University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Application Prompts for 2024-2025

Your essay and short answer responses help us get to know you.

We’ve selected the following prompts for the UNC-specific portion for the first-year and transfer applications for 2024-2025. We’re proud of the Carolina community and how each student makes us better through their excellence, intellect, and character. In reading your responses, we hope to learn what being a part of the Carolina community would mean to you.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

Prompt 1: 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.

Before we give you your writing assignment for this prompt, let's take a minute to notice that the word 'community' appears in the UNC Chapel Hill Common App supplement prompt SIX TIMES... that's as many times as the word 'the' shows up. This is not a coincidence... the UNC admissions committee wants to suss out what you'll bring to their community that they won't learn from your transcript or test scores.

Let your grades, courses, test scores, and your UNC Essay 2 speak to your intellectual horsepower and intellectual curiosity, and use UNC Essay 1 to inform them about your character. This rule of thumb for college essays holds true for this prompt: if no one else witnessed this story (i.e., you're exclusively telling them a story about your inner life and who you are as a person, without any out-in-the-world anchor points), it's likely not your strongest option.

Now onto the writing exercise… we're going to work backwards through the prompt here. List the communities you’ve been part of during your life (the time frame should include high school, ideally). Feel free to define community broadly here: community can be an established institution like a church, OR it can just be a group of people coming together for a shared goal or activity. You should choose the story that speaks most highly of your character in community, not the one that pertains to a community that best exemplifies the dictionary definition of 'community'.

Now, next to each community, describe a positive impact you had on that community, as well as the actions you took to create that impact. You can cross out any communities where you don't feel you had a measurable impact... you only need ONE strong story, after all! The best stories will generally include some kind of conflict or tension... you had to convince others that, while they'd been doing it THIS way for months/years/decades, actually the best approach was THAT way... and at first they didn't want to hear it! OR the community had a rift, and you used your empathy and people skills to find a path forward, or a way to bridge that rift.

From there, work backwards and write a list of personal qualities you'd ascribe to SOMEONE ELSE you heard had had that same impact on that same community. This is NOT the time for modesty... which is why we're having you imagine that you're describing someone else. It's often easier to sing someone else's praises.

Now, go through that list of attributes and pick one that resonates with who you know yourself to be as a person. Pay attention if you're shying away from descriptors for fear you'll look too proud—this is the moment to own your strengths!

As you craft your essay, keep in mind that a great story can show how you changed as a person through the process. It's totally fine (great, even) if you have a character arc over the course of the essay, going from someone who wouldn't bother to do XYZ to someone who's deeply committed to it! And always, always ensure that the story is anchored in the positive impact you had on a community. 

Prompt 2: 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.

The UNC admissions committee is seeking to identify students who are both smart and intellectually curious. Your school transcript says a lot about your academic abilities, but UNC is looking for students with the curiosity and intrinsic motivation to continue to pursue intellectual interests even after they manage to get into college.

So, you're admitted to UNC Chapel Hill... no more APs, no more SATs... what fires you up? You don't need to convince them you know exactly what your post-grad career will be AND the exact set of courses you'll take to get you there... you need to convince them you have the curiosity to be a life-long learner, as exemplified by [insert amazing and credible story here].

So, whether you've decided on your major or are just really excited about an area of study or research, take a moment and write about how you got there. Were you initially more excited about field A, but then you had an amazing teacher who fired you up about subject B? Are you electrified about B despite your parents wanting you to do A? Or do both your parents do B, and try to rebel as you might, you couldn't quell your passion for B? You want their takeaway to be that you're really sincere in your passion, and the best stories are often the unpredictable ones.

All of this so far will take up the majority of your 250 words. The last bit is explaining how, of all the X departments out there, the X department at UNC is the best fit for you of all. Do your research... maybe it's the faculty, the research they're doing, or the department's... what was the word?... oh yeah, community. Connect this specific desirable aspect of the UNC program to something specific about you.