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Supplemental essay: a character, historical figure, or creative work that influenced you
How to write the supplemental essay about a character, historical figure, or creative work that influenced you, with a short sample and analysis.
Prompt: Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
For this essay, don’t spend too much time describing. Rather, focus on analyzing a character, person, or work and its influence on you. When did you come across the essay’s subject? What attracted you to it? How and why has it influenced you? The explanation is the core of this type of essay, as it will reveal your personality and passions.
Remember that a “creative work” doesn’t necessarily have to apply to the studio arts or literature. Every field, from engineering and math to psychology and medicine, requires creative thinking for progress. Focus a bit more on the subject’s “influence on you.” After all, admissions officers are reading your essay to learn about you and no one else.
Example
Degas’ ballerinas appear as if they are delicately dancing off the canvas, or caught mid-twirl in his bronze sculptures. Their ease and grace are interpreted through the artist’s touch and eyes as he shows them in the dance studio practicing tirelessly. Since the age of three, I too have been studying ballet, and although I initially hated wearing a leotard and tutu because I found them constricting and itchy, by the age of 12 they had become my favorite attire, especially before taking the stage at my dance recitals. Every time I see one of Degas’ works depicting his lovely ballerinas, I can’t help but place myself inside his canvas as well, knowing that those girls, who are more or less my age, also put their heart and soul into each practice and performance of one of the most classical yet expressive dance forms. I can feel the excitement of his ballerinas as they are mid-movement in first or second position, anticipating their next step or twirl.
Quick analysis
The writer chooses to discuss her personal experience as a ballerina and parallels her passion for dance with Degas’ paintings and sculptures of ballerinas, entering the same kind of dance studio that he depicted over a century ago.
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