The most common college essay advice is some version of, “Write about something important to you.” It’s good advice, but often difficult to execute. For example, playing on the football team may be important to you. But if you write an essay about how football has taught you the importance of committing to your goals, you’ve just written an essay that thousands of other students will write. You followed the advice, but it didn’t serve you well.
Here’s a different version of that advice:
Imagine you had a relaxed, 1-hour conversation with your favorite teacher at a coffee shop (I’m assuming your favorite teacher is someone you like and respect).
What do you think you might talk about?
What do you imagine you would say about those topics?
Chances are, you wouldn’t go on for 20 minutes detailing what it means to be on the football team, explaining why teamwork is important, or recounting a teammate’s injury and how that taught you that it’s just a game, after all.
But you might talk about how great it was that your dad left work early to come watch you play the first time you were named as a starter.
You might talk about how the fact that you’ve never been successful at sports didn’t stop you from learning how to punt a football and practicing all summer so you could try out for the team.
You might talk about why you love being on the team even though you’ve never gotten a single minute of playing time.
Those are real conversations you might have with an adult you like and respect. And that’s why those topics, each of which is a real example from a Collegewise student, are great choices for college essays.
Asking yourself, “What do they want to hear?” or “What’s going to sound good?” is the worst way to start a college essay. Those are the same questions your competition is asking, and a surprising number of students will reach identical conclusions.
Instead, write your essay as though you were having a real conversation with an adult you respect and feel comfortable with. You’re still following the advice and writing about something important to you. But you’ll do so in a way that makes an admissions officer want to keep reading. And more importantly, you’ll stand out from the other applicants.