Would a cliche essay topic be to talk about initial issues surrounding a business I made that ultimately gave way to better results? The central idea would be an ability to maintain confidence in the face of failure. I could also conclude by rejecting this cliche by saying that the success wasn’t to the degree I’d expect. I’d love to hear some people’s input.
Note that this would be for top 20 schools, so I need a strong essay.
Google “Hacking the College Essay 2017” and read it.
Write the Essay No One Else Could Write
“It boils down to this: the essay that gets you in is the essay that no other applicant could write.
Is this a trick? The rest of this guide gives you the best strategies to accomplish this single
most important thing: write the essay no one else could write.
If someone reading your essay gets the feeling some other applicant could have written it,
then you’re in trouble.
Why is this so important? Because most essays sound like they could have been written by
anyone. Remember that most essays fail to do what they should: replace numbers (SAT/GPA) with the real you.
Put yourself in the shoes of an admissions officer. She’s got limited time and a stack of
applications. Each application is mostly numbers and other stuff that looks the same. Then she picks
up your essay. Sixty seconds later, what is her impression of you? Will she know something specifically
about you? Or will you still be indistinguishable from the hundreds of other applicants she has been
reading about?”
Sounds boring, to be honest. There are best sellers in bookstores that have covered this topic.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the honesty.
It doesn’t need to be unique. For top tier, it needs to be relevant, show the qualities they look for. You know what those are?
Your idea is fine, but you don’t want a laundry list of what you faced, what you tried. You’d need to have some fun with it, to show yourself well. And it’s good not to paint yourself as the lone player. This isn’t like a hs paper.
Yeah, a common issue that I’ve been revising in my common app is a lack of emotion. I’ve thought up a couple other topics so I’ll write them all up and see which I like best.
That being said, if I wanted to describe a specific moment in an extracurricular, does it need to be in one of the ones I ranked highly in the order of common app activities? I was going to write about a specific challenge from robotics, but I listed that about 6 down in my activities for order of importance.