<p>I'm getting a really early start on my apps. I'm on my second, University of Pittsburgh, and have to write my first essay (My first was LSU where I have automatic admissions). Their prompts are very vague, and I have no Idea what to do, or where to start, should I write something personal, or something about an issue that I really care about?</p>
<p>also one of the topics is to write an essay about a topic important to you, whether it'd be personal, political, scientific, since I'm passionate about politics as a whole, can I write my essay on politics as a whole, and how would that work?</p>
<p>I could write one about a good friend of mine that I admire, or my track coach , I could write about my philosophy on life, I could write about my love of diversity, I could write about my extracurriculars, or I could write about pretty much anything else</p>
<p>I'm a bit lost on this part of the app.</p>
<p>Alright. Firstly, the prompts are vague on purpose. Colleges want you to interpret them in such a way as to achieve a unique perspective on the subject matter-- open to your creative mechanisms in a sense. With that being said, colleges also want to find out more about the person writing the essay than the topic about which the person is writing. This has led to more people straying away from such broad topics as politics or sports, going for much more specific incidents/events and analyzing them in such a way as to provide the admissions officer with a sense of perspective as to WHO is writing the piece.
As an example, such a trivial topic as getting highlights in your sophomore year of high school can be molded to provide insight to your life. If you had chosen to do so because of purely cosmetic reasons, fine, but you could also manipulate it as a quasi-exodus from the “darker days” of your life. Pretty lame, I know, but that’s just one of many topics that could potentially work to provide the admissions officer with a sense of perspective into your app.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents.</p>