I wrote an essay about my moment of “teenage stupidity” and how I hid an injury until my season for a sport ended because I didn’t want to sit out of the championships. I explained how my ignoring of that injury made it worse and prevented me from playing that sport senior year of high school and went on to talk about how I learned from that mistake t and realized that I was blinded by my love for the sport. Would this essay make me come off as irresponsible or naive to college admissions officers, especially ones for ivy leagues? This mistake was the fall of my junior year, so it has only been a year since then. Will admissions officers judge me for my stupidity? I did mention that this ignoring of my injury was out of character for me but will that make me sound like I’m making excuses?
I’m not sure it will hurt— but I’m also not sure it will help.
I don’t love the “learn from a mistake” topic-- I think it forces you to point out things about yourself that the adcoms don’t need to know.
Why not take a look at this prompt: "5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. " You can still talk about the injury, skip the part about hiding it, and talk about how you eventually realized, perhaps after a short period of indecision, to do the responsible thing?
All how you write it but it may be more common topic than you think. Great life lesson though on learning difference in pain from injury and pain from training hard and the need for rest to heal from the former.
I think it could be an okay essay for some schools. But don’t write it because you want to explain why you dropped your sport senior season (you can put a sentence or two in additional info for that). I will also say that sports injuries are a very overdone category of essay – since this is for ivies, I’d find something different
The essay topic is ok. It’s important to show what you learned, and something new about yourself that the readers don’t know about you. It’s fine to show vulnerability. Be likeable.
The problem I have with the essay is that it doesn’t show any real growth or maturity. You paid a price, and because of that you now regret what you did, but that’s all I’ve learned about you. And pretty much everybody feels regret when we suffer the consequences for poor decision making.
It’s for an ivy? I agree that there needs to be a higher level of inferential reasoning and showing your growth, insight into your character and that you are capable of deeper thought.
Here’s what it might be like to explore this topic deeply: It’s not a “moment of stupidity” if you ignored your injury week after week for a whole season. Didn’t your parents, coaches, teachers notice you moving differently or in pain? Did you lie? Did you self-treat? Did your team have an unhealthy culture where admitting pain is discouraged? Did the voice in the back of your head saying that this wasn’t a good idea slowly get louder… or softer? Is it truly out of character or have you abused your body to reach other goals (pulling caffeine fueled all nighters, etc)? How do you want to change in college?
Thank you everyone for your replies. I have written multiple essays so far and all of them felt tacky, cliche, or underdeveloped, including this one. I really am having trouble in finding topic that can truly portray me. Can I get some feedback on some ideas?
- Influence my wheelchair bound aunt with polio has on me
- My disagreement with my conservative Indian relatives who are racist and often encourage me to use skin bleaching creams
- How chicken tenders have become something of a comfort food for me through marching band competitions even though I severely dislike them. They represent my moments of happiness and achievement if that makes sense??
I know that most of these ideas are really bad. While I’m strong academically and with extracurriculars, I have always struggled with expressing myself with words. I am struggling to find prompts that I can develop into a well written essay. Any ideas would be appreciated!
There are very few “Great” or “Really bad” ideas… it’s all a matter of what you do with them.
Personally, I would skip #2, to avoid the risk of alienating a reader. But both 1 and 3 could be successful-- 3 intrigues me more.
Why not rough out both of them?