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CMC  /  Essays  /  Prompt 2

CMC: Open Academy: Changing Your Mind

150-250 words

A critical part of fulfilling our mission is living out the commitments of CMC's Open Academy: Freedom of Expression, Viewpoint Diversity, and Constructive Dialogue. We want to learn more about your commitment to listening and learning from others with different viewpoints, perspectives, and life experiences from your own. Describe a time when engaging with someone about a specific topic resulted in you changing your attitude, belief, or behavior, or you changed the belief or behavior of someone else. What was the change that occurred for you, and what facilitated that change? What did you learn from that experience, and how has it informed how you engage with others?
What it’s really asking

Describe a real moment when a conversation changed you (or you changed someone), what specifically caused the shift, and what you took from it. They want evidence you can listen across difference, not just tolerate it.

Why they ask it

Open Academy is central to CMC's identity. The college is betting on students who can disagree productively. This prompt screens for intellectual humility and the ability to describe how a mind actually changes, which is rare and hard to fake.

Three ways in
Pick a small, true shift

Choose a modest change (how you treated a person, a habit you dropped) over a dramatic political conversion, and dwell on the exact moment it turned.

Make the mechanism visible

Quote or paraphrase the specific thing the other person said that landed. The prompt asks what facilitated the change, so put that on the page in concrete words.

End on changed behavior

Close with a concrete thing you now do differently, not a generic 'I learned to be more open-minded.' Behavior is more convincing than sentiment.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always believed in keeping an open mind and listening to all sides of every issue.”

✓  Strong opening

“My grandfather kept voting for a man I could not stand, and for two years I just stopped asking him why.”

✦ Annotated example · Changing my mind: debate over rent control. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
I came into our policy club convinced rent control was obviously good. My grandmother had stayed in her apartment for thirty years because of it, and that felt like proof enough.1 Then Daniel, who I usually disagreed with, asked me a quiet question: what happened to the apartment next to hers? I did not know. He did. It had sat half-empty for years because the landlord could not cover repairs at the capped rent. 2What changed my mind was not that Daniel won. It was that he asked about the thing I had not looked at. I had built my whole position around one apartment I could see and ignored the ones I could not.3 I spent that weekend actually reading studies, and I landed somewhere uncomfortable and partial: rent control protects current tenants and can shrink future supply, both true at once. I did not get a tidy answer. I got an honest one.4 Now when I feel certain, I have a habit: I ask what apartment I am not looking at. 5And I try to be the person who asks the quiet question instead of the loud one, because that is what actually moved me, and it is how I want to move other people too.6
  1. 1States the prior belief plainly and grounds it in personal stake, so the change later has real weight. Honest, not performative.
  2. 2The turning point is a specific question from a named peer, not an abstract 'someone challenged me.' Shows real constructive dialogue.
  3. 3Pinpoints exactly WHAT facilitated the change (a better question, not a louder argument), which is the heart of CMC's Open Academy prompt.
  4. 4Lands on a nuanced, unresolved position rather than flipping to the opposite side. Demonstrates intellectual humility, which CMC explicitly rewards.
  5. 5Turns the lesson into a concrete, repeatable practice rather than a vague takeaway.
  6. 6Closes by connecting the experience to how the applicant now engages others, answering the prompt's final sub-question directly.
Stuck? Start here
  • When did a conversation actually change how I think or act, even slightly, and what exact words or moment caused it?
  • Is there a person whose view I dismissed before I understood the experience behind it?
  • What do I now do differently in disagreements because of that moment?
Before you submit
  • Is the shift I describe real and specific, not a staged conversion on a hot-button issue?
  • Did I show the mechanism (the exact thing that moved me), not just the topic?
  • Does the ending name a concrete change in how I engage with others?

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