Any advice is good! Thank you!
Travel, stories from your childhood, something that shaped you, a specific moment that changed your outlook… Basically anything that would present you as a dynamic person who would be successful and creative in college. Good luck!
That’s really open ended. What experience had an impact on you? What are you passionate about?
I heard good advice for essays: imagine you could talk to admissions officers for a few minutes and give them a pitch on why they should accept you. Well, you have this opportunity - essays!
I see from your past threads that you’re a junior. You definitely have a head start for starting this early, so good for you! For now, maybe just think and toss some ideas around. Also, you can change significantly from now to your senior year so keep an open mind and know that you may have something you’d really like to write about later on.
Good luck!
You want to tell an interesting story. Do some research- there are some essay tropes that admissions officers really don’t want to see (the BIG GAME, or the volunteer trip abroad for a week, etc.) Talk about things that are meaningful to you, and for the common app essay don’t try to fit too much in one 650 word essay. Tell one story that allows you to explicate on multiple personality traits.
Conventional wisdom is something that only you can write about. If someone picked it up out of a pile, they would know instantly its yours. (your story). I never quite understood how to make that happen. Another thought is to show your curiosity through a story a la student who used a trip to Costco to illustrate her insatiable quest to try new things. Every college community wants students who will make use of the myriad of opportunities they provide students. Good Luck.
Is there something about you that is not reflected in your application? You want the essay to give them a picture of who you really are beyond the stats and numbers. It may be something that shows your character or something unique about you, but you want to humanize your application. You want them to read your essay and think to themselves that they like you and want you to come to their school. Once you come up with what you want the admissions committee to know about you, you can usually find a way to have it answer one of the common app essay questions. They pretty much cover everything. Try to work from that direction and not choose the question first.
Write about how you fell asleep in a bathtub when you were thirteen and woke up shaped like a question mark and how you’ve been puzzled ever since. Tie it in with your goal of becoming a psychiatrist.
A Columbia AO said that your essy should be so much about you that if your friend found your essay lying on the floor, they would immediately know it was yours.
I can tell you what your essay shouldn’t be about, (there are exceptions of course, but these topics are very overdone and are hard to pull off, unless you are a great writer): your big sports moment, your tragic family circumstance, your anxiety/depression, your expensive trip to help build a school in a third world country, several others. Not that those are not worthy topics, and can be deeply affecting, but they are all really overused. Students alos think the sympathy card might win them admission, but it doesn’t work that way.
I have worked on many essays. I believe the most effective essays are ususally focussed on something small that causes a student to discover something about themselves. One of my students wrote about her nightlight. Another wrote about forgoing an important cultural rite of passage in favor of doing something practical with the money the celebration would have cost. Another wrote about how his job as a pizza delivery guy helped him understand people. My kid wrote about how changing her hair color brought unexpected benefits. All of these kids are attending good colleges now.
Look at the current Common App topics. They probably won’t change much for the next cycle. But IMO,it is much too early to start writing now. Wait until late in the summer. You still have a lot of life to experieince between now and then.
@Lindagaf - the new prompts were released almost a month ago! http://www.commonapp.org/whats-appening/application-updates/common-application-announces-2017-2018-essay-prompts
Wow, didn’t realize they were out so early. Thanks, @jym626 .