Prospective Students

Essay Prompts

The LSA Honors Program is community of individuals who are interested in ideas, discovery, and intellectual and cultural exchange.  We seek academically talented students who want to be part of such a community.  To help us determine whether you might thrive in the Honors community, respond to one of the following prompts.  Your essay should be 500-1000 (please, no more than 1000 words). 

Put your name along with UM ID number at the top of your essay.  Also indicate the prompt to which you responded.  Save your essay as a Word document or as a pdf, and name the file with your last name, first name, and UMID:  “doe, john12121212.doc” or “doe,tammy13131313.pdf.”

Respond to one of the following prompts:

Prompt 1

Late one evening next fall, you finish studying at UM’s Hatcher Graduate Library and decide to stroll up State Street before heading back to your residence hall.  You see that tomorrow night the State Theater’s midnight movie is The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Tonight’s midnight show, however, is one of your favorite movies, and you decide to see it.  You buy a ticket from a man that you swear looks just like Jeff Daniels.  The same man sells you popcorn and takes your ticket before you walk into the empty theatre.

The house lights go down.  A few minutes into the movie, the action stops, and one of the characters steps off the movie screen and walks up to you….

Prompt 2

In the year 4089, an archeologist discovers your iPod, iPhone, or Blackberry, etc., and she is able to access the media stored on it.  Based on the music, images, messages, programs, and/or movies, etc., that she finds on your device, what observations might she make about early 21st-century culture.

Prompt 3

This past year, ESPN asked viewers to propose a “Mount Rushmore of Sports”: fans were to nominate four great athletes whose faces were to be carved on a hypothetical mountainside.  Propose your Mount Rushmore of Science or Art or Writing or Philosophy or Music or….  Which four faces would you honor on a mountainside?  Why?  

Prompt 4

The astronomer Carl Sagan said, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." What is the incredible thing you wish to know?

Directions for Submitting your Essay

1.  You may submit your essay after you have been admitted to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

2.  Put your name along with your UM ID number at the top of your essay.  Also indicate the prompt to which you are responding.

3.  Save your essay as a Word document or as a pdf.  Please name the file with your last name, first name, and UMID:  “doe,john12121212.doc” or “doe,tammy13131313.pdf.”

4.  If you have not received an email from the Honors Program inviting you to apply (the message should arrive within a couple of weeks after you are admitted to LSA), email us at honors.admissions@umich.edu, expressing your interest.  Wait for our response before continuing.  Expect to hear from us in no more than two business days except between December 24-January 4 when our office is closed.  Continue with step 5.

5.  If you have received an email from Honors inviting you to apply, go to https://ctools.umich.edu/portal.

a.       Click on “log in”—upper right corner.

b.      You will be asked to login at the University of Michigan Weblogin site.

c.       If you already have created a UM “Friend account,” use that to login.

d.      If you don’t have a “Friend account,” click on “create one now” and follow the directions for “Others.” (You will also be able to use this ID and password to check on the status of your UM application).  Then login.

6.  You will be taken to myworkspace@ctools.umich.edu.  Click on “LSA Honors Essays” link at the upper left.

7.  In “LSA Honors Essays,” click on “Drop Box.” Your email address will appear on the page.  Go to the “Add” pull down menu and click on “Upload Files.”  “Browse” for your essay and then click on “Upload Files Now.”  You should see your file in the Drop Box.

Within 2-3 business days after you submit your essay, we will begin processing your Honors application.  Once we begin processing your application, you will no longer be able to return to the LSA Honors Essays website. 

Please get your essay to us as soon as possible.  We work on a rolling admissions basis which means we are able to inform some students with a few weeks after they submit their applications whether or not they have been admitted to the program.  We will, however, need to wait well into the spring to make many of our admission decisions.