Why College X - Wild Card College

Essay Prompt

Please tell us what motivated you to apply to Haverford and what excites you most as you imagine your Haverford experience. Please limit your response to 150 words.

Sample Essay

Haverford is my wild card college: the college on my list that I barely knew anything about a year ago and that I didn’t really understand the appeal of until I visited. Coming from a big public school that I’ve loved, I wasn’t considering any of the “small schools,” but I found myself agreeing to visit when my Dad’s best friend, a Haverford grad, offered to spend an afternoon showing me around. As we wandered the campus and I heard his stories of his time in college, I realized that much to my surprise, Haverford is everything I want a college to be. It is a place defined by its intimate community. A place where I will be in small classes and develop close relationships with professors, instead of sitting in a huge lecture hall with hundreds of other students listening to a professor who knows none of us. A place where students like and support each other and no one is left out. A place where everyone knows everyone, and together at Plenary we make decisions about how our community is governed. So even though I always thought I was a “big school” kind of guy, Haverford is my wild card college. Go figure.

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