supplemental essay for university of delaware

Writing the University of Delaware’s Test Optional Supplemental Admissions Essays

Written by Karen Spencer on October 8th, 2020

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• Anticipate what it will be like for you as a student at the University of Delaware. Both in and out of the classroom, where do you expect to feel most comfortable and where will you need to stretch? (250 words maximum)
• Relate a personal experience in which you were denied an opportunity or treated unfairly. How did you resolve the situation? If that were to happen during your college experience, what would you do? (250 words maximum)
• Describe an accomplishment that took a great deal of time and/or effort on your part. What motivated you to continue when it got challenging? Who or what did you turn to for support, and how was that helpful? (250 words maximum)

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How to Write the University of Delaware Essays 2018-2019

The University of Delaware is a large public research institution that offers a high-quality and affordable education to a diverse population of students. In 2013, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine rated UD as one of the best values in public higher education thanks to a “high four-year graduation rate, low average student debt at graduation, abundant financial aid, a low sticker price, and overall great value.”

The University encourages its students to give back to the community as volunteers, and expand their horizons by studying abroad (UD piloted the United States’ first study-abroad program in 1923, and to this day, 30% of UD students study abroad).

Because UD is increasingly recognized as offering high-quality and affordable education at a time when many students are worried about accumulating debt, the University of Delaware is also increasingly competitive. Receiving about 28,000 applicants a year, the university admits around 60% of them. The middle 50% of enrolled students have SAT reading scores from 580 to 660, SAT math scores from 570 to 670, and ACT composite scores between 25 and 29.

While all UD students fill out the Common App, the school does have a rather distinctive set of short-response essay questions that can potentially push you into some uncomfortable territory. In order to navigate these questions and help you present your best self, the team at CollegeVine has composed the following guide.

University of Delaware Application Essay Prompts

Anticipate what it will be like for you as a student at the university of delaware. both in and out of the classroom, where do you expect to feel most comfortable and where will you need to stretch (response required in 200 words)..

While this essay asks you to “anticipate” what you will be like as a student at UD, that does not mean they are asking for idle speculation. A strong response to this essay will show how your projection connects back to your experiences. Once you start thinking about the question in these terms, then you can use your 200 words to start sharing some things with the admissions committee that they may not have been able to learn from reviewing your grades and test scores.

For example, you might say that you will be excited to start participating in small seminar discussions about literature because all throughout high school one of your favorite activities was going to the science fiction and fantasy book club. Nothing makes you happier than getting into an argument about the racial politics of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (are the orcs really bad guys who can be killed with impunity?). Maybe outside the classroom, you will want to continue volunteering as a reading coach at a local elementary school in preparation for your intended career as a teacher.

As you talk about what excites you inside and outside the classroom, you will want to try to make sure that those two things are related. In the example I’ve been discussing, there is a common theme: a love of reading .

On the whole, you will want to stick to talking about academic and community-service topics. This is not the time to say that you are excited about going to parties and experimenting with alcohol. If the social aspects of college really are part of what quickens your pulse, you can talk about that in a more wholesome manner. Maybe event-planning has always been your passion in high school, and you look forward to organizing student days for UD’s Athletics program.

But there is one more part in this question that adds a considerable amount of depth. UD not only wants to know where you will expect to thrive, but also what kinds of challenges you will expect to face. Here, it is okay to be a little bit vulnerable. It can often seem like the college admissions process is asking you to trumpet an endless line of success stories, but this part of the essay wants to see if you are good at recognizing your own limitations and figuring out ways to manage them.

Maybe you are really close to your family, and you know you will miss being able to spend time with your brothers around the house. Whenever you talk about areas where you will have to stretch yourself, you will probably also want to offer a sentence softening the blow and saying that, even if you know you will be challenged, you are still looking forward to facing that challenge. If you know you are going to miss your family, you can also say that you are looking forward to sharing your college experiences with your little brothers and encouraging them to attend college as well.

Describe an accomplishment that took a great deal of time and/or effort on your part. What motivated you to persevere when it got challenging? Who or what did you turn to for support, and how was that helpful? (Response required 200 words)

Like the previous question, this one is also asking you to be a little bit vulnerable. This question is asking you to both talk about one of your accomplishments at the same time that you talk about a challenge that you encountered.

The first thing to recognize is that this question is asking you to dig a little bit deeper than your activities list. The admissions committee probably already knows that you have won your high school’s community service award or made the varsity baseball team in your sophomore year.

The trick is to focus on one accomplishment in particular, a challenge where you pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone, even if it does not appear on your activities list. For example, maybe you were already a competent trumpet player, but you decided to learn a new instrument and audition for your district orchestra on the french horn. You might talk about putting in extra hours while practicing in the basement and how you had to muffle your sound, or putting in an extra shift at work on the weekends in order to afford French horn lessons. Maybe you made the district orchestra in the end, in which case you can finish your essay on a happy note.

It’s also possible that you didn’t make the district orchestra, but you can still say that you are proud of the time you put into trying something new, and that the extra effort made you a better musician. The point of this prompt is not to add another “achievement” to your activity list, but rather to give the admissions committee a sense of how you challenge yourself and what you do when things get difficult.

One especially important aspect of this prompt is addressing “who or what you turned to for support.” As you probably recognize, your accomplishments are probably not solely the result of your own individual effort. Maybe you had parents who clothed you, maybe a good teacher offered some especially useful feedback, or maybe your friends were there to commiserate when you faced a setback. One of the most important marks of maturity that this prompt is looking for is this: Do you have the capacity to reach out for help and support when you need it?

Relate a personal experience in which you were denied an opportunity or treated unfairly. How did you resolve that situation? If that were to happen during your college experience, what would you do? (Response required 200 words)

This is probably the hardest prompt to address because it can be very easy to sound bitter. Everyone suffers setbacks, and we sometimes need to vent when we are just talking amongst our friends. Also, sometimes “anger” might be the appropriate response to injustice. As Audre Lorde says, “Anger is loaded with information and energy.”

But as you answer this question, you should try to put the emphasis on what you did after you were denied an opportunity or were treated unfairly. Maybe you were passed over for a promotion at work, and you needed to go home and blow off some steam so that you could come back the next day and continue to do your job. Or maybe you went home, did some research, and found that your workplace had a history of not promoting people who look like you. However, when responding to this prompt, you want to put the emphasis not on the moment of suffering and grievance, but rather on what you did to regain your own sense of agency and dignity in the aftermath.

You might also interpret this prompt in a slightly more banal way: Maybe you received a bad grade on a paper. You thought you deserved better, but then at home you took a few moments to really look at your essay and realized that there really were some logical gaps. As with the previous example, you want to put the emphasis on what you did after the moment when you thought you were being treated unfairly. Maybe before handing in your next paper, you made sure to ask a friend to read it, and you offered to read their paper in exchange. At UD, you might talk about how you hope to take advantage of the writing center in order to get a fresh perspective on your paper before you turn it in.

It’s also possible that you do not feel like you have ever been treated particularly unfairly. Or maybe you feel like the few moments of unfair treatment you might have received pale in comparison to the injustices suffered by others in your community. If that is the case, you should feel free to talk about the injustice that you see in your own community and what you have done or hope to continue doing to fight it.

Self-appraisal of your academic performance: With Delaware’s increasing selectivity, grades of “B” or above are expected. The Admissions Committee expects that you will take advantage of this question to explain any grade on your transcript that is unusually low or varies significantly from your usual performance in the section below. (Response required in 500 words)

Only answer if there really are unique circumstances. This is not the place to air your grievances about a chemistry teacher who “had it out for you” — even if that’s true, you don’t want to draw attention to interpersonal conflicts in your personal essays.

An example of situations in which you want to write a response to this question might include: Your grades were unusually low the fall of your sophomore year because you suffered an especially serious illness that made you miss class for three months. Hopefully after you recovered, your grades did as well.

Also, note that while you have 500 words to respond to this question, you should not feel compelled to use all of that space if you do not need it to give a straightforward account of your situation. If you only have one grade to explain, and you can do so in two brief sentences, you should stop there. With all of your other essays being less than 200 words, a 500-word essay on the special circumstances that led you to get a C in Spanish 2, but an A in Spanish 1 and Spanish 3 will sound strange. You want to minimize the amount that your admissions officers spend focusing on your lower grades.

Why UD? In one or two sentences, tell us why the University of Delaware excites you. (Response required in 1-2 sentences)

In this short question, UD is asking you why you would want to attend the school in particular. Though there are only two sentences, you do not want to say something generic like “I am excited about UD because I will get to learn from experienced professors.” The same could be said for just about any university.

One way to approach this question is to focus in on a specific event or club that UD offers. Maybe you are interested in studying urban planning and were excited to learn that the Department of Energy and Environmental Policy recently held a symposium on “ Smart Cities and Sustainable Energy .”

Maybe your older brother went to the University of Delaware, and you remember hearing stories about Twilight Induction . Whatever you say in these two sentences, you want to show the admissions committee that you have taken the time to research UD and that you are not just checking the boxes on one more application (even if you really are applying to a number of different schools).

Best of luck writing your essays!

Check out our a list of hundreds of  2018-2019 essay prompts .

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At the University of Delaware, we believe that inside each of our students, inside you, is a great idea, a revolutionary invention, a visionary work of art. We believe that with hard work, creativity and guidance you can break barriers. We believe this because our students, faculty and alumni have done it. Their ideas have redefined the world we know today. With deep historical roots going back to 1743, UD has a long tradition of innovation, creativity and scholarly inquiry. UD offers more than 150 majors and over 100 minors, allowing you to customize your education according to your passions.

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What you need to apply: Completed application Required essays Self-Reported high school grades through SRAR (Self-Reported Academic Record)* For spring and fall 2021, standardized test scores are optional*† a high school counselor school report—letters of recommendation optional *Students who are admitted and plan to attend UD will be required to submit official, final high school transcripts and test scores before their initial semester. † Students who choose not to submit their test scores must complete supplemental essays.

Transfer applicants should not apply using The Common Application. For more information on transfer applications, visit our website: www.udel.edu/transfer.

See UD for yourself—either virtually or in person. Schedule a visit led by our student tour guides, the Blue Hen Ambassadors; hear an admissions presentation from our counselors; and see Newark, getting a full sense of what life as a Blue Hen is really like. We’re easy to find: Right off I-95, an hour by car from Philadelphia and Baltimore, another hour north and south from New York City and Washington, D.C. Can’t make it to campus? Take our virtual tour and join an online presentation. Visit www.udel.edu/visitUD for more information and to schedule your visit.

“I am so proud to this day that I graduated from the University of Delaware. The foundation I got here—the strength and support—helped me go forward.” Susan Stroman, five-time Tony Award-winner and graduate of UD’s College of Arts and Sciences, Class of 1976, Arts and Sciences

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University of Delaware 2017-18 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision: 

University of Delaware 2017-18 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 3 essays of 250 words; 1 essay of 100 words; 1 optional essay of 500 words

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why , Additional Info

University of Delaware admissions is playing mighty coy on this supplement. According to them, these brief essays are allegedly optional, but as you likely know by now, we don’t believe in “optional”. You should grab any opportunity to talk to admissions in your own voice like it’s the last chip in the bowl (and even if you don’t like chips, you get the idea). That being said, we understand if you didn’t necessarily prioritize writing these essays when admissions seems so lax about reading them. On this application, strategic recycling will be your best friend.

Writing Questions are Optional: Provide a short response, 250 words or fewer, to each of these prompts .

Q1. anticipate what it will be like for you as a student at the university of delaware. both in and out of the classroom, where do you expect to feel most comfortable and where will you need to stretch.

The key to hitting this prompt out of the park is to spend at least an hour on University of Delaware’s website. Although this doesn’t appear like the usual Why essay, it’s asking for the same thing from you: research and details about what you’re going to do when you get there. So fire up your device of choice and find out what UD has to offer. Maybe you’d like to join the Anime & Manga Club so you can meet other fans and artists. Perhaps you’d like to step out of your comfort zone and learn more about Brazilian Jui Jitsu with the BJJ club. Maybe you’ll be right at home in Trig class, but look forward to trying your hand in a Creative Writing class (see what I did there?). No matter your interests or the circumference of your comfort zone, make sure UD knows you have thought about how you will get involved, which classes you will take, where you will spend time, and that you plan to grow on campus. Use specific details to paint a picture, but conserve some of your enthusiasm for the follow-up question that will appear further down.

Q2. Relate a personal experience in which you were denied an opportunity or treated unfairly. How did you resolve the situation? If that were to happen during your college experience, what would you do?

When answering this question, make sure you don’t invite admissions to your pity party. Shed your tears on your own time (we all need to from time to time) and then focus on answering this prompt in an essay that reflects your integrity, problem solving skills, and composure. Do not dwell on the part of the story where you were treated unfairly, but focus on how you went about resolving the issue. You don’t want to seem salty, but like a well-adjusted young adult who can stand up for him or herself when necessary. And don’t forget to answer the second question, about what you would do if you were to encounter a similar situation again. This is the perfect opportunity to show (and not tell) what you learned and even improve on a response that you regret. While injustices exist on a spectrum, try to dig past the trivial (mom wouldn’t let me go to the concert) to experiences that have affected you more deeply (my teacher accused me of cheating and would not allow me to defend myself). But be gentle with yourself. If there’s a story you’re afraid to tell or not ready to share, don’t force yourself just for the sake of a college essay.

Q3. Describe an accomplishment that took a great deal of time and/or effort on your part. What motivated you to persevere when it got challenging? Who or what did you turn to for support, and how was that helpful?

Although superficially different from Q2, this prompt gets at a very similar set of qualities. How do you respond to challenges? What motivates you to persevere? Given the parallel themes, it’s important that you relay a very different story in this essay. So, start here: what do you love? Did your passion for poetry inspire you to memorize a plethora of uncommon words and enter a local spelling bee? Or perhaps your culinary curiosity ultimately led you to work as a line cook at a local restaurant, the hardest job you’ve ever had! While both Q2 and Q3 are about struggle, this question is also fundamentally about what brings you joy. Which struggles have really been worth it for you? But before you think about writing about a major academic struggle, check the “self-appraisal” question below. It could be a better fit if you want to write about bouncing back from a bad grade.

Self-Appraisal of your academic performance: Your academic performance. With Delaware’s increasing selectivity, grades of “B” or above are expected. The Admissions Committee expects that you will take advantage of this question to explain any grade on your transcript that is unusually low or varies significantly from your usual performance in the section below. (500 words)

Okay, this is the one instance when our “optional isn’t optional” rule doesn’t apply. We refer to this prompt genre as the “additional info essay,” and it isn’t a requirement as much as it is a resource. If you’ve had an academic slump at any point in your high school career, this is your opportunity to shed some light on what happened. If you have a consistent academic record, then your work here is done. No need to write an extraneous essay that won’t shed new light on who you are as a student.

Admissions officers know that you’re not a robot, and that your life circumstances can affect your academic performance, but that doesn’t mean you should launch a smear campaign against a teacher who “had it out for you.” Instead, it’s your job to maturely explain and reflect on the circumstances that made it difficult for you to succeed academically: an illness, a fundamental misunderstanding of a key concept, grief. How did you cope with and ultimately overcome the situation? Writing about a few bad grades can ultimately allow you to tell a story of personal growth.

Why UD? (optional) In one or two sentences, tell us why the University of Delaware excites you. (100 words)

See, we told you this question would be back! University of Delaware only gives you one or two sentences to express why you want to be a Blue Hen – so be succinct. Fortunately, you’ve already enumerated your specific interests in your first stab at a Why essay (above), so now all you have to do is distill them down to one pithy sentence. Maybe there’s one key theme or value that strikes your fancy, or maybe there’s a concrete feature of the school that draws your eye. Now is your shot to hammer that point home. Is it the fact that UD is known for being a good school for veterans? Does UD’s nursing program call to you? Is the city of Newark the ideal size and location for a collegetown? Write your answer here.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, supplemental essays at umd: what's required.

Hi all, I'm looking to apply to the University of Maryland and was wondering if there are supplemental essays to write. If so, can someone point me in the right direction to find the prompts?

Hey there! Excitement is definitely in the air as application season progresses. The University of Maryland, like many institutions, understands that they are selecting students, not just grades and scores, and that's where the supplemental essays come in. They offer a chance for you to showcase your personality and how you could contribute to their vibrant community.

Yes, UMD requires applicants to complete supplemental essays. They're a key part of your application. For the most accurate and up-to-date prompts, your best bet is to check the UMD admissions website or through the Common Application if you're applying via that platform. The prompts may change a bit from year to year, so it's always good to get the information straight from the source. Once you have the prompts, you'll want to take your time to craft thoughtful and personal responses. Remember, they're an opportunity to go beyond your GPA and test scores to really let admissions officers know who you are. Good luck with your essays!

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• New Faculty Canvas Site
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• Mental Health Resources for UD Employees
• Employee Health & Wellbeing
• Family Friendly Policies
• Onboarding Resource for International Faculty
• Faculty Mentoring at UD

All Faculty

Faculty Support and Development

• Promotion and Tenure  
• Frequently Asked Questions about FMLA for Faculty
• Office of Institutional Equity
• COACHE Faculty Satisfaction Survey and Report
• National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD)
• View Paystub
• Registrar’s Office
• Undergraduate Advising Resources , and the Blue Hen Success platform
• Graduate Student Advising Resources
• UD Course Catalog
• Graduate & Professional Education Policies and Procedures
• Student Guide to University Policies
• Credit by Examination
• Center for Teaching and Assessment of Learning (CTAL)
• Overview of UD Resources for Teaching Online
• Report on Student Course Feedback October, 2021
• Nancy Turner Presentation: Reframing Students’ Contribution to Assessment and Enhancement of Teaching Quality
• UD Research Office
• Research Office : Policies and Forms for Researchers
• Research Training
• Internal Funding Opportunities (e.g., GUR, UDRF)
• UD WorkForce
• Sabbatical Leave Request
• Information for Faculty about Undergraduate Summer Scholars
• Post Doctoral Fellows and Post Doctoral Researchers
• Accreditation
• Approvals Needed for Academic Classification, Reclassifications and Appointments
• Continuing Track Renewals
• Emerita/Emeritus Appointments
• Expedited Tenure Review
• Faculty and Staff Hiring
• Faculty Special Salary Increase
• Named Professors and Named Chair Nominations
• Chair handbook
• Policies & Procedures Manual
• Faculty Recruitment Protocol
• Offer Letter Templates (located in TalentLink)
• Dual Career Assistance
• Postdoctoral Fellows Resources   (COE)
• Revised Recommendations of Ad Hoc Committee on CT Searches
• Procedures for Faculty Peer Reviews and Contract Renewals
• Procedures for Special Faculty Appointments
• Faculty Appraisal and Planning Instructions
• Approval Changes
• Performance Appraisal Web Form for Staff
• Articulation Agreements

Chairs Workshop Presentations   

• Sludge (Spring 2023)
• UD Faculty Affairs Presentation (Fall 2023)
• Corrie Fountain Presentation on Equity Minded Workloads (Fall 2023)
• UD Faculty Affairs Presentation: UD ADVANCE Institute & AI for Teaching and Learning (Spring 2024)
• UD ADVANCE Institute Handout: Formalizing Peer Review (Spring 2024)

Department Chair Annual Timeline

Faculty Affairs