Essay, avoiding no-no's

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>"Make Yourself Look Bad: If your topic could reflect poorly on you in any way, don’t write about it! Avoid any past mental unbalances or hugely detrimental mistakes you’ve made."</p>

<p>I saw this on a site outlining how to write a good college essay.</p>

<p>One of my college essays has to do with me overcoming my depression junior year and how I've changed in the span of 1 year.</p>

<p>I pretty much changed from being on route to getting my GED and going to a community college (stopped attending school, almost had 2.00 GPA junior year) to being a serious candidate for top 20 colleges.</p>

<p>However, no matter how I look at it I am writing about past mental unbalances and detrimental mistakes I've made. </p>

<p>Is this a bad essay idea? It is no doubt the biggest event/change in my life and I want to write about it.
Around half of the essay was focused on my hardship and the rest focused on my progression and me overcoming my hardship.</p>

<p>Also, there is some aspect of God in my essay. It's not focused on religion at all but will it hurt me? I've heard various responses from people but I feel like people on CC would know better.</p>

<p>Here is the last few sentences of my conclusion where there is God mentioned:</p>

<p>"I discovered God and a belief in the personal talents given to me. I found my dream: I want to help the people in oppressed countries and become a world changer. I found a plethora of things at MYSCHOOLHERE and I want to find more in college. Just like how PERSONHERE and God found a way into my heart, I want to find a way into other people’s hearts."</p>

2

<p>IMHO, mentioned God should be fine, but I’m not sure about the depression part since you already mentioned your hardships throughout your essays.</p>

3

<p>I think it would be okay if make it clear that you overcame your hardship and are looking towards a brighter future. Just make sure you really emphasize how your outlook on life changed due to the influence of that person and your faith, etc. Also, since you consider your upward trend into senior year as the biggest change/event in your life, it will probably be a very passionate topic to write about.</p>

<p>Just to be safe though, I would suggest asking your teacher or guidance counselor to look over it before you send it off to colleges to make sure it doesn’t give off a negative impression. Good luck!</p>