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UVA  /  Essays  /  Prompt 2

UVA: School of Nursing Short Answer

300 words

Describe a health care-related experience or another significant interaction that deepened your interest in studying Nursing.
What it’s really asking

This is the only UVA-specific supplement for 2025-26, and it is required only if you apply to the School of Nursing. UVA wants proof that your interest in nursing grew out of real contact with people and care, not an abstract desire to help. They are looking for a specific moment and what it taught you about the work nurses actually do.

Why they ask it

Nursing is relational and hands-on, and UVA's School of Nursing wants students who already understand that. A concrete experience signals that you know what you are choosing, which matters in a field where motivation gets tested early. It also lets you show empathy and judgment in action rather than just claiming them.

Three ways in
One person you helped care for

Center a single patient, resident, or family member whose care you were part of, even in a small role, and what it showed you.

A nurse doing the unglamorous work

Describe a moment you noticed a nurse doing something you had not realized was part of the job, and why it stuck with you.

Caregiving that fell to you

Write about a time you were responsible for someone's wellbeing and what surprised you about the actual work of it.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always wanted to be a nurse because I love helping people and making a difference in their lives.”

✓  Strong opening

“The CNA did not check the chart first. She checked whether Mr. Alvarez had eaten, then turned the TV to the right channel, then drew his blood.”

✦ Annotated example · Night Shift, Room 4. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
My grandmother spent her last month on the fourth floor of a hospital where the night nurse, Dell, worked the 7 p.m. shift. I noticed her before I understood why. She was the only person who knocked before entering a room of someone too sick to answer.1I had come to keep my grandmother company, but mostly I watched Dell. She did things the daytime bustle hid. She warmed the lotion bottle in her hands before touching skin that bruised at a glance. She narrated each step before she did it, even when my grandmother was past answering, because, she told me later, hearing is the last thing to go and no one should be handled in silence.2One night my grandmother's oxygen monitor alarmed, a sound that turned my stomach to water. I froze in the chair. Dell did not. She moved fast but not frantic, checking the line, adjusting the cannula, lowering her voice rather than raising it.3When the number climbed back, she sat with me for a minute and explained what had happened in plain words, then asked if I wanted to learn how to read the monitor so it would scare me less. I said yes. By the end of the week I could tell a real alarm from a loose sensor.4I had assumed nursing was mostly about the body, the lines and numbers and medications. What I saw was that the technical skill was the floor, not the ceiling. The hard part, the part Dell was best at, was carrying calm into a room and leaving the people in it a little less afraid than she found them, my grandmother included, and me.5My grandmother died on a Tuesday, before dawn, and Dell was there. She did the same things she always did, the knock, the warmed hands, the quiet narration, except now to me. I want to study nursing because I have seen what it is at its most demanding hour, and I am not turning away from it. I am running toward the room.6
  1. 1Starts inside a specific scene with a named, observed person. The knocking detail is small but precise, and it signals attention to dignity, which is exactly what a nursing program wants to see noticed.
  2. 2Concrete clinical-adjacent details (warming lotion, narrating to an unresponsive patient) show the writer learned something real about care, not just felt sad. It demonstrates the kind of specific observation the prompt asks for.
  3. 3The turning point begins. Splitting the crisis into its own beat lets the contrast between the frozen observer and the composed nurse land sharply, and 'fast but not frantic' is a precise, credible detail.
  4. 4The writer moves from passive fear to active learning, and Dell models teaching as part of care. 'A real alarm from a loose sensor' is a credible, earned competency that shows genuine, growing interest rather than a vague calling.
  5. 5The reflective turn extracts a real, non-cliché idea: technical skill as the baseline, composure and human attention as the actual craft. This shows the maturity to understand what the profession demands.
  6. 6Closes with restraint and a forward-looking commitment that answers the prompt directly. The final image echoes the earlier knock and warmed hands, giving the short essay structural unity, and lands close to the 300-word ceiling.
Stuck? Start here
  • What single health-care moment first made nursing feel real rather than abstract to you?
  • What did you watch a caregiver do that you had not expected to be part of the job?
  • When did you have to put someone else's comfort or safety ahead of your own plans?
Before you submit
  • Did you build the answer around one specific moment instead of listing experiences?
  • Does it show judgment or empathy in action rather than just claiming you have them?
  • Are you comfortably under 300 words with room for one concrete tie to nursing?

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