What is “intellectual curiosity”? Why is it important? How can I show it? Do I even have it? 

If you’re curious about being intellectually curious, you probably are! 

Ok, but what is it?

Intellectual curiosity can take many forms, but these kinds of minds have some shared habits:

• Someone who is intellectually curious devotes free time to learning and exploring. 
• They challenge their own views, consider new ideas, gather facts or experiences to build entire case studies in their brains, and then excitedly tell whoever will listen. 
• They may offer in-depth, impromptu teaching sessions highlighting unexpected connections in the world due to their ability to synthesize and formulate new ideas from the many perspectives they’ve collected! (Hello also to Saggitarius with Aquarius rising!)

So, why is it important?

I’ll spoil your exploratory fun and just tell you. Colleges are looking to build a class of students with diverse skills: some may relentlessly work to better the community, some will have the drive to motivate peers through great challenges, others will innovate and begin projects that will result in better ways of doing things, and then you, curious collector, you will be the keeper of facts, distributor of knowledge, and curator of intellectual challenges! (Hello future tutoring center or research lab participant!)

How does this trait manifest? 

Intellectually curious people are all bound by a deep desire to “know,” but that can manifest in different ways. Here are a few examples:

The Intellectually Curious Academic: This one’s pretty obvious. Maybe you have a friend who became obsessed with ponds after a nature camp in third grade, went down a YouTube rabbit hole on dragonflies, spent the summer after freshman year working in wetland conservation, has taken so many college-level biology courses that they call all teachers “prof,” and now has their eyes on a major program that lets them spend 90% of their time “in the field.” Like an actual field. They may single-handedly figure out how to use swamp grass to prevent global warming.

The Intellectually Curious Socializer: You might have met someone who treats social interactions like a puzzle. They analyze body language, eye movement, breath rate, feet placement, time spent on a topic before switching, level and pitch of voice, and how much their subject… er… conversee smiled. They geek out watching politicians’ physical tactics and can even sometimes guess something that’s about to happen — and it does. They’ve devoted tons of time and energy to understanding how people interact, just for funsies. Hello, Sherlock Holmes.

The Intellectually Curious Creative: This trait in creativity is likely responsible for bringing you raku pottery, anything Banksy, Waiting for Godot, Bach’s entire canon, Andre 3000’s canon…. This is that friend who discovered modal music theory and spent all of tenth grade trying to invent a new chord progression. When they played a few possibilities for you, they watched your eyes light up when you heard one you liked, and immediately wanted to know why you liked it. When you responded with, “It sounded cool,” they launched into a diatribe on dissonance, resolution, leading tones, and voicing. Their idea of a party is having the music department over to appreciate Coltrane. 

See yourself in any of these? If so, you’re in the in(tellectually curious) crowd. The main thing you want to show your readers, then, is how you made these interests grow! Want help telling the story of your compulsive deep dives? A Prompt editor is standing by to advise. 

Check out our series on the five traits colleges look for, a deep dive into each trait and how you can know you possess it!

Contribution to Community

Diversity of Experience

Drive

Initiative

Intellectual Curiosity