If you were asked to describe your academic coursework in a paragraph or two, what would you write about?

What’s it for? Because that would really impact what I said.

I would probably mention what my major and minor were, why I chose them, what interested me in them. I’d mention what I thought were the big things that those classes had taught me – like how to critically analyze, or how to spot potential biases, or the idea of social construction, etc. I would mention maybe a couple classes I thought were really something special or really awesomely niche, but not the entire course list if the person reading it could read my transcripts.

Agreed that it depends what the purpose is – you would want to say what knowledge you had gained, but also what skills you had learned which would transfer to other settings. So, talk about how you can apply those skills to whatever specific thing you’ll be working on next, if this is for a job or scholarship application.

I would also make sure I had someone else edit it for content and form. Part of the exercise is to observe your writing skills. So, be clear, be interesting, be terse, be original and be quick about it. Use parallel construction, don’t use banal adjectives, and use concrete examples.