College Essay Topic Advice

College Essays
1

Hello!

I am currently starting my Common Application Essay and I am having trouble figuring out what would make a good essay about me. I have about 6 different Ideas:

  • I am the only African American Female at my school in a micro town and it has been that way since 5th grade. I want to talk about how I adjusted. (Before I moved there I went to a predominately African American School in a larger city)
  • I wanted to talk about why I was born in the wrong decade. I am obsessed with the 1990s ( Like anything from Music, to technology, fashion)and according to my mom. I have been ever since I was little. and I thought it was a little I ironic because I was born in the 2000s.
  • My experience as an only child ( This one is pretty generic)
  • My love for creating Art and my experience when I attended the Missouri Fine Arts Academy ( It is an academy that is hard to get into
  • All about my name and how I have dealt with it for the past 17 years

    -and last but not least-

  • I am planning on majoring in Biology so I can go to graduate school for Genetics and Genomics, and I wanted to talk about finding out my DNA and ancestry made me interested in that major.

I am a very indecisive person, so all feedback is greatly appreciated. Sorry if these descriptions are vague. There is just so many of them I didn’t want to make it to long. Thank you all so much!

2

The point behind this essay is to separate you from your statistics, from every other kid who has the exact same scores and ECs and statistics. They want to have some idea of WHO you are, as opposed to WHAT you’ve done. They want to see an essay that your best friend could choose from a pile and just know that it belonged to you.

I’ll repeat what worked for my son, who also hates writing.

Today: set a timer for 4 minutes. Copy the first prompt onto the top of a document, and brainstorm any event in your life, large or small that could possibly apply.

After 4 minutes, do the same with the second prompt, and then each remaining prompt. No idea is off limits; the more off the wall, the better.

Tomorrow: Go through your list, and eliminate any that seem like a bad idea. For those that remain, write a sentence or two about what you would write.

Thursday: For each topic that remains, come up with bullets that generally outline what you would say. Eliminate any topic that doesn’t flesh out.

Friday: Take what you have, and write a draft of the body of the essay. Don’t worry about an opening or closing, just get the guts of the draft written.

Saturday: Take what you have, and choose the one(s) that seem to have the most promise, and write an essay or two.

********* Then, if you want readers, PLEASE send your essay only to adults here with a proven posting history. Check on the person’s name and check to make sure they are who they say they are. Look at the threads they’ve started over the years. Do NOT send your essay to anyone whose threads don’t seem to prove that they’re an adult.

3

I agree with the poster who said that the essay is your chance to make yourself stand out. It’s also an opportunity, of course, to display your writing skills.

I think that you could combine elements of your several proposed topics. For instance, your initial idea sounds the most interesting, and it also says the most about you (the only female African-American students in a small town high school), but there could be opportunities to fold in elements about you being raised by a single parent, as well as your interest in art.

In other words, see if there’s a way to incorporate these different ideas. You’ll need an overall controlling idea, however. For instance, your interest in art might be off topic unless you can somehow connect it to your interest in biology. I don’t know you, and I don’t want to read too much into a single post, but perhaps your identity is the controlling idea (you mentioned how a curiosity about ancestry is what led you to an interest in biology and genetics), and from there you can include lots of details (standing out in your small-town HS, being raised by a single parent, your broad intellectual interests (science and art)) that work to support the overall controlling idea. You just need to find what that controlling idea–or theme, or thesis, or focus–is.

But I’d lose the idea about being obsessed with the 1990s. Unless there is some meaningful idea behind this quirkiness (not that quirky, though, as lots of people feel attracted to particular time period (for me, it’s the 1970s)), I’d leave that writing topic on the cutting room floor.