Yes! We’ve done it! This 🥳 is 🎉the 🚨 final 💥countdown!!! As the last installment of our “How to Write the Common App Essay” series, this post will break down the one and only Prompt #7.
We’ve spent the last 6 blogs showing you how to write the best possible personal statement in response to each Common App prompt, but we haven’t been shy about the fact that Prompt #7 is our favorite option (and it’s not close!).
Now why is that, exactly? It’s because Prompt #7 is more like an anti-prompt — it gives you complete freedom to write about any topic you choose, which means you’re much more likely to stand out. Still, while this is a fantastic opportunity to color outside the lines and show off your creativity, your personal statement still needs to function as a college application essay.
What we mean by that is that you can absolutely break the mold here, but your 650 words should tell a story, introduce information that doesn’t appear anywhere else in your Common App, and allow admissions officers to get to know you better. That’s how you leave an impression — don’t try duct-taping a banana to a wall or exhibiting a urinal (our apologies to Duchamp for the shade), otherwise you’ll be wasting the most important essay of your college application on an abstract gesture that says nothing about who you are as a person.
Let’s get into it, then: the dos and don’ts of Prompt #7!
Common App 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.
Our Assessment
We don’t just like it — we LOVE it. No matter what topic you choose, the framing and approach will be all your own, and your essay will be as different from another example of a Prompt #7 statement as it will be from a response to Prompt #3.
That being said, the advantages of this prompt mostly come down to originality. In other words, don’t take this as an excuse to recycle a paper you’ve already written. Not only is it pretty clear to admissions officers when you’ve retrofitted a pre-existing essay to check the box of your personal statement, but an academic or analytical paper doesn’t speak to your personality or unique skills.
Let’s put it this way: if you’re really proud of a past assignment you turned in for history class, your abilities and performance already show in your transcript. Beyond that, you’re not demonstrating your distinct qualities by submitting a think piece on what Napoleon did wrong at Waterloo, and it’s highly doubtful you could pare a persuasive argumentative paper down to 650 words in the first place. And, finally, using your Common App essay in this way would be a waste because individual school supplements typically ask about the origins of and examples of your academic passions. (Some schools — like Princeton and Amherst, for example — even require that you upload an expository piece of writing that’s been graded by one of your high school teachers.)
Suffice it to say that your treatise on the downfall of the First French Empire is a no go. However, you could write a really refreshing and entertaining personal statement that describes how your love of pop led you to research the way cultural responses to political movements and historical events manifest in music, from ABBA’s “Waterloo” to the Cranberries’ “Zombie.”
And that’s the reason we think this prompt high-key rocks — it allows you to write a very different, one-of-a-kind essay that tells readers a lot about who you are and how you think that probably wouldn’t fit as a response to any of the cookie cutter prompts (#1-#6).
How to Do It Right
As you’re wrapping your head around the limitless possibilities of Prompt #7, you might feel a little daunted by the prospect of coming up with a “unique” topic. Don’t worry if something akin to a throughline from French colonialism to the Troubles in Northern Ireland by way of Swedish disco and a ‘90s chart topper doesn’t immediately come to mind; there are a million ways to go about this, and we’ve found that the best essays start with ordinary moments and authentic details.
Think about it — even this example we’ve given is actually pretty “small” on a plot level. It doesn’t tell the story of free climbing Mt. Everest; it talks about an interest our imaginary student stumbled across lying on their bedroom floor listening to their favorite oldies playlist on shuffle while taking a break from their gnarly AP Chem problem set. That’s what you’re aiming for! At its heart, your personal statement is a way of introducing yourself and identifying what’s emotionally profound and distinctly “you” in the stream of daily life.
If you’re not sure how to go about identifying that thing, don’t worry — that’s what this post is for! First, keep your focus narrow and your structure simple. Your essay should tell a story. That’s the best way to pack a real punch in 650 words; you can get a message across while writing a compelling, well-paced personal statement. Second, decide what you want your personal statement to say about you. Choose the quality or combination of characteristics you want to showcase in this writing sample, and then find an anecdote or example that will allow you to illuminate that side of yourself.
When you’re working on this second point, you may immediately know what you want to get at, but if not do a little bit of brainstorming. Here are some questions to get you started:
What are the first words that come to mind for your friends and family when they describe you
What are some of your favorite memories to revisit or what fun facts or stories do you find yourself relating during icebreaker games or cocktail party chatter?
Is there something you’ve done or an interest you have that most people wouldn’t guess? Why do you think it’s surprising or might seem “off-brand,” and why is it actually in character?
Have you ever won when playing two truths and a lie? What were your three statements, and what made it hard to guess which were real and which was false?
If you could pause time and have 24 hours entirely to yourself, what would you do with it, and why?
As you freewrite or make a list of responses, pay attention to any ideas that recur, excite you, or leave you inspired to say more. Those will lead you to your topic.
Getting to Your First Draft
Here’s the good news. Yes, writing your essay and polishing it to perfection will take work, but once you’ve decided on an idea the hardest part is over. There’s so much pressure associated with the Common App essay that coming up with a topic can be paralyzing, but, as we hope this post has shown you, it doesn’t have to be. And if you’ve made it here, you’re already through the worst of it. Kudos to you!
Your next step is writing a full first draft. If you work best from an outline, then draw up a roadmap for your essay that gets you from A to B and execute it. If you tend to find your form as you go, then start writing from the “hook” — set the scene and get right into the action that made you interested in this topic yourself, and then write until you feel you’ve got the full story down.
At this stage, your essay will probably be too long, but that’s ok! It’s really important that you fully flesh out your idea without self-censoring, because you can always cut it down once you’ve got a statement to edit. What you can’t do is revise an essay within the 650 word limit to have substance and intrigue if the core material is boring or meaningless.
Once you’ve got a full draft, read it out loud to yourself and listen for any sections that are poorly phrased, rhythmically awkward, thematically confusing, irrelevant, or boring. You’ll want to make those big-picture revisions first, adding clarity where it’s needed and removing extraneous or distracting passages. After that, if you’re sure the order of information is set and the story you’re telling hits all the necessary beats, you can edit for style. That means optimizing for sentence-length variation, voice, diction, and descriptive or figurative language.
When you’ve completed several rounds of individual revisions and you feel you’ve taken your personal statement as far as you can on your own, solicit feedback for final touches from a trusted editor (or two, at most). That might be your best friend who knows your voice and has given you good notes on past assignments, a teacher, or a writing-inclined parent or older sibling. Make your last tweaks, and your Common App essay is — can you believe it?! — complete, and you’re ready to run. Three cheers for Prompt #7! Long may it reign!!!
For expert advice on writing a one-of-a-kind personal statement for your college applications, contact us today.