I need some insight.
Well, mine was in 1976…
My son wrote last year of contacting someone in the field he hoped to enter, and of that person’s willingness to act as an informal mentor. He learned a lot from those conversations. (And then changed his major.)
My daughter is probably going to write about my husband’s serious illness last year, and how she grew up a lot in the weeks my husband was ill…still a work in progress there.
One of my kids wrote about a famous fictional character they had been trying to emulate since middle school and how that went through the years. The other had two essays (due to some topic overlap with a supplemental). Her topics were (1) an unusual foreign language she had studied since childhood because of her own personal interest and the impact of it on her over the years, and (2) her favorite academic EC – what she loved about it (it showed quite a bit about what makes her tick – what she liked isn’t what others would probably say about it) and how it had changed how she views certain events in the world today.
All were heavy on “show” (not “tell”), and revealed some personality traits that wouldn’t have come out elsewhere (unless in a letter of rec they did not see). Don’t worry too much about the prompts – figure out what you want to talk about, then find a way to fit it to a prompt.
I wrote about the day I was contacted by a fellow student at my school (who I’d never spoken to before) whose parent had just died, and how I dropped everything I was doing to help that person through that experience by drawing on my own experience of losing a parent. That way, I was able to write about losing my father in a way that really said more about me than about him.
I forget what the question was but it was one of the ones from Common App in 2015. I started it with some dialogue to interest the reader and then went into describing what was happening, which was my family finding out that my aunt had killed herself (in a very unconventional horrific way, which I won’t mention). This had a significant impact on my life and lead me to choose my career (nursing), so I basically connected the personal story to why I want to be a nursing major. I remember also talking about my life goals, like providing healthcare to the poor in the 3rd world country my parents are from (where my aunt was). I don’t remember how I ended it but make sure the last sentence is something that will make the reader think!! And make it personal, because it shows what kind of person you really are.