Lewis & Clark: Personal motto

300-400 words (choose this prompt OR the difference prompt)

Tell us about your personal motto and how it guides you (Latin not required).

What it’s really asking

Lewis & Clark introduces this with its own motto, Explorare, Discere, Sociare (to explore, to learn, to work together), then asks for yours. They want a phrase you genuinely live by and proof, through real examples, that it shapes how you act. The motto can be a saying, a family line, a rule you set for yourself, or a translated phrase. It does not need to be in Latin or sound profound.

Why they ask it

A motto is a fast, revealing lens on values. In 350 words it forces you to commit to one organizing idea and then back it with behavior, which tells admissions far more about your character than a list of activities would.

Three ways in

Listen for what you already say

Think of a phrase you actually repeat to yourself or hear at home, then hunt for the one moment that proves you mean it.

Reverse-engineer a habit

Start from a small habit you have, like always finishing the boring task first or always asking one more question, and work backward to the motto behind it.

Write toward the gap

Pick a motto you sometimes fail to live up to, and write honestly about the distance between the words and your actions.

✕ Weak opening

“My personal motto has always been to never give up, no matter how hard things get.”

✓ Strong opening

“My grandmother's rule was 'measure twice, then measure again,' and I once cut a board four times before I trusted the number.”

✦ Annotated example · The mechanic's measure-twice motto. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

My grandfather repaired washing machines for thirty-one years, and the only sentence he ever repeated to me at his workbench was "Measure the part you can't see." ¹He meant it literally. A faulty drum is usually fine on the surface; the crack that matters is the one hidden behind the panel you have to unscrew. But I have spent four years quietly applying it to almost everything except washing machines. In our weekly Model UN sessions, I used to write my position papers from the easy, visible facts: a country's GDP, its votes, the headlines. The first time I represented Bangladesh on a climate committee, I lost the room because I argued only what I could see. ²Afterward, a delegate from another school asked me whether I had read anything about how the country's rivers actually move when the monsoon shifts. I had not. So I went home and unscrewed the panel: I read about silt, about embankments that protect one village by flooding the next, about why a "simple" sea wall is a moral argument disguised as engineering. ³My next position paper was slower to write and far less tidy, and it was the first one anyone argued with. The motto has cost me comfortable opinions more than once. ⁴When my best friend told me she was leaving our shared church, my first instinct was to defend the visible thing, the building and the Sundays we had grown up in. Measure the part you can't see. So instead I asked her what the leaving felt like from inside, and I listened to an answer that took an hour and did not flatter me. ⁵I did not change her mind and she did not change mine, but I understood, for the first time, that I had been measuring her decision by my own visible panel. What I like about my grandfather's line is that it is not really about being right. It is about assuming there is always a part you cannot see, and being willing to look stupid while you find it. ⁶He retired before I could thank him for it, and his old toolbox now sits under my desk, mostly empty. I keep it there because it reminds me that the screwdriver is the cheap part. The expensive part is admitting the panel was on the whole time.

1Opening on a borrowed, slightly odd motto (not a famous quote) is more memorable and original than a Latin maxim, which the prompt explicitly says is optional. It also plants a concrete person and setting in the first line.
2Moving the motto from the literal (appliances) to the intellectual (research) shows range and signals the genuine curiosity Lewis & Clark rewards. The admitted failure adds honesty and lowers the bragging register.
3The unscrewing image literalizes the motto and threads it back through, giving the essay a spine. The specific details (silt, embankments) prove real intellectual digging rather than a stated love of learning.
4Naming a cost of the motto keeps it from being a tidy slogan; reflection over achievement is exactly what this school says it values.
5A second, more personal application (faith, friendship) widens the motto from academic to relational, which previews the comfort-across-difference value without switching to the other prompt.
6Restating the motto as a method (humility, willingness to look stupid) rather than a result is the reflective turn that elevates the piece above a résumé in prose.

Stuck? Start here

What phrase do I actually say out loud, to myself or to other people, more than once a week?
When did following this rule cost me something or change an outcome I can describe in one scene?
Where do I fail to live up to this motto, and is that gap more honest than pretending I always nail it?

Before you submit

Does one specific scene prove the motto, rather than me just defining it?
Have I shown the motto operating in at least two different parts of my life?
Did I avoid repeating the theme of my Common App personal statement?

Drafted it? Get an honest, admissions-style read, free.

Score my essay