EssayLens

Notre Dame  /  Essays  /  Prompt 2

Notre Dame: Short answers (choose three of five)

50 to 100 words each

Notre Dame asks you to answer three of five short-answer prompts in 50 to 100 words each. Recent options include: a compliment you have received that reveals something about your character; how faith or belief in something larger than yourself shapes your life and decisions; and prompts about your community, your background, and what brings you joy. Choose the three that are most genuinely you.
What it’s really asking

Three quick, honest windows into who you are: your character, your values, your community, and, if you choose it, your relationship to faith or meaning. The set is short, so each must be specific and true.

Why they ask it

Notre Dame wants to feel the person behind the application and gauge fit with its warm, faith-rooted community. The short answers reveal character fast.

Three ways in
Pick your truest three

Choose the prompts where you have the most genuine, specific material, not the ones you think sound best.

Consider the faith prompt honestly

If faith or meaning matters in your life, this prompt welcomes real reflection from any tradition or none.

One detail each

With 50 to 100 words, lead with a concrete image or a true admission and let it carry the answer.

✕  Weak opening

“A compliment I received that I value is when people tell me that I am a really hardworking and kind person who always helps others.”

✓  Strong opening

“The compliment I think about most: a kid I tutor told his mom I explain things 'like they are not stupid for asking.'”

✦ Annotated example · Three short answers, chosen honestly. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
A compliment that revealed something about my character. My debate coach once told me, "You lose well." I was annoyed; I had wanted to win. 1But she meant that I shake hands, ask the other side how they built their case, and take notes on my own collapse. I have come to think losing well is its own discipline: it keeps me curious instead of defensive, and it has won me more friends than any trophy ever did. 2How belief in something larger than myself shapes my decisions. I am the grandchild of immigrants who prayed in a language I am only now learning. 3Faith, for me, is less a set of answers than a posture: the assumption that my life is accountable to people I will never meet, including the ones who came before me. It is why I tutor on Saturdays even when no one is watching. The watching, I have decided, was never the point. 4What brings me joy. Bread. Specifically, the forty minutes when dough is rising and there is nothing to do but wait. 5I started baking during a hard winter and kept going because it taught me that some good things cannot be rushed or optimized, only tended. I bring the first loaf to my neighbor every Sunday. She is ninety-one and tells the same three stories. I have started writing them down.
  1. 1Picks a compliment that is slightly backhanded and surprising, which is far more revealing (and memorable) than 'you are so kind.' The mild annoyance makes the voice real.
  2. 2Lands the reflection in roughly 80 words and turns a flaw-adjacent trait into evidence of character and humility, exactly the self-awareness Notre Dame rewards.
  3. 3Answers the faith prompt through inheritance and culture rather than doctrine, which keeps it specific and inclusive while still serious about belief, the 'something larger than yourself' framing the prompt invites.
  4. 4Ties belief to a concrete weekly action, then ends on a quiet, slightly aphoristic line. Roughly 75 words, the right size for this slot.
  5. 5Choosing the 'joy' prompt with a small, sensory, unglamorous answer (bread) signals authenticity over resume-padding and gives the reader a vivid image to hold.
Stuck? Start here
  • Which three of the five prompts have your most genuine material?
  • If faith or meaning matters to you, what would you honestly say?
  • What is one concrete detail that opens each answer?
Before you submit
  • Did you choose the three that are truest to you?
  • Is each answer specific from the first line?
  • Do the three together show different sides of you?

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

Score my essay