Brown University has released its essay prompts for the 2026-2027 college admissions cycle. Applicants to the Brown Class of 2031 will be required to answer, in addition to The Common Application’s Personal Statement, two 150-word essays and two 250-word essays. So what are this year’s Brown essay prompts?

2026 – 2027 Brown Essay Prompts & Questions For All Applicants: Long Response Prompts

1. “There is something distinctive about Brown students. It is a blend of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and humility. A commitment to collaboration. An openness to new ideas and perspectives. A desire to make the world better. And it is resilience: the ability to recover and thrive after experiencing difficulties.” From President Christina Paxson’s 2025 Convocation Address. How will you use these characteristics or others to shape your approach to the Open Curriculum? (150-250 words)

This prompt is a hybrid question: part origin story and part Why Brown. Brown’s admissions committee wants to understand the origin story of an applicant’s experiences of adversity, or willingness to explore ideas and opinions different from their own. In short, Brown seeks students who can play well in the sandbox with others, and who contribute to the diversity of campus life with their own unique experiences that they can write about with grace and perspective.

And Brown also wants to know why Brown is the right place for an applicant to pursue that course of study. As such, the essay should be peppered with specific after specific about enduring aspects of Brown that only apply to Brown. And, no, name-dropping professors and listing classes do not count as genuine specifics about Brown.

2. Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (150-250 words)

Brown wants to understand the community and values that have shaped their applicants. With the Supreme Court outlawing the practice of Affirmative Action in 2023, this essay prompt presents an opportunity for applicants to share their backgrounds.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion striking down Affirmative Action, “At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” This essay prompt is one such opening.

3. Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (100-150 words)

Too many applicants focus on silly things that fail to showcase intellectual curiosity when answering this essay prompt, which has long been a staple of Brown’s application. While the pursuit that brings an applicant joy need not be world-changing, it must demonstrate how a student thinks, or it will be a wasted opportunity.

4. If you could teach a class on any one thing, whether academic or otherwise, what would it be? (100-150 words)

The class choice will ideally fall within the discipline the student wrote about in their first Brown supplemental essay. The course’s content should be creative, and its title should be pithy. No school in America has more bizarre class names than Brown University. Here’s an applicant’s opportunity to take their best stab at creating a class to join the pantheon of highly unusual Brown classes.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance with Brown University Essays

If you’re interested in optimizing your chances of admission to Brown University by submitting essays that are compelling and showcase a singular hook in the hope of daring admissions officers not to offer you admission, fill out Ivy Coach’s complimentary consultation form, and we’ll be in touch to outline our college admissions counseling services for seniors led by Ivy Coach’s Molly Siegel, a former Brown admissions officer.