<p>Hi,
I am about to start my college essay. I was wondering A. which topic would be the best to write about of the ones offered on the common app or does it not matter. Does it look better if you dont choose "topic of you choice"</p>
<p>b. What are ideas that are considered good essays?</p>
<p>Doesn't matter what you write about, as long as you write a good, memorable essay.</p>
<p>That said, admission officers will often tell you to avoid the 3 Ds: Death, drugs, divorce; because these topics are written about too often and such essays often sound trite and contrived. If you can write a great essay about one of those though, go for it.</p>
<p>some say write about stuff that are EC's that u cant emphasize on ur app others say just choose 1 and write in depth.. which 1?</p>
<p>My idea is to write about my med related activities since im applying to many 8yr programs</p>
<p>is that good?</p>
<p>Personally, b/c I'm a perfectionist of sorts, I wouldn't write about activities. I think that activities are overdone (how many people have written about their activities? Millions over 3 yrs, I bet).
When people say "write about," to me they are a bit vague. You can write "about" something without ever mentioning that in your essay.
Write about a childhood experience/single moment (could be in span of 1min, 1hr, 1day, 1wk, 1yr, etc.) that caused you to want to go into premed.
Here's an essay that might help: </p>
<p>Click on the first, "A Dissection." See, here the author "mentions" premed stuff but goes into a lot of detail about WHY. So he doesn't just talk about it, he looks at his premed experiences through a lens: his curiosity about patterns. </p>
<p>Whatever you do, DON'T LIST OR HINT AT LOTS OF EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES. Some people who apply at Harvard even try this; they do it by paragraphs (LISTS), or tacked-on sentences (HINTS). They don't work, and really are bad. This is more than anything a PERSONAL essay; the officers want to see how you interpret life, the (metaphorical) lens you use to filter out and cope with what life throws at you (tests, loss, defeat, death, etc). T
his is all coming from college course notes in writing personal essays.</p>
<p>BTW I haven't really started my essay yet, and you should probably just brainstorm for now until early September. Write a first draft (don't correct; just keep on writing until you have a main idea in mind), hand it to your teacher. Spend about 10 hrs each week working on the essay, or about 4 hrs on weekends. That's what I'm planning to do.</p>
<p>Write about something you are passionate about and how it makes you the person you are today. Go back to when you were a kid, is there a sign now that you think aboiut it that the passion might have always been there even when you didn't realize it? I'll give you an example...I love backcountry hiking, snowboarding and anything to do with the outdoors. I wrote about that but brought into the essay that when I was three, I beleived I was Davy Crockett..that's an example of possibly having the passion for the outdooors when I wasn't even old enough to recognize it...everything in my life built from there to who I am today.</p>