I know that applying for college that there are hundreds of thousands of applicants who are just as qualified as me. I also know that because there are many qualified students with similar backgrounds, grades, and class ranks, and extracurricular. Because of this, what topics should I avoid? I know everyone is trying to be different and stand out, but what are the most basic common topics to avoid? Also, I know that having an officer position is basically a standard these days, so it is better to write about something else or is it acceptable to write about your contributions to a club?
Side Note: I am applying to most of the UC’s and comparing my stats to the common data set, my dreams schools (UCB and UCLA) are reaches with my current stats.
Don’t write about having ADD or some other diagnosis, or the mission trip to Costa Rica/Mexico/West Virginia that made you realize how privileged you were. Your best bet for standing out is to write about some obscure or mundane thing that you know really well, and describe it in a compelling way. One memorable essay I read from a kid who graduated with my daughter was about video gaming, and the strategies he used to win. Lots of kids game, but his essay made me feel as if I understood it. He graduated from WPI and is now in a PhD program at Cornell.
The topic of the essay is not as important as how it is written, what it reflects about you as a person etc. The idea should be to give admissions officers a glimpse into you that can’t be found by reading the rest of your application.
While it’s not taboo or anything, I can count at least 4 essays I’ve read in the past month about being the child of immigrants, how hard mom and dad have worked, and about how the writer intends to do them proud.
And, no, they weren’t assignments; I teach math. And I’m not counting similar essays I’ve read here; I’ve been too busy with schoolwork in the last month to be much help here. Those were simply kids in my suburban school who asked me to read their essays. I can only imagine how many of them a typical adcom reads each day.
Avoid political, religious or controversial topics or strange like relationship with a teddy bear or too heart warming like the mission trip where more was learned from the children than was taught to the children.
While the topic is important to tell the reader about you, the essay allows readers evaluate your writing and communication skills skills of the writer. Reading posts from other college bound students illustrates the following. You might even spend some time reviewing posts to identify helpful ideas. However, this not your chance to steal others work.
Don't use slang, words your grandmother wouldn't allow, vernacular.
2.Watch abbreviations without explanation such as CC without indicating College Confidential. Instead write College Confidential (CC).
Spell correctly. Spell check seems designed to make mistakes so don't rely on it.
Make sure your word choice is exact because a thesaurus provides alternatives with nuanced meaning. People may use the wrong word to sound smart and miss meaning.
Be careful about not naming the person about whom you are speaking. It can be a problem when he this, he that, he the other. How many males and who specifically did what.
Watch pronouns for tense, order, number. Avoid problems like Me and Bob, We was, etc.
Watch sentence that go on and on...If there are several parts to one idea, put them into several sentence. You want to write clearly without sounding choppy.
Transition from one idea to the next smoothly with words like therefore. Instead, however and so on.
Watch sequencing of ideas so they fall in a clear order.
Writing can be jarring when read aloud. Read your essay aloud as you write. Hearing the essay aloud can alert you to problems you should fix.
Save ideas and other writing you did, but can't use now onto s separate file to use later.
Writing improves over this time. Developing and reviewing writing skills now will be a big help in college. Please forgive my errors in the post.
@zannah I know choppiness is bad, but like what if I wanted to be choppy, like using a fragment as a sentence, in order to bring emphasis. I know there are other methods of placing emphasis, but with the limited words I feel like fragments could be helpful if done tastefully.
@bjkmom oh yes my english teacher has pointed out she will refuse to help us with our essays if we use topics like those because they are too generic. As a person who is mathematically inclined, are there essays that have had such impact or were memorable that you could tell about?
For starters, I think it’s wrong of a senior teacher to refuse to help with essays, even if the topics seem to be generic… In fact, the reason my daughter hasn’t hit SUBMIT on her CA yet is because the last essay she submitted to her teacher-- the last of 4 similar assignments-- was the CA prompt she plans to use-- He assigned # 1, 2, 3 and then any of the others for class credit.
The ones that resonated with me were the ones that dealt with small slices of the individual’s life.
Sit down with a timer. Set it for 4 minutes. Then take each CA prompt, and brainstorm any event in your life, particularly the small ones, that could possibly serve as an example of the prompt. No matter how far fetched, write it down. Then reset the timer and go on to the second prompt.
The next day, take a look at what you have, start to flesh out the keepers from the ones you want to eliminate.
I won’t talk about the particulars of this year’s essays. But my son’s was about how he reached out to someone in the field he was then thinking of majoring in (Sports Management at the time). The man – a manager for a pro sports team-- called my son and spoke to him, offering lots of advice. The essay is about how my son realized that he really had to take his future into his own hands.
Not an essay you could write, because that wasn’t your experience. But it was the perfect choice for my son.
Likewise, my daughter’s essay starts with an offhand comment a teacher made to her one day. I LOVE the essay, and think it’s a real winner.
-Sorry, I had to get the girls up and pour a cup of tea.
What are the stories your family and friends always come back to? The family punchlines? The stories that start with “Remember when…?” The stories your family shares over coffee on Thanksgiving?
Start there. Those are the stories that define YOU-- not the kid in my study hall who gave me his essay to read yesterday, not the kid in my 9th period precalc who gave me hers last week, but YOU.