Johns Hopkins Essays 2025-2026

Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essay Prompts: 2025-2026

Johns Hopkins University recently released its supplemental essay 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 an essay that will get you admitted there.

1. Over the past 150 years, every monumental discovery at Hopkins has started with a first step: The first draft by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. A prototype that led to a life-changing medical invention. The first pitch that launched a new startup venture. As we commemorate the university’s sesquicentennial—150 years since its founding—we continue to celebrate first steps just as much as final achievements. Tell us about an important first in your life—big or small—that has shaped you (350-word limit).

This is a perspective-based essay, which 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 Johns Hopkins' incoming class. The perspective you put forward should either be one whose origins stemmed from an important first in your life, or one that was refined by this first. For the important first in your life, ideally you should choose something that happened in high school, the more recent, the better. Admissions offices are looking for students who currently have plenty of potential to grow and continue to experience new firsts in their lives. They want you to experience many firsts at Johns Hopkins.

I'd use this first as your essay's hook. Describe it in vivid detail in the first person. From there, I would describe how this experience shaped a perspective you either held prior to this first or one that originated from this first. If you held it prior to this first, I'd explain how refining this perspective has altered your goals and aspirations for the future. You might discuss another event in your life that made this first really significant for you, allowing the reader to better understand this perspective that this first altered. If the perspective was born with this first, ideally discuss how this perspective led you to engage in other activities. Show the reader yourself doing those activities so they can visualize you, and explain how those activities further shaped you. Conclude the essay by explaining what this first means to the current you, in light of everything else that has happened in your life since.

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