The college essay brainstorm process can be overwhelming when you feel as if there are so many different directions that you can head towards. In an effort to help you cross some ideas off of your list, we put together a list of topics that should be avoided. Keep reading if you’re hoping to fine-tune your list of thoughts:

The thing about your college essay is it needs to be relatable to an admissions counselor (read: adult) somewhere in the country you don’t know. Easy, right? There are a few ways to access relatability in this regard and one of them is by talking about a feeling pretty much everyone has in common. Student instinct here is often to edge into the land of drama, existentialism, or sadness. We’d advise against all of that. While you may have had a real tragedy in life that impacted your high school journey, the essay is not the place for it (the additional info. section is!). And while you could talk about a really important life-altering lesson you learned or the reason why you became an atheist, oftentimes a story as big as that will come off as naïve from such a young writer. Failure—particularly the lighthearted kind—is, on the other hand, something just about everyone can relate to. Here are some examples:

The Common Application essay––often referred to as your personal statement, or just “your college essay”––is an integral piece of your total application. The role of the essay is to help admissions’ officers get an idea of how you think. Once they know that, they can craft a well-rounded group of kids. That means your job in your essay is to show how you think and what kind of person you are. Colleges can already see your grades and your test scores. They can read the things your teachers say about you. They can look at a list of extracurriculars you’ve been involved in from the beginning of Time. But the bottom line is that as much as those things paint a picture, the basic point of your college essay is to answer, in your voice, the broadest question of all: “Who Am I?”

We’re nearing the end! We’re running through each and every prompt option listed in the Common App 2019-2020 writing section. We’re on prompt #6 out of 7 prompts, which means you might have a good idea of which prompt you’re going to choose, or you might not have a clue and feel ravenously eager for more content. We get that. Let us present prompt #6 for your consideration, with some key suggestions. It’s a fun one.  

Continuing our series on the Common App 2019-2020 prompts, we’re reviewing prompt #5. Read on if this prompt intrigues you, annoys you, or you just want to know our thoughts on it. We’re very opinionated, if you can’t already tell. Particularly when it comes to essays. And the titles of them. And everything in-between.

We’re continuing our Common App prompt series where we review each prompt for the personal essay on the 2019-2020 Common Application. We’re on prompt #4—click here for our syntheses of prompts 1, 2, and 3. Read on for a breakdown of the next essay prompt on the list.

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.