Duke Essays 2025-2026
Duke recently released their supplemental essays for the 2025-2026 admissions cycle. In this article, we will explain exactly what they are looking for in responses from applicants, so you can write essays that get you admitted there.
The following question is required for all first-year applicants to Duke University during the 2025-26 application cycle. (250 word limit)
What is your impression of Duke as a university and community, and why do you believe it is a good match for your goals, values, and interests? If there is something specific that attracts you to our academic offerings in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences or the Pratt School of Engineering, or to our co-curricular opportunities, feel free to include that too.
This is a classic "why this school" essay. You want to start this essay by talking about yourself. Duke already knows about itself, so instead, provide them with a vivid first-person account of an event in your life that establishes a strong personal connection to your goals, values, and interests. It is vital that you clearly state your long-term goals, values, and interests explicitly in this essay.
Once you provide that compelling anecdote that draws the reader in and enables you to establish a connection to your goals, values, and interests, you should show, not tell, the reader how you imagine yourself engaging in these through academic activities, social activities (student clubs), and campus traditions, using first-person writing style. The reader wants to visualize you as a student at Duke taking advantage of specific opportunities there. Conducting research with a professor, attending programs at certain academic research centers, participating in clubs, and engaging in campus traditions are all valid topics to discuss.
With that said, academics should always come first, so make sure to include your academic reasons for choosing Duke before you discuss extracurriculars and campus traditions. Conclude by discussing how you hope to grow as a person at Duke, or return to the personal reasons behind your goals, values, and interests, and explain how your time at Duke will refine and develop them.
Following this required essay, Duke states that the following essays are optional and that if you choose to respond to them, you should pick only one and respond to it in 250 words. In truth, this additional essay is anything but optional. It is absolutely vital that you select one of these essays and craft an outstanding response to it. Here's how to accomplish that.
2. We believe a wide range of viewpoints and experiences is essential to maintaining Duke’s vibrant living and learning community. Please share anything in this context that might help us better understand you and your potential contributions to Duke.
This is a perspective-based essay. This means it is vital that you put forward a well-thought-out, salient perspective on something that demonstrates you will add to the intellectual vibrancy of their incoming class. If you choose this prompt, there are two main ways you can start the essay. The first is a very punchy and bold way of describing your perspective; the second is a vivid personal anecdote that both establishes a personal connection to the perspective you'd like to share in this essay and can be used to argue and support it. From there, you either want to start arguing for your perspective with powerful descriptions of your lived experiences or start discussing how it will inform how you interact socially with members of Duke's community. Finally, I would conclude with a discussion of how this perspective and your experiences will shape your goals and aspirations at Duke.
3. Meaningful dialogue often involves respectful disagreement. Provide an example of a difference of opinion you’ve had with someone you care about. What did you learn from it?
There are two ways to start this essay. The first is a strong personal anecdote in the first person that establishes a connection to whatever topic you will reveal later in the essay that you disagreed about. The second is to describe how you felt when this person disagreed with you. Ideally, the person you are disagreeing with in this essay should be a fellow peer, because in college, that will be primarily who you'll be having disagreements with.
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate to admissions officers that you are someone who will benefit from being part of an intellectually vibrant and diverse community where disagreements are bound to happen, and that when disagreements emerge, both parties, even if their minds don't change, end up becoming more educated as a result.
After your hook, either explain the nature of the disagreement, making it clear what you were disagreeing about, or provide a personal reason why this disagreement was something you couldn't just let slide. For the remainder of the essay, you want to show the disagreement in detail and explain to the reader how both parties learned something from it, especially what you learned. You want to give them a specific, tangible lesson that you gained from the experience.
To conclude, reflect on either how this disagreement has impacted your goals and aspirations or how it makes you recontextualize the events in your life that made you emotionally invested in the outcome of this disagreement.
4. What’s the last thing that you’ve been really excited about?
You might be surprised to hear this, but you don’t need to pick something related to your hook for this one. Being excited about learning in general, regardless of discipline, is a hallmark of an elite college student. The most important thing in this essay is to simply convey the excitement you felt as you learned this new thing to the reader. Nerd out a bit about it. Show unbridled enthusiasm for it. Make the reader care about this new thing by showing that you understand its applications, and draw a personal connection to those applications. I'd conclude by talking about what other new things you'd like to learn about or how learning this new thing has shaped your goals, aspirations, or inspired personal growth.
5. Duke recently launched an initiative “to bring together Duke experts across all disciplines who are advancing AI research, addressing the most pressing ethical challenges posed by AI, and shaping the future of AI in the classroom.” Tell us about a situation when you would or would not choose to use AI (when possible and permitted). What shapes your thinking?
Welcome to the mid-2020s. This question would have been meaningless to ask prior to ChatGPT. I'd start this essay by clearly outlining the situation you have in mind. Explicitly state that AI usage is allowed in the situation by whoever will judge your deliverable. I would try to make the situation relate to your hook or spike, because your use of AI in connection with your intended major or life goals would be of most interest to the admissions committee.
I would then describe how you would use AI to minimize time spent on tasks that prevent you from fully engaging with the essence of your major. For example, if you're reading something in a physics textbook and still don't understand it after rereading multiple times, you can ask AI to explain it at a simpler level, then gradually request more advanced explanations.
Next, I would include a personal anecdote demonstrating how your thinking about where to put boundaries on AI usage originated. To conclude, I'd discuss how you intend to use AI to accomplish your goals. Given the productivity boost that correct AI usage provides, its adoption is inevitable. I don't recommend taking a luddite stance on AI usage in this essay. As much as many people hate it, and for good reason, AI is here to stay.
If you want your college admissions essays to be the decisive factor that gets you into your dream school, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today to have all of your questions answered.
