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Villanova: St. Augustine: advocating for equity and justice

About 250 words

St. Augustine states that well-being is 'not concerned with myself alone, but with my neighbor's good as well.' How have you advocated for equity and justice in your communities?
What it’s really asking

Villanova wants one real instance of you standing up for fairness or for someone else's good, not a survey of your activism. This is the prompt closest to the school's Augustinian core. You answer only ONE of the five 2025-26 options; the other four are: a life lesson you would share at Villanova; why Villanova would be your 'new home'; a time you were misjudged based on your identity, background, experiences or interests; and a time someone 'borrowed your strength' in their time of need. There are no separate program-specific essays, so this single supplement covers all first-year applicants.

Why they ask it

Equity and justice are central to Villanova's identity, so this prompt lets the committee see whether the school's emphasis on the common good already matches how you act. It rewards moral specificity and honesty over scale.

Three ways in
Fix something small and real

A moment you noticed something unfair in a space you belong to (a team, a class, a job) and did one concrete thing about it.

Stand up for one person

A time you spoke up for a single person rather than a cause, and what it cost or risked you to do it.

Quiet, unglamorous advocacy

Translating for a parent, defending a kid at lunch, or fixing a rule that quietly excluded someone counts. Small acts of fairness often read truer than big campaigns.

✕  Weak opening

“I have always been passionate about social justice and making the world a more equitable place for everyone.”

✓  Strong opening

“The sign-up sheet for tutoring was in English only, and Mrs. Okafor's son was standing in front of it, not signing up.”

✦ Annotated example · The laundromat reading hour. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
Every Tuesday, the Soapy Suds laundromat on Lancaster Avenue fills with the hum of dryers and the impatience of kids waiting on their parents' wash cycles. I noticed the impatience first, then the worksheets nobody was helping with.1I had volunteered to tutor through my church, but the tutoring center was three bus transfers away from where the families I met actually were. So I asked the owner if I could set up a folding table by the change machine.2For two years now, I have spent Tuesday evenings on long division and silent e's, surrounded by detergent. I learned to bring my own pencils, because asking a kid to produce one is its own small humiliation.3What changed me was not the math. It was Marisol's mother, who started staying to translate for newer families, and then the night three other students from my school showed up because I had mentioned it once at lunch.4We never named it a program. There was no flyer, no sign-up sheet, just a table that people now expected to find. Some weeks I taught fractions. Some weeks I just held a spot in line so a tired father could sit.5I used to think justice was something you marched for. I have come to believe it is also something you fold into ordinary Tuesdays, one table, one neighbor, one borrowed pencil at a time.6
  1. 1Opens inside a small, specific scene instead of announcing a theme. Villanova rewards advocacy shown, not claimed, so starting at the laundromat earns credibility before any virtue is named.
  2. 2Reframes advocacy as removing a barrier to access rather than performing a good deed. This quietly answers the equity half of the prompt: meeting people where they are, not where it is convenient for the helper.
  3. 3A concrete, humane detail showing attentiveness to dignity. This is the 'how you treat people' value made visible in a single sentence, no adjectives required.
  4. 4Shifts credit outward and turns the effort into something communal. Treating community as a verb, the writer documents the work growing beyond himself rather than centering his own heroics.
  5. 5Reinforces humility by refusing to inflate the effort into something official. The image of holding a spot in line shows neighborliness as a posture, not a project, which fits St. Augustine's 'my neighbor's good as well.'
  6. 6Lands on humility over heroics by redefining justice as patient and small. The closing echoes the laundry imagery, tying the essay together without overclaiming impact.
Stuck? Start here
  • When did you last notice something was unfair and feel an urge to act, even if you hesitated? Who was affected?
  • Whose name comes to mind when you think of someone you stood up for, and what exactly did you do or say?
  • What small rule, sheet, line, or habit in one of your communities quietly left someone out, and did you change it?
Before you submit
  • Is there one specific scene with a real person, place, and moment, not a list of causes?
  • Did you cut every sentence that announces a value ("I learned the importance of...") in favor of showing it?
  • Are you honest about the scale of what you did, and is it comfortably under about 250 words?

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