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LMU  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

LMU: Why LMU / Why Major

500 words (optional, but strongly recommended)

Share with us why you are interested in LMU and/or why you chose your specific area of study or major.
What it’s really asking

This is a combined 'Why this college' and 'Why this major' prompt. The 'and/or' lets you choose, but most strong essays do both: tell the story of how your academic interest began and where it is headed, then connect it to specific LMU resources that would let you pursue it. Some LMU programs (such as the School of Film and Television or certain arts majors) have their own portfolio, audition, or supplemental requirements; check your program's page, but every first-year applicant shares this same core essay.

Why they ask it

LMU reads for fit and demonstrated interest. This prompt is the school's main window into whether you actually understand what LMU offers and whether your goals line up with it. It also screens out applicants who applied on autopilot: anyone who genuinely researched the school can write it well, and the ones who did not tend to fall back on clichés about weather and location.

Three ways in
Start at the origin moment

Open with the class, job, loss, project, or stubborn question that first hooked you on your major, then trace it forward to what you want to study at LMU.

Lead with one real LMU resource

Name a specific course, professor, institute, or service-learning program you could only know by digging, and explain exactly what you would do with it.

Bridge through LMU's identity

Use LMU's mission (education of the whole person, service, social justice, the LA setting as a working lab for your field) to connect who you are now to who you want to become.

✕  Weak opening

“Loyola Marymount University has always been my dream school because of its beautiful campus, great location in sunny Los Angeles, and strong academic reputation.”

✓  Strong opening

“I learned to read a balance sheet at fourteen, hunched over my aunt's failing taqueria with a calculator and a stack of receipts that did not add up.”

✦ Annotated example · Why LMU / Why Major: the public-health pharmacist. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
My grandmother does not speak the language her pill bottles are printed in. For three years I have been her translator at the CVS counter on Whittier Boulevard, turning "take with food, avoid grapefruit" into Spanish while the line behind us grows.1 One afternoon the pharmacist knelt to her eye level and explained a new blood-thinner herself, slowly, drawing the heart on the back of the receipt. My grandmother nodded for the first time. I realized that medicine is only as good as the moment someone is willing to make it understood.2 That is why I want to study Health and Human Sciences with an eye toward becoming a clinical pharmacist who works in underserved neighborhoods like mine in East Los Angeles. I am not interested in the chemistry of a drug for its own sake. I am interested in the gap between a prescription and a patient, and in the people who fall into it.3 LMU is where that gap becomes the assignment rather than an afterthought. When I read about the Bellarmine College's commitment to educating the whole person and to the care and education of the whole community, I recognized the pharmacist on Whittier Boulevard. The Jesuit idea of cura personalis, care for the whole person, is not a brochure phrase to me; it is the exact thing I watched work.4 I want the science of LMU's pre-health curriculum, but I also want the requirement that I sit with philosophy and theology and ask what I owe the person across the counter. Few universities make that a graduation requirement. LMU does, and that ordering of priorities is the reason I am applying.5 I am drawn, too, to the Westchester campus sitting between Watts and Santa Monica, two zip codes with very different access to the same pills. I would join the Student-Run Free Clinic and the pre-pharmacy society, and I would push to keep Spanish-language medication counseling at the center of both. LA's inequality is not a backdrop for my studies. It is the subject.6 My grandmother still hands me her bottles. Soon I want to be the one who kneels, draws the heart on the receipt, and makes the medicine understood, in either language. LMU is the only place where becoming that person is the whole point of the degree, not a footnote to it. That is why I am here, and that is what I came to study.7
  1. 1Opens on a concrete, specific scene instead of a thesis. The detail of an actual street name signals a real life, not a generic admissions story, and immediately frames the major around a person the reader cares about.
  2. 2Turns the anecdote into a value, not just a memory. The line about medicine being only as good as the moment it is understood quietly previews the mission-driven, person-centered ethic LMU rewards.
  3. 3States the major plainly and then narrows it. Naming a specific program and a specific career goal shows direction; rejecting the generic reason ('I love chemistry') in favor of the human gap shows genuine motivation.
  4. 4Connects the school's actual mission language to the opening image. Tying cura personalis back to the kneeling pharmacist makes the 'why LMU' feel earned and lived rather than copied from the website.
  5. 5Demonstrates specific fit by pointing to a structural feature of LMU (its core curriculum) and explaining why that design matches the applicant, rather than praising the school's reputation or location.
  6. 6Adds named, plausible campus involvement and a sharp geographic observation. Committing to specific organizations and a concrete contribution shows the applicant has imagined being a student there, which reads as real fit.
  7. 7Closes by returning to the opening image and the verb 'kneel,' giving the essay a full circle. The last lines fuse 'why this major' and 'why LMU' into a single answer, which is exactly what the prompt asks for.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is the exact moment my interest in this major started, and can I describe it as a scene instead of a summary?
  • If I spent twenty minutes on LMU's page for my major, which one course, professor, center, or club would I genuinely want, and what would I do with it?
  • What do I care about (people, justice, creativity, service) that overlaps with how LMU describes itself, and how can I show that without just saying so?
Before you submit
  • Have I named at least two or three specific LMU details that could not be copy-pasted into another school's essay?
  • Does my opening line drop the reader into something concrete rather than praising LMU or LA in general?
  • Did I connect my major to a real experience of mine, and stay safely under 500 words?

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