5 Topics to Avoid in Your Common Application Essay for College Sarah O'Neill Chester County Supreme Editing
Sarah O’Neill Chester County, Supreme Editing
The Common App essay is your primary writing sample within the Common Application, a college application portal accepted by more than 900 schools.
The Common Application has said: https://www.commonapp.org/blog/common-app-announces-2024-2025-common-app-essay-prompts
“Our decision to keep these prompts unchanged is supported by past research showing that overall satisfaction with the prompts exceeded 95% across our constituent groups — students, counselors, advisors, teachers, and member colleges. Moving forward, we want to learn more about who is choosing certain prompts to see if there are any noteworthy differences among student populations and incorporate feedback into future decisions.”
All prospective schools accepting the Common App will read this essay to understand your character, background, and value as a potential student. Since many colleges read the essay, avoid mentioning any college names or programs; instead, save tailored answers for the supplementary school-specific essays within the Common App. With all the potential TOPICS for Common Application Essay, this article will discuss the ones to AVOID.
#1 PERSONAL SHORTCOMINGS
Being articulate about your weaknesses, reckoning with them honestly and without self-pity, and showing transformation in your character are strengths in themselves. These are not easy to portray in an essay. To also write well in the process, and think methodically? Well, these are prized traits in college admissions essays.
Not All Failures Are Appropriate.
While the goal of the “failure story” is to humanize ourselves, some stories that require more vulnerability, however powerful, are not appropriate. Mistakes that resulted in tragedy or trauma are not really great options to choose here. That doesn’t mean they were not important life experiences. Rather, the admissions committee doesn’t know you that well. If you share with them something you would only really talk about with a close friend or family member, that’s likely all they’ll remember. Let them get to know your strengths and keep it light.
Sometimes, students are compelled to talk about a trait or circumstance that is not actually a direct result of their own decision-making.
If you were in an accident, got sick, or experienced trauma or tragedy that impacted your schoolwork, the essay portion of the Common App is not the right place for you to discuss it. There is an entire section devoted to additional information, and you should absolutely include any disruptions in your education in that section.
#2 RESUME ACHIEVEMENTS
Résumés are an effective method to demonstrate achievements, but they’re boring to read. This is why, in the professional world, résumés are often accompanied by a cover letter. A college application is essentially a student’s résumé — it contains their grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities — which makes an essay listing achievements redundant.
A better strategy is to pick one experience that stands above the rest and write about how it shaped the person they are today. This is especially effective for any experiences that would benefit from further explanation or those that have an interesting backstory. For example, maybe you participate in a unique extracurricular that most people aren’t familiar with, such as being on a Chinese yoyo/diabolo team. You might choose to focus on that aspect of your identity and what it means to you.
Don’t repeat information that is found elsewhere in the application. Your essay will end up sounding like an autobiography, resume, travelogue, or laundry list. Yawn.
Don’t mention your GPA or SAT / ACT scores in your essay.
For example, DON’T say this: “During my junior year, I played first singles on the tennis team, served on the student council, maintained a B+ average, traveled to France, and worked at a cheese factory.”
Many students ask, “What do colleges look for in essays?” and decide that the best approach is to list different kinds of achievements. These may be academic achievements or achievements related to various extracurricular activities (such as sports trophies).
What’s the problem with focusing on your accomplishments like this? The biggest is that it misses the point of the essay — we don’t really get a sense of who you are through these things.
Since you have so few words to work with, a long list of accomplishments is going to feel cramped. Plus, there won’t be much room to contextualize the achievements or to humanize yourself. And you have other space for these kinds of things — use the Activities List and Additional Info sections.
#3 TRAVEL EXPERIENCE
If you’re well-traveled, you might want to write about a vacation, mission trip, or even a volunteer trip you took. However, travel-related college essays are another common type that might not give you a good chance to be noticed.
To make a travel topic stand out, you would need to focus on a particular part of that vacation or trip, such as meeting someone who affected your life in some way or an unexpected event or challenge. Avoid writing about a trip in general terms; this will not make your essay memorable.
Mission Trip Essay
On paper, this seems like a good idea: it showcases leadership, community service, and the student’s general willingness to help other people. First, this is one of the most common college essay topics that admissions committees receive. Second, there is a real danger in how you describe the communities that you helped. If you’re not careful, you may use the language of exclusion or xenophobia. Instead of making yourself look good, this could make you look judgmental or even bigoted. Third, mission trips are all about helping other people, but when you write an essay trying to make yourself look good for helping people, you may end up seeming overly self-congratulatory, which defeats the purpose of writing the essay in the first place.
Volunteer Trip
Building a winning essay about a volunteer trip is tricky. At best, these essays come off as cliché; at worst, they can make an applicant seem pretentious, condescending, and privileged. Like other topics, the key is for the writer to focus on themselves, not the group they volunteered for or the place they went.
One way to avoid the cliché volunteer essay is to write about a specific moment on your trip rather than giving a chronological account of your time. Get really specific, bring the reader into the moment, and share with them how it affected you. An attention-grabbing essay will show the reader how you changed instead of telling them.
#4 SPORTS CHALLENGE
Athletic topics, such as winning a championship game as the underdog team or training hard for a competition, shouldn’t be used as a college essay topic. Student-athletes especially might be tempted to choose sports as the topic of their essay since it’s something they know well. Sports is a common topic, though, which can make it much harder for you to stand apart from the competition. Even if this is your strongest area of interest, it’s better to choose a different topic or use a different angle/lens to write about this interest. “Sports challenges” include essays about winning the big game, losing the big game, making (or not making) the team, and even getting a nasty sports injury.
However interesting the sports challenge itself was, though, these typically make for bad college essay topics. Why is that?
Since one of the main goals of the essay is to help you stand out, it doesn’t really help to do the same thing that countless other people are doing. For example, almost everyone writing about losing the big game ends up writing the same “lessons learned” about humility, teamwork, overcoming disappointment, etc. Another big reason to avoid the sports challenge college essay is that it requires you to use so many words to explain the context of the big game, the major plays, the ultimate outcome, and so on.
This doesn’t leave much room for personal reflection or even stylistic writing, so you are left with an admission essay that mostly codes you as a “generic athlete” in the eyes of the committee. Personal reflection is a key element in making your essay unique and impactful, so it’s important to find a topic that allows for this. Coaches on every level are known for telling their athletes about how the lessons learned on the field/court/ice translate to life. Unfortunately, these lessons and stories have been told in numerous movies and books, along with countless college essays.
◦To successfully write a college essay about sports, it’s important to steer clear of the common themes.
◦Overcoming adversity
◦Trusting teammates
◦Refusing to quit
◦The thrill of victory
The agony of defeat
For example, instead of an applicant talking about how their team trained and improved to beat their rivals or win a championship, they should write about a unique way that sports shaped who they are. For example, here’s an unexpected way to write about a sports injury: maybe tearing your ACL in a soccer game actually led you to start a podcast while you were recovering, which became one of your biggest passions.
#5 A BIG PERFORMANCE
◦Your college application should have a list of your achievements and accomplishments, such as any honors or awards you’ve received. There’s no need to make these the focus of your college essay. Writing about what you’ve achieved might seem like a great way to impress the school you’re applying to, but it can have the opposite effect. The person who reads your essay might not find it engaging or informative enough.
You might also come across as bragging or boasting about your achievements. Your college essay gives schools a chance to assess you based on your writing. Handing in what amounts to a list of your accomplishments doesn’t allow you to let your own voice and personality shine through your writing. These are essays that focus on someone getting ready to take center stage in a play, perform a captivating musical solo, give a major speech, and so on. As with sports challenge essays, these essays are very common and tend to have very similar plot points, so it’s tough to make your own stand out.
For example, the big performance always goes well or goes poorly. Performers almost always learn either the value of preparation or the inner strength to overcome a major disappointment. With these kinds of essays, you may be unable to do what you did with an actual big performance: stand out in a big way.
Another thing these essays have in common with sports essays is that you will inevitably spend much of your essay word count describing what the performance is, how you actually performed, what made the performance great (or not so great), and so on. This gives you less room to humanize yourself and emphasize how and why the skills you used to face this challenge make you an ideal college student.
On a FINAL NOTE, there ARE exceptions to the rules, but that is something to talk over with the person who is reviewing your essays before submission! If you do not have a person to turn to, you can hire one who is experienced on these matters.
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