Competition: People don’t know this about me because I seem so chill, but I am incredibly competitive. Things I rarely lose at: ping pong, Tetris, foosball, and corn hole. I’ve gotten much better over the years at hiding my competitive side, but it’s still there.
I lived with 5 different families as an exchange student, and each one taught me something valuable that I’ll carry with me to college.
Consider using the Revising Your Essay in 5 Steps Exercise to clarify your transitions.
Do I have any other topics I could write on? Are there other interesting parts of myself I’d like to share that could reveal important skills, qualities, and values? Or must I write about this? (Beware the trap discussed earlier of feeling like you must write about a challenge to write a great personal statement—it’s not true! The authors of the “My Laptop Stickers” essay the "Home” essay were students who faced challenges but chose not to write about them.)
The “Home” essay: A quick case study
A boring personal statement chooses a common topic, makes common connections, and uses common language.
A description of these extracurricular activities may have sounded like a laundry list of the author’s accomplishments. But because she’s naming other stickers (which connects them to the essay’s thematic thread), she basically gets to name-drop those activities while showing other parts of her life. Nice.
You should also know that sometimes it takes minutes to find a thread and sometimes it can take weeks. With this student, it took less than an hour.
But if your essay topic is very original and different, you’re more likely to earn that coveted second glance at your application.
Regardless of what you write about in your personal statement for college, there are key features that will always make for a stand-out college essay topic.
Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges.
Therefore, make sure you take the time to come up with an essay topic that is in direct response to every question in the prompt.
#5: It Clearly Answers the Question
For instance, maybe you plan to write about the first time you played Skyrim to explain how this video game revealed to you the potentially limitless worlds you could create, thereby furthering your interest in game design.
Once you’ve chosen a general topic to write about, get out a piece of paper and get to work on creating a list of all the key details you could include in your essay. These could be things such as the following:
If you can only come up with a few details, then it’s probably best to revisit the list of college essay topics above and choose a different one that you can write more extensively on.
Experts like Watson and Urrutia Gedney agree that the everyday challenges students face often make the most compelling essay topics of all. “The thing I see most often with first-generation kids is that they think they don’t have a story to tell,” says Watson, “but most have had rich experiences that colleges are going to want to hear.”
It’s college essay time: a season of sighs, false starts, revisions, tears — and many late nights. Few students breeze through this part of the college application process because writing a good college essay is no easy task. It can be particularly challenging for first-generation college students, who tend to dismiss the real-life circumstances that make their experience unique. Here, first-generation students and experts who work with them offer valuable insights and advice.
Watson marvels at some of the stories he’s heard from students. He recalls a high school senior who was homeless and lived for several months with his mother in their car. For Watson, it wasn’t just the student’s circumstances that were noteworthy, but the way he talked about them. “He described being homeless in just a few sentences,” says Watson. “What he focused on in his essay was lying in the car at night, and thinking about school, and why school brought him so much joy. He was just so grateful for the opportunity to learn.”
“By asking deeper questions, we try to help students see that they do have a story to tell,” Watson says. “I ask kids, ‘What have you learned from helping your mom pay the bills? What has that weekend or after-school job taught you? How are you going to use that knowledge going forward?’ It often takes some digging to help them get there.”
Choosing which story to tell
In fact, the purpose of the college essay is to give college admissions officers a glimpse of a student that they can’t glean from their high school transcript or other questions on their application. “We tell students, ‘Colleges really want to get to know you,” says Urrutia Gedney. “It isn’t just about GPAs and test scores. They want students who are well-rounded, who show character and resilience in difficult circumstances. We tell them, ‘Colleges aren’t looking for superheroes. You’ve accomplished a lot. You don’t have to make things up.'”
His parents helped him turn things around. His family is Hakka, a Chinese ethnic group that has always faced discrimination. His parents told him, “We Hakka people move everywhere around China and around the world, and we adapt to new environments all the time. That is our history.”
Ye Luo says that their words gave him a sense of pride and determination to succeed. “It was the first time I really looked at myself,” he recalls. “I started to work hard in school. Up until then, I wasn’t trying. I tried to adapt socially and academically.” Ye Luo enjoyed high school far more than middle school, he made friends, joined the wrestling team, and took his GPA from a 1.9 to a 4.0.
- Get other people to look at your essay.
- Be prepared to change, cut, and rearrange a lot!
In general, you should avoid topics that are overly controversial, like things that are politically charged, doing things that are illegal, or anything involving graphic descriptions of any bodily function. So if you’re going to write about recovering from hip surgery, probably leave out the gory details of you being constipated and your oozy scars.
It’s always wise to get another set of eyes on your college essays. In fact, several sets of eyes is even better! Other people can help you make sure your essay flows, you have enough detail, that everything is relevant, and that you sound as engaging and interesting as you really are! They can also help you catch typos and other minor errors—although you’ll want to double and triple-check for that yourself before submitting.
- Make sure your first sentence is stellar.
- Triple check for typos and grammatical errors!
Tip #13: Triple-check for Typos and Errors
Imagine the essay you could write about the time you painted Mr. Lurker's claws.
Here are four tips for writing college essays and making sure your work stands out in a good way:
What makes you stand out? This should be something that goes beyond what’s in the rest of your application. Your test scores and GPA are already there. What really shows something unique about you?
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Your essay can be the difference between an acceptance and rejection — it allows you to stand out from the rest of applicants with similar profiles. Get a free peer review or review other students’ essays right now to understand the strength of your essay.
This essay is an excellent example of in-the-moment narration. The student openly shares their internal state with us — we feel their anger and panic upon the reversal of roles. We empathize with their emotions of “utter dread” and embarrassment when they’re unable to speak.
- Avoid italics and bold, since formatting often doesn’t transfer over in text boxes
- Be careful with essays meant to be a certain shape (like a balloon)
As I walked into committee anticipating a battle of wits, my director abruptly called out to me. “I’m afraid we’ve received a late confirmation from another delegate who will be representing Judge Nikitchenko. You, on the other hand, are now the defense attorney, Otto Stahmer.” Everyone around me buzzed around the room in excitement, coordinating with their allies and developing strategies against their enemies, oblivious to the bomb that had just dropped on me. I felt frozen in my tracks, and it seemed that only rage against the careless delegate who had confirmed her presence so late could pull me out of my trance. After having spent a month painstakingly crafting my verdicts and gathering evidence against the Nazis, I now needed to reverse my stance only three hours before the first session.
Does your Common App essay actually stand out?
In this post, we’ll be going over proper college essay format, traditional and unconventional essay structures (plus sample essays!), and which structure might work best for you.
Now that we’ve gone over the logistical aspects of your essay, let’s talk about how you should structure your writing. There are three traditional college essay structures. They are:
The morning of the Model United Nation conference, I walked into Committee feeling confident about my research. We were simulating the Nuremberg Trials – a series of post-World War II proceedings for war crimes – and my portfolio was of the Soviet Judge Major General Iona Nikitchenko. Until that day, the infamous Nazi regime had only been a chapter in my history textbook