College essays are inherently frustrating.
Personally, I think this has a lot to do with feeling a lack of control in the admissions process. By senior year, there’s no undo button for freshman-year math grades, no magical promotion to president of six different clubs, and sadly, you can’t decide what your teachers will write about you (just pick ones who like you, and it will be fine!).
But the essays? They matter. Essays are the one place applicants can still have an impact well into senior year. It’s a chance to tell your story and show who you are beyond grades and activities. So it makes sense that students end up putting tons of time and energy into the writing process.
I honestly believe the hardest part of essay writing is figuring out what to write. For better or worse, the truth is there are no “super secret topics” that guarantee admission to your top choice school. The real trick is avoiding the essay topics that Admissions Officers will see hundreds of times each application cycle.
As someone who reads thousands of applications each year, these are the 10 essay topics that are simply way too overdone. Shall we dive in?
School clubs, part-time jobs, summer internships, research opportunities... You’ve done a lot, and that’s awesome. I completely understand the desire to want to write about the experiences you’ve had or the involvement that’s shaped who you are.
But your essay isn’t meant to be your résumé in paragraph form. Admissions officers already know the bullet points. When you string these accomplishments together into a 650-word essay, it tends to fall flat. Or worse: braggy.
The Résumé Recap is the most frequent culprit on the overused list. In fact, this essay type appears so often that you may not even realize you’ve done it at first. Or maybe your essay started out strong, but the second half turns into a lengthy list of accomplishments. Truly, it happens all the time. While it’s not inherently a negative, this approach rarely helps a student stand out. I tend to think of the Résumé Recap as a major missed opportunity.
“I became confident.” “I learned leadership skills.” “I developed resilience.”
Sure, great, but how? Did you stumble into a community running group despite having terrible cardio, get side eyed by your debate coach for forgetting your entire argument, or spill coffee on your lab partner’s notes? These words mean nothing without the messy, awkward, hilarious stories behind them.
Admissions Officers want the narrative that reveals the transformation, not just the tagline that summarizes it. It’s not enough to say you’ve experienced personal growth. Instead, you need to show it. How did that growth happen? Why is that a good thing? What lessons were learned?
Students often tell application readers a lot of personal traits or provide a narrative of a specific experience. Yet, they fail to show the admissions committee how those things came to be and why that experience matters today. Admissions Officers want to see the person you’ll be on their campus. It’s your job to show them that through your writing.
A few years ago, I read an essay that began, “Every week I wonder if my best friend is going to hurt me.” It was only three paragraphs later that the student explained she and her friend were circus performers who practice dangerous stunts at their weekly cirque class. Now that could have been a really interesting essay!
So why did the author choose to start her personal statement this way? And why did it take so long for her to provide more information?
I’m not arguing against a strong opening hook. It can be a great writing tool! However, it’s important to recognize that being clever is far more compelling than being shocking. Trying to hook the reader with a true-crime cold open sounds creative, but it almost always backfires and makes the Admissions Officer concerned.
In all my years reading applications, I’ve rarely seen the Shock Value Essay work the way it was intended. This process is already tough, so try not to create additional hurdles for yourself.
Grandma is incredible. She is wise. She is funny. She makes unparalleled cookies that should win awards. She’s also survived obstacles that make physics homework seem adorable. Unfortunately, I can’t admit grandma.
As a rule of thumb: if I finish the essay knowing everything about your grandma and almost nothing about you, we have a problem. While others can absolutely play a role in your personal statement, it’s crucial that you remain the focus of the story.
Premed. Premed. Premed. Or software engineer. Or “macro-socioeconomic behavioral strategist.” Big dreams? Love it. Ambition is great! But a 17-year-old mapping out a 20-year career arc in their college essay can be a lot to take in. Colleges want curiosity, not hypothetical LinkedIn biography.
To be clear, narrowing in on a specific interest isn’t negative. However, there’s a big difference between an interesting hobby that you want to share (i.e. your town’s annual mushroom picking event, advocating for sustainable fishing, researching the effects of body image on dancers) versus telling the reader all your future plans.
Contextually, it’s important to be aware that most students end up changing majors at least once during college. This means Admissions Officers take whatever major or career path you list in the application with a pretty significant grain of salt. When the entire application is narrowly focused on one desired outcome, it can be hard for readers to get a sense of who you’ll be outside of that path.
While it may not seem like it, what you do after college is still pretty far away. As far as your application goes, I strongly recommend focusing on the next four years rather than the four after that. I also encourage you to stay away from locking yourself into a certain path or career before you’ve had a chance to explore the hundreds (if not thousands) of classes available to you on a college campus.
Prior to 2015, the Common Application had an essay prompt that asked students to “describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content.” I cannot tell you how many essays I read that answered this question with “the bathroom.” No! Just no. How could this possibly end well?
Fun fact: even though the prompt has been eliminated, I still read at least half a dozen bathroom essays each year.
Even more common will be the dissection essays. Fetal pigs, cats, sharks, human cadavers… Who knew high schoolers were doing so much dissection?! Just writing this gives me shivers. While students who love science are awesome, please remember that not everyone is prepared for the graphic descriptions.
Be vivid. Be descriptive. But please, for the love of all application readers, be mindful of stomachs.
Garrulous, Inchoate, Exigent, Convivial, Ignominious, Expurgate, Phlegmatic…
Know what those words mean? Congrats! You either have a far better vocabulary than I do or perhaps you’ve recently been studying for the SAT.
I tend to think that nothing says, “I panicked while writing” more than a heavily thesaurus’d essay. If your writing sounds like it inhaled the Oxford English Dictionary, it won’t help you. Admissions Officers want clarity, not linguistic acrobatics. If they have to look up the words you’re using in an essay, it’s going to be more frustrating than impressive.
If we were grabbing coffee as friends, then I’d love to learn about what’s sitting on your bookshelf, how you organize your locker, what songs are on your playlist, what you keep in your desk, and the meaning behind the pictures on the walls of your bedroom.
As an Admissions Officer, reading an essay that describes these things tells me a lot about a student’s environment, but not very much about who they are as a person. The objects in your life can be interesting, but only if they connect to something deeper.
When evaluating applications, I am hoping to learn what applicants have experienced and how they think. I want to see the ways they apply those experiences or thought processes to everyday life.
The Walk Through essay tends to get stuck on what items are in the room, bookshelf, desk, or playlist rather than why or how they got there and the impact they’ll have going forward. Always make sure you’re focused on the why, not the what.
Your childhood was awesome. Elementary school was formative. LEGOs and Rube Goldberg machines are amazing. But if the first 500 words of your essay take place before you learned long division, we need to fast-forward.
I could seriously go on all day about this Stuck in the Past essay. It’s probably the most common mistake that applicants make and takes infinite forms. Here are a few:
I understand the desire to recall an influential event from the past, to start off with a narrative story, or focus on showing growth from a few years ago. This is perfectly fine! But Admissions Officers generally want essays to come to the present quite quickly.
You should aim to have any college essay catch up to the present no more than 1/3 of the way in. Colleges want to meet you as you are now, not sift through the entire past.
It’s a trap! The end.
For real though… I’d advocate for steering clear of this topic choice entirely. Students often get stuck in the negative experience rather than the positives that have come out of it.
And, more importantly, every “failure” essay tends to sound incredibly similar. Generally, it goes something like “I failed to make the varsity soccer team my sophomore year. So I worked really hard over the next year, tried out again, and made it my junior year. Now, as a senior, I’m captain!” You can swap in orchestra, mock trial, DECA, robotics, or a hundred other activities. You name it, the story arc is almost always identical.
The issue here isn’t that you failed. It’s that the story is predictable and rarely reveals anything personal or unexpected. Failure essays can work, but only when the “lesson” isn’t success itself.
Keep in mind that writing about ongoing failures or challenges is incredibly tricky. If you’re stuck, try choosing a different essay prompt.
Don’t get me wrong, we love English teachers! Yet, there’s often a school, state, or nationwide curriculum that they have to follow. As a result, each year hordes of students end up submitting a paper written for school as their college essay.
Unfortunately, Admissions Officers won’t learn much about you through your beautifully written analysis of The Great Gatsby. And colleges often end up getting lots of personal statements that have the same topic or theme (and isn’t a Common Application essay choice!). I have a theory that the Walk Through essay started as a class assignment back in the day. Even worse, sometimes the Class Paper is just a school report or research paper that isn’t even about the student! It might be an easy solution to submitting an essay, but it’s not worth it in the long run.
If your essay includes an MLA heading, Shakespearean quotes, multiple references or works cited, or the phrase “in conclusion” then it’s not a personal statement. It’s an English paper in disguise, and Admissions Officers can tell instantly.
While essays are crucial pieces of the application process, just remember that they are only one piece of a very large, holistic puzzle. Colleges look at many factors including academics, extracurricular activities, recommendation letters, campus fit, family context, and a student might contribute to their community.
Ultimately, what all that means is this… The best essay in the world won’t get someone admitted if they aren’t otherwise qualified for that institution. And a “weak” or “overdone” essay won’t necessarily lead to a student’s denial if they’re a great fit for other reasons.
So what should you write about? Anything that feels authentically you. Share your voice, your quirks, your perspective. Just make it something Admissions Officers haven’t read a thousand times.
At Infinite Futures, we specialize in helping students brainstorm topics that are original, engaging, and true to their story. If you want guidance on the Common App, personalized essay help, or full-service college advising, click here to book a consultation and get started today.
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Dr. Corinne Smith spent a decade as an undergraduate Admissions Officer for Northwestern University and Yale University. She has also read applications for Brown University and UC San Diego. Corinne has her B.A. and M.S. from Northwestern and received her Doctorate in Education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At Infinite Futures, she serves as the Director of Application Strategy and oversees the essay editing process for all students.
