How to Write the Duke University Supplemental Essays

This question is a variation of the “Why This College?” question. The prompt can be separated into three discrete parts: a description of your overall sense of the Duke community, why it is a good fit for you, and the specific aspects of Duke’s academics and campus life that appeal to you. While you do not need to answer each element in this order, your essay should address each component.

The first component requires you to articulate your perception of Duke. Perhaps you see it as a place where rigorous academics meet a vibrant, collaborative community, fostering both intellectual and personal growth. Mention specific characteristics that stand out to you, such as Duke’s emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, the spirit of innovation, or the strong sense of community and school spirit embodied by events like basketball games at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

As you tackle the second component, consider the question: what about Duke makes it the best fit for you and offers you the chance to do something that you could not do at any other university? This is where you should compellingly articulate why Duke is an ideal place for you to continue your education.

Finally, illustrate and elaborate on why Duke is the best first for you by identifying a specific class, lab, resource, or program that is of particular interest to you at Duke. For example, if you’re passionate about environmental science and public policy, demonstrate how Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the Sanford School of Public Policy would support your interests and goals. Explain how their interdisciplinary approach and opportunities for hands-on research resonate with your desire to tackle real-world environmental challenges. If you’re drawn to Duke’s commitment to service and civic engagement, discuss programs like DukeEngage and how they align with your dedication to making a positive impact on society. Dive deeper and do your homework about what you plan to take advantage of once on campus.

Don’t forget to make this entry interesting and engaging to read. No matter what you are saying, there is always an engaging way to say it!

Playing soccer for over fifteen years, I am grateful for the countless friendships I have forged. Unfortunately, many inevitably hang up their cleats after high school and adapt to a more sedentary lifestyle, one often accompanied by mental health struggles.

While soccer initially ignited my passion, promoting health and well-being has become a stronger calling. Working with our school doctor, I conducted a survey to yield insights into the prevalence of mental health challenges and sedentary behavior among students. Results highlighted barriers to physical activity, like lack of social connections. These insights helped shape school-wide strategies for encouraging healthier student lives.

Eager to continue learning “the Duke way,” I seek to cultivate my passion for Psychology and Neuroscience at Trinity, where I’ll study the neural influences on motivation and decision-making in neuroscience courses, and improve my understanding of the benefits of physical activity through courses like “Exercise and Mental Health.”

I look forward to continuing my wellness research through Duke’s Bass Connections, working on a project like Creating a Contemplative Community: The Impact of Mindfulness on Student Well-Being.

Much like soccer’s camaraderie, Duke’s community wonderfully emulates the team environment inside and outside of the classroom. From engaging FOCUS group seminars and dinners to contributing to the Blue Devil Wellness Exchange, I know I’ll feel right at home on campus. Bringing heart and passion to classes, clubs, and cheering at Cameron Stadium, there’s no doubt in my mind I’ll feel very much a part of the Blue Devil family.

This supplement is asking you to elaborate on how your identity contributes to the communities you are a part of. We are all a product of our environments, so write about how your communities, contexts, and background have impacted your perspective. Which communities do you come from? What impact have they had on your views, beliefs, and experiences? Who and what has shaped you? How have your unique attributes enriched a community you’re involved in? This is a time to be transparent and authentic—paint your readers a genuine, insightful, and self-aware picture of yourself. You may choose to define “community” traditionally—your sports team, classmates, religious youth group—or a bit more creatively—a fan group you are a part of, a geographic or linguistic community, an expatriate community—for example. Finally, be sure to connect your prior experiences to your hopes and goals for your experience at Duke—what does your background indicate about the kind of community member you will be on your future college campus?

Remember, trying to impress admission officers will likely come off boastful, and groups like National Honors Society typically do not have a strong, meaningful community associated with them. Be honest and humble, and tell readers something that they may not learn about you from the rest of your application.

“Yoga is not about the shape of your body but the shape of your life.”

Every Sunday at 7 p.m., my yoga teacher welcomes our class to the mat with this quote.

Jenn, who is nearly seventy, leans into her down-dogs to my right and Nick, her nine-year-old grandson, frequently lets out soft giggles as he cat-cows to my left. Just ten hours earlier, I left soccer practice exhausted, ruminating on my coach’s instructions to set one physical goal for the coming week, shave our mile-time ten seconds, do three long runs when last week he only imposed two… The list is always demanding, meant to push us to meet his exacting standards. There’s a method to his madness, and it has produced results for my team. We finished our last season as reigning state champions, bested only by Florida in the national finals last winter.

Yoga, on the other hand, has brought me the opposite gift: radical acceptance. You bring your present self to the mat day in and day out—linear progress is not the name of the game. Some days, Jenn slips into scorpion pose while Nick slips into a brief nap. Becoming a part-time yogi has taught me to meet my body, my mind, and my community where it is—a lesson that I will bring into this new chapter. As a member of the Duke community, I plan to be present, authentic, and teachable, knowing that accepting myself and others is the foundation for learning and growth.

Known as the “disagreement question,” this type of prompt has two primary intentions—first, it is meant to provide admissions officers with a deeper sense of what a student truly cares about. When answering this question, you should select a disagreement that illustrates to your readers one thing that ignites your passion or shows a core conviction. While Duke is not looking for students who will be overly argumentative or contrarian, they do want to admit students with strong beliefs, a clear point of view, and a confidence in their values. This doesn’t mean that the disagreement has to be a transhistorical ethical conundrum or a hot-button issue in global politics; for instance, you might share about how a minor religious disagreement with your parents led you to become a more independent thinker or how a clash with other students during a group project made you realize your need to let go of control in some circumstances. What matters is not that the disagreement has universal significance or that it will appear “important” to your readers, but that it is significant to you and shows what you care about.

Second, the question requires you to reflect on how the experience helped you grow. While you should have a strong sense of your belief system, college is all about evolving as a person and thinker in the midst of differing perspectives. Admissions officers want to see that you are teachable, open-minded, and eager to benefit from the diverse intellectual community you will encounter in college. With this in mind, you should clearly articulate how you were positively changed as a result of the experience.

I used to pretend not to notice. Just a few feet away, a person holding a cardboard sign would peer into the line of car windows. As they slowly walked the median, my dad would mutter, “I wish I could help, but they’d probably just use the money for drugs anyways.”

My discomfort at stop lights was not just the result of feeling sorry for the person on the other side of the car window; it was also the result of a fundamental rift in the way my dad and I saw the world. That rift became even more apparent when I began volunteering with an organization that helped unhoused people develop professional skills and prepare for job interviews. These people were doing everything my dad insisted they should be—and yet, many still struggled to find work. They were single mothers, people who escaped abuse, addicts in recovery, people who’d been laid off after extended illnesses.

One day, I finally worked up the courage to say something at the stoplight. “We should give him something,” I said, looking out at the man holding a cardboard sign. When my parents began to object, I defiantly lowered my window, placing a $20 bill in his hands.

Twenty dollars wasn’t enough to change this person’s circumstances, but it was enough to begin to change how my dad viewed people in dire circumstances. My parents still don’t always give money at stoplights. But now, they see people there, and that’s at least a start.

This prompt is your opportunity to “nerd out.” The key to answering this question compellingly is authenticity. Don’t write about a topic that you think will impress admissions officers—write about something that you genuinely care about. When was the last time your curiosity got the better of you? When have you lost track of time reading about a niche interest or researching a new passion? Do you have a strange obsession, weird hobby, or unexpected interest? What is something you could discuss endlessly, even though it might seem boring or inconsequential to others?

While your topic can correlate to your intended major or area of study, this prompt offers a wonderful opportunity to showcase who you are outside of your primary academic interest and add depth and dynamism to your application. Perhaps you just mastered a new knitting technique or discovered a new book series; maybe you plucked up the courage to email an artist that you admire and actually got a reply—whatever the case may be, your enthusiasm should shine through the essay and shed further light on who you are and what you value.

Apricity: noun, the warmth of the sun in winter.

I discovered this word during one of my many recent adventures in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it felt like striking gold. I eagerly added it to the back of my journal, where I’ve kept a running list titled “Words That Make Me Feel Seen” since eighth grade. It started with petrichor, the scent of rain on dry ground. The term put into three syllables a sensation that I thought only I experienced; I suddenly had a vocabulary for that delightful, one-of-a-kind experience I so relished. Ever since, I have become a gatherer of these idiosyncratic words. Clinomania is an overwhelming desire to stay in bed. Pronoia is the belief that everyone is conspiring to help you. Lethologica is the inability to remember a particular word or name.

While many of my peers only open the thesaurus when a paper deadline is approaching, I have formed a whole community in the digital spaces of the r/words subreddit. As a student at Duke, I look forward to not only adding exciting new terms to my longstanding list, but forging real-world friendships with other logophiles like me.

This new prompt reflects the evolving new technological landscape universities are navigating with AI. Unlike the other required and optional prompts, this question does not necessarily require a narrative response, but instead calls for a more critical and explanatory essay. In asking you to share about your own convictions about AI use, the university wants to see that you are not only a critical and self-reflective user of technology, but that you are a principled and thoughtful person.

The first part of the prompt identifies two primary concerns that the initiative is exploring: the ethics of AI and AI in the classroom. You might use these two spheres as a starting point for brainstorming your answer. Are you concerned about AI plagiarism or the potential for AI to steal elements of other creators’ work? Are you worried that AI will displace innumerable workers in a variety of fields? Have you read about the unhealthy relationships that young people have formed with chatbots and want to see restrictions imposed? If any of these issues interest you or impact your thinking, you might focus your answer on an ethical challenge posed by AI. On the other hand, if you have strong feelings about AI in the classroom—perhaps you want to see teachers help students develop AI literacy, perhaps you worry about widespread cheating with AI, perhaps you believe that AI has no place at all in the classroom—then you should pursue the second topic.

In either case, devote some time to truly unpacking and articulating your convictions about the issue. Don’t simply say you want to ban AI on campus because you think the admissions officers will respond well to that position. Show the committee that you can thoughtfully consider a pressing issue and articulate a clear perspective—that is what college is all about, after all!

Three hours. Four class periods. That is how long my Honors English class spent discussing a single sentence in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! during my junior year. The sentence was over one thousand words long and the most complex I have ever seen. Even after three hours of discussion, there was more to be said: the novel seemed to provide endless fodder for interpretation, analysis, argumentation, revision, and imagination.

A recent article in the New Yorker controversially claimed that AI can ease some of the hardships of laborious readings by providing neat summaries or even simplified revisions of classic texts like Dickens’ Bleak House. But this suggestion entirely negates the great value of wrestling with a text: in battling the difficult grammar, sprawling length, dense imagery, and stylistic nuances of Faulkner’s writing in my junior English class, I came to appreciate the value of language itself. The reading process isn’t just about comprehension any more than looking at a painting is just about determining what its subject is. Appreciating an author’s technique and unique style is an essential part of understanding a text. With that in mind, I believe it is deeply important to avoid AI when it comes to reading and discussing literature, as it brings a utilitarian and mechanical approach to something that is inherently a human art.