Do people actually name-drop university programs/classes/professors in their supplemental essays?

ECCA2026
Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:23:09 +0000

HelicopterParent1:

I think there are very, very few schools where you could point out something so distinctive that isn’t a class/professor/institute of some sort.

I should add that you are probably right on this and my experience is largely in that narrow band of schools. Having said that, though I know very little about MIT other than what is in the general public impressions of them, I’d think that MIT is likely one of those schools. First, it is a world renowned science focused technical school which puts it in a small pool to begin with. Then I think about things like that they were the first to go back to required standardized testing because their data showed that is what they needed. Or, that they were the first to reject the administration’s compact, and did so via a public letter that focused on how they want to compete on merit for grants with everyone else in the country because that is the ethos of who they are and their core beliefs in scientific inquiry. And that everyone else followed. And that is not getting into anything about the students attracted or the culture or anything else. My point is, and maybe this is because I am a humanities person and not a science one, I just find it hard to imagine that MIT of all places is not one that has unique stories to tell other than I love your engineering program or x famous prof, or y class. I bet if I spent a couple hours (which I won’t) MIT’s unique story would be obvious to me given the impressions I already have. Like who else is really like MIT?