Please provide some insight on my common app essay - this is the basic topic
Growing up Asian, my parents and siblings always wanted to be lighter in skin tone, and pushed me to not be as dark either. I’ve become really tan from playing lots of soccer, etc, and my parents would always get mad and tell me to not play as much soccer because I was getting darker. Could I talk about how I realized how trivial skin tone is (especially for Asians, as the culture is geared towards wanting lighter skin), and how I now don’t care as much about it?
My kids generally picked topics that made it easy to include information about abilities, interests, accomplishments, and character. Your topic demonstrates good strength of character, but I’m wondering if you could include it as part of an essay on a somewhat broader topic so you could include additional positive things about yourself.
The advice is to use “Show, not just tell.” In itself, just saying you aren’t concerned with skin tone doesn’t give adcoms much to work with. How can you show this, what do you do that bridges across skin color, income groups, or includes kids who aren’t as high achievers as others?
If you can “show” this, the odd feelings your parents have only need to be one or two lines, to set the scene. A whole essay on their attitudes and your resistance isn’t what adcoms need to learn about you for their class. Try to remember, this isn’t like an ordinary high school essay assignment. This is about you, for an admit review.
IMO a good college essay should 1) tell something about you that isn’t elsewhere in the application and 2) give admission officers a reason to want you on campus. Write a draft and see if you can accomplish those two things.