Boston College is a private Jesuit institution grounded in the liberal arts but heavily involved in groundbreaking scientific research, too. Jesuit colleges are Catholic, but in ways that are sometimes surprising to people. The Jesuits prize the learning process, and develop communities of academic inquiry that push students to stretch themselves intellectually. That spirit runs deep at Boston College.
For the Class of 2028, Boston College received over 35,000 applications and only admitted 5,632, or . This makes BC a quite selective school with students representing 1,380 high schools, nearly every state, and 55 countries. Most students at BC, about 60%, come from the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic.
Boston College practices admissions, which means that applicants don’t need to submit an ACT or SAT score to be considered for admissions. However, it’s important to note that they say that “approximately 2/3 of admitted students submit SAT and/or ACT scores.” So, the Boston College admissions process is test optional — but they aren’t test blind. Most students who successfully apply and gain admission to BC have submitted scores. And those scores are high. This is unsurprising, as students who don’t have high SAT or ACT scores typically choose to not submit. But ACT score for an accepted student is 34, and the average SAT score is over 1480.
BC is kind enough to release their supplement earlier than most schools. While most colleges do not release the supplemental essay questions until late summer, Boston College puts them out early. This helps rising seniors get ahead on their applications, which is our preferred method of working. By starting early, our students get to edit and refine before the time crunch sets in, resulting in better work that is a more authentic representation of themselves, and leading to exceptional application outcomes. In this post, we’re going to break down each question in the BC supplement to help you do exactly that — be your strongest, most compelling, and most authentic self for the BC application.
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The Boston College supplement has only one question, but it comes with options. If you are applying to any program other than the Human Centered Engineering major, you get to pick one of four prompts. For students applying for the Human Centered Engineering major, there is a specific prompt you need to do, and we address it last in this post. Now, let’s dive into it.
We would like to get a better sense of you. Please respond to one of the first four prompts below (400 word limit). Students applying to the Human Centered Engineering major should respond to Prompt #5 instead.
This is just the introduction to the prompts, but it includes one important detail: 400 words. Word limits for supplements are serious. Many applications on the Common Application are set up such that it will not let you go beyond 400 words, cutting off anything that is over. Others will let you put in more, which is another sort of trap. We advise submitting your supplement at 350-400 words.
Next, take your time to read each option, even if one immediately jumps out at you. Sometimes the one that you like the best on it’s face isn’t the best option for representing how awesome you are. So, keep your mind open to options.
Option 1: Strong communities are sustained by traditions. Boston College's annual calendar is marked with both long-standing and newer traditions that help shape our community. Tell us about a meaningful tradition in your family or community. Why is it important to you, and how does it bring people together or strengthen the bonds of those who participate?
First, you can move past the first two sentences. In this supplement, as you will not be writing about Boston College in this supplement for Boston College. They do not want to hear about what BC traditions you like. Instead, they are asking you to share a piece of yourself and the traditions you’ve grown up with.
Start by brainstorming traditions, and define tradition broadly. The tradition you write about can include prominent religious or cultural events, but we actually prefer a zoomed in approach. Maybe it is a specific food you and your mom make at least once every winter, always on a snowy day. Or maybe it is a ritual you have with a grandparent — Shania Twain karaoke after Thanksgiving dinner, anyone? The key is that what makes any essay responding to this supplement prompt impressive is not the flamboyance of the tradition, but rather the connection you build with the reader through your story.
So, start any response by immersing the reader in the tradition before providing context and reflection on how it brings your community together and strengthens bonds. Pick-up basketball on summer Sunday evenings is a tradition if it is important to your community. So, if you spend all week waiting to hear balls slam against the headboard, write about it.
Option 2: The late BC theology professor, Father Michael Himes, argued that a university is not a place to which you go, but instead, a "rigorous and sustained conversation about the great questions of human existence, among the widest possible circle of the best possible conversation partners.” Who has been your most meaningful conversation partner, and what profound questions have you considered together?
The next option that you have is interesting, and can also be a bit of a trap. This prompt asks you to write about someone else, and if you are not careful it is really easy for you, the applicant, to get lost in your story. If you want to tackle this prompt, we encourage you to focus in on one conversation that is emblematic of a type of conversation that you have with this person, and you need to keep yourself as the protagonist.
While we don’t recommend this prompt, we love responses centered on conversations over breakfast with a much younger sibling, navigating friendship struggles, or conversations with that gentleman at the assisted living facility where you volunteer reflecting on mistakes he’s glad he made. Don’t forget to include how the conversations impact you beyond the framework of the conversation itself. How has this shaped you? Tell them.
Option 3: In her July 2009 Ted Talk, “,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned viewers against assigning people a “single story” through assumptions about their nationality, appearance, or background. Discuss a time when someone defined you by a single story. What challenges did this present and how did you overcome them?
So, this supplement isn’t bad, but it is risky. You are more than a single story, Adichie is right, but this prompt actually sets you up to potentially becoming a single story for the application readers. By picking this prompt, you say that the aspect of your background that you are sharing is critical to who you are, more so than the traditions or conversations that have shaped you. That’s a risky move in our opinion.
Ultimately, this is one of those prompts that we find sounds super appealing to pick but that can actually serve you less well than number one or two (or four), even if you write about the same thing, you would have here. For example, you could share your nationality or background through a tradition you spotlight without the entire essay becoming about that aspect of your background or identity. That, to us, would be a much better supplement than what tends to result from this prompt.
Option 4: Boston College’s Jesuit mission highlights “the three Be’s”: be attentive, be reflective, be loving – core to Jesuit education (see ). If you could add a fourth “Be,” what would it be and why? How would this new value support your personal development and enrich the BC community?
This supplement prompt is super interesting, but it isn’t one you should force. If something immediately pops into your mind as a fourth B, go with it — and let story lead. It is easy for an essay responding to this prompt to quickly become more explaining than storytelling. That’s a bad thing. A supplement may be well-written, but if it doesn’t tell a story and connect with the application reader on an emotional level then it does not do what you need a supplement to do to increase your chances of acceptance. Solve this challenge by telling a story that shares the reason behind this fourth B, and what it would mean to you and the BC community.
Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) Applicants only: One goal of a Jesuit education is to prepare students to serve the Common Good. Human-Centered Engineering at Boston College integrates technical knowledge, creativity, and a humanistic perspective to address societal challenges and opportunities. What societal problems are important to you and how will you use your HCE education to solve them?
If you are applying for the Human-Centered Engineering program, this is your supplement prompt. It’s the one, the only one, and it’s a fun one.
First, read it twice. Next, made an edit. Change “societal problems” to “societal problem.” With only 400 words, we highly recommend that you only write about one societal issue, perhaps approaching it from a few different angles. This should also be personal. While you may care a lot about issues that are far away from where you live, we highly recommend that what you focus on for this supplement is something that impacts your life on a daily basis.
For example, perhaps you are interested in climate resilience. While you could talk about an issue thousands of miles away, in our experience it is better if you focus on something in your hometown, whether it’s flood mitigation, fire, or any other climate-related issue.
Or maybe you care about access to medical care, and there is an issue with lack of access to primary care physicians in your area.
Or maybe it’s nutrition, and how many children rely on free breakfast and lunch to meet their daily needs.
Whatever it is that you care about in society, you can focus on it here. But, again, make it personal. Tell a story that connects you to the issue on a personal level before digging into the potential solutions a Human-Centered Engineering major could unlock.
And there you have it! That’s the Boston College supplement for the 2025-2026 application cycle. It’s short, the questions are great, and it offers amazing opportunities to share who you are with the admissions officials. Now you just need to start writing.
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