The Prompt
"Please tell us what motivated you to apply to Washington University in St. Louis, and why you're interested in the academic program(s) you selected."
Suggested length: around 200 words. WashU reads tight essays more generously than sprawling ones.
What WashU Is Actually Asking
For years WashU didn't require a supplement. The fact that they added one means readers are using it to distinguish applicants who actually know the school from applicants who clicked "add to list." The bar for specificity is high precisely because the essay is short.
WashU admits to five undergraduate schools. Name yours:
- Arts & Sciences — the open curriculum and the largest school by enrollment.
- Olin Business School — direct admission as a first-year, unlike many peer business programs.
- Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts — Architecture and Art as separate programs, portfolio required.
- McKelvey School of Engineering — strong in biomedical and systems.
- Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College — the direct-entry BSN track.
WashU's Underused Selling Points
- Cross-divisional majors. WashU makes it unusually easy to combine schools — Architecture + Engineering, Business + Art, CS + Economics. Naming this structure signals you've read past the marketing page.
- The open curriculum within Arts & Sciences. Not as famous as Brown's, but real. Use the specific requirements (or lack of them) as a reason.
- BJC / Barnes-Jewish Hospital access. For pre-meds and pre-health, WashU's teaching hospital is a legitimate research anchor.
- The First Year Center and College Cabinet structure. Small detail, but naming it reads as research.
Examples That Work
"I'm applying to Arts & Sciences and planning to use the cross-divisional pathway to combine Linguistics with Computer Science at McKelvey. WashU's open curriculum in A&S means I can take the phonetics lab and the NLP sequence the same semester without fighting a distribution requirement — a specific structural reason I'm not applying to a more rigid program."
Why it works: names the school (A&S), names the second school (McKelvey), names the specific structural feature (cross-divisional majors + open curriculum), and explains what the structure lets them do. Under 70 words.
Common Mistakes
- Not naming a school. WashU sees "I want to study at WashU" and moves on. Even a first-year undecided applicant goes through Arts & Sciences — say so.
- "Midwest charm" as substance. Along with "close-knit community," this is the WashU version of every other school's tired phrase.
- Treating WashU as a top-20 safety. Readers can smell a yield-protective essay. Don't hedge your reasons.
- Listing four clubs as your main reasons. Clubs are at every school. Structural features of the curriculum are not.
- Confusing Olin Business School with Olin College of Engineering (different school, different state). It happens. Readers notice.
The Self-Test
Read your draft and count how many proper nouns are WashU-specific (school names, program names, center names, building names). If fewer than three, you have not answered the prompt. Add two more and cut adjectives to stay in the word budget.
Run your draft through our AI essay review tool to check for school-naming accuracy and filler. For the broader framework, read our "Why This College" essay guide. For tight word-limit discipline, see our word limit guide.