Most schools only want standard application materials: your personal statement, a supplemental essay or two, your activities, a few letters of recommendation, and your transcripts. Some colleges, however, allow you (or even encourage you) to submit supplemental materials as part of your application.
This can cause anxiety for students, who wonder just how optional these materials are, whether they should bother submitting them, and what colleges really want to see in them. In this article we’ll explore the main kinds of supplemental materials, and discuss which students should submit them. We’ll also discuss a few specific schools who ask for supplements, and cover whether or not you need to worry about them. Let’s get started!
Who Needs to Submit Supplements?
Most students do not need to submit any supplemental materials, and most applications do not benefit from their inclusion. We have helped students craft supplements when necessary, but have found that the vast majority of students we work with do not need them to succeed with their applications.
Universities don’t want additional materials unnecessarily, since admissions officers are already inundated with tens of thousands of documents to review. If your additional documents do not substantially add to your application, then it is unnecessary to include them. We don’t want you to stress about supplemental materials. That said, let’s explore the various kinds universities ask for, to see what you may want to include.
The Arts Supplement
This is the most commonly asked for (or required) supplemental item. This is a required component if you are applying to a school of music or dance, or to a program specifically focused on visual arts, though in these cases it is a more formal audition or portfolio, rather than a supplement. Arts supplements do not count as auditions, though they have some similarities in form.
Arts supplements are a way to show off your artistic ability, either visual or performing. While they do not count as an audition, they are often viewed and evaluated by faculty in the relevant department at the school for their merits. Admissions officers will then take recommendations from these faculty into account. This will not guarantee acceptance, but can provide a boost to particularly talented students.
We recommend that students only complete an arts supplement if their artistic pursuits are a core part of their identity, and if they are operating at a high level in their field. Students with middling talents, or for whom art is not their main extracurricular, are not well served by including these materials.
You will have to curate this very carefully, as you have limited room, generally 10 pieces of visual art or 2-3 minutes of video. We recommend working with your mentor in your artistic field to determine which pieces best highlight the breadth and depth of your talents. You want to show off your level of skill, and which fields and mediums you have participated in.
Video Interviews
In place of a more typical alumni interview, some colleges (most notably Brown and UChicago) will allow you to submit a brief video instead. Much like a traditional interview, this video is meant to show admissions officers your voice, and let them know what you care about. If you are an engaging speaker, or you believe you would shine in an interview, or you want to show off your videographic talents, then this is a good option for you.
Any video submitted should meet the following technical specifications (check the school’s site for up-to-date requirements: Brown, UChicago):
- Under two minutes in length.
- The video must be uploaded directly through the applicant portal.
- The video must be uploaded before the deadline of the application cycle you chose, either ED or RD.
- Film in landscape.
- Begin your video by addressing the camera and stating your name and high school.
- Production quality is not evaluated.
There are no definitive topics, ideas, or material that you must cover or include in your video. Instead, it should be unique to you, and tell admissions officers things they would not already know. While you should be creative in your video, we advise you do the following:
- Dress casually, but deliberately. Don’t wear a suit, but also don’t wear clothing with inappropriate images or slogans.
- While production quality is not evaluated, you should make sure you are intelligible, and that viewers will be able to understand what you are saying. Doing multiple takes to ensure this may be necessary.
- Tell your audience something they would not know otherwise. This can be a narrative about you, discussions of an event, an exploration of a hobby, or cover some accomplishment. Avoid covering material mentioned elsewhere in your application.
- You can involve props, changes of background, and videographic tricks. This can be good if you wish to demonstrate your skills or passion for these topics.
- While the videos are normally dialogue focused, showing off other aspects of yourself, such as your ability to do backflips, can work well.
The video should above all demonstrate who you are authentically, and let admissions officers know how you will contribute to campus, and who you are as a person. This is a lot to cover in two minutes. You can’t tell them everything about you, so make sure whatever you do say is impactful.
Stylistic Advice
First, make sure you fulfill the technical requirements of the video. Within those, however, you have a great deal of leeway. We recommend working up to your skill level with video editing; the more skilled you are at editing transitions and other video effects, the more these should shine through in the video.
For staging and cinematography, you should again work up to your level of competence. Do not try new or experimental techniques if you have never used them before. A clean and simple approach of addressing the camera will serve, and is easy to make look good.
If you are a novice at filmmaking and video editing, clean sustained shots of your face or other subject matters are perfectly sufficient. Brown and other schools are not looking for the next Spielberg; they want to learn more about you and what you care about. If you have these skills, you should show them off, but if you don’t, a clean and simple video is often the most effective choice.
Research Materials
If you have completed serious academic research, especially which has been published, some colleges will allow you to submit this for consideration (see our article on doing research in highschool to learn how you can do this). Schools which accept this include Columbia, UChicago, MIT, Yale, Harvard, and UPenn. These schools all recommend against submitting a research portfolio unnecessarily.
There are no hard and fast rules on this, but we have the following recommendations:
- Research should be original, and contribute to the body of scholarship.
- Research done with the collaboration of a mentor and which has been published is more valuable.
- Make sure whatever you submit is in the most polished possible form.
Most of these schools will only accept the abstract of your research paper, and this should be limited to 1-2 pages. This will most often be reviewed by faculty in the relevant department, who will judge the quality of both the research and your results.
We recommend not submitting research papers you did in high school, or for high school courses for this. There is no harm in not submitting these, and submitting a mediocre or low quality paper can harm your application. Admissions officers already have a lot to read; don’t add to their load unnecessarily.
Maker Portfolios
Some schools, notably MIT and Tufts, will allow you to submit a maker portfolio. This is exactly what it sounds like: a chance to submit something you have made, and explain how it works. This is done through technical schematics, still images, a written description, and a brief video. These are meant to fully demonstrate what you have created, and its potential.
A maker portfolio is generally used by students interested in engineering who want to show off any past exploits they’ve had in this arena. This is not a necessary component, but is a good way to show off any particularly impressive extracurricular projects you have been working on.
As with the video interview, you are not being judged on your skill as a videographer. That said, any video you include should be well shot enough to be understandable, and fully demonstrate whatever you have built. Images can supplement or be used in place of a video if they are sufficient to demonstrate your creation.
Do not worry if you are applying as an engineering major without a maker portfolio. While these can be helpful to augment your activities, they are not a required part of an application, and you can get in without one.
The Rice Box
We’re going to include a brief note on the Rice Box, as it is somewhat unique among supplemental materials, and often raises questions from our students. Applicants to Rice are required to submit a photograph that represents them in some way; this is known as the Rice Box.
We recommend you not overthink this too hard. The photograph can be of you, one of your creations, or even a location with major significance to you. Whatever it is should reflect a core aspect of your personality, and tell admissions officers something about you. The most important thing with the Rice Box is authenticity; whatever you include should authentically represent you.
Final Thoughts
Most schools do not accept supplemental materials, and the ones that do encourage applicants to consider whether the materials are truly necessary to the application. We recommend you never include a portfolio simply to have done so, and only add supplemental materials when they truly enhance your application. Admissions officers have a lot to review already, and they won’t thank you for extra work that does not help them on their task.
If you are concerned about your own application, and want advice on whether or not a supplemental inclusion or portfolio will benefit you, schedule a free consultation today. We have a depth of experience helping students navigate every part of college admissions, and are always happy to hear from you.
