Selecting a topic for your college essay is one of the most difficult decisions you’ll face during the application process. Your essay is your chance to tell colleges who you are beyond your grades and test scores.
It’s an opportunity to tell your story, showcase your personality, and highlight what sets you apart. There are so many options to choose from that deciding what topics you should be writing about can feel like paralysis.
But with some careful consideration, you can decide on a topic that best reflects your strengths and differentiates you in the application pool.
Understanding the Purpose of a College Essay
The college essay is not just another writing assignment. It’s a personal proclamation that helps admissions officers understand you and your character, values, and aspirations.
Your application outlines your academic achievements and extracurricular activities; the essay provides an opportunity for you to express your voice and offer perspective on your experiences.
Colleges want to understand how you think, what you care about, and how you tackle challenges. A strong essay gives insight into your personality and a glimpse into the admissions team’s potential future reality of you as a member of their community.
How to Find Ideas for Your Essay Topic
Some of the best college essays are personal ones. Here is how to summarize to find the right topic. Consider the experiences that have shaped you, the obstacles you’ve overcome, and the passion that fuels you. Even minor-seeming experiences can be powerful essays if they convey something revealing about yourself.
Areas to Be Inspired On:
- Something you enjoy doing in your free time
- A challenge that you have overcome and what you learned from it
- A significant relationship or mentor who shaped your thinking
- A time you left your comfort zone
- Something you care deeply about, a cause or issue
Just make sure it is a topic that feels real to you, some topic that you can put your spin on.
Telling Your Story
A college essay is a story that you want the reader to get hooked on and not put down. Rather than providing an overview of accomplishments or details about your self, zero in on a singular moment or experience. What happened, how did it make you feel, and how did it change your life?
“If you like playing the piano’ became “The first time I played for an audience.” Share the anxiety you experienced, the blunders you made, and the pride you felt when you finished. Adding sensory details makes your narrative come alive and become memorable.
Showing Growth and Reflection
Colleges want to know you’ve learned from your experiences and can reflect on what you’ve learned. Whether you’ve had success or faced a setback, emphasize how it helped you grow as a person. What skills did you gain? How did it influence your outlook or inspire your aspirations?
If, say, you are writing about a volunteer project, don’t simply write, “For the volunteer project, I … Discussion on how it helped expand your view of community and inspired you to help others Reflection demonstrates maturity and adds depth to your essay.
Highlighting Your Passion
Your college essay is a chance to reveal what makes you come alive. Focusing your essay on something you’re passionate about can help make your essay more engaging and authentic. Admissions officers will know immediately which essays are written with genuine excitement.
Whether it’s a love of science, a talent for art, or a fascination with history, make your essay into a jumping-off point to explain why what you love is important to you. “Share specific stories about how you pursued this interest (or a related path) and the way it ties to your future aspirations to paint a full picture.”
Being Yourself
One of the most effective rules to follow when picking your essay topic is to be you. Don’t attempt to write what you believe the admissions people want to read. Instead, play to what you like and let your uniqueness show.
Authenticity is key. Colleges value honesty and originality, so don’t be afraid to show your quirks, sense of humor, or unique perspective. Your essay doesn’t have to be perfect it just has to sound like you.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
When looking at topics to write about, don’t reuse topics and themes that are overdone. The experiences readers have enjoyed most don’t fall along the lines of pop-outs in essays about sports victories or trips abroad.
But that doesn’t mean those topics can’t be doing interesting work with new takes. Because admissions officers read thousands of essays every year, being different is crucial.
Don’t write essays that concern other people too much. If you’re writing about a person who was a mentor to you, for instance, the essay needs to show you through the lens of that person it should not be about what that person accomplished, but about what you took from the experience.
Avoid overly negative or controversial topics, too. While it’s fine to write about struggles, ensure your essay concludes with a hopeful vibe and an emphasis on what you gained from experience.
Keeping the Focus on You
It’s your story to tell, so focus on you in your college essay. Even if you’re writing about an event or another person, ensure that your perspective and emotions take center stage in the essay. Admissions officers want to know about you, so make sure that your subject matter does not drown out your voice.
If you’ve picked a community service project, boil it down to how it impacted you as a person instead of listing the project’s details. Describe how the experience influenced your values or motivated your ambitions.
Writing About Daily Moments
What makes some of the most powerful college essays is that they focus on an ordinary moment that offers something extraordinary about the writer. You don’t have to have scaled a mountain, or invented a new gizmo, to write an awesome essay. The power of the most basic experiences can still resonate deeply.
Reflect on a time when you felt, challenged, or inspired. It may be a chat with a friend, a family tradition, or a creative project. Such mundane moments can illuminate your character and make your essay relatable and memorable.
Using Your Voice
The only difference is your essay should sound like you. Avoid stiff language and try too hard to sound smart with the vocabulary. Use whatever writing style feels natural and comfortable to you instead. Admissions officers want your voice to come through, so let it.
If you have a sense of humor, add a light joke. If you’re introspective, allow your essay to sound reflective. That’s your unique voice that will make your essay singular, so have trust in it and let it help you write.
Staying True to Your Story
You have a story to share, so keep it authentic it is your essay. Don’t exaggerate or write down what you think colleges want to read. Instead, write about experiences that have genuinely shaped you and lessons you’ve learned.
Admissions officers can tell when an essay is truly sincere. Just telling your real story, even if it’s not dramatic or overly exciting, can have a very strong effect.
Conclusion: How Do I Find a Topic?
One of the most important decisions behind your college essay is what to write about doesn’t need to be stressful. Choose a topic that speaks to you personally by reflecting on your experiences and passions as well as your goals.
Ignore everything else, and just be yourself share your voice, and tell your story in a way that feels real. Your essay is your opportunity to connect with admissions officers and convey who you are beyond your application. Careful Landfall writes With thoughtful reflection and honest writing, you can create an essay that packs a punch.
