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How to Write the University of North Carolina Essays

Updated for 2025-2026

The UNC-Chapel Hill community is vibrant and diverse, and these supplemental essays offer the opportunity for applicants to show how they will contribute distinctively to it! These two 250-word essays ask you to draw upon both your personal experiences and knowledge of UNC’s unique offerings to illustrate your values, character and enthusiasm for the school. Don’t know where to start? Take a look at our extensive guide below!

2025-2026 Short answer prompts

We’d like to know how you’d contribute to the Carolina community and ask that you respond to each prompt in up to 250 words.

Discuss one of your personal qualities and share a story, anecdote, or memory of how it helped you make a positive impact on a community. This could be your current community or another community you have engaged. (250 words)

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Explanation:

To answer this prompt successfully, break it down into its two primary components. First, the prompt asks you to share a unique quality about yourself, an integral trait that informs your story and experiences. Ideally, pick a trait that aligns with those UNC uses to describe Tar Heels. For this portion, you should take time to carefully consider which of your numerous qualities is most reflective of your core values, identity, and worldview.

The second part prompts you to reflect on how this quality has helped you to enact positive change in your community, whether big or small. As you select an anecdote to illustrate this unique personal attribute, ask yourself how you could use this attribute to make a positive contribution to the UNC community, as well. Most importantly, be specific. Find clear and distinct examples of an academic program, student club, or another component of your community that you have shaped as a result of your character, actions, and dynamism.

As you tackle this prompt, it is important to focus on one aspect of your identity—do not try to tie in 2-3 different qualities. You only have 250 words, and UNC is not looking for a ‘well-rounded’ student—they want to learn about one key attribute that sets you apart from the crowd! To accomplish this, use these 250 words to demonstrate a particular quality and anecdote that sends a clear message about your personality and values.

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Sample:

“I don’t know if I agree with that interpretation.”

Those nine words introduced the majority of my contributions to discussions in AP American Literature. When I first said them, I feared they’d invite a collective eye roll from my peers and eternal branding as a critic or contrarian. But I couldn’t resist the near-scientific impulse to pull things apart. My assertive, outspoken and sometimes “loud-mouthed” nature often used to feel like a curse.

As the semester progressed, though, something amazing happened. Our once atomistic classroom grew to become a community of interlocutors, and I soon found myself on the receiving end of my nine-word catchphrase as classmates became emboldened to test their own ideas and question others’.

The class quickly became my favorite; I learned to disagree with grace, to examine my own preconceptions and assumptions, and open my eyes to the unique approaches of those around me. My classmates helped me see that my willingness to question ideas—and my openness to having my own ideas and opinions questioned in return—both foster an atmosphere of curiosity and trust that we all came to appreciate.

Knowing how my bold and inquisitive personality fits in a collegial classroom environment and embracing my desire to explore ideas more fully has changed the course of my academic career. I look forward to bringing valuable contributions to the classroom environment at UNC and growing as a person and scholar through the unique contributions of my future classmates as well.

Discuss an academic topic that you’re excited to explore and learn more about in college. Why does this topic interest you? Topics could be a specific course of study, research interests, or any other area related to your academic experience in college. (250 words)

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Explanation:

The key to this prompt is to showcase your intellectual curiosity, so don’t be shy! With your response, you should convey the excitement for learning that animates you both inside and outside of the classroom; use this space to dive deeply into the topic, text, theory or philosophy that interests you the most. While it doesn’t have to be directly related to your intended area of study, make sure that it doesn’t come off as entirely disconnected from your selected major or your application hook—this response should be complementary to your overall narrative, adding dimension and context to interests already evident in your application.

As you approach this prompt, be sure to explicate the why with care and specificity. Why can you get lost in this topic for hours? Why did you decide to explore it in the first place? Why is it important to you in the context of your story, background and experiences? As you describe these details, also focus on the human elements that are meaningful to you in addition to the topic itself. What makes you so happy about absorbing endless details and intricacies about it? How have you chosen to investigate its dimensions through your endeavors?

Additionally, be sure to underscore precisely how UNC is the ideal place for you to further pursue and dissect this topic of interest. Admissions officers hope to not only discover what exhilarates you academically, but how you’ll use it to enrich UNC’s learning environment and make the campus as a whole a more interesting, energetic, and dynamic intellectual community.

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Sample:

Whether seeing Greta Thurnberg’s impassioned speeches or following social media accounts that demand accountability from celebrities who pollute the air through excessive reliance on private jets (yes, even Taylor Swift), climate advocates have inspired me to study climate activism.

Few people in the public sphere are discussing the issue of climate injustice, which addresses the ways in which climate change disproportionately impacts minority groups and those in more challenging socioeconomic circumstances. I was first exposed to the issue in an elective course at my high school on social justice and climate science. Through enlightening discussions with my teacher and peers, I came to understand the extensive, negative effects of climate change on already disadvantaged and marginalized communities.

In studying this issue, I have developed the deeply held conviction that knowledge without action is futile. I know that the Environmental Justice Minor at UNC will equip me to mobilize my knowledge for the good of others, and I am eager to enrich my knowledge in courses such as “Water, Conflict, and Connection in the Middle East,” and become involved with impactful student organizations.

The Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) will empower me to improve human wellbeing and environmental prosperity simultaneously, while the Sustainable Business Club will grant me real-world insights into the financial dimension of climate action and the strategies behind ethical investment. As I embark on the new challenges and discoveries UNC will bring, I’m eager to join a community who will cultivate and uplift my passion for climate justice.

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