Question: I can’t think of a topic for my college essay.
Answer: I think you articulate what most students think. The hardest part of the college essay is coming up with a topic. I ask students to describe themselves and tell me how friends and families would speak about them. I also have students brainstorm with me about how they spend their time during school and in the summer. I also like to learn about their family and the dynamics within their home, as so much of our “story” comes from our interactions within our family. If dinner conversations in your home are lively, write about them with actual anecdotes that would allow me, the reader, to feel as if I were sitting at your table and learning about you through these conversations. If you and your family take a trip every summer to a family cabin, describe what that trip has meant to you over the years and why that trip was a formative experience. My own daughter wrote an essay about sipping a cup of tea with her sister and how that very experience symbolized how they each approached life based on whether they gulped the tea or took slow tentative sips. I mention this only as a way to say that you can pick one defining moment in time to examine and write about.
My students often lament that they come from loving, privileged homes that do not seem to lend themselves to writing about adversity. No one expects you to have had a life-altering experience or even to have experienced genuine hardship. If you have experienced adversity, such as having a learning disability, you can choose to write about it if you address how you overcame that adversity and what you learned about yourself as a student that will help you in a college setting. One topic that frequently comes to mind for students is writing about a sick grandparent, but I caution you to make sure that the essay is about you, as it is all too easy for a sick grandparent to become the focus of an essay. It is your one chance to tell admission officers about yourself, as you will have few other opportunities to show yourself beyond your grades and scores.
One of my favorite student essays depicted what a student learned about himself through playing Scrabble with his family. Another student wrote a brilliant essay about how he enjoys playing word games on his cell phone and his love of words in general. Some students describe a volunteer experience that changed them. I do caution you not to fall into the trap of writing about how seeing poverty makes you realize how privileged you are. I think that is true and can be stated, but you need to take it to the next level and discuss how you reframed your thinking, your goals and beliefs based on this experience. Other students focus on a novel that they read either for school or for pleasure and discuss the parallels between the characters and themselves. One student who had just finished reading “Angela’s Ashes” wrote an entertaining essay comparing himself and his trials of being a camp counselor to Frank McCourt’s need to earn a living.
I recommend an essay that speaks to the person who you are and how others see you, as it can be validating when your recommenders speak to some of these same traits. It is important that you do not see the common application essay as a chance to elaborate on your resume. Do not fall into the trap of listing your myriad of activities in the hopes of impressing the admission officers. In fact, some humility and self-effacement might be more endearing than the list of the accolades that you accrued over high school. If you did something that was meaningful to you, and you are proud of it — by all means, share this in your story. Just remember that the point is to let them know that you have some new insight into how this experience has changed you or colored your opinion of something.
When you finish your first draft, show it to those very people who you asked to describe you and see if they could tell if this essay could only have been written by you. It is your voice and story that will separate you from the multitude of applications at the end of the day. Just make it yours, and make it real.
Joan Franklin is the owner of The College Source, an independent college consulting practice: www.thecollegesource.org. She is also a certified school counselor in the Issaquah School District. She can be reached at (206) 232-5626 or joanfranklin@thecollegesource.org.
