What will you contribute to our class?
What you add beyond a seat filled. They're building a class, not ranking individuals.
The trap
'Hard work and dedication.' Everyone admitted will work hard; it's not a contribution, it's the entry requirement.
How to structure your answer
Two or three specific contributions → evidence you've done each before → the concrete form it'd take here.
- Be specific: a language, a background, a skill, a perspective, a track record of organizing
- Prove each with something you've already done
- Name the actual campus outlet — a clinic, an org, a program
A weak answer
I'd bring hard work and dedication. I'm someone who shows up, supports the people around me, and takes the work seriously, and I think I'd be a positive presence in the class. I'm also a good team player. I've always been the one making sure everybody is included and that the group actually finishes what it started.
Hard work is the entry requirement, not a contribution to a class.
A stronger answer
Three things. I speak Vietnamese, and I've been translating forms for my parents' dry cleaning customers since I was about eleven, so if a clinic day is stuck on language, put me on it. Second, I organize. I ran a free screening day at a community center with two hygienists and about sixty people through the door, and mostly what I learned was how to chase down permits. Third, I'm a few years older, and I'll be the one who says the group's plan isn't working. That last one isn't always welcome.
Three contributions, each with something he already did standing behind it.
A contribution is what the class loses if you're not there. Dedication isn't that. A Vietnamese-speaking clinic day is.
These are illustrations, not scripts. An answer you memorize sounds memorized — the point is the shape and the specificity, in your own words and about your own life.
Reading it isn't the same as saying it.
Most people can explain a good answer and still fall apart saying one out loud. Admitted asks you all 100 questions in a faculty voice, records you, and scores your pace and filler words.
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