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.
It’s easy to have a love-hate relationship with the common app essay. On one hand, it’s a chance to turn inward and reflect on what you want to tell colleges about yourself. Fun! On the other hand, you have to turn inward and reflect on what you want to tell colleges about yourself. Daunting.
The first step is brainstorming what you want to write about, and we can help with that.
What is a good common app essay?
The best common app essays do two things: 1) they show how you think and 2) they show what characteristics make you who you are. That might sound complicated but we promise it can be easy. Before you even start writing, thinking about what characteristics you want to showcase and a story that exemplifies them will help the process of crafting your essay. We have tips and tricks for how to do that.
Find out what makes you, you
This sounds more dramatic than it is. What you need to find out is what characteristics you should write about that really scream, ‘this is me!’ A lot of students tend to start by thinking they have to list everything they have done or everything about who they are. We advise against this. Fill out the activities section of the common app (section 5) before you even start thinking about your essay. It will get the listing of accomplishments and extracurriculars out of your system. Then it’s time to text your friends.
Ask your friends for 3-5 adjectives to describe you. You don’t want answers like, “tall, brown hair, big smile.” Instead, look for groups or phrases of personality traits. We’re looking for things like, “Good listener, patient, loyal.” You will start to be able to identify words/phrases/characteristics that group well together. If multiple friends pick the same word or groups of words that should tell you something. For example, if multiple friends text you something like, “thoughtful, caring, kind, and adventurous,” you might realize that “thoughtful, caring, and kind,” work really well together. Don’t feel like you have to include every adjective that comes up--that would be incredibly chaotic and messy.
When you have an idea of what adjectives you want to use, take the next step and ask your friends why they called you those adjectives. If you ask your friend, “why did you call me thoughtful?” and they say, “Cause you are!” that isn’t very helpful to you in this process. Try to ask follow-ups like, “can you share a memory you have where I was particularly thoughtful?” If you do this enough times, you will see a clear narrative emerge. You won’t necessarily use any of these stories, but they will help you solidify what you should be writing about.
Find your story
We’re going to repeat it again for the people in the back: you need to have already filled out your activities section before you choose something to write about. We don’t want the story that you pick for your essay to overlap with information that you have already told them. If your application already has information about playing varsity basketball elsewhere, we don’t necessarily want to do it again. Introducing new information will help keep the reader interested. End of rant.
Let’s say you wanted to showcase the characteristics, “thoughtful, caring, and kind” and have a list of stories from your friends about always cooking for your weekly hang-out nights. Using a story like that is a great way to come off as caring and thoughtful and shows a talent or skill that most likely won’t come up elsewhere in your application. We had a former student talk about being driven and having a desire to learn through him cooking different types of eggs until he perfected the recipe and moving on to a new type of egg. You could talk about being “daring and adventurous” by riding your bike through busy streets. Maybe you bike every day, but you want to talk about how it feels like meditation for you on the way to work, now it’s a story about how you are “grounded and contemplative.”
These smaller stories feel more unique, more you. Choosing a small story will also make it easier to add a bit of levity or even humor and that can be a great way to make your essay stand out to someone who has already read about 400 of them that day.
Things to not write about:
You might think it’s a good idea to write about what makes you most impressive. But there can be an issue with that, you probably don’t know what’s most impressive about you to an adult and outside reader. You might think the time you volunteered at a soup kitchen on Christmas is impressive, but readers may not see it the same way you do. Showing the human side of you is much more interesting to them than writing about the volunteering you only do sometimes.
The best stories are small, humanizing stories. The story you use to show off your characteristics can be anything, but we try to avoid a couple of things. Don’t write about a trip to build a school abroad or anything else that might make you come off as overprivileged. Volunteering abroad is expensive and often is an indicator of privilege. Your heart might be in the right place, but it can come out all wrong. We also don’t advise on writing about something you did once. If you only went to a student debate conference once, it most likely isn’t the number 1 thing that describes you as a full person.
Think about the things you do every day, making a specific breakfast, riding your bike, what your friends do together, nothing is too small if you can use it to talk about your important characteristics. Small things you do often are great, but it’s all about picking the right one to talk about yourself and the characteristics you have chosen to focus on.
An important note about trauma: A lot of students think this is a good place to talk about their hardest of hardships. We try to push against that for a couple of different reasons. One of which is, you are more than your trauma. Bad things happen and you can talk about them, but essays solely about trauma don’t show the whole story of you. It might seem callous but colleges are also businesses and accepting you to their school is a business calculation. They want to know you will thrive and graduate and essays about trauma sometimes give them pause. We think adding a short essay or information about hardships especially those that made you miss school or impacted your high school experience to the additional information section is a much better use of your effort.
Putting it all together
So now you have a story and you have your characteristics, what comes next? Well next comes actually writing the thing. People can get tripped up here, mostly when it comes to form. We have a-whole-nother blog about form here where we will break down the structure of these essays and how you can use form to your advantage to stand out.
Our biggest hint for this entire process is to give yourself time. Starting early, if you can, is the gold standard. But even if you can’t start months out, don’t pressure yourself to get this done in a day. We never advise rushing any step in the application process, but especially give yourself time for the common app essay. Brainstorming is a process. Maybe after thinking of your characteristics and story, you sit with them for a couple of days and realize you have a better story that you would rather use or want to tweak one of your characteristics as you think more about the story itself. This happens to our students all the time. You can always go back to brainstorming. You can always write a second draft (for most of our students it is multiple drafts!) so be kind to yourself and recognize that this process can take some time.
Get in touch with us here if you have no idea where to start, we’d love to help.