How to Write Baylor and Baylor2 BS/MD Essays
Can’t bear the idea of NOT becoming a Baylor Bear? Feeling embarrassed about your Baylor essays? Ready to bare it all in your writing so you can land a spot at one of the top universities in Texas?
I’m here to make the whole essay process for Baylor much more bearable.
(Whew! Bear puns are over!)
What does that mean? Well, let’s start with the basics. Baylor University allows you to use ApplyTexas, The Common Application, or its own website to apply. In addition to following the requirements in those application portals, Baylor also has a supplemental essay for all of its undergraduates and an additional one for students who plan to apply to the Baylor2 bs/md program.
You may be wondering if it's better to submit an application via ApplyTexas, Common App, or Baylor’s site. As is directly stated, it doesn’t matter what method of submission you choose. What matters, as always, is what you are submitting.
Let’s talk about that more.
Let’s discuss how to approach the supplemental essays and even how to roughly outline them. If you haven’t started writing, or if you are stuck on how to revise, pay attention and think about how you can apply these ideas to your own writing and experiences!
BAYLOR GENERAL ESSAY:
What are you looking for in a university, why do you want to attend Baylor, and how do you see yourself contributing to the Baylor community? (750-word limit)
GENERAL STRATEGY:
This prompt has three questions, all of which should be adequately addressed in your answer. If you are recycling essays from another application that Baylor doesn’t already see (such as using ApplyTexas or UT Short Answers with a Common App Baylor submission), then you need to make sure that you are covering all the points as clearly as possible. Don’t make the reader assume that you are answering all of the questions.
That said, here is one way to think about the essay, considering the three questions. You can split it up into three parts:
Part 1: What are you looking for in a university?
Part 2: Why do you want to attend Baylor?
Part 3: How do you see yourself contributing to the Baylor community?
Parts 1-2 will take up the bulk of your essay, whereas Part 3 can be part of the conclusion.
General structure aside, you should think about experiences that you have had with education, including ones at school, through volunteering, and in extracurriculars. You want to highlight key aspects that you think are essential to effective education, whether it be, say, freedom of ideas, the collaboration of differently skilled peers, or a commitment to something morally greater.
To do this, you need to introduce your experiences, which will be not only crucial in shaping what you see as essential in education but also important for how you use resources at Baylor and how you influence the Baylor community.
OUTLINE:
Paragraph 1: Hook that is a scene related to your education experience Ex: You talk about a moment when running a coding camp for girls, how the students were behaving and “getting it” after you described something.
Paragraph 2: Introduction that explains hook and then transitions to answer the three questions of the prompt in the form of a thesis statement Ex: You explain the scene and the related details. You talk about how you see education as something that should inspire people to trust themselves to experiment and fail before succeeding. You want to go to a university that promotes this idea. You see yourself fitting into Baylor because its programs do just that, and you can inspire your peers to think this way.
Paragraph 3: Experience related to education that contributes to what you want out of a university Ex: You talk more about the coding camp for girls, first by going into why you made it and what challenges you saw in the beginning. You talk about how maybe you struggled to connect with the kids and wanted them to have all the answers immediately.
Paragraph 4: Experience related to education that contributes to what you want out of a university Ex: You expand on the coding camp experience and say how you solved your problem, how you became more willing to accept that the students would fail, and that you even designed the curriculum to give them a chance to experiment. Doing so, you were able to get them to truly learn.
Paragraph 5: How you will use Baylor’s resources based on that experience / definition of university Ex: Building off your lesson from the coding camp, you hope to take what you learned and now see as the important role that education can play and use Baylor’s resources to have a similar environment. You explain which specific programs would allow you to experiment, fail, and ultimately succeed.
Paragraph 6: How you will use Baylor’s resources based on that experience / definition of university Ex: You talk about even more resources from Baylor that fall in with this idea of experimentation and failing to succeed. Or you extend on a thought from the previous paragraph.
Paragraph 7: Conclusion and how you plan to contribute to Baylor community Ex: Finally, you say how you hope that from your experience in high school and by using the resources at Baylor, you hope to inspire others to see failure as something that is fundamental to learning and that you will give people support so that they don’t beat themselves up and demand perfection in damaging ways.
BAYLOR2 MEDICAL TRACK ESSAY:
Why do you want to pursue your career in medicine at Baylor University and Baylor College of Medicine? (500-word limit)
GENERAL STRATEGY:
The strategy for this essay is similar to that of the previous essay. You have to start with your personal experience and then present how that has shaped your decision to apply to Baylor’s bs/md program. You have to explain, in your own way, for your own reasons, based on your own KEY experiences, what exactly it is about medicine that attracts you.
This isn’t the time to pull out the laundry list of medical school cliches or high school clinical experience generalities. Just think: you are using this essay as a way to get accepted to a MEDICAL SCHOOL PROGRAM. You have to submit an essay that shows you have thought deeply, maturely, and profoundly about this subject, not that you did a bunch of activities like countless other students and now should be rewarded with a spot in the program. It isn’t going to happen.
OUTLINE:
Paragraph 1: Hook of a scene volunteering or interning at hospital or clinic (or something related) Ex: You describe a scene when you volunteered at a hospital on the medical-surgical floor. You describe an experience when you observed a doctor working with a patient and how you interacted with the patient yourself. This was a meaningful moment during their recovery.
Paragraph 2: Introduction that explains scene and transitions to talking about your medical career goals (based on your life experiences) and how you will achieve them by going to Baylor bs/md program Ex: You explain the scene in the hospital -- where you were volunteering and why -- and then go into more generally what you have come to realize about yourself and what you love about medicine. In this case, you talk about how the small moments between doctors and patients are where you see yourself making the most difference. You then talk about how Baylor’s bs/md program is perfect for seeing the moral good of the medical field and getting a doctor to better understand patient psychology.
Paragraph 3: Description of medical experience (GO DEEP ON ONE) and how this has shaped your goals for a career in medicine (this paragraph builds context for the part the describes why Baylor) Ex: You talk about the details of your volunteering experience, how maybe you were initially interested in volunteering because you took classes or that you had a relative who needed to go to the hospital and get treatment. From this, you got your foot in the door, and you met patients you had never imagined meeting.
Paragraph 4: Description of medical experience (GO DEEP ON ONE) and how this has shaped your goals for a career in medicine (this paragraph builds context for the part that describes why Baylor) Ex: There was one patient in particular who you will never forget. This patient had just gotten back from surgery and nobody had come to visit him. The doctor made his rounds and stopped in the patient’s room, and they both sat quietly, and the doctor held the patient’s hand for what seemed like an hour, and you could see the patient crying but also smiling. That was the moment when you knew you wanted to be a doctor and the impact you could have on people. That’s what you hope to be the best at--connecting with people in their own individual ways.
Paragraph 5: Explanation of how you will use Baylor to promote your medical goals (as you just described in previous two paragraphs) Ex: You talk about Baylor’s bs/md program specifically and how it will build on your experience in the hospital and how you hope to gain a more personal medical touch from taking certain classes and participating in certain programs.
Paragraph 6: Conclusion that wraps up and ties together your ideas and reiterates why Baylor University and Baylor Medical School are the best places for you to build your medical career Ex: You conclude by reiterating what you hope to accomplish as a doctor and how Baylor’s bs/md program will make you reach your goals. You call back the image of the hospital from earlier.
Now you should be in the best position to write your Baylor supplemental essay(s). In other words, you have what it takes to grin and bear it!
Stuck on your Baylor essays or other bs/md program essays? Need help with college admissions essay writing in general? Check out our college admissions services and get your essays ready for the November 1st deadline!
