<p>OK, so I wrote an essay for my EA school about a choke at the state geography bee actually made me re-consider my perspectives. However, I'm not sure if, for the common app, I should write an essay about how I've persevered despite living with only one parent for the past decade (obviously due to divorce)...I don't want colleges to think I'm taking the "pity me" route, because I'm definitely not. </p>
<p>Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Choose the topic that allows you to write your most personal, detailed, honest and revealing essay. The one that is so personal that, ideally, only you could write it.</p>
<p>Both of them do, though the second one is about an incident that happened about 6 years before the first one.</p>
<p>How old were you at each time?</p>
<p>13 for the first one and 6/7 for the other.</p>
<p>That might argue for the one at 13, but really it sounds like you've been living ever since, up to now, with the results of both of those events. It seems, then, and would be desirable imo, that either essay can be revealing about you at the present time, not just about you five or ten years ago. </p>
<p>The bee topic has the advantage of showing you dealing with a significant personal setback/failure. It's good to show resilience to colleges. There is always the possibility of bad grades/unexpected problems at college; colleges are interested to know whether the applicant will be able to cope.</p>
<p>Imo, something to think about with regard to your single-parent essay is whether whatever you have to say can really set you apart from other kids; there are a lot of single-parent families out there, with many problems in common. </p>
<p>Just asking; you would know best which topic can allow you to be the most personal, detailed, honest and revealing.</p>
<p>Seems to me that probably about 50% of applicants grew up in single parent homes.</p>
<p>Yeah I found a better topic to write about lol.</p>