What should your college application essay be about?

Question

I will be applying to college and I don't know where to begin with writing my college application essay. Help!

Answer 1

Obviously, you want to pay attention to the topic that they're asking you. The purpose of this question is to find out those elements of your personality and character that do not appear in your GPA or ACT/SAT scores. Your essay shows how you think and what is important to you.

 

Most college application essays have to do with a personal experience or with an expression of your personal opinion about a particular topic. Make sure that you prepare an outline of your story, with a clear beginning, middle and ending, and show that outline to your high school English teacher, or a tutor, or to your parents. Explain to that person why this story is worthy of inclusion in your college essay. If you can sell this person on it, and if your outline makes sense, then you are well on your way. Good luck!

Answer 2

Kimberly,

Write about why you want to go to that college in particular and why that college will benefit from you going there.

Look up the college on the internet and see what they proudly showcase and then include that in your essay as something that impresses you.

Assure them that you wish to become involved in campus life and that you will be a dedicated student that will eventually graduate from that school.

They want to know that you are committed to them and that you will serve as a good representation of them to the world.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

The answers above are right that the topic matters less than what it shows the reader about you, so rather than repeat that, let me offer a way to actually find your topic, since that is the part that tends to stall people.

Start by setting aside the question of what sounds impressive. Admissions readers move through hundreds of essays, and the ones built to impress tend to blur together, since everyone reaches for the same achievements and the same lessons learned. The essays that hold attention are usually about something small and specific that only you would write, told with enough detail that the reader ends up understanding how you think.

A practical way to get there is to make a list of moments rather than topics. Think of three or four times you changed your mind about something, or got absorbed in a task to the point of losing track of time, or noticed something other people walked past. These do not have to be dramatic. A job washing dishes, an argument with a grandparent, a repair you taught yourself, a habit you keep that no one knows about, any of these can carry an essay if you render it closely. The test is not whether the moment is big. The test is whether you can write about it with detail no one else could supply.

Once you have a moment, write toward what it reveals rather than what happened. The narrative is the vehicle, and the point is the way you noticed, decided, or changed. The friends Renee and Peter mention who wrote well did this. They picked something genuinely theirs and rendered it with enough specificity that the reader could see their mind at work, which is the actual thing colleges are reading for.

One caution on the advice to write about why you want that particular school. That essay can work, but only when your reasons are concrete and specific to you, since a general version reads as flattery and tells the reader nothing about you. If you go that route, ground it in something you actually plan to do there, not in what the school showcases on its website.

The short version is to choose a true and specific moment, render it in detail only you could provide, and let it show how you think. That essay will do more for you than any topic chosen because it sounds like what colleges want.

Answer 4

Your college application essay should review your experience in certain courses that are similar to your major and what you want it to be. As a rule, you want to emphasize your achievements toward your academic and vocational goals. You also will want to list any academic awards and your grade point average, if it is exemplary. Talk about your high school experience and education and how it has helped to shape you for the future and how your college studies will help solidify your goals toward your desired field of study. Discuss how you plan to attain your goals, even if you are still undecided. For instance, will you be pursuing a liberal arts degree or something in the fine arts or sciences. State how your own private reading choices have influenced you in one way or another. Do whatever you can to let the powers that be know why their university is the ideal one for you.

Answer 5

Hi:

My first comment and suggestion is that you carefully review and follow all of the advice given you in the answers provided above! There is not much else I can add, except, perhaps to remind you that admissions committees are responsible for reading hundreds (if not thousands) of application essays. They want to be intrigued, impressed, and interested in or by what they are reading. Consider how you feel when you start a new book: if it does not immediately grab your interest and motivate you to keep reading, you may just toss it. At the least, you will soon lose interest and 'tune out.' A good writer can express a human experience with insight and passion. While you need to stay on topic, you also need to engage your reader(s) -in this case, the committee who is determining your acceptance.  Good luck!

Answer 6

I agree with all that has been written in response to your question so far. I'd add one more thing, though it may or may not be helpful for YOU. Imagine, if you can, that you are NOT writing this essay to "get into college." Imagine instead that you are writing it for no reason other than that the subject matter means a great deal to you, perhaps even to the extent that what you have to say is a part of what makes you who you are. Better essays in general (in my opinion) are passionate as well as well put together.

 

One piece of advice suggested that you look up the college to which you are applying and identify how something they showcase is something that impresses and attracts you, and how you will both make use of that showcased quality and contribute to the campus. This is good advice, but may lead you into the "pick me" camp, unless what you discuss is both VERY specific and VERY special to the college in question. 

 

I would advise that your essay needs to be honest. Write what is true, in the most basic sense, to you; what feels true in addition to what is factually true. I met some friends in college who had written very specifically about what it was at Brown (where I went) that attracted them specifically. But the things they wrote about were very VERY specific, and not generally broadcast to the universe at large. At least not at loud volume. They had discovered something others might have overlooked, and imagined themselves into a world with that something (or someone).

 

The "topic" of my essay sounds, even to me, like old hat: as if it would be boring, dull, and not particularly attention-getting. What did I write about? Being the only daughter among four children, and the youngest as well. However, I wrote it with great specificity and with what I hope was passion. My brothers were and are immensely important in my life, in virtually every way one can imagine. Each of my brothers is tremendously unique, and each in a different way contributed to who I was becoming. 

Answer 7

   The purpose of the college essay is for the college to get a sense of what makes you the kind of student they would like to have as one of their students.  Many years ago, students wrote standard bio essays that pretty much sounded all the same- "PICK ME". What the colleges look for now is what is unique about you and what do you hope to find with this education.  For some individuals it is their background or heritage.  For others it can be a specific hobby or goal.  Still for other students it might be a talent or at the other spectrum, a disability that has helped shaped who they are today.  I had one student who wrote about his love of writing which began for him as early as nursery school.  I had another who wrote that he was accomplished in every facet of academics but he did not have one really good friend and realized that the university life could offer him an opportunity to round out his academics.  Another student was the first to get a college degree in her family; an honor for all of them.  Ask yourself the following questions:  Why do you want to go to college?  What do you hope to gain from the experience?  What do you want the college to appreciate about you?  Good luck!

Answer 8

Kimberly,

 

This answer may be too late, but I just discovered this forum!

 

The topic is less important than what the essay conveys about you.  Look at your entire application before you write. After the admissions person reads your activities, awards, grades and scores, what else do you wish he or she knew about you? Schools want to know that too; they want an insight into your personality and character they cannot get from the rest of the data.  Help them imagine you on their campus-- the friend who will console a buddy late into the night, the activist who will stage a (peaceful) rally on the steps of the student union, the classmate who will bring up a topic in class that gets the whole room engaged. 

 

You can write about shelling peanuts, your cousin Jethro, rap lyrics or political strife in Syria -- as long as the essay is about you (and of course, it should be well organized, concise and grammatically correct!)

 

The people who read applications have to read hundreds, if not thousands of essays.  They get tired and crabby like the rest of us.  A little appropriate humor or lively language will make your essay a pleasure, instead of a burden, to read.

 

Good luck!

 

Lisa K.

 

 

Answer 9

You certainly want to pick a topic in which you are very interested and make sure it is something you can write passionately about without sounding forced or repetitive.  You should also have a view to being original; consider writing about something unique that you have experienced.

 

Accoding to the admissions offices I have worked with, some topics are overdone, and while they aren't bad, they won't make you stand out.  Some of these are: a death in the family; a divorce; fitting in (or not) in high school. 

 

Make sure your personality shines through in the essay!

 

I hope this helps!  Good luck!