How to Write the Carnegie Mellon Supplemental Essays

With this prompt, the admissions committee seeks to understand more about your academic journey and your intellectual curiosity, a quality that the university specifically looks for in applicants. First, consider your intended area of study—what initially sparked your interest? A teacher? A documentary? A book? One strategy you can employ when approaching this prompt is to start your answer with a story or anecdote that connects your prior experience with your intended major. However, be mindful that this essay should not simply restate content shared in your personal statement—tailor your response specifically to your intellectual interests and experiences. While Carnegie Mellon requires prospective students to apply to the particular school that houses their chosen discipline, the university also prides itself on its interdisciplinary approach to academics. In order to demonstrate your intellectual curiosity as well as your commitment to the school’s vision of intellectual collaboration, consider how your area of interest intersects with other disciplines or perhaps how you arrived at your major area of study through a line of inquiry in another subject area.

The day I turned twelve, my parents gifted me a jigsaw puzzle—a thousand-piece challenge depicting a sprawling cityscape. As I slowly started to connect the pieces, I felt a thrill of satisfaction with each small victory. While my friends were engrossed in video games or sports, I would spend hours solving puzzles, trying to fit ever-more complex pieces together to make increasingly intricate pictures.

During my freshman year of high school, I enrolled in a computer programming class. As I stared at numbers and symbols on the screen, I felt the same thrill of discovery I often felt as a child sorting through a sea of puzzle pieces. I discovered a new way of thinking that combined my love for problem-solving with the ability to create something tangible. The first time I successfully programmed an algorithm to solve a real-world problem—an application that helped local businesses optimize their inventory—I was hooked. After helping a few more businesses optimize their systems, I started hosting weekly webinars for businesses and organizations teaching simple coding solutions, expanding throughout local counties as my events became more popular.

As a student at Carnegie Mellon, I hope to continue giving back to my community as I deepen my knowledge of computer science. Carnegie Mellon’s rigorous computer science program, with its emphasis on both theoretical foundations and practical applications, is the perfect place for me to deepen my knowledge and pursue my passion. I am particularly drawn to the intersection of computer science and data analytics, where vast amounts of information can be harnessed to make informed decisions in fields ranging from healthcare to finance. I’m eager to collaborate with like-minded peers and learn from leading experts in the field as I continue to use technology to make a meaningful impact on the world.

This question inquires about how the process of learning will help you achieve your goals, and as such, students should consider both the what and the how of their academic and career aspirations in their answer.

First, consider your ultimate academic and professional goals and work backward. Think specifically about where you hope to be in ten years, how you hope your degree will help you arrive at that destination, and finally, what you would hope to gain from your time at Carnegie Mellon in pursuit of those goals. Keep in mind that while these goals could be academic, professional, social, and personal, the language of the prompt is guiding you to think about how learning will help you to achieve them. There is a wide array of possible answers to this question, but make sure that your answer foregrounds things that are specific to Carnegie Mellon and the ways in which the university’s offerings are uniquely suited to your goals. The admissions committee wants to know what you intend for your own trajectory of growth, and as such, this prompt is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your curiosity, teachability, and motivation. Do you want to work in the nonprofit or social justice fields? Perhaps a successful college experience entails some sort of community engagement, study abroad, or charity work. Do you want to be a researcher? A successful college experience might include presenting at conferences, conducting an internship or research project with a Carnegie Mellon professor in your field, or taking part in one of Carnegie’s numerous undergraduate research opportunities.

The year is 2035—I imagine myself standing in a bustling innovation hub, surrounded by a team of brilliant engineers, each of us working tirelessly to bring a groundbreaking project to life. As I look around the room, I remember the late nights spent debugging code over my dorm room desk, the animated discussions with professors that spilled over after class, and the moments of breakthrough in the classrooms of Scaife Hall. It was at Carnegie Mellon that I realized the power of collaboration, the thrill of solving complex problems, and the importance of using technology to make a difference in the world.

When I look back as a Carnegie Mellon graduate, the experiences that stand out the most are not the grades I earned, but the way that my peers, professors, and coursework at CMU pushed me to grow and develop as a person and scholar. Success was defined by more than just academic achievements—it was about the relationships I built, the challenges I overcame, and the impact I began to make in the CMU community. Those years shaped me into the leader I am today, equipped with the skills, knowledge, and drive to turn my visions into reality. And as I look toward the future, I know that the foundation laid at Carnegie Mellon will guide me in my journey to innovate, inspire, and lead—in 2035 and beyond.

This space allows for you to share anything about yourself that you believe is important for your candidacy but has not been adequately conveyed in your essays, activities list or through your grades or test scores. Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on an aspect of your application that would require more context to be fully understood. Perhaps you feel as though your test scores or good grades don’t properly convey that you are a hard worker and have overcome personal or academic challenges to achieve your grades. This is also a great opportunity to write about your passion project or involvement in an extracurricular activity that you have not yet had the chance to write about elsewhere in your application. Alternatively, you could show your diverse range of interests by discussing another passion or activity outside of the classroom that would help the admissions committee get a holistic sense of who you are. Whatever you choose to write about, be sure to use this space wisely—you shouldn’t use this space to brag about all of your amazing accomplishments, but rather, highlight a new aspect of who you are or what you devote your time to, or provide more context about something mentioned elsewhere in your application.

At eight years old, I found myself sitting in a parent-teacher conference, my feet barely touching the floor, watching my mother struggle to understand the words coming from my teacher’s mouth. My mother nodded politely, her face tight with concentration, but I could see the confusion in her eyes. When we left the room, she squeezed my hand and asked me to explain what was said. I translated as best as I could, but even at that young age, I knew something important was lost in the process—an understanding, a connection, a shared meaning.

While my transcript and other application materials attest to my love of language and my desire to study Linguistics at CMU, it cannot fully convey the way in which my childhood experience as an immigrant made me passionate about cross-cultural communication. My 3.8 GPA that steadily grew over my four years of high school does not capture the many frustrated nights I spent wrestling with math problems and school essays alone because my parents did not understand the assignments. My improvement wasn’t just about mastering the material; it was about learning how to navigate a system that my parents, despite their best efforts, could not fully engage with.

This self-sufficiency has fueled my determination to succeed and deepened my commitment to studying language and culture at Carnegie Mellon, where I hope to continue exploring how our words shape our world.