Essay too cliché

College Essays
1

How do I know if an essay is too cliché? I will be applying to colleges this fall, and I have written an essay to the following common app prompt: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

I am pretty sure my essay is cliché, but I feel ok about it. Is being cliché a super bad thing? Any tips for how to make it less cliché? Mine is about a time when I was a counselor at a camp for kids with muscular dystrophy and how eye opening it was for me. I go into a more specific story from the camp, but that is a general idea.

2

Don’t sweat the whole “cliché” thing.

The odds are pretty good that your life experience at age 17 pretty much mirrors the life experiences of most other 17 year olds.

The details, though, are what makes your story uniquely yours, and it sounds as though you’ve chosen a good one.

3

Your experience or lesson could be cliché, but that doesn’t mean that your writing style is

4

Just remember “show, not just tell.”