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Your Ultimate Guide to the Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essay Prompt 2024
2024-09-09•20 minute read
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Personal Statement vs Supplemental Essay
What Does the JHU Supplemental Require?
Polishing Your JHU Supplemental Essay
In this blog post we’ll take a deep dive into how to write the Johns Hopkins supplemental essay, with expert guidance from a former Johns Hopkins Admissions Officer.
This post will explain the difference between the JHU personal statement and JHU supplemental essay and offers nuanced but crucial insights into the role of the JHU supplemental essay within the larger admissions process.
At the end of the post, we’ll share some sample JHU essays written by top Crimson applicants.
So, buckle up! It’s time to jump in and take a look at Johns Hopkins' 2024/25 supplemental prompt and essay as you learn exactly how to make sure your essay — and your larger JHU application — really stand out!
“I often use the analogy of the hotel doorman. Imagine you’re approaching an elite hotel or residence, but before you can go in, the doorman asks you: 'What’s the reason for your visit and why should we let you in?'”
- Jeremy Parks, Crimson Education FAO
If you’re aspiring to get into Johns Hopkins university, understanding what admissions officers are looking for in the John Hopkins supplemental essay will give you a distinct advantage, in addition to helping you avoid some all-too-common missteps.
Remember, the acceptance rate at JHU hovers around 7% these days, so you’ll want to be sure your essay really stands out.
In this post you’ll get some specific pointers you can use to make sure your JHU supplemental essay makes a distinct impression.
Your JHU essay has a pivotal and unique role to play in the admissions process, providing a lens into the deeper experiences and reflections shaping your academic journey — insights that go well beyond what’s conveyed by your grades, test scores, and Common App activities list.
Knowing how to navigate the JHU essay prompt and writing process is too important to leave to chance.
Fortunately veteran Crimson strategist Jeremy Parks has a number of nuanced insights to share with you — insights acquired from his own experiences working as Johns Hopkins University Admissions Officer. With this insider advice you can more easily craft the kind of supplemental essay we see submitted by our top applicants!
1. What’s the Difference Between the JHU Personal Statement and JHU Supplemental Essay?
For JHU, the personal statement refers to a more generalized essay that you write as part of completing your Common App or Coalition App.
Unlike the Common App or Coalition App essay, the JHU supplemental essay prompt is unique to JHU, requiring you to make a clear connection between some aspect of your personal story and your reasons for applying to JHU specifically.
Your JHU essay needs to showcase how your personal story dovetails in some significant way with JHU’s academic approach, campus values, programs, and specific offerings or resources you want to take advantage of.
Keep reading to learn more about the JHU supplemental prompt and essay, and if you want more help with writing the personal statement, check out these top resources:
2. What Is the 24/25 Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essay Prompt?
Below is the 2024 supplemental essay prompt for students applying for admissions in the fall of 2025.
Prompt
How has your life experience contributed to your personal story—your character, values, perspectives, or skills—and what you want to pursue at Hopkins?
The Johns Hopkins supplemental essay has a 350-word limit.
3. How To Answer the Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essay?
There’s no simple or single answer of course when it comes to how to write your JHU supplemental essay. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your JHU essay will be a unique composite of personal interests, experiences, and perspectives that make your story and college journey unique, but that also resonate with specific features of JHU’s offerings and community ethos.
With this goal in mind, I have many tips, insights, and recommendations below, similar to those I share with Crimson students applying to JHU. These tips will help you write a truly effective essay that will stand out in a crowded field.
Some tips below may be common to how to write a college admissions essay for any top-ranking school, but for the most part I’m going to tailor my advice to reflect what I learned about JHU’s holistic admissions process during my time as an Admissions Officer there.
What do admission officers at Johns Hopkins look for in essays?
From my own JHU perspective three components matter most of all in terms of what JHU admissions officers are looking for when reading the supplemental essay.
Tip 1: The readers at JHU want to see genuine and valid reasons why JHU matters to you personally and academically.
An overarching goal of your essay should be to make a compelling connection between YOU and JOHNS HOPKINS. Your essay needs a clear narrative where the writing captures your voice and perspective and makes a strong connection between your personal story and what you want to pursue at Johns Hopkins.
This typically means you’ll want to highlight aspects of your life experiences, perspectives, and values that will resonate with your most compelling motivations for attending JHU — JHU in particular, and not just any good university that’s like JHU.
Your first strand of your essay requires identifying memorable and relevant personal themes and ensuring those have an important place in your essay narrative.
The second strand involves connecting an important aspect of your life story with JHU in particular. This means that admissions officers will be looking to see what you really know about JHU — requiring some research that goes beyond surface level school features or a quick Google search!
- How do you know the identity of JHU and its really core values?
- Do you know that Hopkins is the largest spender on academic research of any institution in the world, and that every year it’s been that way for thirty-five or forty years?
- Is there a particular program that connects to your interests and aspirations in a very specific way?
By making connections at this level of familiarity with JHU’s ethos, offerings, and resources, you can really impress admissions officers — with your level of knowledge about the school and by casting light on a truly compelling motivation for attending JHU.
To ace this step, be sure to do your research...
- Try and visit the school and take a tour.
- Talk with or interview faculty in a program you’re interested in or try to find out information from recent graduates.
- Research a few relevant faculty to learn more about the most current interests and specializations.
- Talk with some members of the school staff and faculty, and/or with school alumni for their insider insights.
Tip 2: Admissions officers at Johns Hopkins want something personal, not a writing sample or academic essay.
In your supplemental essay, Johns Hopkins wants to get to know you and aspects of your personality, perspectives, and values — qualities that can’t be conveyed by transcripts, test scores, or activities lists.
This means you shouldn’t approach your supplemental essay the way you approach an academic essay. The tone, style, and perspective should convey your voice, personality, and personal perspectives with authenticity.
“At JHU we very much want you to talk about yourself the way you want to. If you do that in an effective way, it’s going to sound genuine and help you tie together your story and your college journey, and we don’t care if you’re using colloquial wording or a conversational style.”
- Jeremy Parks, Crimson Education FAO
In fact, a conversational and colloquial tone and style are likely to be essential for conveying who you are, and at Johns Hopkins it’s perfectly acceptable to write with a more personal voice and perspective.
The readers want to get to know you as a person while also learning about your goals and interests. In your essay, paint a picture of your personality, values, and perspectives — whether it’s an off-beat view of life, an ingratiating sense of humor, or an exceptional passion or determination… or whatever makes you you.
Remember, though, don’t get carried away with the subjective elements of voice and style because you don't want a personality quirk to distract from important reflections and insights.
While the personal voice and perspective should come through, the content, themes, and ideas should be highly relevant to the admissions context, with your essay format and structure supporting the most important elements of your narrative.
Tip 3: JHU readers won’t mind if your essay has a focus on academic interests and goals.
Even though admissions officers at JHU want your supplemental essay to convey who you are as a person, it’s okay if the core themes in your essay explore academic themes and interests, or vocational goals and interests.
“I’ve read a lot of essays and even managed our FAO team sometimes and one thing I’ve come away with that’s so different for Johns Hopkins is that it’s okay to be a bit more academic. Generally I don’t advise doing that, but at Johns Hopkins it certainly was more acceptable when I was reading there to have an academic lens into your essay. Maybe it's not entirely explaining why you’re competitive or valid for this university, but it could be using a story to help explain where that comes through.”
- Jeremy Parks, Crimson Education FAO
For example, there may be an experience, anecdote, or influence in your life that really helps illuminate, in a personal way and through a lens of introspection, an academic passion or vocational goal.
Your reflection on your own college journey can also show the reader that you really understand all the layers of the kind of career path you’re heading into.
This can be really powerful for many JHU applicants who have a general interest in studying medicine down the road, for example. Many applicants find it hard to articulate in a more nuanced way what studying and performing “medicine” will actually look like, lead to, and how it will impact society or the field.
Even though this may mean a core strand of your narrative is about your major and about academics, as opposed to more general personal values and experiential aspects of your life, that approach is fine at JHU.
How To Brainstorm Your JHU Supplemental Essay
One way you can start your brainstorming is by identifying the aspects of your academic journey and story that you care about most.
Remember — each individual’s college journey has unique features and anchoring experiences, influences, or aspirations… You might find these by looking at different past, present, and future points on the timeline of your life story and academic journey as you brainstorm:
- Looking backwards in time: Is there a learning experience in your past that’s formative, shaping your values and commitments for the future?
- Focusing on a present motivation or interest: Maybe you’re taking a class or involved in an extracurricular that’s sparking new interests. Why is this interest motivating you to go to JHU in particular?
- Seeing JHU as a crucial stepping stone to a future aspiration: Does your interest in attending JHU relate to a vision for where you see yourself working or what you see yourself doing, or how you see yourself applying your college education after you graduate?
The next step of your brainstorming process will typically require prior research into JHU — such as insights you develop into specific offerings, programs, learning pathways, and resources.
This deeper level of familiarity will allow you to capture the most compelling ways your academic journey connects with JHU and speak more convincingly to why you’ll benefit from and contribute to the JHU community:
- What crucial aspects of your life story, academic journey, and motivations for attending JHU are intertwined most deeply?
- How do these personal factors make you a great fit for JHU while also making JHU your dream school?
In the end, you’ll want this introspective brainstorm to uncover themes that connect your life story and JHU — so much so that your final essay will powerfully illustrate why JHU has an essential place in your evolving college journey.
What are some tips to stand out when writing essays for Johns Hopkins?
For your essay to stand out, it needs to make you stand out by being infused with personality, introspection, and authenticity.
Personal voice and introspection infuse your essay: Infusing your essay with a sincere, authentic, and personal voice and perspective is key to making your profile memorable. By showcasing the experiences and reflections that connect your life story, your academic journey, and the importance you place on learning at JHU, you'll go a long way in making sure your essay stands out.
Generally I don’t think students realize how hard they’re trying to qualify themselves and their accomplishments to us in their writing — which is really NOT what the writing is there for, since that’s the job of the transcripts and extracurricular lists!
Showing us (not telling): As you recount a compelling story or explore an intriguing reflection that has meaning for you in your life, we can read between the lines in terms of what it conveys about your future potential as a JHU student, your maturity and capabilities, and so forth. I sometimes use the example of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. You just need to tell the story in a powerful way, your readers at JHU will get your meaning and grasp the larger significance.
Building a coherent applicant profile: Your essay narrative should be carefully crafted to ensure it resonates with, complements, and extends in some meaningful ways the applicant profile emerging across your other application components.
Your essay narrative should reveal the passions, personality, and arc of personal reflection and growth underlying your test scores, extracurriculars, and motivations for attending JHU, including JHU's place in your larger aspirational journey into, through, and beyond college.
“Thematic consistency is a core tenant… When I would go into a committee room after the first read, the essays that made it through the first round — the regional evaluations — get read along with essays and applications from other regions around the world. Your story not only needs to be impressive and memorable enough to stand out among other applicants in your own community, but remain memorable at this next level too.”
- Jeremy Parks, Crimson Education FAO
A strong fit for JHU: Finally, it’s crucial that your supplemental essay not only has a clear, unifying narrative focus; it must connect your story to some compelling features of JHU — which can include unique features of academic and community life there, or prominent programs, highly particular faculty specializations, and so forth…
I often use the analogy of the hotel doorman: you’re approaching an elite hotel or residence, but before you can go in, the doorman asks you “What’s the reason for your visit and why should we let you in?”
It’s kind of like that when you apply to JHU and write your supplemental essay. You need to craft a story that offers a really compelling answer to the doorman’s question, showcasing why your story naturally leads to the doorstep of JHU, and not anywhere else!
What are some common mistakes to avoid when writing essays for Johns Hopkins?
The most common misstep involves losing sight of the most important elements of your essay and its admissions context. Here’s a breakdown of how that often looks, based on the many, many essays I’ve seen over the years:
- Avoid using your supplemental essay to “prove yourself.” I often find that students will try too hard in their essay to state qualifications, making their writing more like a resume and too much a repetition of what we know from grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities lists. This may be a symptom of the fact that students have so much training in persuasive writing, as in the 5-paragraph essay format, with its emphasis on making a claim, listing reasons it’s true, and so forth. Instead, it’s important your essay show why you’re special and different from other people and how your personal story forms a crucial part of your academic story.
- Don’t get overly “creative.” You want your essay to reflect personal dimensions of yourself and your personal journey, but you don’t have to use a creative approach simply for the sake of being “different” or being “original.” Showcasing a personality quirk or a creative meme is not really the point of the essay.
- Avoid topics that are overly arcane or complicated. While you may be tempted to dwell on and showcase your chess prowess or your obsession with classical Greek, it’s important that how you format your essay and what you write about are truly relevant to the admissions context, make for an essay that’s accessible, and won't require too much decoding on the part of your time-pressed readers!
4. JHU Essay Example
Below is an example of a well written JHU essay, from AdmitYogi. The prompt is very similar to this year's prompt. Use it for inspiration as you plan your own essay!
Sample Essay
Tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or an experience that has shaped you and how that influenced what you’d like to pursue at Hopkins.
When taking Abnormal Psychology freshman year, I was fascinated to learn that my family’s stoic attitude under stress stems from culture’s influence on human behavior. When the course concluded, I hungered to learn more. Sunlit days crept into moonlit nights as I learned from Google Scholar that culture impacts visual perception (that’s why East Asian websites are more “cluttered” than Western ones) and influences decision-making (i.e. through a focus on either collectivism or individualism). Some cultures even have unique disorders, like ataque de nervios, a panic disorder in Latinx patients. I fell in love with reading about culture influencing cognition and diving into the science that explained it.
My fascination led me to conduct two independent studies assessing the cultural competency of mental health apps and the cultural elements in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). I was mesmerized by case studies like one about a Japanese woman, “M,” who was misdiagnosed with depression instead of adult separation anxiety because her psychiatrists didn’t factor in the cultural context of her immigration story.
At Hopkins, I’d love to double major in Cognitive Science and Medicine, Science, and Humanities. I’m excited to take “Bodies in Flux: Medicine, Gender, and Sexuality in the Modern Middle East” because I’m fascinated by decolonial theory and the intersections between science, health, and culture. I’d also love to take “Cognitive Science in Artificial Intelligence,” since I’m deeply passionate about the biases embedded in artificial intelligence and the way cognitive science can support the creation of ethical technology.
My sister—a sophomore at Hopkins—raves about the ease of getting involved in research. One of my long-term goals is to use insights from cultural cognition to reimagine the value systems behind medicine and technology to make them more equitable, so I’d be honored to work with Professor Yulia Frumer. I’d love to learn about the role of cognition and emotions in technological decision-making and how class and gender biases affect design choices.
At Johns Hopkins, sherlocking the intersections between culture, cognition, and society won’t just feed my curiosity; it’ll energize my soul.
5. The Home Stretch: Polishing Your Essay
However you end up approaching your own Johns Hopkins supplemental essay, you’ll want to make sure you give the entire writing process, and each stage of the process, the attention it deserves.
Polishing your essay may not have all the same meaning it has for writing an academic essay. What is important is applying what you've learned from this blog post and being authentic, in addition to having some outside readers giving you feedback during the revision and proofreading stages.
Likewise, just because JHU is perfectly fine with an essay that’s conversational in style and uses a personal perspective, doesn’t mean it lacks coherence or relevance. You want the style, personal story, and academic aspirations resonating effectively and coming together in a way that’s powerful and memorable.
Final Thoughts
The Johns Hopkins 2024 supplemental essay prompt is straightforward enough, but now you can see that there are many nuanced ways to ensure your JHU essay will really make a strong impression.
Remember, your essay is not intended to be an academic essay; it should use the format of a personal narrative or reflective essay so you can introduce yourself and connect formative aspects of your life story to showing why JHU is your top choice.
If you want more help and expert insights to make sure you stand out among other top applicants, Crimson Education offers a holistic, personalized, and proven approach, including expert essay reviewing and mentoring services.
It's also easy to learn more about our comprehensive approach to helping students get offers from the best institutions around the world, so schedule a free feedback session with a strategist and start boosting your odds at Johns Hopkins or other top schools.
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About the Contributor
Jeremy Parks
Jeremy is a seasoned admissions expert who helps students reach their full potential. After graduating from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with degrees in History and American Culture, he honed his skills as an Admissions Officer at Johns Hopkins University. Specializing in pre-health advising and leading application workshops, Jeremy has a proven track record of guiding students into Ivy League schools, Stanford, NYU, and other top universities.
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