Yesterday we published this blog post detailing 10 bad opening lines for college essays. After much thought, we’ve decided to go through the examples individually and explain exactly why they don’t work. Keep reading for our breakdown:

The best college essays tell stories. Small, zoomed-in stories about you and your personality. Some of the best essays we’ve read are about what happened on a random Tuesday, how much you love making dinner for your family, or that time you tried to build a computer. This blog post isn’t about what to write your common app essay about, but if you’re looking for help with that-- check here, and here.

If you’re familiar with our blog, you know that we’ve written tons of guides about writing your college essay. You should also know that the best college essays of all time are about the person who wrote them. They’re about you, and they shed light on an aspect of your personality that can’t be discerned from the rest of your application. Everyone has grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. We even like to pretend that you’re applying alongside of a very large group of students who have the same exact academic profiles as you do. So, what’s left? Everyone also has different personality traits, and colleges are looking to admit students with all different kinds of soft skills, traits, and quirks. The best college essays explain those traits in the form of a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

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.

Blog readers and clients come to us daily and ask: “how can I make my college essay stand out?” Seeing as this is a primary focus of our job, we do have thoughts and feelings! Interestingly enough, they stand in direct opposition to the things you’ve heard about, and read about, on the internet.

The time has come to ask a terrifying question: “is my common app essay good enough?” This question, of course, is impossible to answer. But in our experience, almost every piece of writing can be improved. We’ve put together a few tips on how to edit your common app essay, and most of these tips can also be used for your supplements:

If you came to this blog post of hopes us telling you that the best college essays are about sports, extracurricular activities, or the global pandemic, bear with us as we go in another direction. The best college essays are about you. Yes, you. This might seem like an oversimplification, but it’s true. You are the only person who can write an essay that is uniquely about yourself, so we’re going back to basics by diving into a brainstorming process that’s been successful with some of our TKG clients.

If you’re familiar with our blog, you know that we love common app essays that are relatable. We like to bring the reader into our lives, which is why we avoid alienating topics and singular experiences that don’t speak to universal truths. And while your essay should ground the reader, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Most students are reluctant to write about failure. This is probably because you’ve spent the majority of your high school years trying to mold yourself into the perfect student, and any mention of a misstep will shine a negative light on your candidacy. Why highlight a mistake when you’ve accomplished so much?

When working with TKG clients, most come to us with an idea of what a traditional high school essay should look like. You’re probably familiar with a structure that looks something like this:

Let’s set the scene. The crisp fall air has reminded you that winter is coming, so you’ve been toiling away at your common app essay is preparation for the submission of your early decision application. We hope you’re also working on your supplements! In any event, you keep coming back to your common app essay. It’s **almost** done, and the content looks good, but you need a title. The thought of choosing a title is scary, so you’ve put it off.

Writing a college essay seems daunting, and it can be complicated without the right tools. To help with the process, we’ve broken the common app essay into individual parts. These are our ten favorite blog posts about how to put together your common app essay.

We received this question via email recently and we thought it was such an important question that we’re addressing it in this blog post. The question:

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: