I was going to write about my family’s hardship as immigrants and then talk about my grandmother’s death and how it affected me, for the common application essay first prompt for this year. I wanted to talk about my background by discussing how small in amount my people are , by discussing my family’s hardships. My guidance counselor told me that a lot of people write about a dead grandparent?!?! Now I am not sure if I should write about it. What should I do? Do many people write about what I wrote?
It’s true that a lot of people discuss the immigrant experience and deceased grandparents. If you feel this topic is particularly important to your story anyway, you should use it. Also, consider your context - most families immigrate for higher education/employment opportunities. If your family immigrated to escape persecution of some sort, that’s much less common.
A major pitfall that you should avoid no matter what the context is talking solely about how hard your parents worked and how much you admire them. As great as I’m sure they are, you want the admissions committee to come away admiring you.