Thanks for bumping this thread. My D is working on her essays right now, and reading this was elightening…even a little scary - My D’s subject for the Common App prompt (the one about transitioning from child to adult) is about her becoming a competitive kickboxer. I think it could fit into the “winning the big game” category that AO read all the time, but it is really about empowerment and overcoming her timidity. Guess we will just have to cross our fingers.
What did your child write about in his/her college essay? College Reps had some...interesting essays
Interesting thread. I have a kid who is trying to decide between a couple of essays that are very different from each other, and written in different ways. How do you choose? You don’t want to start giving it out to a bunch of people to read…
“You don’t want to start giving it out to a bunch of people to read…”
If they’re people you trust, you can.
My #1 advice to kids in this situation is to get together with a small group of close friends and read one another’s essays. A friend who knows you well will recognize which essay evokes you better. Kids can also spot pretension in fellow kids’ work from a mile away. Students can be a big help to one another this way.
Another piece of advice generally mentioned at a couple of campus visits (Brown and UCB): your grandparent (or non-parental relative who knows you) should be able to pick out your essay out of a couple of dozen essays. Or something like that.
@Hanna - Around here, the kids barely tell each other where they are applying, much less give each other essays to read!
After my son got into Chicago early a bunch of his friends asked him to critique their essays. He thought they all suffered from being too serious and sentimental. He really encouraged everyone who asked to be a little more daring and a little more true to themselves. He really had a nice group of friends that tried to support each other. They were applying to competitive colleges, but as far as I could tell they did not act like they were competing against each other.
My D2 wrote about learning about Sherlock Holmes (via reading) in middle school, and spending the rest of her middle school and high school career trying to imitate him. I had no idea until I saw the essay… it was funny & smart, and completely “her”.
Her U of Chicago essay was about sparring daily with her acerbic but brilliant high school English teacher, and what it taught her about preparation to defend her ideas.
D1 wrote about an unusual foreign language she had studied for many years, including how she started (no family background, she just liked it) and the journey to spending a summer abroad in the country where it is spoken junior year. She sprinkled it with some self deprecating humor (trying to command a dog during her summer visit was an example). Her essay ended up published as an example of college essays for the language camps she attended to learn the languages.
Excellent admissions results for both.
My son wrote about his bookcase and how all the books in it were symbolic of who he is. He got into Harvard with it.
wow. I thought my son’s were not very good but at least he did not mention wanting to date Taylor Swift. On the three for Apply Texas he wrote about his faith and the freedom we have to be who we want to be. He also wrote about wanting to research in the area of cancer since so many of our relatives have died or been diagnosed with cancer. Probably the most iffy one was when asked by the honors college to describe a movie where he would be the main character and live his life out in the movie…he chose “Elf”. I suggested “Unbroken” and several others but he said that Buddy the Elf lived life to the fullest, wanted to help others and never cared what people thought about him. (we watch Elf every Christmas 
) oh well…
Buddy the Elf sounds fine with me. Really anything can make a good essay. I know someone who did very well with an essay about Star Wars.