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Brandeis  /  Essays  /  Prompt 2

Brandeis: International Applicants

250 words

What excites you the most about being an international student at Brandeis University?
What it’s really asking

For international first-year applicants only. Brandeis wants to know what specifically draws you to its community as someone coming from another country, and, by implication, what you will add to it.

Why they ask it

At 250 words this is your one explicit fit essay. It tests whether you have thought concretely about Brandeis and about the perspective you bring, rather than treating it as a generic US school.

Three ways in
Anchor on one Brandeis specific

Pick one concrete thing about Brandeis (a tradition, a value, a way of debating) and connect it to who you are.

Name what home taught you

Say what your home context taught you that you want to carry into discussions on campus.

Look forward, not back

Say what you will do or start once you arrive, not just what you admire from afar.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always dreamed of studying in the United States, and Brandeis is the perfect place for me to achieve my dreams.”

✓  Strong opening

“In Lagos, my debate club argued about justice constantly, but we never once agreed on what the word meant.”

✦ Annotated example · Bringing the argument to the table. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
In Addis Ababa, my family argues about politics over dinner the way other families discuss the weather: constantly, loudly, and without expecting to win. My uncle defends one party, my mother dismantles it, and my grandmother referees with a wooden spoon.1I grew up assuming disagreement was a form of affection. What excites me most about Brandeis is bringing that table to a place that was, quite literally, founded on disagreement that refuses to become contempt.2A university built by a community that had been turned away elsewhere, and that chose openness instead of resentment, feels like the natural extension of my grandmother's spoon. I want to sit in a seminar where my instinct to argue is not read as rudeness but as participation, and where I am just as likely to be the one whose assumption gets dismantled.3I am excited to take Politics of the Middle East with classmates who will have read the same sources and reached the opposite conclusion, and to leave the room still friends. As an international student, I think I can offer a useful kind of friction: I will not assume the American reading of a region is the only reading on the table.4Outside the classroom, I want to bring the dinner table itself. I plan to start a standing weekly meal where international and domestic students debate one contested question, with the rule my grandmother enforced: you may not leave until you have stated your opponent's view fairly. I have watched that single rule turn shouting into listening.5I am not coming to Brandeis to be a quiet guest. I am coming to set a place at the table and to find out, gladly, how often I am wrong.6
  1. 1Opens with a vivid, culturally specific scene rather than a statement of intent. It establishes a distinctive perspective the student will carry to campus, which directly answers what excites them.
  2. 2Names the specific excitement (a campus culture of principled disagreement) and pivots cleanly from the personal scene to the institution.
  3. 3Connects the student's background to Brandeis's founding identity (built by an excluded community committed to openness). This shows real research and ties personal voice to institutional values.
  4. 4Names a specific course and frames the international perspective as an intellectual contribution, not just biographical color. Brandeis rewards intellectual independence shown this concretely.
  5. 5Moves from consuming the community to contributing a concrete addition to it, which speaks to Brandeis's emphasis on community and contribution.
  6. 6The closing line is confident and humble at once, leaving the reader with a memorable, voice-driven image that reinforces the essay's throughline.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is one specific Brandeis value, tradition, or practice that genuinely connects to my own experience?
  • What did growing up where I did teach me that would change a class discussion here?
  • What do I actually want to start or join once I am on campus?
Before you submit
  • Did I name something concrete about Brandeis rather than something true of any US university?
  • Is it clear what I will contribute, not just what I will receive?
  • Am I comfortably under 250 words with no sentence wasted on summary?

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