Common App Essay Tip: Dig Deep in the Brainstorming Phase

Common App Essay Tip: Dig Deep in the Brainstorming Phase

Often, the subject that makes for the best essay is the one you least want to talk about. So stay open as you begin the brainstorming process, even to your most sensitive relationships and memories, and notice if there’s a story you’re afraid to tell. Maybe that is your best topic. Most importantly, don’t hold back or self-censor: don’t be afraid to show your messiness and flaws, and know that no story from your life is too small or too silly to include (as long as it’s not from when you were a very small child!).

It takes courage to be vulnerable and imperfect, to admit to your mistakes and regrets. A tip? Be courageous as you brainstorm.

The following questions are some that we use in our 1:1 work, and that you might find helpful to answer as your brainstorm:

  • To start, make a timeline of turning points in your life so far. These could include:
    • confrontations
    • arguments
    • mistakes
    • catastrophes
    • challenges
    • betrayals
    • failures
    • successes
    • life reversals
    • epiphanies
    • breakthroughs
    • beginnings
    • births
    • death

Try to identify 6-8 (or more!) of such turning point moments and write three or more sentences about each. Turning points tend to suggest scenes with dramatic potential in addition to being moments of change and growth, and nearly all the essays our students write revolve around them. Keep in mind that turning points can be minor, like an argument with a friend about who will take charge of an extracurricular project.

  • Describe your immediate family members and your relationship to each one. What makes your family different from other families?
  • List four words you would use to describe yourself and explain why you chose each one.
  • What is something you struggle with and would prefer most people not know about you?
  • What are you scared to write about? Why does it scare you?
  • What do you most enjoy doing with your spare time? Why?
  • What is your greatest weakness? What are you doing to work on it?
  • What do you do better than almost anyone else?
  • What topic or idea (or TV show or book or sport…) could you read about (or watch YouTube videos on) for hours? What makes it so fascinating to you?
  • Do you collect anything? If so, what is it, and why do you feel compelled to collect it?
  • Do you have any rituals or routines that may seem odd, obsessive, or out of the ordinary?
  • Is there any part of your identity that is important to who you are and that you have not mentioned elsewhere?

Think fast:

  • A time when you discovered that you were stronger than you thought: 
  • A time when you realized you were just plain wrong or messed up: 
  • A time you struggled over a tough choice:
  • A problem you solved: 
  • A question that you believe must be answered or a mystery you’re trying to get to the bottom of: 
  • A mark you want to make on the world:

When we work with students one-on-one, we review the brainstorming document, noting the narratives, ideas, themes, and details that interest us the most. It can be easier for us, as outside readers, to notice recurring patterns (for example, how you constantly link your ideas back to collecting objects) or to make new connections between disparate experiences and interests (like between your love for puzzles and your brothers leaving for college). Since it will be harder for you to do this for yourself, you should: 1) wait a week between completing and evaluating your brainstorm, and 2) find an outside reader who can read your brainstorm and give you feedback.

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What’s The Common App Essay All About?

The school year is winding down, which means it’s time to start working on college admissions essays. This month, we’ll share some excerpts from our book, The Complete College Essay Handbook, starting with some personal statement tips!

First, what exactly is a personal statement like the Common Application essay?

A personal statement is a creative essay of 650 words or less that reads like a short story, memoir, or novel—not like an academic essay, textbook, or newspaper article. The best personal statements tell a story that culminates in a meaningful realization and offers the reader a glimpse of a mind in the process of thinking.

The personal statement is not the place to brag about accomplishments (student body president, team captain, founder of a schoolwide service project), or about how amazing you are (“I’m a world-changing revolutionary!”).

Although people you don’t know are going to read it, the personal statement is not a public form, like a school-wide speech. The personal statement is an intimate form, like a secret. It is the place to be honest, vulnerable, and raw, to reveal mistakes and weaknesses, to open up about an experience you’d only tell someone you were really close with, to explore what you struggle with and what scares you.

The personal statement is not “about” an event or achievement. It is about the psychological and emotional processes that occurred “behind the scenes.”

The same story, told from one angle, can be impersonal whereas, from another—told with a focus on the process rather than the outcome—can become deeply personal. Here are a few examples to help explain what I mean.

  • NO (Impersonal): The story about how you got elected student body president and a detailed account of everything you plan work on once in office
  • YES (Personal): The story about your internal struggle to overcome a crippling fear of public speaking in order to run for student body president
  • NO (Impersonal): The story about how you changed lives by raising money for an orphanage in Africa
  • YES (Personal): The story about how you decided to start raising money for an orphanage because you yourself had been adopted and always struggled with the fact that your birth parents had abandoned you
  • NO (Impersonal): The story about how tearing your ACL was hard because you couldn’t play football or see your friends for a few months
  • YES (Personal): The story about how tearing your ACL gave you the time to reflect on who you are and you realized you didn’t want to just be an athlete so you started writing poetry and made new friends at school

Notice how all of these negative examples focus on the superficial event: I was elected; I raised money; I tore my ACL. By contrast, the positive examples explore the story behind the event—what was going inside of the writer that either led to this event (the student body president and orphanage examples) or the internal change that resulted from it (the ACL example). They also explore intimate, potentially difficult topics.

Since the personal statement is a creative essay at its heart, there is no set formula for success—however, our process and essay samples will give you the tools and examples you need to write your own standout personal statement.

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2025–2026 Common App Essay Prompts + Changes to Additional Info Section and Old “COVID” Question

2025–2026 Common App Essay Prompts + Changes to Additional Info Section and Old “COVID” Question

The main CA essay prompts are the same, but there’s an updated “challenges and circumstances” question, which replaces the old COVID-19 question. The post from the CA is below:

We are happy to announce that the Common App essay prompts will remain the same for 2025–2026. 🎉

Based on positive feedback from students, counselors, teachers, and colleges, we’ve decided to keep the essay prompts unchanged. We will continue to explore trends in prompt selection across different student populations and use those insights to inform future updates.

Students will see two changes to the optional “Additional information” questions as of August 1, 2025.

  • The current “Community disruption” question will be updated to a “Challenges and circumstances” question. The new question language will expand to capture a broader range of impacts students may experience. The word/character limit will remain the same (first-year app 250 words max, transfer app 1250 characters max).
  • The “Additional information” question word/character limit will be reduced. The first-year app limit will be reduced from 650 to 300 words max. The transfer app limit will be reduced from 3500 to 1500 characters max.

We are making these changes after conducting listening sessions and consulting with our member, counselor, and student advisory committees to ensure we gather diverse perspectives and input. Students in the first-year app who have text in their “Additional information” question that exceeds the reduced word count limit after August 1 will see an error message alert letting them know they have exceeded the new max. They will not lose anything they have written prior to August 1, but they will need to go back and adjust their response. In the transfer app, student responses to the “Additional information” question prior to August 1 will not roll over.

Here is the full set of essay prompts for 2025–2026.

  1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
  2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
  3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
  4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
  5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
  6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
  7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design

This is the updated “Challenges and circumstances” question language students will see beginning August 1, 2025


Sometimes a student’s application and achievements may be impacted by challenges or other circumstances. This could involve:

  • Access to a safe and quiet study space
  • Access to reliable technology and internet
  • Community disruption (violence, protests, teacher strikes, etc.)
  • Discrimination
  • Family disruptions (divorce, incarceration, job loss, health, loss of a family member, addiction, etc.)
  • Family or other obligations (care-taking, financial support, etc.)
  • Housing instability, displacement, or homelessness
  • Military deployment or activation
  • Natural disasters
  • Physical health and mental well-being
  • War, genocide, or other hardships

If you’re comfortable sharing, this information can help colleges better understand the context of your application. Colleges may use this information to provide you and your fellow students with support and resources.

Would you like to share any details about challenges or other circumstances you’ve experienced?*

(   ) Yes

(   ) No

Please describe the challenges or circumstances and how they have impacted you.

 

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10 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing The Common Application Essay

10 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing The Common Application Essay

Our essay experts know best. Check out these 10 tips from Emma that will help you write the most effective personal statement.

Interested in completing your college essays this summer?  Summer is the best time to tackle this important essay, so start coming up with a plan now! 

  • Don’t worry about the prompts. It’s helpful to read through the prompts to see if doing so sparks any ideas; however, there is no need to stress about writing an essay that exactly “answers” a prompt. Your goal is to write the best essay you can about whatever you decide is best to write about. Working with students 1:1, we totally disregard the prompts and usually find that their essay still easily fits under one of the questions. And, if not, there is often an open-ended prompt such as: “Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”
  • Do open with a scene. A strong opening scene draws the reader into your essay. Admissions officers and their first-round readers have hundreds of applications to get through—make yours stand out from the first sentence. Intrigue them or scare them or make them laugh. Make them want to keep reading.
  • Do focus on a single story. You only have 650 words. Perhaps that sounds like a lot to you: it’s not. There is no reason you should worry about filling it up. Through our process, you will find out how to generate enough detail to write an essay about any story. Nor should you worry about cramming as much as possible into the personal statement. Remember that colleges have all of your application data and that trying to do too much in the essay will only end up making your essay feel rushed and scattered.
  • Do make sure that your story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. You can tell your story out of order—for instance, opening with a scene from a stressful moment in order to build suspense before jumping back into chronology—but you always want to make sure your story has each of these elements. Skipping any single one will confuse your reader and make your story feel incomplete (because it is!).
  • And yet don’t get bogged down in detail. We usually find students have trouble generating enough detail. But sometimes we get a student who is unable to summarize effectively, too. Having too much detail can make your story confusing and also mean that your reader will have trouble understanding what the most significant elements are. It usually also means you don’t have room for reflection—the most important element in the essay!
  • Do present yourself in a positive light. We actively encourage you to tell a story that showcases your vulnerabilities, failures, weaknesses, and mistakes. However, either your narrative or your reflection (or some combination of the two), needs to ultimately redeem you so that your essay, in the end, shows you to be someone who is actively working to improve—to rectify mistakes, move past failures, or strengthen weakness. Your essay should be honest, but its main purpose is to make you seem like someone admissions officers want to see at their colleges! Make sure you come off well.
  • Don’t use huge thesaurus words. Again: you aren’t trying to impress the admissions officers! You are trying to show them who you are—and you are trying to make them like you. Using big words can mean using words you don’t quite know how to use, and that will show. Even if you do know how to use them, unless your essay is about how much you love long words or languages, using the big, 25-cent words can make you sound pretentious and overly formal. The language should sound like you and be relatively casual—not curse-word, talking-with-friends casual, but maybe talking-with-your-grandmother casual.
  • Do use vivid, interesting words and varied sentence structure. Being casual doesn’t mean the writing shouldn’t be good or interesting! Do push yourself to use words you might not use in your everyday speech, and do mix up the sentence structure to keep the writing varied and exciting. Do feel free to include words from your personal vocabulary—words from the language you speak at home or from a regional dialect or words you’ve made up. That can add a lot of texture and personality to an essay. Just make sure you define the words for your reader if the meaning isn’t clear from context.
  • But don’t use emotional language: I was happy; I was sad. Instead, let an action depict the emotional state. That is, instead of saying “I was happy,” you might write, “I couldn’t help skipping a few steps down the street after hearing the news.” And, instead of saying “She was sad,” you might write, “Her shoulders slumped, and she cradled her head in her hands.” You can’t see an emotion, and you always want to give the reader something to see.
  • And don’t use cliche—i.e. common, predictable, overused—language. Cliche language includes (but is definitely not limited to!) phrases like:
    • I need to be true to myself.
    • Time heals all wounds.
    • Every cloud has a silver lining.
    • Good things come to those who wait.
    • I learned more from them than they did from me.
    • Every rose has its thorn.
    • You win some, you lose some.
    • Little did I know.

Of course, your essay might have one of these messages at its heart. Maybe you did learn more from the kid you tutored than they learned from you. Maybe you did find the “silver lining” in a terrible situation. Both of these could make for great essays. But you want to verbalize that realization in your own unique and surprising way.

Contact us if you’d like help completing the CA essay (or other essays!) this summer so you can apply ASAP after August 1.  

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10 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing The Common Application Essay

10 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing The Common Application Essay

Our essay experts know best. Check out these 10 tips from Emma that will help you write the most effective personal statement.

Interested in completing your college essays this summer?  Summer is the best time to tackle this important essay, so start coming up with a plan now! Contact us.  

  • Don’t worry about the prompts. It’s helpful to read through the prompts to see if doing so sparks any ideas; however, there is no need to stress about writing an essay that exactly “answers” a prompt. Your goal is to write the best essay you can about whatever you decide is best to write about. Working with students 1:1, we totally disregard the prompts and usually find that their essay still easily fits under one of the questions. And, if not, there is often an open-ended prompt such as: “Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”
  • Do open with a scene. A strong opening scene draws the reader into your essay. Admissions officers and their first-round readers have hundreds of applications to get through—make yours stand out from the first sentence. Intrigue them or scare them or make them laugh. Make them want to keep reading.
  • Do focus on a single story. You only have 650 words. Perhaps that sounds like a lot to you: it’s not. There is no reason you should worry about filling it up. Through our process, you will find out how to generate enough detail to write an essay about any story. Nor should you worry about cramming as much as possible into the personal statement. Remember that colleges have all of your application data and that trying to do too much in the essay will only end up making your essay feel rushed and scattered.
  • Do make sure that your story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. You can tell your story out of order—for instance, opening with a scene from a stressful moment in order to build suspense before jumping back into chronology—but you always want to make sure your story has each of these elements. Skipping any single one will confuse your reader and make your story feel incomplete (because it is!).
  • And yet don’t get bogged down in detail. We usually find students have trouble generating enough detail. But sometimes we get a student who is unable to summarize effectively, too. Having too much detail can make your story confusing and also mean that your reader will have trouble understanding what the most significant elements are. It usually also means you don’t have room for reflection—the most important element in the essay!
  • Do present yourself in a positive light. We actively encourage you to tell a story that showcases your vulnerabilities, failures, weaknesses, and mistakes. However, either your narrative or your reflection (or some combination of the two), needs to ultimately redeem you so that your essay, in the end, shows you to be someone who is actively working to improve—to rectify mistakes, move past failures, or strengthen weakness. Your essay should be honest, but its main purpose is to make you seem like someone admissions officers want to see at their colleges! Make sure you come off well.
  • Don’t use huge thesaurus words. Again: you aren’t trying to impress the admissions officers! You are trying to show them who you are—and you are trying to make them like you. Using big words can mean using words you don’t quite know how to use, and that will show. Even if you do know how to use them, unless your essay is about how much you love long words or languages, using the big, 25-cent words can make you sound pretentious and overly formal. The language should sound like you and be relatively casual—not curse-word, talking-with-friends casual, but maybe talking-with-your-grandmother casual.
  • Do use vivid, interesting words and varied sentence structure. Being casual doesn’t mean the writing shouldn’t be good or interesting! Do push yourself to use words you might not use in your everyday speech, and do mix up the sentence structure to keep the writing varied and exciting. Do feel free to include words from your personal vocabulary—words from the language you speak at home or from a regional dialect or words you’ve made up. That can add a lot of texture and personality to an essay. Just make sure you define the words for your reader if the meaning isn’t clear from context.
  • But don’t use emotional language: I was happy; I was sad. Instead, let an action depict the emotional state. That is, instead of saying “I was happy,” you might write, “I couldn’t help skipping a few steps down the street after hearing the news.” And, instead of saying “She was sad,” you might write, “Her shoulders slumped, and she cradled her head in her hands.” You can’t see an emotion, and you always want to give the reader something to see.
  • And don’t use cliche—i.e. common, predictable, overused—language. Cliche language includes (but is definitely not limited to!) phrases like:
    • I need to be true to myself.
    • Time heals all wounds.
    • Every cloud has a silver lining.
    • Good things come to those who wait.
    • I learned more from them than they did from me.
    • Every rose has its thorn.
    • You win some, you lose some.
    • Little did I know.

Of course, your essay might have one of these messages at its heart. Maybe you did learn more from the kid you tutored than they learned from you. Maybe you did find the “silver lining” in a terrible situation. Both of these could make for great essays. But you want to verbalize that realization in your own unique and surprising way.

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College Application Essay Coaching – Make The Most of Summer

College Application Essay Coaching – Make The Most of Summer

Having read thousands of college application essays over the course of our careers as counselors, teachers, writing coaches, and admissions officers, the easiest explanation is that we just “know” when we read an effective essay. For a glimpse into our process and to read some of these essays, check out The Complete College Essay Handbook.

In our 1:1 coaching…

  • We help students navigate the essay process efficiently and effectively. There’s no reason a student can’t go back to school in August/September with most of their essays completed.
  • We help students uncover their unique stories and then guide them on how to get those stories onto the page in a clear, concise, and engaging way. Every student has a story to tell.
  • We provide students with writing exercises, manageable deadlines, and encouragement as we guide them from points A to Z. You don’t need to be a “writer” to write winning application essays. 

Summer is THE time to write college application essays—reach out to learn more about our essay process!

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High School Students: Use Your Summers Wisely

High School Students: Use Your Summers Wisely

Rising Seniors

Time flies, right? Hopefully, you’ve planned something interesting to explore your academic interests this summer. If not, there is still time! It might be too late for a formal summer program (a good thing, OK to skip these!) or linking up with a local faculty member to engage in research or work in their lab. Still, it is not too late to get a job and design an independent mini-project or community engagement activity. 

You will also want to spend time on your college application materials, so don’t feel like you need to fill your entire summer with a laundry list of activities. Instead, it is best to do one or two things that are well-thought-out and meaningful and leave time for app work and some relaxation before senior fall because it will be an insanely busy time for you! 

If you’ve finished or are nearly finished with the ACT/SAT, you might also want to consider starting your Common Application essay and completing the base data of your Common App this spring/early summer. If you are in need of essay guidance—shameless plug—grab a copy of The Complete College Essay Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Personal Statement and the Supplemental Essays. 

Rising Juniors

A big ticket item is preparing for and completing standardized testing. Take an ACT and SAT diagnostic and meet with a tutor to determine which test might be best for you, and then put a formal plan and timeline in place to prepare for that test. Junior year is no joke academically, and you’ll likely take the ACT or SAT more than once, so starting prep this summer is a good idea. 

Like rising seniors, hopefully, you’ve got something interesting planned to help you explore your academic interests. The same guidance above applies. Here’s why this is important: colleges aim to create diverse, well-balanced classes made up of students with a range of identities and academic interests. For this reason, most colleges will consider your major of interest when making admissions decisions—and you need to have coursework and extracurriculars that demonstrate your interest. For the most competitive majors (CompSci, business, engineering, pretty much anything STEM, to name a few), demonstrating a high level of understanding paired with experience gained outside of school is critical if you want to stand out as an application. This is, of course, on top of stellar grades and test scores.

If you don’t know what your academic narrative is, now’s the time to decide and work on developing it; if you’re lost on how, reach out

Rising Sophomores and Freshmen

Summers are for exploring! You could attend a pre-college program on a college campus, get a job, read, take free classes online, and volunteer. The key is to do something, or preferably, a few things! Get out there and get some experience and exposure—it’s how you figure things out. Make sure to write down everything you get involved. You’ll need a resume or activity sheet for college, and you can start it now. If you are fairly certain what you might want to study in college, pursue an opportunity this summer that helps tell that story. 

The school year can be a grind, and your “job” is getting the best grades you can while balancing the limited time you have to spend on extracurriculars with homework…and hopefully some sleep. No matter what year you are in high school, think of summer as a time to explore, recharge, and dip into (or dig deeper into!) what you might not have time for from September through May. 

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Diversity and identity essays in college admissions and the possible end of affirmative action

Diversity and identity essays in college admissions and the possible end of affirmative action

Colleges are starting to outline potential next steps if affirmative action is overturned and race can no longer be explicitly used as a factor in the admissions process. 

A recent article in the Brown Daily Herald noted:

Associate Provost for Enrollment Logan Powell says essays would focus on race as one part of identity, describes ‘structured meetings’ of Brown officials to prepare for rulings

And today, Penn’s DP posted about how Penn may respond if affirmative action is overturned. The DP also noted diversity statements (aka essays) 

Half of The Complete College Essay Handbook is dedicated to supplemental essays, which are the essays schools can request in addition to the Common App essay (aka the personal statement). Once you know the story you’re conveying in your personal statement, you can use the supplements to “round out” your application, whether by elaborating on an extracurricular, conveying your interest in an area of study, or even focusing on meaningful aspects of your identity or a community to which you belong.  

Community and Identity is one of the four types of supplements we discuss in the book, and it’s this category of essay Provost Powell is referencing. If race-conscious admission is eliminated, more essays of this type should emerge on applications and become even more critical in the efforts of colleges to build well-rounded, diverse classes. 

Through Community and Identity essays, admissions officers hope to get a sense of not only who you are and what shapes you but also how you interact with others in a group setting—a skill needed in college and your career. Often, Community and Identity essays are just as personal as the personal statement, though many are much shorter in length, averaging between 250 and 450 words.

The types of communities you belong to might include but are not limited to: 

  • Racial and ethnic communities
  • The LGBTQ+ community
  • Religious community
  • School community
  • Geographic community (could range from a specific neighborhood, city, or state to a whole country if you’re applying as an international student)
  • A specific socioeconomic community
  • Family community
  • A community based around a job, an extracurricular, or a hobby
  • Any other special school and/or local groups
  • Any other group you were born into (e.g., having a physical disability or a chronic illness, being an only child, having red hair)

You might have noticed that many of these communities speak to diversity in some way. Diversity is something admissions officers want, and now more than ever before might need, to learn about when they ask you to discuss your communities and identity. Diversity encompasses a wide range of other aspects of identity. Diversity is whatever experience or aspect of your identity makes you unique. The communities we belong to often help determine and define this difference. Community, identity, and diversity are all closely intertwined. 

Reflection is also an important component of many Community and Identity essays. When considering your identity in relation to a community, you will need to reflect on your role within that community, consider what it means to you, and examine what you have learned as a member. This means you can’t simply describe or celebrate the community or simply list all the accomplishments you’ve had as a member; you should take the time to reflect on the difficulties (and joys) of being a part of that community and how that community has helped make you who you are today.

For sample Community and Identity essays and a deeper discussion of how to approach writing this type of essay, grab a copy of The Complete College Essay Handbook. If you would like a complimentary copy for your school library or counseling office, or if cost is a barrier, please write to us. 

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Personal Statement Do’s and Don’ts

Personal Statement Do’s and Don’ts

It’s almost time to start writing essays!

Our essay experts know best. Check out these 10 tips from Emma that will help you write the most effective personal statement. Interested in working with Emma? Contact us.

Now is the best time for juniors to start with us!

  • Don’t worry about the prompts. It’s helpful to read through the prompts to see if doing so sparks any ideas; however, there is no need to stress about writing an essay that exactly “answers” a prompt. Your goal is to write the best essay you can about whatever you decide is best to write about. Working with students 1:1, we totally disregard the prompts and usually find that their essay still easily fits under one of the questions. And, if not, there is often an open-ended prompt such as: “Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”
  • Do open with a scene. A strong opening scene draws the reader into your essay. Admissions officers and their first-round readers have hundreds of applications to get through—make yours stand out from the first sentence. Intrigue them or scare them or make them laugh. Make them want to keep reading.
  • Do focus on a single story. You only have 650 words. Perhaps that sounds like a lot to you: it’s not. There is no reason you should worry about filling it up. Through our process, you will find out how to generate enough detail to write an essay about any story. Nor should you worry about cramming as much as possible into the personal statement. Remember that colleges have all of your application data and that trying to do too much in the essay will only end up making your essay feel rushed and scattered.
  • Do make sure that your story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. You can tell your story out of order—for instance, opening with a scene from a stressful moment in order to build suspense before jumping back into chronology—but you always want to make sure your story has each of these elements. Skipping any single one will confuse your reader and make your story feel incomplete (because it is!).
  • And yet don’t get bogged down in detail. We usually find students have trouble generating enough detail. But sometimes we get a student who is unable to summarize effectively, too. Having too much detail can make your story confusing and also mean that your reader will have trouble understanding what the most significant elements are. It usually also means you don’t have room for reflection—the most important element in the essay!
  • Do present yourself in a positive light. We actively encourage you to tell a story that showcases your vulnerabilities, failures, weaknesses, and mistakes. However, either your narrative or your reflection (or some combination of the two), needs to ultimately redeem you so that your essay, in the end, shows you to be someone who is actively working to improve—to rectify mistakes, move past failures, or strengthen weakness. Your essay should be honest, but its main purpose is to make you seem like someone admissions officers want to see at their colleges! Make sure you come off well.
  • Don’t use huge thesaurus words. Again: you aren’t trying to impress the admissions officers! You are trying to show them who you are—and you are trying to make them like you. Using big words can mean using words you don’t quite know how to use, and that will show. Even if you do know how to use them, unless your essay is about how much you love long words or languages, using the big, 25-cent words can make you sound pretentious and overly formal. The language should sound like you and be relatively casual—not curse-word, talking-with-friends casual, but maybe talking-with-your-grandmother casual.
  • Do use vivid, interesting words and varied sentence structure. Being casual doesn’t mean the writing shouldn’t be good or interesting! Do push yourself to use words you might not use in your everyday speech, and do mix up the sentence structure to keep the writing varied and exciting. Do feel free to include words from your personal vocabulary—words from the language you speak at home or from a regional dialect or words you’ve made up. That can add a lot of texture and personality to an essay. Just make sure you define the words for your reader if the meaning isn’t clear from context.
  • But don’t use emotional language: I was happy; I was sad. Instead, let an action depict the emotional state. That is, instead of saying “I was happy,” you might write, “I couldn’t help skipping a few steps down the street after hearing the news.” And, instead of saying “She was sad,” you might write, “Her shoulders slumped, and she cradled her head in her hands.” You can’t see an emotion, and you always want to give the reader something to see.
  • And don’t use cliche—i.e. common, predictable, overused—language. Cliche language includes (but is definitely not limited to!) phrases like:
    • I need to be true to myself.
    • Time heals all wounds.
    • Every cloud has a silver lining.
    • Good things come to those who wait.
    • I learned more from them than they did from me.
    • Every rose has its thorn.
    • You win some, you lose some.
    • Little did I know.

Of course, your essay might have one of these messages at its heart. Maybe you did learn more from the kid you tutored than they learned from you. Maybe you did find the “silver lining” in a terrible situation. Both of these could make for great essays. But you want to verbalize that realization in your own unique and surprising way.

For more, grab a copy of The Complete College Essay Handbook. It’s a no-frills, practical guide that will give students the confidence and know-how they need to craft the best essays for every single school on their list—in less time and with less stress.

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Out Now on Amazon: The Complete College Essay Handbook!

Out Now on Amazon: The Complete College Essay Handbook!

Hi. If this were a podcast, this would be the part where we’d say, in our distinct voices: “I’m Brittany.” And then: “I’m Emma.” We’ve been working together to guide students through their college applications since 2016. After a few years, we realized our process was not reflected in any of the essay materials we found elsewhere, so we decided to write it down. What started as internal documents for our students eventually turned into a book. Since it is time to start thinking about essays, remember that…

The Complete College Essay Handbook is available on Amazon

It’s a no-frills, practical guide that will give students the confidence and know-how they need to craft the best essays for every single school on their list—in less time and with less stress. The Complete College Essay Handbook walks students through:

  • What makes an essay stand out, drawing on sample essays by real students to illustrate main points
  • Brainstorming activities to find the best topics for the personal statement and supplemental essays
  • How to write the two central components of every application essay: scene and reflection
  • Editing and revision—including techniques to cut down or expand an essay to hit the word limit
  • The four types of supplemental essays and how to decode the different essay prompts, using actual essay questions
  • The strategy behind a well-rounded set of application essays

We are excited to get our expertise and years of experience into the hands of as many students as possible—especially now that it’s college application season!

We’d be so grateful if you shared a link to The Complete College Essay Handbook with friends and family, and if you decide to purchase it—thank you, and also consider leaving a review (verified Amazon reviews are huge for increasing exposure). If you have feedback—or just want to say hi—email us at brittemmaessays@gmail.com

Thank you for your support!

Brittany & Emma