Life at Hope College

What Does It Take to Write an Excellent College Application Essay?

College Essay Topic. It is a dilemma of every student applying to college. Is there a “good” or “bad” topic?

A college essay is a place where the admission representative has a chance to “meet” the applicant more closely. That being said, what is it that make a college essay successful?

A successful essay will reveal something about you that the admissions reader may not have already known, and will show how you interact with family and friends and demonstrate your beliefs or explore your passions.”

In other words, a lot of people write about their activity, beliefs, lessons learned or some sort of story. It is relatively easy to write about something that happened. But the key is to use a passion, relationship or belief to highlight oneself from other applicants through that experience that happen.  To reveal something new about oneself.

On the other hand, here is what to NOT pick for an essay topic.

“ Avoid writing about things like scoring the winning goal, topics of public consciousness like natural disasters, or something that happened to you in middle school. Also, avoid gimmicks like writing in a different language, presenting your essay as a poem, or anything else that is stylistically “out of the box.” Your focus should be on the message rather than the presentation.”

It is too basic and too cliché write about winning goal or for example community service. Yes, it is great that applicant is doing well in sports and contributing to the community, but another thousands people do it as well and. It does not differentiate or make stand out the applicant from others.

Here is great video by Princeton Review that will answer some of your questions about the college application essay.


Key takeaways


Citations

Cohen, Kat, Dr. “The Best and Worst Topics for a College Application Essay.”       Noodle. Noodle, 22 Apr. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.
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