As August ushers in the new school year, it’s a reminder to incoming high school seniors to begin writing and revising the college essay in earnest. Whether you have finished a first draft or are still deciding what to write about, it can be helpful to review the purpose of the college essay, learn tips for getting started, and consider strategies for writing both the Common App Essay and the supplemental essays.
Finding the Prompts
If you will be applying to a 4-year college or university as a first-year student, one of your first steps should be to create an account with Common App. Common App is a nonprofit organization that streamlines the application process. Students fill out their personal information and upload their college essays online. You will be back at Common App’s website before November 1st (for Early Action/Early Decision) or January 1st (for Regular Admission) to fill out your list of activities and submit your essays.
Each year, Common App puts together a series of essay prompts for the Common App essay, an approximately 650-word essay that is accepted by over 1,000 colleges and universities. For this application year, 2024-2025, there are 7 prompts.
- 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.
- 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?
- Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
- 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?
- Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
- 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?
- 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.
The most important thing to understand about these prompts is that they are meant to be open-ended and encouraging. Rather than rules, the prompts are designed to help students reflect on what aspects of themselves—identity, experiences, activities, passions, and/or ideas—best explain who they are and what matters to them. In fact, Prompt #7 is so open-ended that, not only can it be on any topic (e.g., a fascinating coincidence, a question that has always perplexed you), it doesn’t even have to be about you at all. Students could submit any essay, even an essay on Charles Dickens or Dua Lipa. (Of course, your essay about another person or topic should be sparkling with insight, wit, or original research in order to present a compelling portrait of you as a writer).
Note that the numbers are not a ranking system. All 7 prompts are equally valid options, and there are no essay prompts that readers will automatically rank higher than others; your essay will simply be compared to other essays (without reference to the choice of prompt). An important corollary is that some prompts will be easier for you to write on than others, and there are no points for degree of difficulty. So, if you are able to brainstorm a detailed plan for an essay when thinking of Prompt #3, but your ideas for Prompt #4 feel uninspired, go with #3 and see where it takes you rather than forcing yourself to write about a topic that isn’t a good fit.
Remember that essay prompts aren’t intended as mutually exclusive categories. If a student’s essay explains a challenge she faced (#2) as well as the gratitude she felt for the person who helped her to process it (#4), that’s perfectly fine, and the student is free to label the essay as a response to prompt #2 or #4. No administrator is going to second guess an essay because it fulfills or overlaps with the topic of another prompt. In fact, it may be a useful writing strategy to combine responses to several different prompts. For example, try writing a draft combining your background (#1), an accomplishment (#5), and the new understanding of yourself that results from it (#5).
The Purpose of the College Essay
The purpose of the college essay is to tell colleges about yourself, but what does that mean exactly? Can you mention your friends? How personal does it need to be? Should it focus on the classes and activities listed on your transcript—or should it disclose something the college wouldn’t otherwise know about you? Also, should it brag about accomplishments, and how much bragging is too much?
What it is, after all, that colleges want to know about you? Which of your virtues should you narrate in our essay? Is it your intelligence? athletic prowess? your curiosity? compassion? consistency? Inevitably, you wonder which represents the real you. Is it really any of them at all?
But don’t doubt yourself. Your voice is the crux of the college essay. (A word that aptly means both the decisive and most difficult point.) To speak your truth, the truth of your experience, clear-sightedly is the purpose of the college essay. And to find that voice, you may have to consider your uncommon virtues—not the made-for-tv triumphs or checklist of professional accomplishments, but stories of second thoughts, unexpected connections, or insights into yourself and your community. Whatever your passion is (an academic subject, the arts, athletics, STEM, politics, etc.), colleges want to see that you’ve pursued that passion by getting involved and, at some point, reflected on what that passion means to you. Passion + experience + reflection can be a formula for a surprisingly diverse number of essays. Or, if writing about your identity or background, how have your experiences challenged, changed, or deepened how you think about that identity? (Identity + experience + reflection.) Ultimately, all Common App essays must include some kind of reflective writing on your passions and/or experience.
Strategizing Across Multiple Essays
Many schools require not just the 650-word Common App Essay, but also 1 or 2 supplemental essays as well. These supplemental essays are often shorter, usually between 100 and 350 words, and two typical questions are “Why are you a good match for our school?” and “What led you to choose the field of study you are applying for?”
So, if your schools require supplemental essays, Rule #1 is to make sure that your content doesn’t significantly overlap from one essay to another. For example, if your Common App tells the story of your persistence and dedication leading you to become captain of the tennis team, a supplemental essay on a significant challenge you overcame *should not* focus on tennis leadership in order not to appear as one-dimensional to the reader. Likewise, if your Common App focuses on your interest in your field of study, and a supplemental essay asks that same question, you will have to find a way to answer it with new information or a slightly different focus. Essentially, each essay should convey a different facet of your identity and experiences, so that you come across as a student with multiple interests and experiences—or, in other words, as the three-dimensional person that you are.
The Common App Essay and the supplemental essays differ not only in their content but also in their writing styles. If the Common App is literature, then the supplemental essays are rhetoric. In other words, the Common App can shine with the inclusion of literary elements: detailed descriptions and nuanced vocabulary, a story you tell and the corresponding use of narrative techniques (e.g., flashbacks/flash forwards or direct quotations). It also tends to emphasize personal content and reflections rather than argument, and therefore it is more likely to reveal aspects of the student’s personality that aren’t included on the transcript. In contrast, the supplemental essays are in the business of persuasion by making a direct argument. They summarize rather than narrate stories, use experiences as supporting evidence, and make a well-reasoned case for how your experiences fit together or how you will contribute to the school’s diversity. Supplemental essays also tend to reference the student’s resumé and include bragging points more frequently than the Common App Essay does.
Tips for Starting the Common App Essay
Parents, you don’t have to stand on the sidelines. You can support your high school senior by doing some writing of your own. Consider sharing your responses to the following questions with your son or daughter:
- What are your child’s most outstanding accomplishments in high school?
- In what areas has your child shown the most development and growth in high school?
- What is your child’s greatest strength?
- What are 5 adjectives that describe your child?
Your perspective will inevitably be different than your son’s or daughter’s, but you might give them an idea or remind them of some important accomplishments to write about.
Students, understand that the Common App Essay *cannot* be a compelling essay if it says the same thing over and over. It has to move from one topic to another, develop over time, zoom in and zoom out, be proverbial lightning in a bottle. An essay gains those characteristics over time as you revisit and rethink it.
As you start, it may be useful to brainstorm/outline more than one essay:
- 1) your academic field of interest
- 2) an influential experience you’ve had
- 3) a hobby or pursuit that connects you to your community
Sometimes, as you plan these different essays, they start to come together in unpredictable ways. At other times, one will emerge as the strongest draft. Whichever way it goes, your effort isn’t lost, because you can always revise these drafts for your supplemental essays.
Finally, let’s all recognize that writing about yourself is a difficult undertaking. What to focus on, what to leave out; when to summarize, when to speak from the heart; how to hold your reader’s attention, gain their sympathy, even remind them of themselves can be a matter of guesswork. Push yourself to write again and again, but be patient with the results. Remember that colleges aren’t looking for perfect people or even young professionals, so don’t let youth or inexperience keep you from putting yourself out there. To paraphrase the quote attributed to Goethe in Almost Famous: Be bold, with a bit of self-awareness and reflection, and mighty forces will come to your aid.
College Admission Counseling
From year to year, the Common App Essay doesn’t change much, but the college admissions landscape does. At Write Start Prep, we provide college admission counseling for high school juniors and seniors, helping students and parents to select schools, navigate the requirements, and excel on their admission essays. To learn how we can help you reach your college goals, find us through our website at writestartprep.com.