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UVM  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

UVM: Why UVM?

500 words (optional; choose one of six prompts)

Why UVM?
What it’s really asking

This is the classic 'why us' essay. UVM wants to know what specifically draws you to the school and why you and UVM are a good match. Note that this is one of six optional prompts; you only answer one. Pick this only if you can name concrete, UVM-specific reasons rather than generic praise.

Why they ask it

UVM is a large public university and wants students who actually want to be there, not students treating it as a safety. A specific, well-informed answer signals genuine interest and helps yield. It also tells readers how you would use the place: which programs, which communities, which parts of Burlington and Vermont.

Three ways in
Earn one academic hook

Tie one specific program, lab, course, or major to something you already do or have done, so the connection feels earned rather than researched the night before.

Match a value to an action

Connect UVM's environmental and community ethos to a concrete value of your own, shown through an action you took, not a slogan you repeat.

Use the place itself

Use Burlington or Vermont itself as evidence of fit: an interest, an activity, or a way of living that the location uniquely supports.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was little, I have dreamed of attending a top university with a beautiful campus, and the University of Vermont is the perfect place for me.”

✓  Strong opening

“I want to study watershed science somewhere I can wade into Lake Champlain before lab and still make my 9:45, which narrows the list to exactly one school.”

✦ Annotated example · Why UVM: rivers, not rankings. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
I found UVM through a watershed, not a ranking. 1Last summer I volunteered with a creek-monitoring group back home in Ohio, wading in with a turbidity tube and a clipboard that always ended up soaked. I liked the part nobody else wanted: logging numbers that would not mean anything for years. When I started researching where to study, I kept landing on the Rubenstein School and the work coming out of the Watershed Alliance, undergraduates actually sampling Lake Champlain, not just reading about it. 2That is the first thing that pulled me: at UVM, the lake is a classroom you can fall into. 3I went looking for the catch. There is always a catch with a place that looks this good in the brochure. So I emailed a current student in Environmental Sciences and asked her what she would change. She told me the winters are real, the hills are not optional, and that her favorite class made her count macroinvertebrates in a freezing stream at seven in the morning. She also said she would not trade it. That answer, the honest one with the cold stream in it, told me more than any tour. 4I am not only a creek person, though. I want the Honors College so I can take a seminar that has nothing to do with water, something like ethics or film, and argue with people who think differently than I do. I want to keep playing cello in a non-major ensemble without auditioning for my life. I read that Burlington shuts its main street to cars and fills it with musicians, and the version of me that busks badly for fun is genuinely excited about that. 5What I am looking for is a school small enough that a professor learns my name and big enough that I can be wrong in public and recover. UVM keeps showing up at that intersection. 6I do not expect Vermont to be easy. I expect it to be cold, hilly, and worth the walk uphill, clipboard soaked, numbers logged, to the place I have been quietly aiming at all along.7
  1. 1Opens by refusing the cliche entry point. UVM rewards genuine fit over flattery, and this line signals the essay will be about real reasons, not prestige.
  2. 2Concrete, slightly unglamorous detail (the soaked clipboard, the unwanted task) builds a believable voice and shows character through action rather than adjectives.
  3. 3A specific, slightly playful line. UVM explicitly rewards voice and a little fun, so a small joke that still makes a point lands well here.
  4. 4Demonstrates research and skepticism instead of empty praise. Naming a real program and a real (unflattering) detail proves the fit is earned, which is exactly what UVM wants to see.
  5. 5Widens beyond the single hook to show a whole person, then ties each interest to a specific UVM offering. This shows fit is multi-dimensional, not a one-note pitch.
  6. 6States what the student actually values in plain language, which reads as sincere rather than rehearsed.
  7. 7Closes by echoing the soaked-clipboard image from the opening, giving the essay a tight loop, and reframes 'uphill' literally and figuratively as a value rather than a complaint.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is one UVM program, course, or research group I can name, and what have I already done that connects to it?
  • If I deleted 'UVM' and wrote a different school's name, would this essay still be true? What detail makes that impossible?
  • What about Burlington or Vermont specifically fits how I want to live and learn for four years?
Before you submit
  • I named at least two specific, UVM-only reasons (program, course, club, or place), not just rankings or beauty.
  • Every 'why' connects to something I actually do or have done, so my interest is shown, not claimed.
  • The essay could not be copy-pasted to another school by swapping the name.

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