Common App, topic of your choice

College Essays
1

<p>Well,
I have the toughest time writing about serious issues and even more trouble writing about myself. Just the concept of seeming cliche makes me shudder.</p>

<p>Since I'm a gambling man, I've decided to go on a last ditch effort to put everything on the line and go the humorous route with my essays. It's for a reach school, so I figure, I'm probably not going to get in with a conservative essay, so I'll just write a ridiculous essay and possibly bump my priority over others with my own ridiculousness.</p>

<p>I want to write an essay about my name and how offensive my name is to my ethnicity. But, when I read the prompts on Common App, I get the idea that the essays should reveal something about you, like a hobby or some problem you had to deal with. I guess I would write about how I find it humorous that my parents named me this. I was going to write how I found the significance of my name during history class.</p>

<p>Is this too random of a story that would absolutely kill my chances, or would it bolster some laughs with the admissions process.</p>

2

<p>Your topic seems perfectly fine. The main thing you should focus on, I think, is how you approach it. There's plenty of examples of essays about simple topics. Humor is a plus if you can pull it off. The good essays, though, use the subject matter to show something insightful, regardless of the topic. You can speak intelligently about who you are, what your background is, and perhaps academic experiences you've had within an essay about your name. Just try to use your name as a unifying part of the essay, not the real substance of the essay. Good luck.</p>