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Picking a topic for your college essay can be intimidating, to put it lightly. In 650 words, you are supposed to distill yourself into an essay that is both a convincing argument for offering you admission and a literary masterpiece. That’s a lot. But picking the right topic for your essay can be the key to the puzzle. With the right topic, things flow.

We love jobs. We love summer jobs, and we love after-school jobs. We love part-time jobs, and we love seasonal jobs. We advise nearly all of our students to get a summer job that pays real money to do real work, as opposed to an internship — which is also good but different. Many colleges even prioritize applicants who have real-world work experience, so getting a job pays you at work and in the college admissions process. Because of this, a summer job is nearly always a great topic for a college essay.

The College Essay is mythical in status, but at the core it’s just an essay. Like any essay, it needs to say something, and preferably something interesting. As part of your college application, what it says shouldn’t be obvious, but it should make sense. You shouldn’t be repeating something elsewhere in your application, but what you say should resonate with the reader because it makes them feel like they’ve gotten to know you a little better than they would have without it. In 650 words, you need to do all of this while sounding smart, self-aware, and like someone they have to say yes to. That’s a big lift, but we’re here for you.

We get it. You pressed submit on your personal statement and now you’re wondering: Did spellcheck miss something? What if I wrote a really bad essay and got rejected early and YIKES now I want to change it? And, if so, what do I do next?

What makes someone the best at something? It can be a hard question to answer. When it comes to college admissions services, we believe we are the best. But what does that mean? What does it look like? It’s easy to say that we are good at our jobs. Every year we get over 88% of our students into their top choice school and every year that percentage increases. It’s the highest acceptance rate of any college consulting firm. Does that make us the best?

“What do you do?” It’s a question that comes up time and time again. Whether at a cocktail party or a business meeting, we like to talk about it. The reason? We are pretty proud of what we do.

“In this blog post, we will tell you how to write the best college essay introduction…” We’re diving right in with a what-not-to-do. College essays are always challenging. That’s why most of our blog is about the ins and outs of essay writing and it’s what most of our clients come to us for help with, too. You’re sitting there on your laptop, blank screen, with absolutely no idea where to start. Should you go corny? Saucy? Informative? What if it sounds bad? What if it makes me look dumb? Take a breath. Let’s figure it out together.

As summer draws near, the school year comes to a close, and decisions start getting sent out, it’s easy to start daydreaming about your future college. You have images of walking from your dorm to class, crossing campus, sitting in a lecture hall, cramming for midterms in a giant library. You dream of going to school in a college town, or in a city, maybe it’s a big school – or small. You think about all the different things you could study, friends you will make, and clubs you’ll join.

The common app essay can provoke a lot of anxiety, but we find that, when done correctly, it provides a chance for students to showcase their personalities. When you drill down to it, the anxiety around the common app is really a brainstorming problem. As such, most of your effort should go into finding a topic (a story) that allows you to demonstrate who you are as a person. Think of it as an opportunity—while a lot of your application is standardized, this essay is open-ended and allows you to get creative.

Imagine you are an application reviewer. You are tired. The room is either too hot or too cold. You have already read 8,000 essays and need to read 400 more today and every single one feels like it starts with something like “3 summers ago, I….” or “My grandfather was the strongest person I knew.” How would you feel? If it were us, we would be some combination of bored, tired, and antsy. You turn over the next essay and it’s written as a screenplay and is titled Act 2 Scene 3. You are immediately thrown out of your routine and, more importantly, you’re grateful to this student for livening up your day.

“Hey, can you write a new post for the blog?”

“Sure any idea of what we should write about?”

“I think we need to do one on form and the common app essay.”

“On form?”

“Yeah about how good common app essays break form.”

“Of course! I will work on one about how breaking form can make a really memorable reading experience.”

Even the most prepared students are usually surprised by some part of the college application process. Maybe it’s a supplement that really makes them think or how short some essays have to be, but there’s one thing that everyone knows about before starting the process: they are going to have to write a killer common app essay.

We made it! We broke down the first six prompts and we’re concluding this series by diving into our favorite prompt #7. Let’s get right to it:

Hooray, a good prompt is lurking below! Prompt #6 is a little different than the rest and we’re here for it. Below you’ll find our tips and tricks: