<p>I know that they make you seem like some privileged white kid who went to another country to help out. But I am a lower middle class black student who got to go on an amazing trip. </p>
<p>I was not going to write it as the typical "this trip was amazing, we did X Y Z, and all in all it was life changing." Not sure if the reason why kids are told not to write about service trips is for that reason. I do not plan on doing anything like that, or even outlining what we did on the trip.</p>
<p>For example, my sister wrote her Common App essay on a river in the country she went to, and a woman who always returned to it, and it became a metaphor for her life.</p>
<p>Any thoughts? Do college admissions officers just roll their eyes at the mere mention of a service trip?</p>
<p>I don’t see how the essay about the river and the woman who returned to it tells an admissions committee much about the applicant themselves. Not sure how your sister did with that application, but isn’t a topic I would recommend. </p>
<p>I don’t think admissions officers exactly roll their eyes about service trip essays. But they are well aware that (1) it was probably a brief experience, not something that tells a long term truth about the applicant, (2) it may very well have been ‘paid for’ and isn’t the type of experience many students of lesser means would get to have, and (3) they ARE tired of the “I saw how little they had and it changed my view of the world and myself” or “I saw the illness and poverty there, and now want to devote my future efforts to humanitarian causes” story lines. In my mind a typical service trip essay on one of those themes is sort of a cop-out on more closely inspecting your day-to-day live and the inner workings of your mind for a better topic.</p>
<p>@intparent I forgot how she related it to herself, but it was personal. I remember thinking it was amazing. She got into many top schools with it.</p>
<p>I went on a service trip in Africa, although I am a first generation student with
parents born in a different African country. I was going to relate an experience on my service trip, without going in depth about the trip, to my cultural identity. </p>
<p>See, that is a good use of a service trip in an essay (your idea), IMHO. A way to tie the trip to other things in your life and reveal something interesting about yourself is good. Just be sure you reveal yourself (not just your heritage).</p>
<p>@intparent I am worried about this too. I went with a new local organization to Belize this summer to work in a primary school with children for a week. Upon returning, I began an internship with the organization and am currently planning to co-found a new club at school that would start a pen pal system and raise money for dictionaries. I wanted to write about it in one of my supplements but I don’t want to sound so cliche, even though the whole project really does mean something to me. (Btw, I didn’t go on the trip just so I could write about it for college; the thought never really crossed my mind until I began reading about how it isn’t the best idea to write about service trips). </p>
<p>@gibby thanks for the info! But is the mere mention of the service trip a problem? I don’t plan to write about the trip itself, what we did, or the trip’s impact on me. I was going to write about a somewhat racial slur/offensive remark I was called in the country, which I was also called in my home country (although in a different language). I was going to make the essay personal and mostly about my daily life, not about the trip itself. Would that still be considered “lame” and stinking of privilege? And won’t colleges see I’m a low income student anyway?</p>
<p>I don’t think the mere mention of service is cliche. There’s a Tufts admissions officer that blogs on reddit (I think his name is Dan), and he said that it’s best to avoid cliche topics like service, but it can also make an essay stand out if you can write about a cliche topic in a way that isn’t cliche, which is what it sounds like your sister did.</p>
<p>OP, I think yours will be okay. Just keep an eye on revealing and showing yourself to the admissions committee. They will see that you are low income, and you also have a cultural reason for talking about it. </p>
<p>Let me give an example of how it can work to discuss a trip to a foreign culture without sounding too privileged. One of my kids had studied the language of another culture for years. She developed a fascination with it at a young age and had an opportunity to study it in our community – this was not our family’s cultural heritage, and none of the rest of us speak it. In high school she had a chance to visit the country where that language was spoken (not a service trip) for a summer. She mentioned her summer in the country as part of her essay about the impact this early interest and learning this language had on her life. She told stories about being able to talk to her host’s grandparents in the language and command the family dog as well. She also talked about how her personality fit in while visiting the country – she is very extroverted, and they have a reputation as introverts, but how speaking the language helped her initiate conversations and meet people. She also talked about adapting to food differences, and winning her host family’s approval by eating something most foreigners won’t eat. So her trip was mentioned, but was not the focus of her essay. It was in the context of a larger topic, and mentioned to give some examples of how she reacts to different situations.</p>
<p>I found the quote from the admissions officer at Tufts, I think this is ver helpful. When asked what the most common essay topic was, his response was:
“The service essay.
But, it’s not the topic that makes the essay stand out, it’s the execution. Any topic, really, can work and work well. One of the biggest mistakes I see students making is they pick the topic for their essay first, and then try to mangle some lesson about themselves into that topic, which is I think why we get so many service essays. I think you need to pick the piece of yourself you want to convey first, and then find the topic that allows you to convey that idea or characteristic.
The problem with the service essays is that it’s really hard to write them without resorting to cliches. Cliches like “I went there to serve them, but really they were the ones serving me” or “that’s how I learned that those people weren’t so different from myself.” If you’ve got an essay that has one of those two lines in your final paragraph, you need to seriously evaluate what you’re doing. It’s not that those sentiments aren’t truly felt, or that we doubt their value, it’s that no one writes an essay that yawns the other way and both of those lessons are surface level and emotionally centered instead of intellectually grounded.
We’re a university, so we want, more than anything, insight into how you think and process problems and/or ideas. If you gained more than you gave, are you ok with that? Is that morally permissible if you pledged to serve others? If you learned that people are the same, why were you surprised? How does this new insight change your goals or perspective on other ideas or issues?
Most service essays never dig deep enough to explore in ways that truly matter beyond the limited experience of a service trip or service project.”</p>
<p>@430ktk Thank you very much! That quote really made me understand the stigma. </p>
<p>I came up with five essay topics for the common app, and I was wondering if you could tell me which are cliche? You totally don’t have to if you’re busy or uninterested. Thanks again for all the help. </p>
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