Featured Supplemental Essay Prompt For Howard University Applicants:

The College of Arts and Sciences is comprised of three divisions: Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The curriculum of the College is designed to meet the needs and interests of a diverse, multicultural student body. Explain what interests you in the Arts or Sciences, and how studying at Howard University will help you achieve your overall goals? 750 Word Maximum.

Successful Supplemental Essay Example From Our Accepted Alumni Student:

“The Mecca is a machine, crafted to capture and concentrate the dark energy of all African peoples and inject it directly into the student body… The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca — the crossroads of the black diaspora,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me.

When I first read the passage, things became abundantly clearer. I could cross off my previous college search parameters—low student faculty ratios and good dining hall food—and replace it with the be-all and end-all: finally having a place of refuge.

Besides Howard’s illustrious prowess as an academic institution, I understand it also as a place of culture and community. While, personally, the Black Student Union at my school has helped me to anchor myself in like-minded communities of aspiring activists and feel secure in my identity as a woman of color, it took several years for my school administration to even arrive at a consensus that equity and diversity were crucial. They are now putting into place a curriculum that will be more inclusive and mindful of the different cultures and communities that are present in the school. I want an environment that already has those institutions, electives, and cultural organizations put in place. I want educators that have similar passions as me that will teach the material fully and make it feel like it is more than just a couple of credits. At Howard, that culturally inclusive community, curriculum, and educators are all present.

I live close to my white relatives and get to see them on holidays and special occasions and partake in Italian traditions such as Christmas Eve and Easter, but I never was able to have this opportunity with my Jamaican relatives. Because my Black relatives live in Jamaica and Florida, I visit with them rarely. Only occasionally can I actually connect with them, learn and retain bits of Patois, delight in ackee and saltfish together, and see myself reflected in the people I love. At Howard, I would eagerly join the Caribbean Students Association. As one of the most diverse organizations on campus, I could explore the totality of the Caribbean community which would allow me to feel more connected with that part of my identity.

The Howard Sociology Department, where I hope to be able to spend my college years, would give me opportunities to understand how society works from different viewpoints. In my experience, predominantly white schools tend to graze over Black history and the systemic injustices currently unfolding in our society today. To correct these blindspots, I constantly find myself researching the topics on my own to get the full story, to do my own critical race theorizing. Ultimately, Howard’s academics will not sugarcoat the truth—rather, the professors and students acknowledge and process the deep cuts that White supremacy and systemic racism have made in communities of color so that they can overcome them. In the Sociology Department, I would love to take courses like Sociology of Power, Women in Development, and Sociology of Poverty. I would love to work with professors like Dr. Teri Adams, researcher of gender studies, policing, and disaster trauma, and Dr. Eleanor King, researcher of archaeology as it relates to the Black community and public education systems.

At Howard, I would follow a pre-law track in the hope of one day employing critical lenses in the service of individuals who are historically made vulnerable by the U.S. legal system. Howard, being an open, honest environment where we could talk about the reality of being black and having a legal system that operates against us, is exactly what I am looking for in terms of a school and a curriculum. I long to study law in a place where all the cards are on the table, where we know what is what, and how things unfold. Law is such a powerful profession and at the crossroads of being “either a social engineer or a parasite on society,” according to Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP first special counselor Litigation Director, I hope to be the former and not the latter with the guidance of Howard’s pre-law track.

I would love to join the Howard University community and engage with the Mecca that has made a lasting impact on so many. As a cornerstone of the Black community, Howard would give me the tools to develop an understanding of myself as an activist and a more well-rounded critical thinker.