First things first … congratulations! If you’re asking the question “what should I write my college essay about?” this likely means you’ve weathered months and months (and months and months) of researching schools, asking your teachers and counselors for advice, and politely smiling when your well-meaning relatives/dentist/mail carrier tell you why you absolutely must go to the University of Wherever-They-Went for the best college experience.
And while you may have whittled your list of potential schools down to just a few or are still deciding which of your top 50 schools (but hopefully not nearly that many) deserve to learn more about you, the fact that you are looking for help with college essay ideas means you’ve started to take some concrete steps forward in the application process.
This is a big deal!
Let’s be honest … the written part of the application process can be daunting. How do you possibly share everything that is awesome about you while also figuring out effective college essay topics and remembering what not to write about in a college essay?
It’s a lot, but we are here to help. You’ve got this!
What should I write my college essay about?
In a word, you! Your college essay is your chance to show the admission officers the things they only get a glimpse of, or can’t see at all, in the rest of your application. Here’s a useful way to understand and reframe college essay topics: Essentially, your “topic” (e.g. Home or Light) is just an excuse—your topic is always you. Who you are, what you value, what you bring to a campus and community. So this is the place to fill in the gaps by being personal and specific. Because it’s so important, we’ll emphasize those again. Personal. Specific.
It can be hard to get into the mindset of writing about yourself. This probably feels vulnerable and maybe a little scary. Just remember that you have control of your own story. You only have to share what you want to share, and the flip side is that you GET to share what you want to share! You might be thinking, “no kidding, but how do I do this?” Never fear! We have some tips:
What “topic” allows you to show your values, insights, skills, qualities, and/or interests?
Sharing these qualities with the people reading your essay will help them learn all they need to know about how you will contribute to their school and why they want you to be part of their community. Think about these characteristics this way:
What makes you tick?
What makes you get out of bed each morning?
What are the things you absolutely need someone to believe in if they’re going to be your friend?
What tells your story?
Often, students (mistakenly) think this means, “what has been your greatest challenge?” While this can be a way to focus your essay, there are a lot of other (potentially more interesting) college essay ideas that still let you tell your story.
Remember there is beauty and value in your everyday experiences, so consider a personal statement topic that lets you share the parts of you that extend beyond your most significant challenge.
Maybe learning to ride your bike is something that’s stuck with you since you were a kid, or maybe there’s a book you read over and over again because it reminds you of a particular moment in your life. Do you eat the same meal every Wednesday? There’s a story in there somewhere. It could be that your greatest challenge IS your story, but it definitely doesn’t have to be the story you tell in your application if you don’t want it to be.
How to brainstorm topics for a college essay
There are many ways to find your college essay topic, and that makes this part maybe the toughest, but also incredibly useful, because this is the first step in gathering your personal statement ideas. And let’s face it, getting started isn’t easy. But here are some brainstorming activities we love and that we know will help you identify what you value most about yourself and about the world around you. Let’s dive in!
As you look at these brainstorming exercises, we suggest you do this without worrying about any specific prompt yet, since that can actually hold you back. This phase of the writing process is meant to get your thoughts flowing, so let’s put aside any constraints that might prevent that.
The Values Exercise: Take a few minutes to work through this one first—again, one great way to think about the purpose of a college essay is that it helps a reader to understand who you are, and one of the easiest ways to help someone get a sense of who you are is through sharing what you value.
The Essence Object Exercise is an awesome way for you to think about the physical objects that have meaning for you and that reflect your values. Maybe you have a pair of socks you wear anytime you give a class presentation. Maybe it’s a stuffed animal you’ve had since you were a kid. Many of us have things that bring us comfort, remind us of important memories, or make us think of important people, and this exercise helps you get those objects down on paper (or on your screen). Click here for more about how to complete this exercise.
The Forked Path Exercise: Thinking about important transitional moments is a great way to generate personal statement topics since it can start you on a path of reflection about things you’ve learned, and all this exercise really asks of you is to create a list (we’re big on lists here) of times in your life when you were one way before something happened and somehow different after the thing happened. Again, this doesn’t have to be a moment in which your entire life changed … moments of growth happen in big AND little ways. Spend 10 minutes listing as many of these moments as you can think of and then another 10 minutes writing a single word next to each item about HOW you changed.
The 21 Details Exercise is a straightforward and effective activity that allows you to just list random facts about yourself without having to worry about organization. Don’t overthink this one! Just list the first 21 things that come to mind. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll reveal about yourself with this list. Click here for more about this brainstorming activity.
The “Non-negotiables” Exercise is another one that lets you just get something down on paper without worrying about structure, grammar, or even writing in complete sentences (which are things you shouldn’t worry about until much later in the writing process). This one is also pretty short (just 5 minutes). At the top of your screen, type the question, “what could I not live without?” Then spend the next five minutes listing these non-negotiables, and reflecting a bit on why (hint: How do they connect to your core values?). Remember that this is different from the Essence Object Exercise as this one asks you to focus on intangible things like comfort, adventure, security.
How to draft a college essay aka personal statement
Now that you’ve done some brainstorming, look back through those lists you created and circle/underline/highlight 3 bullet points from each list that strike you as the most elastic—as in, things that can stretch to connect to a bunch of sides of who you are. And by “sides of who you are” think in terms of core values. For example, maybe “auto repair” connects to family, culture, curiosity, and personal growth.
Once you’ve done that we’d highly recommend outlining before you start drafting. At this stage, your focus should be on overall content and structure. Don’t get bogged down in sticking to the word count or making sure each semicolon is properly placed. That time will come later!
So how do you outline? When it comes to structure, there are a few ways you can organize your essay. The essay prompt might help determine this, but it also comes down to personal preference about how you want your story to unfold (for the Common App personal statement, you’re always fine writing about anything—they have a few prompts that are wide open).
We’ll explain two basic structures for you here and then give you some examples below:
Montage structure is arranged thematically, so each paragraph might focus on a new idea, feeling, or thought as opposed to the next step in a story. The paragraphs are connected by a theme/thread (like “auto repair” or “translating”).
Narrative structure follows a clear chronology with a beginning, middle, and end. This type of structure is probably best if you are describing a challenge (the first third of the essay) and what you did about the challenge and what you learned from your actions and experiences (the other two thirds of your word count).
Creating an outline is a good idea before you start drafting since it can give you a plan for your essay. You can explore some example outlines here, but here are the basics:
For a montage, bullet point 4-7 ways your thread connects to different values, illustrated by different experiences.
For a narrative, use the Feelings and Needs Exercise to bullet point your challenge, what you did about it, and what you learned.
Once you’ve crafted your outline, it’s time to start writing! When creating a draft, remember that no matter what the essay prompt asks, every personal statement topic is about you. Your readers want to learn what your transcripts and resumes don’t tell them, so make sure you are always at the center of your essay.
You’ve probably heard “show, don’t tell” from an English teacher at some point in your many years of English classes (check this out for more about this sometimes frustrating comment), but for your college essays, you want to show AND tell. You have limited space in which to tell your story, and your reader may be reading quickly, so it is important to make use of that space by using great showing detail and then also telling your reader what it is you showed them.
Don’t worry about word count yet! Just write your draft first and then do the editing later.
Once you’ve written a draft, we suggest you put it aside for at least a day so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. You will most definitely need to revise (this is an important part of the process), so when you look at your essay a second or third time, do so with the idea of refining, clarifying, and specifying.
What not to write about in a college essay
Don’t be shocking just for the sake of being shocking. Admission officers have read thousands of essays and they can see right through that ploy to grab their attention.
Humor can be great, but if you aren’t used to injecting humor in your writing, this is not the place to try for the first time. Using humor effectively can be hard, and if this isn’t something you’ve had some practice with it can easily detract from the message you’re trying to convey.
Avoid writing essays in which you spend the entire time complaining. It is surprisingly easy to lapse into this if you’re discussing an obstacle or challenge, but what these essay topics are really trying to get at is what you’ve learned from these obstacles or challenges.
It should probably go without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway because we’ve actually read a number of these essays from students: Don’t write essays about crimes you’ve committed! If you shoplifted a pen when you were in 7th grade or scraped a car in a parking lot and didn’t leave a note, this is not the place to work through your guilt about that!
Remember your college essay is all about you, so avoid writing about “society” or “humankind.” As we said above (and we’ll say again because it’s so important), be personal and specific!
How do I know if my college essay is good?
Does it contain at least 4-5 core values, include a moment (or several) of vulnerability, illustrate insight through a few “so what” moments of reflection, and demonstrate writing craft? If so, yes, it’s probably good. For more detail, click here for our Great College Essay Test!
Sample college essays + Analysis
Here are a few sample personal statements, along with our feedback, but remember that these are just some ways to approach your personal statement, not the only ways. Instead of thinking of these essays as formulas for you to copy (how hard would that be to fit your own experience into someone else’s college essay?), think of them as inspiration and as examples of effective writing. Look at the voice and structure and think about how you might draw some ideas from them.
“Essence Jar” (essence objects montage)
Ribbons, glitter, and some popsicle sticks in a mason jar, that’s all it took to create the best gift I've ever given. A combination of all of the small snippets of my life from memories, to jokes, and limericks. As I travel towards new adventures and go off to college, I reflect on what I would have in my own jar. It would most likely include these:
I pull out the first stick, written on it is, “Not a Masshole”: Massachusetts is often characterized by its arrogance and terrible driving skills. But I love where I’m from and it’s played a huge role in who I am today, from being an avid fan with the utmost pride for my sports teams: the Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots, to Dunkin Donuts iced coffee running through my veins, and being “Wicked Smaht”. I was raised on frequent weekend trips into Boston to walk through Boston Common and make way for ducklings or rides on the duck boats. It’s also given me a sense of community: from the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk and Making Strides walk to other large-scale community service activities, we stand together in times of need to support one another.
“Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies”: The day after Thanksgiving, after an excessive amount of family time with cousins and relatives, my family dedicates a night to decorating our Christmas tree. Holidays marked by competitive game nights that include lots of trash talking and my sweet, sweet victories. Inevitably, someone yells, “one more round!” after a painful loss. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies wafting through the air and the annual watching Jimmy Stewart help Clarence get his wings.
“Bulls and Bullet Holes”: Roman columns, volcanic ruins, bulls running through the streets, and amazing international cuisine. Traveling to Rome and seeing where Caesar was killed in the Roman forum, or where people were burned by flowing lava in Pompeii, I experienced history firsthand. Traveling to Germany and seeing bullet holes in buildings and half blown up cathedrals still standing as a reminder to its citizens showed me how important it is to embrace our history and not run from it.
“Dirty Knee Pads”: A persistent championship mindset. Countless hours of practice every week, loving every second of it. But what we learned from Coach Cawley during our season was far more than dive, dig, sprawl. Coach taught us the importance of social justice, the magnificence of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and how girls can do anything boys can do.
“Enzymes and Eloquence”: This represents my scientific proposal and in-progress research, an alternative treatment for patients with Type 1 diabetes. From cream alternatives with buffer-like qualities, to insulin pills that could evade decomposition by stomach acid during digestion, in the future I plan to aid those with Type 1 Diabetes by creating a solution to end finger pricks and insulin pumps.
“Butterfly Wings”: Fifteen years of dance has given me a place to be vulnerable and develop new skills. Through improvisation I’ve learned to let loose and be spontaneous following the musical cues. No preconceived ideas, just feeling the music. Tap has taught me diligence and technique, while ballet has taught me how grace and strength compliment each other. The work ethic and focus I have learned at the studio has guided me to new heights in my everyday life, from schoolwork, to the volleyball court.
In the future I am eager to add to my own “jar”, creating new memories and personality traits. From new friends, new organizations I partake in, and my future career in the medical field, going to college will be the basis for my growth as a student, as a friend, and as a member of a greater community.
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Tips + Analysis
This essay is awesome for so many reasons. From a structure perspective, the writer breaks the essay up into small, easily read chunks of text, which is a great way to keep your reader’s interest. The essay is also so good at showing AND telling (here are my objects + strong, clear, interesting images about them AND this is why they are important to me). The written voice is personal and conversational, and the writer manages to share some of their accomplishments without this reading like a resume. Do you feel like you know this person better after reading the essay? We do, and that’s the whole point.
I Swear I’m Hispanic (Identities montage)
I swear I’m Hispanic.
I made a playlist with this title featuring reggaeton artists like Bad Bunny, Ozuna, and Daddy Yankee after years of seeing people’s shock when they heard me speak fluent Spanish. For some reason, most people associate “Hispanic” or “Latina” with thick-accent-bearing, huge-family-having, fiery bombshells. With English that easily passes as American and an aversion to anything Spandex, I am the opposite. I am an introvert in a family of three who was born and raised in Argentina. The pressure of the expectations for how I should behave, think, and look used to make me feel like I had to prove myself and my identity. While I cherish opening gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day and look forward to the World Cup more than Thanksgiving, I’ll only ever dance while alone in my room—and to anything except tango.
I swear I’ll eat anything.
Born into a diverse family of self-proclaimed chefs without any accolades, I’m a sucker for all kinds of homestyle cooking and long meals. To sample as many dishes as I possibly can, I annoy my friends with a constant “Can I try what you got?” My Lebanese great-grandmother cursed me with my inability to tan, but she fueled my quest to create my own twist on her famous hummus recipe. My Italian grandma created my love for pasta and formaggio and gifted me my Italian citizenship. My Spanish grandparents taught me to appreciate a classic tortilla de papa and condemned me with a last name that gets misspelled everywhere I go. And my 10 years in Buenos Aires made me realize that there’s never enough asado on a Sunday afternoon. I believe the kitchen is a place where home cooks across the globe use their superpowers to slow down time, helping friends and family craft lasting memories.
I swear I have a superpower.
I don’t know if it’s innate or if I acquired it from watching hours of behavioral analysis and true crime shows, but I am a mini psychological profiler. As a gelato shop cashier, I can predict with near flawless accuracy what flavors customers will order, what type of milk they’ll want in their coffee, or whether they’ll use blue or black pens to sign their receipts. I associate myself with mostly blue pen users, who I’ve noticed tend to be creative, intuitive, and perceptive. However, I deeply respect black pen users, who seem to be structured, methodical, goal-oriented, and objective. I annotate the margins of novels, write essays, and take history notes in blue, but take math notes, schedule planner appointments, and complete lab reports in black. The balance I find in my pen ink personalities is what attracts me to behavioral psychology’s blend of the social and natural sciences.
I swear I’m 18, but I can’t vote (yet).
As a Latina immigrant who’s watched her 12-year-old sister deal with the repercussions of her open bisexuality and witnessed her cousin’s challenges with Asperger Syndrome, I’ve realized that the fight for equality is far from over. Although I’m still on my path to acquiring a US citizenship, I think it’s time to take the historical deconstruction that is currently occurring a step further, and I wish I could include myself in this narrative. I’ve become more aware of my own role in systemic homophobia and racism, and even though I can’t vote in 2020, I actively look for ways to be an ally in the fight for Black liberation and LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent rights.
I don’t need to swear anymore.
Although I don’t fit the stereotypes of what most people think Latinas should do, eat, love, or believe in, I know and embrace that I'm Hispanic. You can find me in the kitchen making my signature “no-tahini” hummus, buried in an FBI profiling book, or at a protest. My name is Lara Abril Afonso Martinez: an Argentinian, food-loving, equality-seeking profiler.
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Tips + Analysis
Oh, how we love this essay. What this writer does so well is to discuss the influence of the people in their life while still staying focused on themselves (Heads up: It’s really easy for students to end up focusing too much on other people. Those people sound great, but they aren’t the ones applying to college). We hear about great-grandparents, grandparents, and sisters, but this essay is still entirely about the writer. The essay structure is also effective in that those short, concise sentences peppered throughout give the reader clues about what’s coming next. While your college application essays are ABOUT you, they are FOR your reader, and giving them a head’s up about the essay’s progression is a good way to keep their focus.
Witness protection in Egypt (Narrative)
How does a person change the witness protection program in Egypt? Let me tell you.
I recently discovered that in Egypt girls who had faced any sexual violence and wanted to file a legal complaint did not have the right to witness protection. Their names had to be made public, ruining any future prospects of marriage, education, or a professional life. This deeply upset me, for how could the legal system put this type of pressure on a victim of sexual assault? Recognizing this oppressive structure, I started using my voice on social media to raise awareness about the failure of witness protection in cases of sexual violence. I wanted to make people aware of the irony of the injustices that the legal system was placing on women. Raising awareness was my aim, but I never imagined that I could use social media to make quantifiable change.
My journey towards advocating for a just legal system started with the struggle over my own body. My relationship with my body has always been complex, and my attachment to food has been a long struggle. My journey with the scale began at the age of twelve. If the number on the scale was more than what society told me it should be, I would spiral into a cycle of self-loathing. I had let the scale become my entire being. Looking in the mirror, I saw someone unhappy and lonely, but not me.
I realised I needed to make a change. What started as a weight loss journey soon became a process of discovering self-worth. Through this growth and my journey to self acceptance, I learned that society should not be able to dictate who I am and what I’m worth. Only I can set the standards for my body, and that’s a responsibility that I now take charge of, and share with other young girls struggling with their body image and self-confidence.
My excitement about my new mindset wore off quickly as I noticed a different norm that I, and other women, were subjected to. Sexualised and objectified by men of all ages, I knew that my body and the bodies of other women were intimately connected in our experience of gender mistreatment. I knew we didn’t deserve to live like this. We deserved to feel safe and free in our existence. I began shifting the scales in the fight for gender equality, especially for the cause of sexual violence.
And here we return to the problem of witness protection and the case that rocked my country. In a case that captured the attention of the media, involving the serial rape of over 150 girls and women, I knew I had to fight for their safety. This case was not only structural but personal, as I had been one of this man’s prospective targets. Addressing this case head-on, I took action and contacted a lawyer, volunteering to reach out to victims and offer my help to the girls in any way possible. They started reaching out to me anonymously, but still didn’t feel safe making their case public. This is where my social media campaign came in. Highlighting the failure of witness protection, my campaign went viral. Multiple other campaigns followed suit, attacking the government for their stance against these girls. We all agreed on one thing: women should not have to bear the weight of these violations.
We made our opinions clear and the government finally listened. They implemented a witness protection program for Egyptian women! The victims I fought alongside were able to come forward safely and anonymously, finding comfort in the fact that as a society we came together, making a commitment to ourselves and to them.
At first, the scale was my biggest fear. Now it is my biggest motivator. I am motivated to continue advocating for gender justice, and I’m willing to put up a fight.
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Tips + Analysis
This narrative essay is a strong example of how a writer can share the challenges they’ve faced without getting stuck just talking about the challenges. While this writer does tell us about their hardships, the essay quickly shifts to what they learned from these hardships and how they used them to gain self-understanding. Even better, this writer tells us how they turned outward to help those around them, and in the process they clearly share their values with the reader. An admission officer could read this essay and get a clear sense of what this student could bring to their new school.
Special thanks to Jessica for writing this blog post
Jessica has a Ph.D in English from the University of Southern California and teaches English at a Los Angeles-area independent school, where she has also been English department chair and a class dean. Sandra Cisneros is her hero, and she loves books, her awesomely-sarcastic family, the beach, cozy sweaters, and more books. Oh, and her sweet pitbull/lab mix named Ruby.
Top values: Curiosity, equity, wonder
