Let’s be real! Navigating the USC Viterbi Supplemental Questions on the Common App

It’s true! Answering the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s supplemental questions on the Common App is an important part of your application.  Supplemental questions are designed to give the admissions office a better understanding of your personality, interests, and goals. They allow you to showcase aspects of yourself that might not come through in other parts of your application.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you one correct way to answer these questions, and there certainly is not a magic combination of words that will guarantee admission!  However, if there is one secret ingredient to answering the supplemental questions it would come down to one word: authenticity.  We are trying to get to know you on a more personal level.  In other words, we want you to tell us who you really are, not who you think we want you to be.   There are so many ways to tell your unique story so just focus on showcasing who you are.

When you select a Viterbi School engineering or computer science major inside the Academics Section of the USC Questions as your first choice major, the Common App will automatically populate with the supplemental questions you need to answer to apply to the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Before we dive into these supplemental questions,  please keep in mind they aren’t meant to trip you up—they’re an opportunity for you to showcase your uniqueness and passion.  So, let’s get to it!

Now that you have selected the Fall 2025 term, your choice of Early Action or Regular Decision in the General Section, and an engineering or computer science major (any major starting with the prefix ‘VSE’) as your first-choice major in the academics section….  the following two short answer  questions should appear near the end of the ‘Questions’ tab underneath the header ‘Writing Questions.’ 

And now, for the fun part!  Here are the USC Viterbi supplemental questions and what they mean…

1. Your Unique Contributions to USC Viterbi

The student body at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering is a diverse group of unique engineers and computer scientists who work together to engineer a better world for all humanity. Describe how your contributions to the USC Viterbi student body may be distinct from others. Please feel free to touch on any part of your background, traits, skills, experiences, challenges, and/or personality in helping us better understand you.

Explanation: To sum up this question another way: “How will you make a unique contribution to the USC Viterbi student body?”

Our main goal in reading your entire application is to find out who you are.  We aren’t “looking for” anything in particular, but we want to know your story.  As we read your application, we’ll notice aspects of it that are unique. This question is your chance to give us your own perspective on what you believe your unique contribution to USC Viterbi will be.

Every year, we get around 15,000 applications for first-year admission and about 1,200 applications for transfer admission. It’s an incredibly difficult process to make admission decisions with such a large pool of talented applicants. To help us out a bit, we want to ask you to tell us, in your own words, what you think makes you a stand-out applicant. Notice that in the last sentence of this question, we really leave the door wide open for you to choose from a wide variety of different things to talk about. You can focus in on one topic or weave together an answer that discusses a combination of elements that make you different from every other applicant.

2. The Engineering Grand Challenges

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and their 14 Grand Challenges go hand-in-hand with our vision to engineer a better world for all humanity. Engineers and computer scientists are challenged to solve these problems in order to improve life on the planet. Learn more about the NAE Grand Challenges at http://engineeringchallenges.org and tell us which challenge is most important to you, and why.

Explanation: The first thing you want to do is visit the link above and read about the NAE’s Grand Challenges. Then, reflect on which one you think is most important, and tell us why it’s the most important one to you. That’s it.

The most common email we get about this question is if it’s okay to discuss a Grand Challenge that isn’t related to your major. Of course it is! The question is asking you which Grand Challenge is most important to you and why–not which Grand Challenge is related to your major. The truth is that there is no Grand Challenge that is solvable by one engineering discipline alone. These are interdisciplinary problems that will require people coming together from a wide variety of backgrounds, so you don’t have to discuss the problem through the lens of your major (although you can do that if you want).

The second-most common email we get about this question is if you need to tell us how you would solve the problem. Don’t worry, we’re not expecting any solutions here. These challenges are very complex, and solving them is beyond the scope of a 250-word response.

Another common question we get is if there is a correct answer to the question. There is no ‘right’ answer that we’re looking for, and there is no one Grand Challenge that is objectively more important than another. All we want to know is which one you care about the most, and why. There are countless reasons why a Grand Challenge might be the most important one to you, and we’re hoping that your answer to this question reveals more about yourself and your perspective on a big engineering-related problem.

Hopefully, this blog post helped you better understand our supplemental questions. The common thread between the explanations above is that the purpose of every question is to get to know you a little better. While you’re writing your responses, you may want to ask yourself the following:

• Am I writing in my authentic voice?
• Is this an accurate representation of who I am and what I’m interested in?
• Is my writing clear, concise, and concrete? Or is it vague, wordy, and abstract?

You are the only person who knows who you truly are, and what you are genuinely interested in. Approach these questions thoughtfully and sincerely – give a clear sense of YOU.

Try not overthink these questions. We wish you the best of luck luck with your application!