with how I was going to prepare to become an all-knowing mother. Then one day it struck me: I didn’t need to have all the answers. What a great example I could set if I let my daughter know that I, too, am still learning. And I realized how much more I could learn if I took another look at things I thought I already knew the answer to with the curiosity of a child. My little girl’s mind is a beginner’s mind – curious, open to new ideas, eager to learn, and not based on preconceived notions or prior knowledge. I decided that I would approach her questions with a beginner’s mind, too.

Once I decided to become more curious, I started noticing that curiosity was becoming more prominent in the workplace, too. Leaders, it seems, don’t need to have all the answers, either. But they do need to be curious.

Curious about curiosity, I searched for answers, and found frequent references to Albert Einstein’s famous words, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” We might well quibble with the notion that Einstein had no “special talent,” but he wouldn’t have solved the riddles of the universe if not for his passionate curiosity. Then I came across another Einstein quote: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”

Curiosity’s reason for existence in the workplace

Decades ago, management thinker Peter Drucker placed knowing the right questions to ask at the core of his philosophy on strategic thinking. Many of today’s leaders have adopted Drucker’s “be (intelligently) curious” philosophy, an approach that is becoming more salient as the world increases in complexity.

Warren Berger, in “ Why Curious People Are Destined for the C-Suite, ” cited Dell CEO Michael Dell’s response to a PwC survey that asked leaders to name a trait that would most help CEOs succeed. Dell’s answer? “I would place my bet on curiosity.” Dell was not alone. Alan D. Wilson, then CEO of McCormick & Company, responded that those who “are always expanding their perspective and what they know – and have that natural curiosity – are the people that are going to be successful.”

Leaders don’t need to know everything. In fact, it’s an impossibility. Things change too rapidly for that. What worked yesterday can’t be guaranteed to work tomorrow. Disrupters are just around the corner. If you’re not one of them, you may well end up a disruptee. Today’s leaders need to be curious, and know how to ask the questions that lead them to consider new ideas.

How we can all develop curiosity

Becoming a mum has taught me how to handle my little girl’s curiosity. It strikes me that leaders in new roles also have to learn what to do and how to act in ways that are new and different. What I find works best is approaching your new role with a curiosity mindset, completely open to new ideas and suggestions. Here are some ways to develop your curiosity:

  • Apply a beginner’s mind:  Be open to and look for new and novel ways of doing things.
  • Ask questions, listen and observe:  Seek first to understand, not to explain.
  • Try something new:  Take a different route to work, read a book in a genre you usually avoid, go to an art gallery you wouldn’t normally go to. Each of these activities opens your mind to new points of view.
  • Be inquisitive:  Ask others their opinions, perspectives, and their approaches to certain things. Everyone does things a bit differently, and there are potential new answers and solutions to problems hidden in other people’s thinking.

These are a few of my ideas. I’d be interested in hearing yours. How do you stay curious?

Dalia Molokhia is a senior learning solutions manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at  [email protected] .

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Home — Application Essay — National Universities — The Pursuit of Intellectual Curiosity: A Journey to Wellesley College

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The Pursuit of Intellectual Curiosity: A Journey to Wellesley College

  • University: Wellesley College

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Words: 737 |

Published: Feb 15, 2024

Words: 737 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

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Introduction, academic excellence and critical thinking, empowering women, diversity and inclusion, vibrant campus life, renowned faculty and experiential learning.

In an era of boundless opportunities, I approach my college aspirations with a profound desire to embrace intellectual growth and contribute meaningfully to society. As a young woman determined to carve her own path, I find Wellesley College to be the epitome of academic excellence, empowering women to become leaders and change-makers. The distinguished reputation of Wellesley, coupled with its commitment to fostering an inclusive community, has ignited my passion to join this esteemed institution.

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From an early age, I have been captivated by the power of knowledge. Born into a family that values education, I grew up surrounded by books and stimulating conversations that nurtured my intellectual curiosity. This environment has fostered my innate desire to explore the unknown, to challenge conventional wisdom, and to make a positive impact on the world.

Through extensive research, I have discovered that Wellesley College is renowned for its rigorous academic programs and commitment to fostering critical thinking. This aligns perfectly with my personal and intellectual goals, as I strive to be a lifelong learner and engage with diverse perspectives. The liberal arts education at Wellesley offers an interdisciplinary approach that would allow me to delve into a wide range of subjects. The breadth of the curriculum, from the humanities to the sciences, would empower me to develop a well-rounded understanding of the world and its complexities.

One aspect of Wellesley College that particularly resonates with me is its emphasis on empowering women. In today's society, where gender equality is still an elusive goal, Wellesley's dedication to promoting female leadership is truly commendable. As a firm believer in the potential of women, I am inspired by the stories of Wellesley alumnae who have shattered glass ceilings and paved the way for future generations. I aspire to become part of this legacy of trailblazing women, who, through their education and determination, have made lasting impacts in various fields.

Furthermore, Wellesley College's commitment to creating an inclusive community aligns with my own values. In a world that is increasingly interconnected, I believe that embracing diversity is not only crucial but also enriching. The opportunity to learn and grow alongside individuals from diverse backgrounds would broaden my horizons, challenge my assumptions, and foster a global mindset. I yearn to be part of a community where diverse perspectives are not only tolerated but celebrated, as this is where true innovation and progress are born.

Beyond the classroom, Wellesley College offers a vibrant campus life that encourages personal development and community engagement. From clubs and organizations to research opportunities, the college provides an array of avenues for students to pursue their passions and explore their potential. The sense of community at Wellesley is fostered through traditions such as Step Sing and Flower Sunday, which create a familial atmosphere where lifelong friendships are formed. As someone who believes in the transformative power of collaboration and shared experiences, Wellesley's vibrant campus life holds great appeal to me.

In addition, the esteemed faculty at Wellesley College is a testament to the institution's commitment to academic excellence. The opportunity to learn from distinguished scholars who are leaders in their respective fields is a privilege I yearn to experience. The mentorship and guidance of these renowned educators would provide me with the necessary tools to push boundaries, think critically, and contribute meaningfully to the academic community. Furthermore, Wellesley College's emphasis on experiential learning and internships aligns perfectly with my desire to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application. The opportunity to engage in hands-on research and internships would not only deepen my understanding of my chosen field but also allow me to apply my knowledge to solve real-world problems. This approach to education would equip me with the skills and experiences necessary to navigate an ever-changing world.

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In conclusion, my journey to Wellesley College is fueled by a passion for intellectual growth, a commitment to female empowerment, and a desire to create positive change. The college's esteemed academic programs, emphasis on diversity and inclusion, vibrant campus life, and renowned faculty make it the perfect setting for me to thrive and reach my full potential. I am eager to embark on this transformative journey, where I can cultivate my passions, forge lifelong connections, and contribute meaningfully to society. With Wellesley College as my compass, I am confident that I will not only succeed academically but also make a lasting impact on the world.

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curiosity college essay

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Home » Tufts University » How Do You Show Intellectual Curiosity In College Essay?

How Do You Show Intellectual Curiosity In College Essay?

Table of Contents

Intellectual Curiosity Use anecdotes, such as a classroom experience or time you performed independent research, to illustrate your passion for learning . You might also relate a question that inspired you. This is another essay where it’s important to show, not tell.

How would you describe intellectual curiosity?

Here is an intellectual curiosity definition: Intellectual curiosity is a person’s willingness and desire to learn new things and dig deeper than the surface . Intellectual curiosity makes learning a much more natural process, instead of just a duty or a chore.

How do you demonstrate intellectual?

8 Ways to Increase Your Intellectual Capacity

  • Expand your horizons. Expanding your horizons unlocks the world to you by introducing you to possibility.
  • Be imaginative.
  • Pleasure reading.
  • Train your brain.
  • Consistently learn.
  • Physical activity.
  • Get enough sleep.
  • How you dress.

How do you satisfy intellectual curiosity?

10 Ways to Stimulate a Student’s Curiosity

  • Value and reward curiosity.
  • Teach students how to ask quality questions.
  • Notice when kids feel puzzled or confused.
  • Encourage students to tinker.
  • Spread the curiosity around.
  • Use current events.
  • Teach students to be skeptics.
  • Explore a variety of cultures and societies.

How do you show your passion in college essay?

A better guideline: write about what you’ve spent a lot of time on . Start by looking at what you’ve spent the most time on, then figure out which activities you particularly enjoyed, and then remember how you became interested in those activities and detail why they are important to you.

What is intellectual curiosity essay?

How would you describe your intellectual ability.

Intellectual capacity is your ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline . A helpful analogy is to think of it as your processor or operating system—building this capacity allows you to do more in less time and with less energy.

What are examples of intellectual skills?

Memory, comprehension, reasoning, analyzing, and problem solving are examples of intellectual skills that companies desire for their workers. Strength, stamina, coordination, psychomotor, and sensory skills are the top elements needed for physical work.

What sparks your intellectual curiosity?

There are many different things that a person may say when asked what sparks their intellectual curiosity. For some it may be along the basis of greed or want of knowledge. Others may just simply love to learn, and their pleasure from learning is what sparks their curiosity.

How do you demonstrate curiosity in the workplace?

The space for inquisitiveness can be created in small and unexpected ways without any elaborate changes to your lifestyle.

  • Slow down to create time for research and reflection.
  • Be open to the opinions and ideas of others.
  • Practice asking “why” and other good questions.
  • Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

What are colleges looking for in essays?

As part of the college application process, colleges ask prospective students for a personal essay in order to learn more about them. They want to see context on each student’s background, positive traits that the student could bring to campus, and examples of the student demonstrating those qualities .

What should you not write in a college essay?

Many essays included things that you should not do in your college admissions essay including: Never rehash your academic and extracurricular accomplishments . Never write about a “topic” Never start with a preamble.

What makes you a strong candidate for college essay?

Whether reflected in the essay or the thoughtful confluence of the academic course load and extracurricular activities, a successful applicant should highlight an ability to overcome obstacles and garner results . It’s about proving you can produce outcomes, both on the part of the student and the university.

How can I be curious in college?

Encourage them to notice which activities or questions spark their interest, and then feed their curiosity with books, podcasts, documentaries, YouTube videos, music, projects, or any other medium that lets them plunge into their topic of choice. Strive to be enthusiastic about your student’s interests.

What is an intellectual experience?

Common Intellectual Experiences (CIEs) refer to any curricular and/or co-curricular program designed to build a student cohort focused on a common, broad theme .

How do you describe someone’s intelligence?

Some common synonyms of intelligent are alert, clever, and quick-witted . While all these words mean “mentally keen or quick,” intelligent stresses success in coping with new situations and solving problems.

What are intellectual skills for students?

Intellectual skills are defined as the methods an individual can use to evaluate or organize information and data . In the 1950s, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom created a model of intellectual skills that defined abilities such as application, analysis and synthesis as building on basic knowledge.

How can students improve their intellectual skills?

Teach students to develop divided attention for multitasking . This will help in developing highly functional cognitive skills. Practicing mindfulness a few times a week for children help in concentration. Processing speed is the time taken by the mind to process information or command.

What is an example of curiosity?

The definition of curiosity is anything strange or rare, or having an interesting in learning or knowing something. An example of a curiosity is a little known and interesting fact about a subject . An example of curiosity is always asking questions, reading books and going out to try to learn about the world.

Why is curiosity important for learning?

Encouraging students to embrace their curiosity is an important part of education. Curiosity is key to learning. In fact, studies show that, when we’re curious about a subject, we are much more likely to remember information we learned about that subject .

Why do you want to go to this college essay?

Tips for Writing the “Why This College” Essay Make a list of the reasons you decided to apply . Research unique opportunities related to your academic and extracurricular interests. Pick your top academic reasons for applying, and your top extracurricular/social reasons.

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By Cary Hardy

Hi there! I'm Cary Hardy, an education expert and consultant. I've worked with students of all ages and backgrounds, and I love helping them unlock their full potential. I'm also a big believer in lifelong learning- there's always something new to learn!

I got my start in education as a teacher, working with students in grades K-12. After several years of teaching, I transitioned into the world of educational consulting. I've since worked with schools and districts all over the country, helping them improve their curriculums and instruction methods.

I'm passionate about helping people achieve their dreams, and I believe that education is the key to unlocking everyone's potential. Thanks for reading!

You might also like:

Is tufts university a party school, what percentage of tufts students get into medical school, is tufts a fun college.

Is writing an essay about my curiosity too common?

So I wrote a rough draft of my personal statement and it’s about my curiosity inside and outside of the class room. I use a specific event from preschool first and then kind of move my way along my timeline of life until present day in which I’m as curious as ever. Is this too common/ boring a topic for an essay?

there is no boring topic, only boring writing. Make sure the essay really shows your personality.

Curiosity a quality that is highly valued in higher education. And by admissions committees. So it is always a good theme. It becomes a good essay when your examples and insights are interesting.

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How to Write the Haverford College Essays 2023-2024

curiosity college essay

Haverford College has two, short supplemental essays: one about your intellectual interests, and one about Haverford’s Honor Code. As a small, academically rigorous school just a short train ride from Philadelphia, Haverford attracts a competitive pool of applicants, so you want to make sure your essays stand out. In this post, we’ll break down both prompts, and explain how to write strong responses to each one.

Haverford College Honor Code

Before we dive into the essays, we want to provide some background on the Haverford Honor code. Here’s what you need to know.

Haverford College has one of the oldest and one of the very few student-run Honor Codes in the U.S. Our Honor Code is not a set of rules, but rather a statement of shared values centered on the concepts of trust, concern, and respect.

Our Honor Code serves as an educational tool in and of itself and provides a powerful framework for our community, emphasizing and supporting qualities we see as essential to a Haverford education. Among other things, the Honor Code at Haverford shapes:

Academic Freedom: The Honor Code fosters an atmosphere emphasizing academic integrity, collaboration over competition, and the cultivation of intellectual curiosity. Differences and disagreement are respected, valued, and embraced, and open discourse is seen as fundamental to the academic endeavor.

Student Agency: The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community. Student ownership is reflected in self-scheduled exams, in the fact that every student completes a Senior Thesis, in shared responsibility for the residential experience, and of course in oversight of the Honor Code itself.

Community: The Honor Code establishes a supportive environment for living and learning, where the community experience plays a central role in one’s education. The inherent value of every community member is recognized, and diversity in all respects — including diversity of background, experience, and perspective — is nurtured, celebrated, and embraced.

Leadership and Engagement: The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance, to learn methods of problem solving and conflict resolution, and to examine the ways they can and will impact the world beyond Haverford.

Before delving into Haverford’s supplementary essays, it is extremely important to have a solid understanding of Haverford’s Honor Code and its role in Haverford’s community. At first glance, Haverford’s Honor Code may appear to be an explicit set of rules that are designed to govern the lives of students, forcing them to comply with specific guidelines and standards. However, the goal of the Honor Code is not to restrict students, but rather to allow for more freedom.

The Honor Code fosters a community grounded in honesty, fairness, and respect. These values create an environment where students feel not only comfortable, but confident sharing their own ideas, opinions, and beliefs. Diversity in thought, belief, culture, and perspective are not only recognized, but accepted and celebrated.

The values of the Honor Code afford students an unprecedented level of control over their education and community. Since it is expected that students adhere to a high degree of honesty and integrity, students are trusted by the administration as well as their professors and peers. For instance, Haverford students don’t have RAs in their dorms, are allowed to take tests without proctors, and are able to schedule their own final exams. These freedoms and privileges can exist because of the values of the Honor Code. 

Haverford’s Honor Code also presents an opportunity for self-governance. At Plenary, an all-student “governing” session, students can debate and vote to revise the Honor Code. In this way, students have the autonomy to change and improve Haverford’s campus. 

While Haverford’s Honor Code is taken seriously, consequences for infractions are not seen as punishments, rather as opportunities to instill lifelong lessons. Consequences are decided upon by the Honor Council, composed of students, not members of the school administration. It is the hope of the Haverford community that through this process, students will take ownership for their bad decisions, learn from them, grow as community members, and realize that they have the power to control their circumstances both inside and outside the classroom.

As you write your supplemental essays, keep Haverford’s values in mind. Incorporating their values into your essays not only shows that you did your research, but also creates connections between yourself and the Haverford community. For instance, Haverford’s collaborative environment could enable you to work with your peers to understand complicated mathematical theorems. Or, Haverford’s respectful and accepting community could empower you to debate the best policies to solve climate change. Regardless of the interests you choose to express in your essays, it is always a good idea to connect your thoughts to Haverford’s Honor Code and core values. 

Haverford College Supplemental Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. How do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at Haverford? (150-200 words)

Prompt 2: We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you? 

As you think about how to answer this question, you might draw from how you have been influenced by other communities you have been a part of, experiences you may have had within your communities, or opportunities you have had to shape or even change your communities. (150-200 words)

Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. how do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at haverford (150-200 words).

This prompt is an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your interest in a specific subject or topic. Although it is not a “Why Major?” prompt, as you have the freedom to write about any of your intellectual interests, not just your intended major, the overall structure of the essay will be similar: you want to select one of your interests, which could be as obscure as Victorian fashion or as common as math, and explain why and how your topic excites your intellectual curiosity, as well as how you’ll be able to continue learning about it at Haverford.

Starting your essay with an anecdote is a great way to show your interest in your topic to readers, rather than simply telling them about it. For example, you could begin by telling the story of how you became interested in art after your first visit to an art museum. Or, you could describe what thoughts and emotions you experience when creating art. Since you’re dealing with a low word count, your story should be pretty simple, as you don’t have the space to flesh out something complicated.

The next part of your essay should focus on the deeper reason why you are so interested in your topic or subject. In other words, what specifically about your topic makes you excited to learn more? Maybe you love science because it explains how everything in the world works, from plants growing to playing tennis. Or, maybe you’re passionate about music because it has the power to inspire and connect people.

While this essay is a short one, you ideally also want to explain, at least briefly, what you do to satisfy your curiosity about this topic. Do you read every available book on Egyptian pyramids? Do you debate the most successful political campaign strategies with your family at dinner? This extra detail will give your reader a clearer sense of how your interest in your topic manifests on a daily basis, which will make your interest feel more tangible and genuine.

Finally, you want to connect your interest in your topic to your potential future as a Haverford student. Hop onto Haverford’s website, and do some research on classes, clubs, or other opportunities at Haverford that will allow you to keep learning about it. Since you probably won’t have much room left by this point, you want to pick just one or two things, as otherwise the end of your essay will feel cramped and rushed.

For example, you could talk about how the College Year in Athens study abroad program would deepen your understanding of Greek mythology, by allowing you to see firsthand many of the sites that were most important to the Ancient Greeks. 

Alternatively, you could write about how the clubs Charcuterie Union and Food for Thought would expand upon your interest in cooking, and help you develop a more comprehensive understanding of the role food can play in different people’s lives.

We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you?

Brainstorming Your Topic

This prompt tells you pretty much exactly what it wants to know: the values you’re looking for in a college community, and how those values align with Haverford’s. However, while the questions are clear, answering them thoughtfully may take some time, as you’ll need to reflect on what your values truly are.

With a question as open-ended as “What do you value in your communities?” sometimes asking yourself related, slightly more focused questions can help you brainstorm more efficiently. Here are some examples of those kinds of questions:

  • What are some of your favorite communities you’re a part of? What makes you love them so much?
  • When you think about your friends, what qualities do many of them share?
  • Look at your complete college list—why are you applying to this particular set of schools, out of all the colleges in the United States and across the world?

The actual values you choose are much less important than those values being genuinely important to you. One applicant might write an excellent essay about trust, while someone else might write an equally strong one about open-mindedness. But if you try to force a connection to something that isn’t really one of your primary values, your reader will be able to tell you aren’t being fully authentic.

Finally, as you’re brainstorming you’ll likely come up with a list of several different values. But because this essay is so short, you’ll want to focus on just one, or two at the most, once you start writing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to give each value the attention it needs, and your essay will end up feeling all over the place.

Tips for Writing Your Essay

In your actual essay, the most important thing to do is connect the value or two you’re focusing on to Haverford’s values, specifically those laid out in the Honor Code. If you’re having a hard time doing that, you may want to go back to the drawing board. For example, valuing a good sense of humor is a wonderful thing, but doesn’t connect super well to anything in the Honor Code.

A better thing to focus on would be, say, speaking up about what’s important to you. You could easily connect that value to the following two lines of the Honor Code:

  • “The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance.”
  • “The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community.”

Once you feel confident that you’ve linked your own values to Haverford’s, you want to think about how to clearly explain that link to admissions officers. Here, Haverford is once again being considerate, and telling you pretty much exactly how they want you to do that, in the second paragraph of the prompt.

To summarize, that paragraph is telling you to use concrete examples and anecdotes to explain how you came to have this particular value. In other words, show, don’t tell, because otherwise, your reader won’t really understand what you having this value says about your personality as a whole. Plenty of people value outspokenness, but the point of the college essay is to distinguish yourself from other applicants. So, you want to show what the value you have chosen means in the context of your life specifically, and why that value’s importance in your life has inspired you to apply to Haverford. 

For example, you could talk about how you hated attention as a kid, and preferred to just spend time with your family’s pets. But during the pandemic, seeing people adopt pets for company without knowing how to take care of them frustrated you to the point that you started your own YouTube channel, to explain how to avoid making common first-time pet owner mistakes. To your surprise, the channel became extremely popular, and many people wrote comments thanking you for your help. Speaking up is still hard for you, though, and being on Haverford’s campus, where outspokenness is encouraged, will help you continue to get better at it.

Mistakes to Avoid

Because this prompt is so explicit about what it wants, it’s pretty hard to get totally off-track. The only thing you really want to be wary of is using your space in an inefficient way. 200 words will disappear quickly, so you want to make sure you’re being thoughtful about how long you spend addressing each part of the prompt.

Otherwise, you may end up accidentally using 160 words explaining how you came to have the value you’re focusing on, and then have to cram in the connection to Haverford at the very end. There’s no one correct breakdown of how long you should spend on each point of your essay, as ideally one thing flows naturally into the next. Just make sure the connection to Haverford gets enough room to breathe, as, since that part is likely going to come at the end, it’s at the most risk of getting cut short.

Where to Get Your Haverford Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Haverford essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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