Many students choose to apply to the honors college at a particular institution for the privilege of taking additional classes and taking advantage of smaller class sizes, dedicated faculty, the opportunity for independent research, and the opportunity to access living-learning communities. Sometimes, honors college students receive additional financial aid and other perks. It is a good idea to check into the options available to you at the honors colleges at your potential colleges to determine whether or not they fit your needs and specific goals.
In the meantime, to get accepted to the honors college, you are required to write honors college essays for each honors program you are considering. Let’s take a look at how to write honors college essays and a practical framework to make it happen in this article.
What Makes an Honors College Essay Different?
Honors colleges and honors programs look for specific things: intellectual curiosity, initiative, critical thinking, and true engagement at the college in which you are considering. You will also need to prove you have a high GPA and extensive extracurriculars in high school, but in most cases, those are not enough of a reason for an honors college to accept you.
Therefore, if you think you can approach your honors college essay like your Common App essay, you are half-right. They must both be intellectual and engaging, but you will answer completely different prompts for your honors college essay compared to your Common App essay.
What Do Honors Colleges Look for in an Essay?
An honors college admissions reader will generally look for the following:
- Intellectual curiosity and a genuine desire to learn
- Critical thinking and willingness to question assumptions
- Initiative, leadership, and meaningful contributions
- Reflection, maturity, and openness to new perspectives
- A clear sense of how the student would contribute to the honors community
However, it is important to recognize that they vary depending on the institution and the prompt. For example, the Penn State Schreyer Honors College requires an answer to the following:
Identify an important global or local issue that you believe does not receive sufficient attention. Why is this issue often overlooked or under-addressed? Analyze possible paths forward and propose a realistic strategy to raise awareness and advance solutions. Finally, evaluate your proposal’s potential to create meaningful change, considering its feasibility, limitations, trade-offs, implementation challenges, and possible unintended consequences.
The university also mentions: The Schreyer Honors College first-year application will have one essay question, in addition to several shorter prompts. The essay question changes on a yearly basis and is meant to elicit well-written, comprehensive responses. The essay response has a maximum word count of 800 words.
This is an opportunity to present your best self to the review committee, and there is no right answer to the prompt. Rather, reviewers will consider how or why you take a specific approach to the question looking for a well-reasoned, consistent, and persuasive response.
The most important thing you can do is to embrace it and tell yourself you will be able to successfully answer the prompt — because you can!
How to Choose the Right Topic for Your Honors College Essay
Curious how to write honors college essays and identify the right topic? Just as the Schreyer Honors College prompt instructions mentioned above, you will want to present your best self to the committee.
Therefore, I recommend taking ten minutes to write down every single thing you can think of relating to an honors prompt that would make sense related to the prompt. For example, for this one, you may want to brainstorm a few ideas over the course of ten minutes:
- Community center is not thriving
- Local bagel shop has new competition
- Homelessness in the downtown area preventing people from accessing shops
- Food insecurity at the local schools
- Dirty local waterway
- Financial illiteracy among teenagers
In this case, it is a good idea to consider selecting a topic close to home because it might be tough to think of a way to solve a problem on a global scale — though if you think you have the solution, knock yourself out!
Once you have written down all your topic ideas, narrow it down to what you find the most interesting. The one you are most interested in will be more likely to sing off the page.
Learn more: How to Narrow Your College List and Touring Colleges
How to Answer Common Honors College Essay Prompts
The first thing you need to do to answer any honors college essay prompt is to read the prompt several times and ensure you understand it. (You would be amazed how many essays I read that do not answer the prompt.)
Here are a few common prompts and suggestions on how to answer them:
- Why do you want to join the honors college? Do your research on the honors college itself and connect it to your own genuine academic interests.
- What intellectual topic are you passionate about? In this type of essay, you can show curiosity, exploration, and a willingness to go beyond the classroom. Prove that you have been instrumental in your robotics club, and that will carry over to engineering, for example.
- How will you contribute to the honors community? Connect specific strengths and interests and show exactly how you will participate and collaborate.
- Discuss a challenge, failure, or learning experience. Choose a challenge or failure and show your learning. Be sure to show honest reflection and growth!
A small moment that reveals intellectual curiosity can be more compelling than a major accomplishment with little reflection.
How to Structure an Honors College Essay
How to write honors college essays starts with structuring your essay:
- Opening: Introduce your moment or idea reflecting back to the original prompt.
- Development: Explain your moment or idea in more depth. Be thinking about how to explain it in your own words, but be as clear as possible in your explanation.
- Reflection: Show what you learned or how your thinking changed.
- Tie to the opening: Tie the story back to the prompt and the honors program itself.
This is a suggested framework, though every essay may not follow it exactly!
Learn more: How to Ace Your College Interview
Honors College Essay Examples: Weak vs. Strong
Let’s walk through a couple of first-paragraph examples of an essay response, one weak, the other strong:
Here is an example of a weak essay:
Food waste does not get enough attention. People throw away food every day, despite hunger going on everywhere in the world. Food waste hurts the environment and wastes resources. People often do not realize how much food they throw away or how it affects others. We need to educate people about food waste and encourage grocery stores to donate leftover food. I believe it would help people make better choices.
Here is an example of a stronger essay:
I began counting the sandwiches, fruit, and packaged meals that kids threw in the trash cans in my high school cafeteria. I counted over 194 perfectly good sandwiches, salads, whole apples and more—during one lunch hour!
I cannot ignore the environmental and social costs. Instead of asking students to waste less, I checked with a local food pantry to determine whether we could donate unopened food and avoid the waste I see every day.
Do you see the differences between both types of essays admissions officers might see in the admissions cycle? See how the second essay is so much more specific and hits on exactly what the writer wants to discuss in the essay?
6 Common Honors College Essay Mistakes to Avoid
I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss several common mistakes to avoid, because it is easy to cut corners with these (especially because they can be really difficult to write — and long!):
- Reusing a general college essay without adapting it to the prompt. Always, always answer the prompt directly and accurately.
- Focusing too much on grades, extracurriculars, awards, APs, and résumé details. Again, you want to focus on the prompt and tailor your answer to the honors college essay specifically.
- Writing what you think admissions readers want to hear. Whenever you do that, you are neglecting to talk about what’s important to you, and that always comes across in your writing. Go for authenticity rather than trying to sound impressive — always.
- Using broad claims without specific evidence. Do your research and let that research shine through in your answer.
- Mentioning program features without explaining why they matter to you. You must explain why you want to be at that particular college and the major that fits you, because everyone will have a specific reason why it works for them.
- Using AI to write your Honors essay. How to write honors college essays always requires steering clear of AI completely except to give you an outline.
How to Make Your Honors College Essay Stand Out
Whenever you write about what matters to you, it will stand out, so use specific details that come directly from your heart, and explain the significance of your experiences instead of simply recounting them. You must incorporate reflection. Demonstrate curiosity by showing what interests you and what you want to pursue in college, and that also means researching the actual honors curriculum and opportunities available to you.
Finally, every paragraph should serve the prompt, kind of like a novel writer who must always be trying to push the characters forward through actions that only fit the premise of the novel.
Honors College Essay Checklist Before You Submit
Once you are finished, read through the following checklist before you submit:
- Have I answered every part of the prompt?
- Does my essay reveal something important about me?
- Have I shown, rather than merely claimed, my qualities?
- Have I included meaningful reflection?
- Is my discussion of the honors program specific and accurate?
- Does the essay sound like me?
- Have I followed the word limit and submission instructions?
Your Essay Should Sound Like You at Your Best
A strong honors college essay does more than describe a student’s accomplishments. It helps admissions readers understand how you think, learn, and contribute.
If you are unsure whether your essay is communicating the right things, an experienced consultant can help you identify what is working, what needs more depth, and where your own voice needs to shine through.
Get expert help with the college search and your final decision with Campus to Career Crossroads, from deciding between EA and ED, summer programs, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions about how to write honors college essays? Read on for more information:
Is an honors college essay different from a regular college essay?
Yes, it sure is! The honors college prompts are specifically about the honors college, not about any other topic. You won’t be answering the same general essay prompts the Common App requires, of course. Read the prompt carefully before you answer it so you consider every angle.
Do all honors colleges require an essay?
In most cases, honors colleges do require an essay, especially for selective institutions. However, some honors college programs will offer you a spot simply because you have an excellent GPA and test scores, as well as great extracurriculars.
Can I reuse my Common App essay for an honors program?
No, you should not reuse your Common App essay for an honors program. Most honors programs require you to answer a vastly different prompt than the Common App essay requires. Therefore, craft a new response for every honors program to which you plan to apply.
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