is it advisable to mention sexuality in common app essay?

Yeah, I certainly agree with your thinking @AboutTheSame. In the end the purpose of a college essay is to reveal something about you that can’t be shown on your transcript or activity list. What your daughter had to battle absolutely does that, and I should add that her essay does sound unique (I’ll be applying to Princeton REA and I’m gay too, but as someone from South CA I always expected San Fran to be even more liberal and supportive.)

I think what I would still caution against is writing a boring story. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem that a cliche essay is the worst in the world. One that basks in generalities, vagueness, and abstractness is (like writing “Being gay I had to battle a variety of different challenges and that’s made me a better person.”) I truly believe that no matter how bad the essay topic, having a unique voice and memorable details can save almost any essay.

I agree with @intparent: I think college essays about “coming out” may be an overdone topic. To wit (and admittingly, this is antidotal evidence): in the last several years, at least 30 to 40 students have sent me a PM with their essays and asked for advice – and at least half of them (it’s probably closer to 60% of them) – have been about “coming out.” One student’s essay began, like a film script, looking out the rear window of an ambulance as he was being taken from his childhood home because his parents called 911 thinking he was mentally unstable after announcing to them that he was gay! These are truly heart wrenching stories of all the horrific things parents/friends have said or done.

My advice: If you are going to write about “coming out” think carefully about what makes YOUR experience different from every other LGBT student who has also “come out” to their fiends and family. It’s not enough to say you felt ostracized, confused, abandoned, self-pity or suicidal but specifically how did you overcome those feelings/fears and become a better person despite everything that has happened to you! Resiliency is the ‘key’ – not the actual fact that you are gay.