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Scripps  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

Scripps: Why Scripps

Up to 200 words

Why have you chosen to apply to Scripps College?
What it’s really asking

Scripps wants concrete evidence that you understand what it is (a women's college and a member of the Claremont Colleges) and that your specific goals fit it. Word limits are reported as 100-200 words depending on the source; treat 200 as your hard cap and aim for a tight, fully-used answer.

Why they ask it

This is the loyalty and fit test. With a strong yield and Early Decision options, Scripps wants students who chose it deliberately, not as one of seven similar small colleges. Specific, accurate detail proves you did the research and would actually come.

Three ways in
Name a Scripps-specific academic feature

Cite the Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities, a major, a professor, or a program, and connect it to something you already do.

Own the women's college choice

Connect your goals to the fact that it is a women's college, honestly and in your own words, without resorting to a slogan.

Use one concrete piece of campus life

Motley Coffeehouse, a residence hall tradition, or the relationship to the other 5Cs can prove you can actually picture yourself there.

✕  Weak opening

“Scripps College's beautiful campus, small class sizes, and strong sense of community make it the perfect place for me to grow.”

✓  Strong opening

“I want to take the Core Curriculum sequence because I keep starting arguments at dinner that need three disciplines to finish.”

✦ Annotated example · The Margaret Fowler Garden. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
I found Scripps the way I find most things I love: by accident, in a library. 1A photograph of the Margaret Fowler Garden was tucked into an old alumna memoir I was shelving as a volunteer, and I spent twenty minutes reading about a walled courtyard where students hold class under fig trees. 2That image sent me into the Core Curriculum, and I was hooked. The idea that every first-year wrestles with the same big questions about histories of the present, then argues about them across disciplines, is the kind of intellectual community I have been building alone in the margins of my books. 3I also chose Scripps because of what a women's college made possible for the women in that memoir. 4I have spent four years as the only girl who raises her hand in physics, and I am tired of the half-second I lose deciding whether to. 5I want a classroom where that hesitation does not exist, where I can spend that half-second thinking instead. Scripps, with its fig trees and its hard questions, is where I want to learn to stop hesitating.6
  1. 1Opens with a small concrete scene instead of a thesis. The applicant's voice arrives before any argument does, which is exactly the kind of personality Scripps rewards.
  2. 2This is the move that separates a real Scripps essay from a generic 5C one: a hyper-specific, verifiable detail tied to Scripps itself, not the consortium.
  3. 3Names a signature academic program (the Core) and connects it to who she already is, so fit feels earned rather than flattered.
  4. 4Transitions directly into the women's-college reason, which the prompt and the school both genuinely care about.
  5. 5Gives a real, specific personal reason for wanting a women's college, not an abstract one about empowerment. The lost half-second is a vivid, honest detail.
  6. 6Closes by braiding the two threads (the garden and the women's college) into one image, ending on a forward-looking note that answers the actual question: why Scripps.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is one thing I can do or take at Scripps that I genuinely could not get at a similar small college nearby?
  • If a friend asked why I picked a women's college, what would I actually say out loud?
  • Which single professor, course, or program name can I cite accurately, and what about my own life does it connect to?
Before you submit
  • I named at least two specifics that are true only of Scripps, not the consortium in general.
  • I addressed, in my own honest voice, that Scripps is a women's college.
  • Every sentence is doing work; I cut all generic praise about campus beauty and class size.

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