Johns Hopkins University has released its supplemental essay prompt for the 2024-2025 college admissions cycle. Johns Hopkins, which in recent years, has asked applicants to answer only one supplemental essay, is again requiring applicants to answer only one essay prompt — a 350-worder. But it’s not the length of Johns Hopkins’ essay prompt for applicants to the JHU Class of 2029 that’s interesting (although it’s 50 words longer than last year’s prompt). Instead, it’s the topic.

Unlike last year, when Johns Hopkins’ brave admissions committee — to our surprise — pushed the needle as far as it could go in the wake of the Supreme Court’s outlawing of Affirmative Action, by explicitly including race as among the grab bag of background options for applicants to choose to write about, the school chose a more conservative prompt this year. Yes, maybe they got scared.

2024-2025 Johns Hopkins Essay Topic

Below is Johns Hopkins’ essay prompt for applicants to the JHU Class of 2029:

How has your life experience contributed to your personal story—your character, values, perspectives or skills—and what you want to pursue at Hopkins?

Johns Hopkins’ Supplemental Essay Is Less Bold This Year

While similar, the wording of this year’s Johns Hopkins essay prompt doesn’t walk as close to the legal limit as last year’s, which read as follows:

Tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual and how that influenced what you’d like to pursue in college at Hopkins.? (This can be a future goal or experience that is either academic, extracurricular, or social).

Last year, the school’s admissions committee directly asked about a student’s race (or gender, sexuality, religion, community, or something else) to understand their perspective and lived experience.

It marked a bold move in response to the Supreme Court’s outlawing of the practice of Affirmative Action in late June 2023. At the time, some surmised that many of our nation’s elite universities would avoid directly asking applicants to comment on their race. But not us. No, we at Ivy Coach have a crystal ball. That crystal ball, once even cited on the pages of America’s oldest college newspaper, forecasted that America’s elite universities would still find ways to indirectly consider race in the admissions process to create diverse classes, capitalizing on the opening provided by Chief Justice John Roberts.

In the majority opinion, Roberts wrote, “At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

Yet not every school put themselves directly in the line of fire by using the word “race” in their supplemental essay prompt(s). Johns Hopkins — a school that proudly previously banned the un-meritocratic practice of legacy admission, or the tradition of offering preferential treatment to the progeny of a school’s alumni base — dared to do so for last year’s applicants. Agree or disagree with Affirmative Action, Johns Hopkins’ bold response to the ruling was noteworthy. However, this year, they walked it back, choosing instead to include a more broad background/perspectives-type question that has become a staple of many elite schools’ supplements.

Johns Hopkins Supplemental Essay Was Super Bold Last Year

And it’s not as though Johns Hopkins simply cut and pasted their essay 2023-2024 prompt last year from the 2022-2023 cycle. The 2022-2023 essay prompt did not explicitly mention race. It read as follows:

Founded in the spirit of exploration and discovery, Johns Hopkins University encourages students to share their perspectives, develop their interests, and pursue new experiences. Use this space to share something you’d like the admissions committee to know about you (your interests, your background, your identity, or your community), and how it has shaped what you want to get out of your college experience at Hopkins.

How to Approach Answering Johns Hopkins’ Supplemental Essay

But while Johns Hopkins’ admissions committee may have played it safer by changing the wording of the 2024-2025 essay prompt so as not to explicitly cite race, the sentiment remains intact. They want to hear about a student’s character, perspective (which could have been shaped by their race), values, skills, etc.

One, of course, doesn’t need to be an underrepresented minority to be able to answer this essay prompt. Applicants really have a blank canvas for this essay question. As such, they can direct their answer in just about any way they wish. However, it should be sure to also address the second half of the hybrid question of how that perspective, community, or life experience has shaped what they hope to study at Johns Hopkins.

It’s thus essential to include a few specifics that only apply to Johns Hopkins (and, no, name-dropping professors or listing classes do not count as genuine specifics about an institution). After all, JHU admissions officers want to understand how that perspective, value, skill, etc. will influence what you bring to their vibrant campus.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance with Johns Hopkins Essay Prompt

If you’re interested in optimizing your case for admission to Johns Hopkins and wowing admissions officers with compelling storytelling, fill out Ivy Coach’s consultation form, and we’ll be in touch to outline our college counseling services for seniors.