can someone help me with listing topics for the essay as a person who didn’t do the craziest extracurriculars (me) and doesn’t have good stories to discuss in the essay, i’m really worried about this and i really don’t know what to do with it, my mind is in complete blank when i think of what topic should i write in the essay.
Check out The Essay Guys website. He offers many paid courses, but also has several free blog posts on his site with good brainstorming activities and ways to come up with ideas to help generate unique ideas about you.
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Are you referring to the personal essay? You don’t need to and probably shouldn’t write about extracurriculars. You can write about anything. All three of my kids looked through photographs of growing up to come up with ideas. Maybe that would help you too.
Things that make you happy & things that make you sad.
What you write about is not important. How you write about your topic is important.
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Many may not agree, but what I always looked for when reading essays was genuineness. Really it just needed to show “YOU.” It’s a misconception that the essay needs to be some master piece of work or has to discuss you curing cancer. It’s meant to offer a glimpse into your personality that isn’t reflected in the facts and figures. I liked to see what the writer was like and if you’d be a good fit. My own DD wrote about comic books; yep, I said it comic books. She painted a picture of herself, why she liked them, the escape they provided, the creativity of the writing and diversity of the heroes.
What are you passionate about. Sit down tonight, set the timer and write about it for 2 minutes; write anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry about grammar, just write. Do that again with another of your passions/interests. Go back and reread each and see which flowed better. That’s what you can use as attempt one.
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Awesome advise…
My daughter got a good start by reading Write Your Way In: Crafting an Unforgettable College Admissions Essay by Rachel Toor. The author is a former college admissions officer at Duke. We ordered it from Amazon.
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