A strong diversity essay demonstrates how you will bring a different perspective, personality, or background to your potential campus environment. In addition, you should provide anecdotes about how your life experiences have influenced your behaviour, views, and objectives.

Diversity essay: Definition

In diversity essays, students are asked to write on a significant aspect of their culture, history, heritage, experiences, perspectives, ideas, talents, interests, and objectives.

A diversity essay can take many different shapes. For example, some scholarships are available only to students from disadvantaged backgrounds or ethnicities in higher education. In addition, supplementary diversity essays are required at particularly selective schools, and they ask candidates to explain how their distinctive perspective, identity, or heritage would benefit the student population.

Some primary essay topics in the Common Application and applications for multiple other universities discuss how your heritage, culture, or experiences influenced you.

Example of a diversity essay from the University of North Carolina

Describe a facet of your personality, such as your faith, ethnicity, nationality, sexual or gender orientation, interest group, etc. What impact has this element of your personality had on your life so far?

Example of a diversity essay from the University of Michigan

Everyone is a part of a culturally diverse community and group characterized by common location, faith, race, profession, food, passion, race, philosophy, or intellectual history, among other things. Pick one of the communities and describe that community and your role within it.

Example of diversity essay in Common Application prompt

Many students have a significant history, personality, passion, or skill that they think would make their candidacy incomplete without it. If this describes you, please share your experience.

Why do schools ask you to write a diversity essay?

Many colleges feel that having a diverse student body with diverse viewpoints, ideas, identities, and experiences will improve campus’s educational and social environment.

Admissions staffs want to know how your history, personality, views, culture, or qualities will contribute to the college community.

Admissions committees are looking for applicants to convey the following in their diversity essay:

• What distinguishes them from other candidates?
• Stories about their origins, identities, or experiences
• What impact their life experiences have had on their worldview, interests, and ambitions

Describe how you will contribute to the college community
Consider what components of your identity or heritage distinguish you and pick one that has greatly influenced your life.

It may be simple for some kids to recognize what makes them unique from their peers. If you’re having problems figuring out what sets you apart from the competition, take a step back and look at your life from outside the box. Don’t assume that your life experiences are ordinary or uninteresting because you’ve had them before.

The following are samples of personalities or circumstances that you might talk about in your diversity essay.

• Religion/belief system
• Immigration background
• Gender identity
• Nationality
• Race/ethnicity
• Sexual orientation
• Socioeconomic status
• Family circumstances
• Place of residence

Talk about your personal experiences
Include anecdotes from your life that are sensitive and real. Keep your attention on your perspective rather than contrasting yourself to others or summarising their experiences.

Focus on yourself
Narrate a tale that describes how your culture, upbringing, and other life experiences have helped shape you. Although you could include external perspectives to add more context to your narrative, ensure that the essay’s focus is on yourself. Admissions committees are primarily looking to know more about you and not others.

Example
Despite nearing the retirement age, my granddad welcomed me into his home when I was you, even though it meant more work for him. He rarely skipped a single school event or football match, despite having to work extra shifts to support me.

He and I shared a different type of bond to the extent that we even invented a secret language to communicate with one other. He constantly encouraged me to do well in school and congratulated me on every academic success as if it were a Nobel Prize. Each month, whatever extra tip money he got at work was put into a 509 college saving account for me.

My grandpa was stricken with ALS while I was in tenth grade. We could not afford health insurance, so I stopped playing football and eventually dropped out as her illness deteriorated. However, I did take advantage of those rare free times between his doctor’s visits, cleaning the house and making him comfortable to prepare for my GED.

Example
You could always recognize me as “the Asian girl” in school photographs at Raleigh Elementary School. I sometimes used to bring extra fun see noodles to school for lunch, but after my friends complained about how bad they smelled, I urged my mother to make a “normal” lunch with sandwich bread, mayo, and sandwich meat.

Despite being born and schooled in North Carolina, I had a cultural duty to master my “mother tongue” and bond with my “homeland”. So I went to Beijing for the first time following 2 years of Weekend Chinese School, hoping to fit in completely. While my appearance originally satisfied residents of my Chinese ethnicity, my cover was shattered the moment I talked. My Chinese was riddled with phonetic mistakes, and I was dubbed an “ABC,” or American-born Chinese, right away.

I felt like I was on the verge of becoming a cultural outcast.

Write the diversity essay based on your own personal experience

Rather than contrasting yourself to others, emphasize your efforts, struggles, and emotions. While it’s easy to talk about how you’ve had it better or worse than others, concentrate on yourself and your distinct experiences, as seen here.

Example
When the FAFSA website was once again flooded with red error notices, I became despondent.

Despite waiting in the library for the entire day, I could not finish the submission form, let alone the rest of the requirements for the application.

I am the first in my family to be going to college. Both my mother and father maintain two occupations, yet it can still be difficult to make ends meet. So rather than playing soccer or attending debates, I supported my family by looking after my siblings whenever I got the time.

Example
“We here speak only one language! You need to know how to speak proper English,” Exclaimed a shopkeeper as I tried to buy food but mistook a pronoun while speaking.

English grammar had always been a strong point for me, and I always aced my English tests back at school.

Departing from Seoul was difficult, but managing everyday interaction with Americans in New Jersey was difficult.

Describe how your upbringing or identity has influenced your life
After you’ve shared relevant personal anecdotes, explain how your life experiences have shaped your outlook, interests, and ambitions. You could also describe why you applied to this school and why you’re a good fit based on your history.

Include your thoughts, activities, and objectives
Finish your diversity essay by elaborating on how your upbringing or identity has influenced your viewpoint, behaviours, and aspirations. Relevant activities and initiatives that you have taken as a result of your insight should be included.

Example
I dropped by my closest friend Maria’s place one night before the midnight debut of Avengers: Endgame. Homemade tortillas, churros, and Mexican hot cocoa were cooked by her mother and beautifully packed in an insulated lunch box. I remembered Maria and me taking dance classes together and belting out Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” at karaoke while we sat in queue wrapping around the AMC theatre. As I ate a chicken tortilla at that time, I understood how much I respected Maria’s culture’s richness, intricacy, and joy but had repressed and discounted my own.

I enrolled at the Model UN the next semester. Ever since I’ve learnt how to confidently represent different countries and have broadened my cultural horizons. I’ve realized that all civilizations, including mine, are equal. Nevertheless, small triggers continue to bother me, such as when I go past security at the airport and receive a disapproving glare or when I am self-conscious about taking kabsa to lunch at school. However, in the future, I would like to study and work in international affairs to continue learning about various cultures and give the world a favourable view of Saudi culture.

Example
Some of my most cherished childhood recollections are the fragrance of early hours dew and the comforting neighing of my family’s horses. Unfortunately, our property is still so remote that we don’t have access to the internet, and we’re too far from the nearest town for the mail service to reach us.

Regularly going to school became much of a chore for me: tending to the constant duties around the farm and a lack of internet made it tough to be on track with my classes. Although I was an amateur scientist, ardent reader, and enthusiastic student in class, I missed out on many school days owning to farm chores and unanticipated circumstances.

All these years of hardships had taught me tenacity, the significance of diligent work, and the worth of family, despite all the setbacks and hardships I had to go through. These challenges have taught me a lot about a family, from sleepless nights tending to a newly born foal to calming horses after a thunder.

My family’s farm is both our inheritance and our means of livelihood. I am eager to learn how to maintain its financial and technical viability for coming generations. I plan to join a branch of Future Farmers of America in college and major in agricultural business to continue my family’s history.

Make your response specific to the university
You can highlight university clubs, groups, or programs you’re interested in after discussing how your character or background would strengthen the institution’s current student body.

Perhaps a bigger public school will enable you to expand your social circle, or a small liberal arts institution will provide a specific curriculum that will help you find your perspective and identity. Perhaps there is an established affinity group at this college that you would want to join.

Highlighting how a university’s unique programmes or organizations are relevant to you in your diversity essay might demonstrate that you’ve done your research and will be a fantastic fit for the school.

Example
I want to pursue engineering at the University of Michigan Engineering not just to mirror my mother’s accomplishments and determination but also to carve my career as a disabled engineer. I like the university’s commitment to assisting disabled students in various ways, from inclusive accommodations to mobility aids. I want to acquire a top-notch education at the University of Michigan Engineering and utilize it to motivate others to achieve their goals, irrespective of their situations or backgrounds.

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