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As we move into late November, many seniors are completing early college applications while preparing for their regular decision deadlines. In this season, students and their families start to pay much closer attention to supplemental college essay requirements. These essays play a major role in shaping how the admissions officers understand a student’s character, values, and intellectual curiosity.
Boston College (BC) has become one of the first highly selective and well-known universities to release its 2025 to 2026 Supplemental Essay Prompts. These supplemental essays are designed to push aspiring applicants to think deeply about their identities as individuals and how they plan to contribute to a larger community. This year’s given prompts continue that tradition and offer applicants several opportunities to showcase their voice.
Before exploring each prompt, we must first understand the broader admissions context. Last year, universities such as Yale, Cornell, Caltech, Dartmouth, and Duke all included supplemental essays in their applications. While their formats varied from prompt to prompt, several themes appeared consistently:
- Academic Interest and Fit
- Community Engagement
- Personal Values and Background
- Creativity and Problem Solving
- Authenticity
- Demonstrated Understanding of the School
Many of these themes can be reflected in Boston College’s supplemental prompts. In this article, Ivy Talent Education will provide a detailed analysis of each essay prompt along with writing strategies that will help future applicants present their most authentic voice in their essay writing.
As an applicant, you must answer one of the first four prompts in no more than 400 words. Only Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) applicants may answer Prompt Five.
Prompt 1: Community Traditions
Strong communities are sustained by traditions. Boston College’s annual calendar is marked with both long-standing and newer traditions that help shape our community. Tell us about a meaningful tradition in your family or community. Why is it important to you, and how does it bring people together or strengthen the bonds of those who participate?
Strategy
You can choose a tradition from your personal experiences that reveals something meaningful about your identity. It does not have to be tied to a regular holiday. In fact, small traditions shared with your family and friends often lead to richer, more original essays that speak from your heart. You may want to consider traditions that are:
- Cultural
- Family-created
- Community based
- Related to service, creativity, or shared values
You must explain these three components clearly:
- Origin: How did your tradition develop, and who celebrates it?
- Personal significance: How has it shaped your personal values, understanding, or sense of belonging in this world?
- Community impact: How does it strengthen your connection, resolve conflict, or build trust within your community?
Writing Tips
The strongest essays allow the readers to relive a specific moment. You may describe an instance when this tradition felt especially meaningful to you and allow the emotions, sounds, or actions to narrate the scene. Then, explain how this particular tradition shaped your understanding of something deeper, such as shared connection or personal responsibility. If it fits naturally, you can also mention how you hope to contribute to BC’s community traditions through this same sense of belonging and participation.
Prompt 2: Meaningful Conversations
The late BC theology professor Father Michael Himes argued that a university is not a place to which you go, but instead, a “rigorous and sustained conversation about the great questions of human existence, among the widest possible circle of the best possible conversation partners.” Who has been your most meaningful conversation partner, and what profound questions have you considered together?
Strategy
This essay is less about your conversation partner and more about how these conversations expand your critical thinking. Choose someone whose perspective challenged or deepened your understanding of something. This can be:
- Your grandparent who has a complex life story
- Your teacher who pushes your thinking
- Your mentor from work or community service
- Your friend or peer who sees the world differently
You can focus on one or two specific life questions you explored with your chosen person. Explain how these conversations:
- Encouraged your intellectual growth
- Shifted your assumptions on a particular theory or belief
- Changed the way you approach decision-making or relationships with others
Writing Tips
From your conversations, begin with a small but memorable moment that impacted you, perhaps a question or line that stuck with you. Show how your conversations shaped your personal thinking and explain why it matters to you now. You can then connect this mindset to BC’s culture of thoughtful dialogue and inquiry, especially their Jesuit emphasis on seeking understanding through reflection and conversation.
Prompt 3: Breaking the Single Story
In her November 2019 TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned viewers against assigning people a “single story” through assumptions about their nationality, appearance, or background. Discuss a time when someone defined you by a single story. What challenges did this present, and how did you overcome them?
Strategy
A “single story” refers to an oversimplified label or an assumption that someone made about you that may or may not be true. This may relate to your:
- Culture or ethnicity
- Gender
- Academic strengths or weaknesses
- Hometown or school type
- Socioeconomic background
- Personality or physical appearance
Choose one clear moment that you recall when someone gave you a “single story.” Describe their assumptions, your emotional response, and how you expanded or corrected that narrative. Show how you handled the situation with maturity, insight, and resilience.
Writing Tips
As you write, you must remember to keep the storytelling specific and grounded in the details. The admissions officers want to see how you handled the emotional and practical aspects of your situation. End your essay by explaining how this experience changed your understanding of your identity, community, or empathy towards others. If it is appropriate, you can briefly connect this insight to BC’s commitment to having an inclusive and thoughtful dialogue.
Prompt 4: The Fourth “Be”
Boston College’s Jesuit mission highlights “the three Be’s”: be attentive, be reflective, be loving – core to Jesuit education (see A Pocket Guide to Jesuit Education). If you could add a fourth “Be,” what would it be and why? How would this new value support your personal development and enrich the BC community?
Strategy
Upon answering this prompt, you can choose a value that complements BC’s Jesuit mission, while also reflecting on your authentic character as a human being. Consider values such as:
- Be curious
- Be courageous
- Be humble
- Be patient
- Be joyful
- Be persistent
Then, explain these two things clearly: Using a brief example to strengthen your arguments, why does this value matter in your own life? How would it enrich the BC community, such as encouraging deeper dialogue, supporting peers, or promoting innovative thinking?
Writing Tips
To illustrate this value in action, introduce a brief example from your life that connects with your chosen “be.” It does not need to be a dramatic narrative. A small eureka moment that reveals your character is often more powerful than a tragic story with no meaning. After explaining why this value matters to you, describe how it can further enrich your interactions with your classmates, professors, or the broader BC community.
Prompt 5: Human-Centered Engineering (HCE Applicants Only)
One goal of a Jesuit education is to prepare students to serve the Common Good. Human-Centered Engineering at Boston College integrates technical knowledge, creativity, and a humanistic perspective to address societal challenges and opportunities. What societal problems are important to you and how will you use your HCE education to solve them?
Strategy
This prompt will evaluate your understanding of engineering both as a technical and a humanitarian field. To answer this question, you must select a specific, but manageable problem. Some examples include:
- Improving accessibility for people with disabilities (PWDs)
- Reducing hospital waste in medical systems
- Expanding digital access for underserved communities
- Designing climate-resilient structures in natural disaster areas
Then, explain your approach to your chosen solution through these two lenses:
- Technical thinking: How would you design, test, prototype, or model a solution?
- Human-centered thinking: How would you collaborate with communities, consider ethics, or understand their cultural context?
Discuss how BC’s HCE program, labs, and interdisciplinary curriculum will help you move your ideas toward creating a real-world impact.
Writing Tips
In this prompt, focus on clarity. Describe the problem in concrete terms and explain what solutions you plan to incorporate, even if they are preliminary actions. Show awareness of the people affected by this issue and describe how empathy, collaboration, and ethical decision-making play a significant role in your approach. Finally, connect your vision directly to BC’s interdisciplinary HCE program and explain why it is the right environment for you to achieve your goals.
Boston College’s supplemental essays ask students to think deeply about who they are, what they value, and how they engage with others. Whether you focus on a tradition, a conversation, a stereotype, a personal value, or a societal issue, the strongest responses combine storytelling with reflection and purpose.
If you’re interested in learning more about Boston College and how to prepare a strong application, we also recommend reading our in-depth guide: “Applying to Boston College: All You Need to Know.”
At Ivy Talent Education, we aim to guide students through every stage of their supplemental essay-writing process. Our counselors help applicants identify strong topics and refine their narrative voices to create essays that highlight their genuine strengths while aligning with a university’s mission. If you would like personalized support as you prepare for your college applications, feel free to contact us and schedule a free consultation session. Our team is more than happy to help you.
