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How to Write the Haverford College Essays 2024-2025

Haverford College has two, short supplemental essays: one about your intellectual interests, and one about Haverford’s Honor Code. As a small, academically rigorous school just a short train ride from Philadelphia, Haverford attracts a competitive pool of applicants, so you want to make sure your essays stand out. In this post, we’ll break down both prompts, and explain how to write strong responses to each one.

Haverford College Honor Code

Before we dive into the essays, we want to provide some background on the Haverford Honor code. Here’s what you need to know.

Haverford College has one of the oldest and one of the very few student-run Honor Codes in the U.S. Our Honor Code is not a set of rules, but rather a statement of shared values centered on the concepts of trust, concern, and respect.

Our Honor Code serves as an educational tool in and of itself and provides a powerful framework for our community, emphasizing and supporting qualities we see as essential to a Haverford education. Among other things, the Honor Code at Haverford shapes:

Academic Freedom: The Honor Code fosters an atmosphere emphasizing academic integrity, collaboration over competition, and the cultivation of intellectual curiosity. Differences and disagreement are respected, valued, and embraced, and open discourse is seen as fundamental to the academic endeavor.

Student Agency: The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community. Student ownership is reflected in self-scheduled exams, in the fact that every student completes a Senior Thesis, in shared responsibility for the residential experience, and of course in oversight of the Honor Code itself.

Community: The Honor Code establishes a supportive environment for living and learning, where the community experience plays a central role in one’s education. The inherent value of every community member is recognized, and diversity in all respects — including diversity of background, experience, and perspective — is nurtured, celebrated, and embraced.

Leadership and Engagement: The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance, to learn methods of problem solving and conflict resolution, and to examine the ways they can and will impact the world beyond Haverford.

Before delving into Haverford’s supplementary essays, it is extremely important to have a solid understanding of Haverford’s Honor Code and its role in Haverford’s community. At first glance, Haverford’s Honor Code may appear to be an explicit set of rules that are designed to govern the lives of students, forcing them to comply with specific guidelines and standards. However, the goal of the Honor Code is not to restrict students, but rather to allow for more freedom.

The Honor Code fosters a community grounded in honesty, fairness, and respect. These values create an environment where students feel not only comfortable, but confident sharing their own ideas, opinions, and beliefs. Diversity in thought, belief, culture, and perspective are not only recognized, but accepted and celebrated.

The values of the Honor Code afford students an unprecedented level of control over their education and community. Since it is expected that students adhere to a high degree of honesty and integrity, students are trusted by the administration as well as their professors and peers. For instance, Haverford students don’t have RAs in their dorms, are allowed to take tests without proctors, and are able to schedule their own final exams. These freedoms and privileges can exist because of the values of the Honor Code.

Haverford’s Honor Code also presents an opportunity for self-governance. At Plenary, an all-student “governing” session, students can debate and vote to revise the Honor Code. In this way, students have the autonomy to change and improve Haverford’s campus.

While Haverford’s Honor Code is taken seriously, consequences for infractions are not seen as punishments, rather as opportunities to instill lifelong lessons. Consequences are decided upon by the Honor Council, composed of students, not members of the school administration. It is the hope of the Haverford community that through this process, students will take ownership for their bad decisions, learn from them, grow as community members, and realize that they have the power to control their circumstances both inside and outside the classroom.

As you write your supplemental essays, keep Haverford’s values in mind. Incorporating their values into your essays not only shows that you did your research, but also creates connections between yourself and the Haverford community. For instance, Haverford’s collaborative environment could enable you to work with your peers to understand complicated mathematical theorems. Or, Haverford’s respectful and accepting community could empower you to debate the best policies to solve climate change. Regardless of the interests you choose to express in your essays, it is always a good idea to connect your thoughts to Haverford’s Honor Code and core values.

Haverford College Supplemental Essay Prompts

Prompt 1: Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. How do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at Haverford? (200 words)

Prompt 2: We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you?

As you think about how to answer this question, you might draw from how you have been influenced by other communities you have been a part of, experiences you may have had within your communities, or opportunities you have had to shape or even change your communities. (200 words)

Tell us about a topic or issue that sparks your curiosity and gets you intellectually excited. how do you hope to engage with this topic or issue at haverford (200 words).

This prompt is an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your interest in a specific subject or topic. Although it is not a “Why Major?” prompt, as you have the freedom to write about any of your intellectual interests, not just your intended major, the overall structure of the essay will be similar: you want to select one of your interests, which could be as obscure as Victorian fashion or as common as math, and explain why and how your topic excites your intellectual curiosity, as well as how you’ll be able to continue learning about it at Haverford.

Starting your essay with an anecdote is a great way to show your interest in your topic to readers, rather than simply telling them about it. For example, you could begin by telling the story of how you became interested in art after your first visit to an art museum. Or, you could describe what thoughts and emotions you experience when creating art. Since you’re dealing with a low word count, your story should be pretty simple, as you don’t have the space to flesh out something complicated.

The next part of your essay should focus on the deeper reason why you are so interested in your topic or subject. In other words, what specifically about your topic makes you excited to learn more? Maybe you love science because it explains how everything in the world works, from plants growing to playing tennis. Or, maybe you’re passionate about music because it has the power to inspire and connect people.

While this essay is a short one, you ideally also want to explain, at least briefly, what you do to satisfy your curiosity about this topic. Do you read every available book on Egyptian pyramids? Do you debate the most successful political campaign strategies with your family at dinner? This extra detail will give your reader a clearer sense of how your interest in your topic manifests on a daily basis, which will make your interest feel more tangible and genuine.

Finally, you want to connect your interest in your topic to your potential future as a Haverford student. Hop onto Haverford’s website, and do some research on classes, clubs, or other opportunities at Haverford that will allow you to keep learning about it. Since you probably won’t have much room left by this point, you want to pick just one or two things, as otherwise the end of your essay will feel cramped and rushed.

For example, you could talk about how the College Year in Athens study abroad program would deepen your understanding of Greek mythology, by allowing you to see firsthand many of the sites that were most important to the Ancient Greeks.

Alternatively, you could write about how the clubs Charcuterie Union and Food for Thought would expand upon your interest in cooking, and help you develop a more comprehensive understanding of the role food can play in different people’s lives.

We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you?

Brainstorming Your Topic

This prompt tells you pretty much exactly what it wants to know: the values you’re looking for in a college community, and how those values align with Haverford’s. However, while the questions are clear, answering them thoughtfully may take some time, as you’ll need to reflect on what your values truly are.

With a question as open-ended as “What do you value in your communities?” sometimes asking yourself related, slightly more focused questions can help you brainstorm more efficiently. Here are some examples of those kinds of questions:

What are some of your favorite communities you’re a part of? What makes you love them so much?
When you think about your friends, what qualities do many of them share?
Look at your complete college list—why are you applying to this particular set of schools, out of all the colleges in the United States and across the world?

The actual values you choose are much less important than those values being genuinely important to you. One applicant might write an excellent essay about trust, while someone else might write an equally strong one about open-mindedness. But if you try to force a connection to something that isn’t really one of your primary values, your reader will be able to tell you aren’t being fully authentic.

Finally, as you’re brainstorming you’ll likely come up with a list of several different values. But because this essay is so short, you’ll want to focus on just one, or two at the most, once you start writing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to give each value the attention it needs, and your essay will end up feeling all over the place.

Tips for Writing Your Essay

In your actual essay, the most important thing to do is connect the value or two you’re focusing on to Haverford’s values, specifically those laid out in the Honor Code. If you’re having a hard time doing that, you may want to go back to the drawing board. For example, valuing a good sense of humor is a wonderful thing, but doesn’t connect super well to anything in the Honor Code.

A better thing to focus on would be, say, speaking up about what’s important to you. You could easily connect that value to the following two lines of the Honor Code:

“The Honor Code allows every student to find and develop their own voice, to practice ways of improving community and acting on issues of importance.”
“The Honor Code upholds a culture in which students are deeply trusted to take substantial ownership of their education and to profoundly shape and define the Haverford community.”

Once you feel confident that you’ve linked your own values to Haverford’s, you want to think about how to clearly explain that link to admissions officers. Here, Haverford is once again being considerate, and telling you pretty much exactly how they want you to do that, in the second paragraph of the prompt.

To summarize, that paragraph is telling you to use concrete examples and anecdotes to explain how you came to have this particular value. In other words, show, don’t tell, because otherwise, your reader won’t really understand what you having this value says about your personality as a whole. Plenty of people value outspokenness, but the point of the college essay is to distinguish yourself from other applicants. So, you want to show what the value you have chosen means in the context of your life specifically, and why that value’s importance in your life has inspired you to apply to Haverford.

For example, you could talk about how you hated attention as a kid, and preferred to just spend time with your family’s pets. But during the pandemic, seeing people adopt pets for company without knowing how to take care of them frustrated you to the point that you started your own YouTube channel, to explain how to avoid making common first-time pet owner mistakes. To your surprise, the channel became extremely popular, and many people wrote comments thanking you for your help. Speaking up is still hard for you, though, and being on Haverford’s campus, where outspokenness is encouraged, will help you continue to get better at it.

Mistakes to Avoid

Because this prompt is so explicit about what it wants, it’s pretty hard to get totally off-track. The only thing you really want to be wary of is using your space in an inefficient way. 200 words will disappear quickly, so you want to make sure you’re being thoughtful about how long you spend addressing each part of the prompt.

Otherwise, you may end up accidentally using 160 words explaining how you came to have the value you’re focusing on, and then have to cram in the connection to Haverford at the very end. There’s no one correct breakdown of how long you should spend on each point of your essay, as ideally one thing flows naturally into the next. Just make sure the connection to Haverford gets enough room to breathe, as, since that part is likely going to come at the end, it’s at the most risk of getting cut short.

Where to Get Your Haverford Essays Edited For Free

Do you want feedback on your Haverford essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

Need feedback faster? Get a free, nearly-instantaneous essay review from Sage, our AI tutor and advisor. Sage will rate your essay, give you suggestions for improvement, and summarize what admissions officers would take away from your writing. Use these tools to improve your chances of acceptance to your dream school!

The Importance of Academic Honor Code and Integrity

Categories: Honor Codes Student Study

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Published: Aug 30, 2022

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The conflict surrounding honor codes have impacted educational platforms such as schools and universities in various ways. Honor codes are a set of rules that were created to prevent students from taking actions that are morally wrong. This system is being used in many schools and it has been confirmed that students have different perspectives on these rules. While some believe that the system benefits their education, others believe that it is unnecessary to limit students standards. However, schools should maintain honor code because not only does the system allow students to build relationships and trust in their communities, but these regulations also push individuals further into making a decision based on their morals and virtuousnesses. Some might believe that the honor code system should be eliminated because it does not make a difference in schools. In the article, “How Do Ya Spell Plagiarism?” by Chris Kahn, the author talks about how plagiarism has been a significant issue in schools and how the honor code has not done anything to fix this problem. For instance, Kahn states, “But even here, where honor is so well defined.. has been a problem.” (Source D). However, the reasons given by the opposite side are not strong enough to support their claim because although students might have been irresponsible for disobeying their schools regulations, the honor code system has been affecting the results of students since they have been learning to weigh the costs of taking such actions. According to the article, “Honor Codes Work Where Honesty Has Already Taken Root” by Jennifer Dirmeyer, the author discusses the benefits of maintaining an honor code system in schools. For example, Dirmeyer states, “students at colleges with honor codes. less than their counterparts elsewhere do.” (Source C). The author points out the importance of having honor codes in schools by stating how students tend to cheat less when they are a part of this system. Thus, not only do they become aware of the risks of getting caught, but they also become more responsible which prevents them from cheating. Some might also believe that honor codes should not be maintained in schools because students are not honest enough when it comes to reporting their peers for cheating. According to the “Assessing Honor Code Effectiveness:Results of a Multipronged Approach from a Five Year Study”, the table shows a student survey based on their perceptions of academic integrity. The table displays that only 8% of students reported another fellow student for cheating which was a small percentage (Source E). However, the reasons given by the opposite side are not strong enough to support their thesis because although students might not report their peers due to personal relations, students overall would become less likely to cheat. In the article, “New Honor Codes for a New Generation” by McCabe and Pavela, the authors talk about how cheating is not acceptable among the students. For instance, it states, “Many students would simply be embarrassed to have other students find out they were cheating.” (Source F). Although most students did not report others for cheating, they were aware of how embarrassing and wrong cheating was. Since cheating was socially unacceptable by most of the students, this shows that they were aware of the fact that cheating is dishonorable. Therefore, honor code should be maintained because it helps student realise that cheating is morally wrong and unacceptable. Some might also say that honor code should be eliminated because it discourages students from going to school and causes them to drop out. In the article, “How Do Ya Spell

Plagiarism?” by Kahn, the author mentions how penalizing students has been affecting their education life in negative ways. For instance, he states, “Thirty nine of those accused of violating the schools honor code have either dropped out or been expelled-the only penalty available for such a crime.” (Source D). In spite of that, the reasons given by the opposing side are not strong enough because students should already be aware of the circumstances that might occur when they disobey the standards. For example, in the article, “Honor Codes Work Where Honesty Has Already Taken Root”, the authors state, “Students convicted of lying or cheating can expect to receive punishments ranging from suspension to expulsion.” (Source C). Since students are responsible for being honest and trustworthy, they are expected to obey the standards of the schools honor code. If students disobey and ignore these regulations, then schools have the right to carry penalties by expelling students due to their lack of honesty. Therefore, schools should maintain honor code because it allows student to become better individuals who learn to plan a brighter future for themselves.

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How to Write the Haverford College Essays 2024-2025

Haverford College Honor Code

Haverford College Supplemental Essay Prompts

As you think about how to answer this question, you might draw from how you have been influenced by other communities you have been a part of, experiences you may have had within your communities, or opportunities you have had to shape or even change your communities. (200 words)

We have highlighted for you some of the values that shape the Haverford community. What are some of the values you seek in your next community? How do Haverford’s values, as demonstrated through our Honor Code, resonate with you?

Where to Get Your Haverford Essays Edited For Free

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Course : English Comp/Rhetoric (ENGL 1100)

The Significance of Honor Codes

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