The rise of flickering cell phone screens, social media, and the insane competition of college admissions will define this era in history. Alongside the innovations and competition of the 21st Century is a rise of anxiety amongst all age groups, including, and perhaps especially, teenagers. Your anxiety is totally valid. It’s real and it is something that you should communicate to colleges, but you need to know where to send the message.

The college application is holistic. What that means is each part of it should help to complete a picture of the applicant for the admissions committee. As such, no two parts should be the same. A lot of kids end up writing their essays about something that’s already represented elsewhere in the application, like an extra-curricular. While we typically advise against doing that, there is an exception.

The goal of the essay is to tell a story that illuminates something new about you to the admissions committee. Many students take this as an opportunity to try and get deep. Students frequently write about tragedy or major, life-altering obstacles they’ve faced. Some students choose to write about how they’ve grappled with something like addiction or disease. While those experiences are valid, there is a whole separate section just for them. This essay is not the appropriate platform. The trouble with writing about, well, trouble, is that one often falls short of connecting with the anonymous readers, and the whole point if the exercise is to connect with those very people.  

Write about something that doesn’t appear in your activities section or resume  

Every single component of your application, from essays to short answer supplements, should show the admissions committee a different part of you. Let your personality become three dimensional. Don’t just rattle of the same redundant information they’re going to see on your resume.  

Identity is a word that you’ll see often during the college process and it can be daunting to anyone, not just someone writing a college essay.

Not all Common App essays are created equal. In fact, many are garbage. That’s good news for you. In this blog post, we discuss how to get ahead of your competition by creating an excellent and memorable Common App essay.

Let’s start with something that most people overlook: the title of your essay is included in the 650 count word limit. This causes a lot of our students to have a mini meltdown (you’re not alone) so we wanted to get that out of the way.

There are a million different ways to write your common app essay, but in this post we’re going to share the process that we use with TKG students. We like this method because it helps us zero in on topics and ideas that students commonly overlook. It works with every personality type and any potential interest, from introverted interior designers to extroverted entrepreneurs.

Most students we work with are familiar with essay introductions that look something like the below: 

“Due to my diverse background and upbringing, I’m able to relate to many people because of the experiences I’ve had throughout my life.”

High school college counselors often advise students away from creativity and into a box of ordinary, albeit palatable humble brags. Their method has worked for them before and they’re not about to go out on a limb if they’re not positive it will work. But college is getting increasingly more competitive and run of the mill essays are not going to put anyone over the edge.

Getting started on a personal essay can be challenging. How do you convey the details of your accomplishments in an interesting way? The answer is, you don’t.

Finally! We’ve been giving you the tools and tricks you need to tackle each one (and insight into ), and we’ve finally reached our favorite of the lot — number seven.