Can anxiety be an appropriate topic for a college essay?

College Essays
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So I just began brainstorming ideas for my college essay and the first thing I came up with was my struggle with anxiety. I knew it could be a risky topic but I wanted to try it out. I figured it could work both for or against me depending on how I executed it.

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PLEASE-- right now-- ask a mod to delete this.

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If someone else likes it too much, you may find that your essay is plagiarized-- and you’ll have no way of proving that you’re the original author.

Now as to the actual essay, I’m not sure it does the best possible job of “giving them a reason to say yes.” And I think you’re trying too hard to use $12 words when a $0.50 word would do better. Aside from “prodigious” (really?) – even “grasped” and “sovereignty” seem to be pushing.

I don’t feel as though I know you at all after reading your essay. I feel as though you started with a story and then went wild with a thesaurus.

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Please, mods - delete this before the poor girl gets it stolen, or Google indexes it.

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I understand where you’d see that, but those are the words I would normally use. I don’t think it’d be appropriate to purposely lower it?

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I edited the post as to not have the essay, but is it still showing? I really didn’t think that part through!

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It’s gone.

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Thank you!

OP, feel free to edit, and then PM it back to me. You can check my posting history-- I’m the mom of 3 teenagers and a high school math teacher. (Don’t take my word for it, check!) Don’t send to anyone but an adult.

Even if those are the words you would normally use, it sounds stilted.

I think you could work with the topic, even though I think there are probably topics out there that would probably serve your purpose better. But remember the litmus test: It has to “give them a reason to say yes.”

I’m not confident that your first draft did that. I don’t feel like I know you, though I do feel as though I know a little of your struggle with anxiety. But I didn’t end that essay thinking “Now there’s someone I would love to meet, someone I hope my kids meet on campus.” Instead, my reaction was more along the lines of “That poor kid!”