WashU Essays 2025-2026
University of Washington in St. Louis Supplemental Essay Prompts: 2025-2026
Washington University in St. Louis recently released its supplemental essays for the 2025-2026 admissions cycle. Despite them claiming they are optional, in reality, they are not. If you are serious about attending WashU, do them. 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.
You are given the option to respond to one of these two prompts
1a. WashU supports engagement in the St. Louis community by considering the university as “In St. Louis, For St. Louis.” What is a community you are a part of and your place or impact within it? (250 words)
This is a classic community essay, nothing more. What admissions officers are looking for is a first-person snapshot of you within a community that simulates the type of campus environment you will find if you are admitted and decide to attend Yale. Ideally, your chosen community should be one that you are currently part of, is filled with smart, highly ambitious peers, and has a respectable number of members. Large school clubs certainly count.
If you aren't part of a community that fits these criteria, you are not out of luck. As long as you pick a community from which you can demonstrate that you have tangibly benefited and to which you have given back, you can craft a very strong response to this question.
Once you have chosen your community, you want a powerful hook to draw the reader in. This can be a vivid first-person snapshot of your community carrying out its main aim or goal, a moment of triumph or sorrow for your community, or you bantering with members of your community to immediately establish that you are close to them. The key is that your hook demonstrates to the reader that you are indeed writing about a community in which you are deeply entrenched.
After your hook, you want to create a narrative showing how reciprocal social interactions within your community allow your group to accomplish its main priority and goal. It is vital that your community has a clear goal or priority and isn't just a loose collection of people. During this section, where you show how your community achieves something meaningful, it is critical that you provide first-person anecdotes of your social interactions with other members. Demonstrate how those social interactions made you grow as a person in some specific way and helped you become more refined.
Then you want to show how you have benefited members of your community. It is key that after reading this essay, admissions officers can visualize the type of community member you'll be on their campus over the next four years. To conclude the essay, discuss how this community has shaped your future goals as they relate to your hook and personal strengths.
1b. WashU strives to know every undergraduate student “By Name & Story.” How have your life experiences shaped your story? (250 words)
This prompt needs some deconstruction. Life experiences are the tangible events you objectively lived through. A story, however, is subjective. No one has just one story. People can reframe their lives through multiple narratives.
A story requires creative liberty: selecting what to include, what to emphasize, and how events should be interpreted. All of these elements make storytelling an art, not a science where you simply list your experiences. Given the short word count, I wouldn't try to convey your entire life story. Instead, stick to using recent experiences to build your narrative, this will give the reader the best information about the version of you who will inhabit their college campus.
You should aim to cover recent aspects of your story not included in your Common App essay. When describing your life experiences, do so vividly in the first person. To describe how your life experiences shaped your story, focus on certain perspectives you hold and explain how your experiences gave birth to or refined those perspectives. To conclude, describe where you'd like to take your story next.
Personally, I recommend picking the first prompt. This prompt is incredibly open-ended, and as a result, without expert guidance, it can be difficult to know if you've addressed it well.
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.
