Featured Supplemental Essay Prompt For Vanderbilt University Applicants:

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. 400 Word Maximum.

Successful Supplemental Essay Example From Our Accepted Alumni Student:

Not many may appreciate the aroma of decomposing banana or the presence of fruit fly larvae, especially in their dorm room. Even fewer sift through rotten duck feed in search of tiny, squirming maggots. However, I welcomed these opportunities as I embarked on research—and navigated mishaps—at Governor’s School this past summer.

I was captivated by topics—regenerative medicine, confounding variables, bioremediation, and more—that I was able to explore in course discussions with peers from all reaches of [State]. I couldn’t wait to design a novel project and collaborate on research.

With guidance from our mentor, Dr. [Name], my student team aimed to evaluate conditions for cultivating a potential alternative food source—D. melanogaster. We integrated our knowledge of cellular respiration and reaction kinetics from two of our courses, Biology Lecture and Biology Lab, as we designed and curated our hypothesis and experimental design. My team constructed our apparatus to measure carbon dioxide production, incubated our batch of fly larvae, and planned the statistical tests we would utilize—ones we had learned to execute using RStudio in our Statistics course.

But we soon encountered some unexpected mishaps—and navigated them together. Our first batch of D. melanogaster proved to be unviable, but Dr. [Name] brought rotten duck feed from her own backyard for us to sift through. After securing permission, I even housed the larvae in my dorm room, so I could continue monitoring their environmental conditions. My team also discovered our self-constructed respirometer had limitations, but Dr. [Name] mentored us as we refined our project, sought out existing data, ran ANOVA, and more. Teamwork and mentorship proved to help us overcome our obstacles.

With our project’s mishaps, I expressed my concerns to Dr. [Name]. But she shared her own past research missteps and many unexpected discoveries. She credited my group’s persistence and asked me what I learned—and the lessons I would translate to future inquiries. Through discussions with her and reflecting with my new friends from my research team, I realized that I understood more because of the mishaps. I learned how to conduct a meta-analysis, a process that can often elucidate more than any single experiment. And I learned that mistakes—and collaborating to problem solve—can often lead to breakthroughs.

Now, when I think of future projects, I welcome the unexpected. I will continue to ask questions, remain patient, and persist in the pursuit of knowledge—along with the friends I make along the way.