If you’ve come to us for a singular topic, you’re out of luck! But stick with us, as we do have tips and tricks. Unfortunately, no one topic is the best topic. We’ve told you what to avoid, the do’s and don’t’s, and how to approach our favorite common app essay prompt. This blog post is about how to hone in on a topic that only you can broach.
While we can’t tell what to write about, we can start by helping you by cross a few ideas off of your list. This is often the best place to start, as to avoid wasting time writing drafts that should ultimately end up on the cutting room floor. The most important thing to keep in mind? Avoid redundancy. You only have so many opportunities to show your dream school who you are as a person. So, if you listed something in your activities section, you shouldn’t focus your common app essay on it as well. We think of it like this: if you can only describe yourself in three words, you wouldn’t use the same word twice. And despite their popularity on Google, you should also avoid writing about your grandparents, trips around the world, community service, and traditional leadership roles such as being captain of the volleyball team.
To broaden the brainstorming process, start by making a list of adjectives about yourself. We also suggest crowdsourcing by asking your friends and family to contribute to your list. Then, look at your list and cross off everything that can be discerned from other areas of your application.
You should end up with a list of traits and personality characteristics about yourself. Why is this list going to be helpful? Because the best college essay ever written is going to be about you. Yes, you. And you’re the only person that can write it.
The truth is that as long as the essay is about you and your personality, the essay can be about anything. The friendships you’ve forged at the dog park, the reason you organize your bookshelf by color and not alphabetically, the way your parents rely on you to get dinner on the table when they’re working late, the park bench you go to when you’re trying to solve problems, or the way you stuck with your first job even though you made the world’s worst coffee.
By going small, you can tell a ~big~ story about who you are. Keep in mind: you’re not going to be able to encapsulate your entire personality in one essay. But you can shed some light on one special aspect of your character that you’ll be bringing to school. Colleges aren’t just looking for students with varying academic interests, they’re looking for all different kinds of people with diverse personalities.
We recommend streamlining your list to a few adjectives and then brainstorming stories from there. If you focus your efforts on remembering details, and narrative, you’ll be surprised what you can accomplish with just 650 words. So instead of reading sample essays online and doing your best to emulate them, look inward. Focus on what feels most genuine and then find the best way to tell your story.
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