Virginia Tech: Inclusion and Principles of Community

120 words

Virginia Tech's Principles of Community supports access and inclusion by affirming the dignity and value of every person, respecting differences, promoting mutual understanding and open expression, and strives to eliminate bias and discrimination. Have you had an experience when you or someone you know were not being included? Did you reach out to anyone for assistance, direction, or resources? Were you able to affect change and/or influence others? Did this experience change your perspective, and if so, how?

What it’s really asking

VT wants a true story about exclusion and what you did about it. The someone can be you or another person. Walk through the moment, the action you took (asking for help counts), whether anything changed, and how your perspective shifted. Honesty beats heroics; a small, real intervention reads better than a grand claim.

Why they ask it

This prompt screens for lived empathy. VT cares whether you notice when people are pushed to the edges and whether you act, even imperfectly. They are building a community and want members who do the quiet work of inclusion.

Three ways in

When you were the excluded one

A moment you were left out and learned, firsthand, who steps up and how it feels when someone does.

Pulling in a sidelined person

A time you noticed someone on the edge and made one specific move to bring them in.

Using a resource or adult

An instance where you spoke to a teacher or used a resource to change a situation you could not fix alone.

✕ Weak opening

“I believe everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity no matter their background.”

✓ Strong opening

“New kid, October, lunch: the deaf student ate alone because no one at our table signed.”

✦ Annotated example · The new kid at lunch. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

Priya transferred in March, and for two weeks she ate lunch in the stairwell because our cafeteria tables had calcified into groups by October. ¹I knew, because I had eaten in that same stairwell my freshman year and told nobody. ²I did not have a grand plan. I asked our class advisor whether I could move our debate club meetings to lunch, ³so there was a standing place to sit with a built-in reason to talk. ⁴Priya came the first Tuesday and argued me into the ground about ranked-choice voting. ⁵It changed how I see inclusion: less a feeling, more a logistics problem. You do not fix loneliness by being warm. You fix it by building a chair, a time, and a reason.⁶

1Drops us into a concrete scene with a named person and a vivid detail ("calcified") instead of abstract talk about inclusion.
2Answers "someone you know" by quietly making himself the someone. Self-awareness, not a savior pose.
3Honest about scale and shows reaching out for resources, exactly what the prompt asks.
4Shows the concrete mechanism, a chair and a pretext, that actually changes things.
5A specific, slightly humbling detail that proves the outcome actually happened.
6Lands a sharp, earned reframe that directly answers "did this change your perspective."

Stuck? Start here

When is the last time you watched someone get left out and felt that small pull to do something?
What did you actually do in that moment, even if it was just asking an adult for help?
What do you believe now about belonging that you did not believe before that day?

Before you submit

Is this a real, specific experience rather than a statement of your values?
Did you show an action you took, not just a feeling you had?
Did you name how your perspective changed, which the prompt directly asks for?

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