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Community, Initiative & Lehigh Fit
~300 words · Real situation + action + outcome + Lehigh match + forward direction
~300 words
Lehigh University is a highly personal community that is focused on developing students into purposeful leaders who apply their skills to make an impact. In this spirit, please describe a meaningful experience — in your community, a project, or any setting — that demonstrates your initiative and impact, and explain how Lehigh's resources and opportunities will help you continue this work.
High-signal content — pick what's genuinely yours:
Built something
A program, system, tool, or process that addressed a real need and is now used by others
Improved something
You saw something not working, proposed a change, and made it measurably better
Helped others tangibly
Tutoring, mentoring, organizing, translating — with a specific person or group who benefited
Solved a real problem
A community, technical, or organizational challenge where your work produced a visible result
Applied learning
You took something from a class or self-study and used it in a real setting with real stakes
Engaged with systems
You worked with or within an organization, policy, or process and made it function better
What to include
- Start with a real situation — a problem, need, or opportunity that needed someone to act
- What you specifically did — active verbs, in order, with concrete details
- What changed or improved — a visible outcome, even a modest one
- 2–4 Lehigh-specific features: experiential learning, community engagement programs, interdisciplinary opportunities, research access
- Forward: what you want to continue or build at Lehigh specifically
What fails
- Too abstract: analyzing problems without doing anything about them
- Too passive: describing what happened around you instead of what you did
- No visible outcome: "I learned a lot" is not an impact on people or systems
- Generic Lehigh fit: programs listed with no connection to your actual work
- Career-only framing with no community or people dimension
Structure (~300 words)
40–60 wordsReal situation — problem, need, or opportunity that required someone to act
80–110 wordsWhat you did + visible outcome or impact on people or systems
80–100 wordsLehigh match: 2–3 specific features + what you'll do with them
40–60 wordsForward: what you want to continue or build — grounded and specific