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.
BRAINSTORMING
If you’re a longtime ~friend of the blog~ you know that we recommend you tackle prompt #7:
“Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”
You can brainstorm however you want, but we have our clients start brainstorming by asking their friends/loved ones to send them a couple of adjectives that they associate with them. You should try to get a feel for what personality traits they see in you because oftentimes it can be challenging to turn inwards and answer the question, “who am I, really?” Talk to a couple of friends or family members and see which adjective and traits they commonly mention—if everyone mentions your curiosity, that could be a good theme to frame your story around.
Once you have a list of adjectives and or traits, go back to your friends and ask them why they mentioned those words. Ask them to mention specific times that you showed your listed traits. You can use these as a basis for your story—create a list of ‘moments’ from what your friends tell you.
Now think of some stories yourself, times that you demonstrated one or more of the traits you identified. Remember, these stories can and should be small. Everyday, relatable moments are best.
We’ve had successful students tell stories about cooking, scooping ice cream, and getting a pet. What do these have in common? All of these small moments are framed to showcase their authors’ personalities. The student getting a pet framed her essay as a business proposal, illustrating her attention to detail and determination. The student scooping ice cream showed her ability to learn and her drive to achieve ice cream perfection.
Remember, we have a library of sample essays. Read through them. See what other (successful) students wrote about. Also, see what they didn’t write about—no generic adversity stories and certainly nothing unbelievable.
Let’s take a sec and dive into the ‘Hedgehog' essay to get a feel for the brainstorming process. This student had excelled at her school, and when we asked her to think of an essay topic, she began by mentioning her academic and extracurricular achievements. While many of these were impressive, they didn’t paint a deeper picture of her, and, more importantly, they were already listed in her activities section of the common app. Also, most of the students applying to these selective schools have a full laundry list of achievements.
So we dove deeper. We asked about her routines, her family, and then finally asked her to describe how she decorated her room. When she was talking about her bedroom, she mentioned her hedgehog cage. We asked more. She told us about how she had convinced her parents to let her buy a hedgehog with a detailed business proposal that outlined the variable and fixed costs of purchasing the pet. We immediately knew this was our story. This small little moment—something she hadn’t even thought to mention when first asked to brainstorm—offered a great illustration of her personality.
When you have a couple of stories, begin thinking about them from an outside perspective. Can your first story be used to frame yourself as sympathetic, interesting, and worthy of admission? If not the first, what about the second? Sometimes it’s the 10th story that works best.
WRITING
Begin by writing your story as if you are telling it to a close friend who wasn’t there. Write it so that they would fully understand what happened. Then step away, let it rest, and come back to it in a few days with fresh eyes. Each essay should be edited and reworked a minimum of 3-5 times.
We’ll look at the Hedgehog essay again to see how the author used details and phrasing to give a sense of personality.
We had her get granular about the hedgehog’s food. She details the current rate of food consumption and her projected new rate of food consumption to illustrate her attention to detail and analytical way of thinking: “we currently purchase 16 lb./256 oz. bags at $11.88… making for a 32-day bag-consumption cycle at 1 cup/8oz.”
The author mentions her friend’s pet bearded dragon, using it to frame her request of the hedgehog as reasonable. She uses casual speech such as “Moving on. You might be experiencing sticker shock..” to establish a rapport. This is a reminder that the person reading your essay is a human person and you can and should speak directly to them.
You want your writing style to be personal—don’t go through it with a thesaurus and ‘upgrade’ your words to try and sound smarter. Colleges will be able to tell and also it’s annoying. Why say superfluous when you can say unnecessary?
REVIEWING
The Hedgehog essay mentioned above was drafted and re-drafted multiple times, as we reviewed it with the author to establish the correct tone and focus. Her original essay focused on the difficulty of convincing her parents. We found that this was too emotional and didn’t center herself enough. We asked her to re-write it while taking a step back.
The second draft was depersonalized. It was an analytical business plan that didn’t demonstrate her personality. She went back to re-write and crafted a third response that dealt with the emotional appeal of the hedgehog. We liked this draft better, but upon review she decided to edit again. The essay you read is a version of her fourth draft.
So this is your reminder that this takes time. We are professionals and it took us a while to find the correct voice for the piece. This is normal. You should draft and re-draft based on feedback multiple times: your first (or even third) draft is never the best.
CONCLUSION
Remember that every school will be reading this essay: you want it to be your absolute best work. Work on it until you are sure that’s the case.
Then take a deep breath and put the essay away for a bit. You’ll want to come back and read it again a couple of days later—taking some time can help you read it from a different perspective. If you feel good about it, great. Be proud of your work and get ready to move onto the supplemental questions.
If you don’t feel great about it, or you want clarification on a specific question, reach out to us. We’re happy to help in whatever way we can.