5 College Application Essay Topics That Always Work

5 College Application Essay Topics That Always Work Don’t procrastinate on this part of your application. Once you zero in on your topic, it’s time to organize your ideas. You might want to use an outline, laying out your main points, developing supporting ideas, and sequencing your thoughts logically. This should help you to organize a clear rough draft. There are no tricks or shortcuts to writing the perfect college application essay. It’s less stressful if your child allows it to emerge from a process of discovery that includes brainstorming, free writing, revision, review and editing. It's a part of the application process that can prompt plenty of anxiety. I thought about these things constantlyâ€"while brushing my teeth, doing chores, and driving to school. Unable to take this beloved course a second time, I chose my senior classes with more than a touch of melancholy. But remember it is still a part of your application. In brainstorming about what topic to write about for your Common Application essay, look at what you intend to present in the rest of your application and think about overarching traits that can represent you. I attribute a lot of my successes to how my application as a whole, not just the essays, constructs a story about who I am and what I’ve done. Maybe not, but I loved the rules, the structure, and the big questions that surrounded organizing a government. I was skeptical that even the most appealing humanities class, AP Literature, would be anything but anticlimactic by comparison. I’d become so accustomed to reading the function-focused writings of Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Thoreau, that I found it difficult to see “literature” as anything more than mere stories. Open with an anecdote (If it’s funny, even better.) that will hook them in the beginning and keep them reading until the end. Or go for their heart â€" trying to move an admission officer with emotion isn’t a bad idea, either. Writing the college essay is the most stressful â€" and arguably, the most important â€" part of the application process. The college essay provides a good opportunity to leave a long-lasting impression on the reader, apart from the interview and an efficient way to let the people in the admission know you closely. A person they like and remember through the college essay is most likely to be selected. This essay is an example of how to tell the story of moving to America in a unique way. This student focused on a single question â€" where is home? â€" and showed the reader a lot about who he is as a person. The essay is a joy to read, sharing a detailed glimpse of the student’s personality without feeling like it’s trying to list positive personal qualities. Putting your ideas into the right words may take time. The author of this post, Kim Lifton, is president of Wow Writing Workshop, based in Huntington Woods in Michigan. Her strategic communication and writing services company is a leading expert on the college application essay. You will learn about yourself, your mind, your material. And most of all, you’ll have some writing to review in order to produce â€" or help revise â€" a college essay. Do not allow your essays to descend into an impenetrable bulk of buzzwords and banality. This is best described in How to Write a Great Statement of Purpose, by Vince Gotera of the University of Northern Iowa, which was my guide to writing my essays when I applied to graduate school. Yes, the essay is an important part of your application. Here, we debunk four myths and show how to nail that attention-grabbing college essay. college essay prompts or without any prompt at all, you will start to see themes, obsessions, and observations that matter to you. I wanted substance that I could actually do something with, and I didn’t expect to find it in AP Lit. Some colleges require a supplemental essay in addition to the personal essay. Typically, admissions pros note, these essays are shorter and focus on answering a specific question posed by the college. College admissions officers comb through hundreds of essays a year, so you have just a few minutes to catch their attention.