We are pleased to announce Emory University’s short answer questions for the 2024-2025 first-year application.

In addition to your Personal Statement, please answer two additional short answer questions, one about your academic interests and one to help us get to know you better. We encourage you to be thoughtful in your responses and not stress about what the “right answer” might be, as there really isn’t one.

Academic Interests

This question is required. (200 Words Recommended Length)

What academic areas are you interested in exploring at Emory University and why?

Note the language here… they’re not framing the question as, ‘what is your intended major?’—in fact, there’s a plural… ‘areas’. Let’s be clear… more isn’t necessarily better in answering this question, but they’re also not asking you to lock yourself into a major and a career path. They’re trying to understand what INTERESTS you… and WHY. 

You’ve only got 200 words here, so limiting your answer to max. two areas of study will leave you space to answer the ‘why’, which is an equally—if not more—crucial part of your answer. Emory is looking for smart students who are academic achievers, sure, but they also want to know what drives you, beyond the all-seeing eye of your parents and teachers and the fear of not getting into a good college. What will KEEP YOU GOING once you’re in college, and in your career?

Pick two or three academic areas that you’re excited about, and take some time to journal about the ‘why’. Are you just totally geeked out on Medieval Studies per se? Are you excited about public health because of the specific impact you hope to have during your career? And beyond your major, do you know you want to keep studying theater because it’s really where you find your most authentic voice and build strong friendships?

If you have three, let’s narrow it down to two areas for the next part of the exercise, which is, how did you arrive at this specific interest? Tell us a (true) story, ideally one with some kind of tension or conflict. Were you initially jazzed about area X, but then you took a class with your now-favorite teacher who made you rapt with subject Y? Are you really jazzed about area Y despite your parents having always told you you’d grow up to be an X? Or are both your parents Xs, and even though you made your best attempt at teenage rebellion, you can’t help but be drawn to be an X as well? Your goal isn’t to convince the adcoms that you definitely, 100% know what you want to be ‘when you grow up’, but rather that your passion for learning—and maybe also for what learning can allow you to do in the world—is sincere. If you can, throw them off kilter a bit with an unpredictable story. 

This will be about 75% of your 200 words. Finally, you need to explain to them that, of all the places you could study A and B, Emory is a perfect match for you because [faculty, department, research, community, etc.] Do your homework and understand what sets these Emory departments apart from their peers. Then connect what’s unique about Emory to what’s unique about you. There’s an art here to drawing a clear connection that’s sincere… the best essays will always be true and feel to you like they really resonate with your experience, even if you developed this perspective in the course of writing the essay. 

Getting to Know You

In addition, answer one of the following questions. (150 Words)

• Which book, character, song, monologue, or piece of work (fiction or non-fiction) seems made for you? Why?

• Reflect on a personal experience where you intentionally expanded your cultural awareness.

• Emory University’s unique mission calls for service to humanity. Share how you might personally contribute to this mission of service to humanity.

• Emory University has a strong commitment to building community. Tell us about a community that you have been part of where your participation helped to change or shape the community for the better.

Before we dig into each of the four options individually, let’s talk about what they’re looking for. In your first essay, you spoke to your academic interests—now that you’ve covered that, let’s move onto other parts of you. 

If you glance over the four prompts, you might think, ‘one of these things is not like the other’, and on the surface you’d be right. The first prompt (which work of art is made for you and why?) feels different from prompts two through four, which ask direct questions pertaining to your character in relation to others (to community, to other cultures, or to humanity). Of those, prompts two and four ask about something YOU ALREADY DID (or are doing), and three poses a hypothetical about the future. 

Let’s clear something up: your response to ANY of the four prompts should seize the opportunity to SHOW them something about your character based on something YOU ALREADY DID (or are doing). Select the prompt that elicits your strongest ‘character’ story, and ideally, that also leads to a ‘so what?’—i.e., where is this taking you going forward? What kind of person do you aspire to be because of this aspect of your character? What is it driving you towards?

Take time to sit with each prompt, and jot down a few topic options for each. Next, run each topic through the following series of questions:

1. Does this story show something meaningful about my character?
2. Is the story that does the ‘showing’ exclusively internal to me (i.e., am I walking them through my thoughts that didn’t lead to any observable actions in the world)? Or does the story end with a meaningful impact (on a community, on specific ways I engage with individuals from other cultures, via service to humanity, etc.)?
3. Can I connect it specifically to the kind of person I want to be at school / in life?

Your best answers will show something meaningful about your character, feature a story with impact, and connect in some way to what you want to bring into the world (through service, or your career, or community engagements, etc.). As always, make sure the story is not redundant with your Common App personal statement or Emory’s first essay!