Villanova University’s acceptance rate has fallen to roughly 27%, well below where it stood a decade ago. Admitted students post strong test scores, and you typically need mostly A’s in AP and honors courses to have a serious shot. Writing an excellent Common App essay and Villanova supplemental essay are also incredibly important pieces of the admissions puzzle for wannabe Wildcats.
Want to learn more about how to create a strong application to Villanova? In addition to our blog entitled: How to Get Into Villanova University, head to College Transitions Gateway for all our best free tools and resources, including an admissions calculator for 170+ institutions, college planning guides & templates, and example essays from accepted students.
Villanova rebuilt its supplement
If you are working from an older guide, almost none of it applies. Villanova has overhauled its writing requirement, and the changes are substantial:
- There is now one essay, not two. The separate 150-word “Why Villanova?” essay no longer exists as its own requirement. It has been folded into the menu as one of the five options.
- Three prompts were retired outright: “What is the truest thing that you know?”, the Confessions redemption and second-chance prompt, and the Augustine miracles-and-technology prompt.
- Two prompts are new, one about being misjudged and one about someone borrowing your strength.
- The equity and justice prompt was rewritten around a quotation from Pope Leo XIV, a member of Villanova’s Class of 1977.
The result: you write one response of about 250 words, chosen from five prompts. That is it. Villanova has gone from asking roughly 400 words across two required essays to asking 250 across one.
The 2026-27 Villanova Supplemental Essay
Please select one of the five essay prompts listed below to fulfill the writing requirement and respond in about 250 words.
Before we take them one at a time, a word on selection. Because you only write one, your first decision is which prompt to choose, and the right answer is almost always the one attached to your strongest lived experience rather than the one that sounds most impressive. Pick the prompt where you already have a specific story, not the prompt whose subject matter you admire most.
Prompt One: Playing your part
As Pope Leo XIV (Villanova Class of 1977) has said, “no one can single-handedly bear the weight of the challenges the world is facing, just as no one is so weak that they cannot play their part.” What have you done to play your part in advancing equity and justice in your community?
This prompt replaced an earlier version quoting St. Augustine, and the substitution is not incidental. Villanova is a small Augustinian university that unexpectedly became the alma mater of a sitting pope, and this question is the admissions office making use of that fact.
Note how forgiving the quotation is. “No one is so weak that they cannot play their part” is explicit permission to write about something small. You do not need to have organized a protest or founded a nonprofit. Engaging a relative in a hard conversation, tutoring a struggling classmate, or making a complicated issue legible to people around you all count.
Some students have more direct experience with equity and justice work than others, and no matter your background, this is an opportunity to show that you care about fairness in your local community as well as the wider world. If you do not have a genuinely personal story here, choose a different prompt. There is nothing wrong with believing in inclusion and tolerance, but articulating those beliefs in the abstract does not make for a compelling essay. Note also that the prompt asks what you have done, not what you believe.
Prompt Two: A lesson to share
What is a lesson in life that you have learned that you would want to share with others at Villanova?
This is the one prompt that survives from Villanova’s older set, now with “at Villanova” added to the end. That addition matters. The question is no longer just what you learned; it is what you would bring into a specific community.
Villanova greatly values students who have gained wisdom from their involvement and leadership in high school. This essay is a chance to communicate what you have actually taken from your present communities, then shift to how that will shape your future collegiate one. Resist the temptation to lead with the lesson stated as a maxim. Show the experience that produced it and let the reader arrive at the lesson roughly where you did.
Prompt Three: A new home
“Villanova” means “new home.” Why do you want to call Villanova your new home?
This is the classic “Why Us?” essay, now optional rather than required and with 250 words instead of 150. Examples of items that quality “Why Villanova?” responses touch upon:
- The residential character of the campus, where the overwhelming majority of first-year students live on campus.
- Specific student organizations you would join, out of the hundreds on campus.
- The specifics of your academic program, whether in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences or the business, engineering, or nursing schools.
- Undergraduate research opportunities you plan to pursue.
- Villanova’s location just outside Philadelphia, and what that enables in terms of service, internships, and access.
- Study abroad programs through the Office of Education Abroad.
- Villanova’s service culture, and how you would participate in it rather than simply admire it.
Common components of a generic response, which we would not call mistakes but which add no needle-moving value:
- Noting that Villanova is highly ranked. They know.
- Professing love for the basketball team.
- Recycled statements from your other “Why Us?” essays that come across as stale, impersonal, or worst of all, irrelevant or inaccurate.
- Statements about how Villanova “feels like home” or that you have wanted to attend since kindergarten. Show that through specifics instead.
One strategic note. Because this option is now one of five rather than a separate requirement, choosing it means giving up the chance to tell a personal story. Only pick it if your research is genuinely deep and specific enough that the essay could not have been written by anyone else.
Prompt Four: Being misjudged
As an Augustinian community, we value recognizing individuals for their true selves. Please share with us a time when you were misjudged based on your identity, background, experiences or interests.
This prompt is one of two that replaced Villanova’s older options. Note that the list of grounds is broad: identity, background, experiences, or interests. You do not need to have faced discrimination in a formal sense. Being assumed to be the quiet one, or the athlete who could not also be serious about literature, or the kid whose accent led people to talk slowly, all fit.
Two things separate strong responses. First, the essay should end somewhere other than grievance. Villanova frames this around recognizing people for their true selves, which means the interesting material is what you did once you were seen wrongly. Second, you do not have to resolve it. An honest account of how you carry a misjudgment reads better than a tidy ending nobody believes.
Prompt Five: Borrowing your strength
At Villanova, we often say “each of us strengthens all of us.” Please detail a time when someone has borrowed some of your strength in their time of need.
This is the other replacement prompt, and probably the most distinctive in the set. Note the framing: someone borrowed your strength. This is not a leadership question and not a service-hours question. It is about a moment when a specific person needed something you had.
The best responses here are small and specific. A friend who called at two in the morning. A younger sibling who needed you to hold steady during a family crisis. A teammate you talked through a collapse of confidence. Resist scaling it up. “I led a fundraiser that helped hundreds” misses the intimacy the prompt is reaching for.
Be careful with other people’s stories, too. The person who borrowed your strength did not apply to Villanova. Keep the focus on what you did and what it asked of you, and do not expose someone else’s difficulty in more detail than the essay requires.
How important is the Villanova supplemental essay?
Three factors are viewed as “very important” to the Villanova admissions committee: the GPA earned, the rigor of one’s curriculum, and class rank. Seven factors rate as “important”: recommendations, essays, extracurricular activities, talent/ability, character/personal qualities, work experience, and volunteer work.
All three of the top-tier factors are settled before you apply. And with Villanova now asking for a single 250-word response where it used to ask for two essays, there is no second prompt to recover on. Pick well, and write the one you can write best.
Want Personalized Essay Assistance?
If you are interested in working with one of College Transitions’ experienced and knowledgeable essay coaches as you craft your Villanova supplemental essay, we encourage you to get a quote today.
Looking for additional writing resources? Check out the following:
