For my common app essay, I was thinking about talking about my trip to China that I’ll be going on this summer (once I get my visa that is…). I realize that essays on traveling and how being in another country leads to worldly awareness is super cliche, but I don’t plan on going that route. Rather, I want to explore its personal significance to me as a Chinese person whose parents can’t return because of political reasons, and my experience being in a country that I know has done so much harm to people I care about. [I’m not going to get ultra political here, but politics is one of my interests so idk.]
It doesn’t sound cliched to me. Besides, as long as you fill your essay with details (e.g. dialogues, information about yourself, your parents’ backgrounds and personalities), you can make even the most cliched topic into a unique essay.
I would let yourself have that “personal experience” before you get too set into what you are going to write. You don’t actually have a topic yet, just some ideas you think you want to explore. The first thing about any form of exploration is that (if you are really exploring) you don’t know what you are going to find, and understanding what you do find is often harder than you expect.
fwiw I do know students who have written variants on similar topics. What sets the good ones apart is rarely the specifics (my X experience with Y situation with unique characteristics Z), but how the person processes the experience and how they experience affects how they actually move forward in life- that is not just the experience, but demonstration of change or evolution. Applicants often get caught up in the facts of the experience (completely understandable, as it is new and big in their world), but that is not what makes for a strong essay.