Conn College / Essays / Prompt 1
Conn College: The Community (Herd) Essay
150 words or less
Developing a strong, equitable and inclusive community is important to us at Connecticut College. After all, camels live and work together in herds. In 150 words or less, please tell us a little more about who you are and what you will bring to the Conn community to help us grow into the best version of ourselves. You may choose to include details about how your background, identity, challenges, and lived experiences have shaped your accomplishments and potential contributions.
This is Conn's signature (and only) supplemental prompt. It is optional but strongly encouraged, and the school accepts any format, including prose, a list, or a poem. It asks two linked questions: who are you, and what will you concretely add to the Conn community? The optional clause invites you to draw on background, identity, challenges, or lived experience, but you are not required to. Note that Conn does not require any supplemental essay and charges no application fee, so this single short response is the main place to make a personal case beyond your Common App essay.
Conn is a small residential college where everyone lives together closely, and the camel-herd image is their playful way of saying they admit people, not stats. They are reading for whether you will make the people around you better. Because the limit is so tight, the prompt also tests whether you can be specific and self-aware under pressure rather than retreating into safe generalities.
Identify the role you naturally play in any group: the includer, the question-asker, the peacemaker, the one who starts things. Then find a real scene that proves it rather than just naming it.
Pick one specific thing about yourself (a ritual, a skill, a fixation) and trace how it spills over into how you treat the people around you. The small detail makes the contribution believable.
Think about a team, family, job, or online group you made better, and isolate the single move you made that mattered. That move is your answer to what you will bring to Conn.
“Connecticut College's commitment to building a strong and inclusive community deeply resonates with me, because I have always valued diversity and bringing people together.”
“At my lunch table, I am the unofficial seating chart: I notice who is sitting alone and I go get them.”
- 1Opens on a concrete, unusual scene instead of an abstract value statement. The voice is established in one sentence.
- 2Sets up a small, specific tension that the applicant will resolve, which the 150-word limit rewards.
- 3This is the heart. Translation becomes mediation, which directly answers community as a verb, a specific contribution rather than general goodness.
- 4A genuine insight earned from the scene, not a borrowed maxim. Shows reflection.
- 5Names concrete campus settings, turning a past skill into a forward-looking contribution the college can picture.
- 6Lands on a compressed line that ties back to the camel-herd image without restating the prompt. Voice survives the cut.
- When you walk into a room full of people you do not know, what do you instinctively do, and what does that say about you?
- Name one specific person, group, or space that is better because you were part of it. What exactly did you do?
- If your closest friend had to describe the role you play in their life in one sentence, what would they say?
- Does this reveal something not already obvious from my activities list and Common App essay?
- Did I show one specific scene or behavior instead of describing a value in the abstract?
- Is it genuinely 150 words or fewer, and does every sentence earn its place?
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