collegevine stanford essays

Stanford University

Cost & scholarships
Essay prompt

Want to see your chances of admission at Stanford University?

We take every aspect of your personal profile into consideration when calculating your admissions chances.

Stanford University’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts

Societal challenge short response.

What is the most significant challenge that society faces today?

Summer Activity Short Response

How did you spend your last two summers?

Historical Event Short Response

What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed?

Extracurricular Short Response

Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities, a job you hold, or responsibilities you have for your family.

Important Things Short Response

List five things that are important to you.

Intellectual Curiosity Short Response

The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning.

Roommate Short Response

Virtually all of Stanford‘s undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate – and us – get to know you better.

Diversity Short Response

Please describe what aspects of your life experiences, interests and character would help you make a distinctive contribution as an undergraduate to Stanford University.

Common App Personal Essay

The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you‘ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What will first-time readers think of your college essay?

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

6 Tips for the Stanford Essays and Short Answers

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Vinay Bhaskara in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

Stanford essay tips.

Stanford Short Answer Tips
Overall Writing Tips

The Stanford application has two different types of essays this year. There are 3 long essays with a 250 word count limit and 5 short-answer essays with a 50 word count limit.

Here are our expert tips for writing standout essays that will improve your chances of acceptance! Stick around until the end of the post for the most important tip.

With the different word counts in each prompt, you’ll want to approach writing each in different ways.

1. Make your intro sentence strong.

The important thing to do with the 250-word essays is to make sure your introductory sentence is really strong. Unlike in longer essays or the common application essay, you can use a paragraph or two to build your points and captivate your audience. That isn’t the case here. In this essay, you can’t waste any time building a narrative. You have to come out in the beginning and grab your audience’s attention.

2. Maximize the word count.

If your essay is 240 words or above, you’re good to go.. One or two extra words won’t drastically change your essay. But, if you have 25 or more words remaining, you could use that space to convey additional material. You could also enhance something you’ve already said, such as taking a couple of sentences and making them more “punchy” or fun to read.

Short Answer Tips

3. don’t sacrifice writing quality. .

These essays are being assessed for writing quality the same way the longer essays are. The fact that they are so much shorter means they will be put under a microscope even more.

4. Don’t waste time on detailed explanations.

If you can describe a concept or idea in shorter words, do that. Keep it concise and to the point. It is much more important to get your entire point across in a logical way than to focus on describing a detail that doesn’t fit into the larger picture of what you’re trying to say.

Overall Writing Tips

5. humanize yourself..

This is the most important tip. You want to show colleges that you are not just your college application; you’re not just a series of grades on a transcript or activities on a resume. Instead, you want to give the admissions committee almost a 3D picture of who you are as a person.

So from that perspective, try to have a mix of more fun and more serious answers. You don’t necessarily have to have everything super academic. For example, for the “historical event I want to witness” prompt, you don’t have to say “I want to go back to the signing of the Magna Carta.” If that genuinely interests you, that’s totally fine to say, but try to have some fun in your other responses.

In fact, at a super-selective school like Stanford, they want you to have the grades and resume that say you’ve spent a lot of your waking life on the admissions process and academics, but they also don’t want to admit students who are trying too hard. It’s not exactly fair, but it’s unfortunately how selective admissions works.

6. Look at your essay with fresh eyes

Regardless of your writing process, the best way to approach editing your essay is with time. In between writing and editing your response, take a break. Whether it’s an hour, a day, or a week, looking at your materials with fresh eyes will be a huge benefit. You will find key points that are missing or areas that you can rewrite in a more concise or interesting way.

Looking for more Stanford essay tips? Check out our full Stanford essay guide .