You’ve probably heard the advice of writing about something “unique” for your college application essays, but let’s be real: that’s MUCH easier said than done.
Are you staring at a blank page, wondering how you’re ever going to find a topic worth writing about? The good news is: everyone has a story worth telling, and the question is how to identify it. Here are our tips on how.
“I only have generic extracurriculars!”
A lot of students struggle to come up with good topics for their essays because they feel that they haven’t done anything “special” worth writing about. If you’re in that boat, I’d highly recommend booking a brainstorming session with us so we can help you tease out the stories worth writing about. You can sign up on www.essay.cafe to book.
If you’d rather start on your own, here’s a quick explanation of the way we approach brainstorming.
Brainstorming Strategy
The key to writing a strong essay is to focus on specific, meaningful experiences within a broader topic.
Ever heard of the advice “show, don’t tell”? Well, that’s especially true for college application essays, where admissions officers read so many essays that they can start to blend together in their minds. As an applicant, specificity is your weapon. If you can give a reader an instant way to identify your essay, then your essay will have a greater chance of helping you stand out.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you really, really want to write about basketball. Our first piece of advice would be to not write about sports, but that’s not very helpful. So, let’s consider a good course of action if you’re absolutely, 100% intent on writing about basketball.
When you consider writing about a sport, your mind immediately wanders to your highlights, right? You want to write about your most impressive moment, like when you won the league championship, or when you became captain of the team. But the problem is, other students are thinking the same thing. They also have very similar highlights as you. Plus, these moments are likely already represented on other parts of your application, like your activities list or your awards and achievements.
What you should do instead is find a very specific moment within your topic, something that only you could write about. Zoom in on something unexpected that happened within the context of basketball. This can be a smaller moment, and in fact, we encourage you to explore smaller moments to start off with. Some of the smallest moments can make the most powerful topics because they make you feel more “human” on paper.
For example — in the basketball context — maybe an older gentleman named Tim unexpectedly joined in a pickup game with you one Saturday afternoon. He couldn’t match the intensity and speed of you and your friends but you found yourself slowing down the game, passing to him even though it came at the expense of your score. You cheered him on when he finally made a basket, and your friends all joined in, helping him create a great memory of the afternoon. Afterwards, he even came back with a box of hot roasted potatoes from the Safeway deli across the street as a token of his appreciation!
This tiny moment has so much potential. It speaks to your powers of observation and empathy: you were first able to notice that Tim was struggling. It speaks to your maturity and your ability to take initiative: you adjusted your behavior to make him more comfortable. It speaks to your ability to lead by example: your friends imitated your behavior, collectively helping create a welcoming, ad-hoc community.
Okay, now what? Should you spend 650 words writing about Tim joining your basketball game? Probably not. But this is a great launching point. Why were you so motivated to encourage and support Tim in the first place? Did you have a negative experience in pickup basketball when you were younger? And what other ways have you taken initiative in building positive, accepting communities? These are the probing questions that we'd ask to help you build a thematically strong and unique narrative.
In its final form, the essay might start by exploring your own challenges playing pickup as a kid, before transitioning to the Tim story to show the initiative that you now take to make your communities more welcoming places. Finally, you could briefly tie in the other communities you’ve had a part in building — from your varsity basketball team, to school clubs, to family. You could even use the potatoes as a hook and conclusion combo.
Suddenly, you’re the student who wrote about “pickup game with the old man and Safeway potatoes”. You’re a community-builder and an athlete with empathy. Can you see how this essay tells a far more dynamic and memorable story than a play-by-play of your championship game?
In Conclusion
We believe each and every student has a story that can set them apart in the admissions office. It’s not always easy to find that story, but with enough probing, you can always find some fantastic options and learn more about yourself in the process.
At Essay Cafe, we have an amazing team of essay consultants from Stanford, UPenn, Columbia, and other top schools. If you’d like professional help brainstorming or improving your essay drafts, book a brainstorm session or essay review with us!
About Kelsey
Kelsey Wang is an essay consultant at Essay Cafe with a B.S. in Data Science and a minor in Creative Writing from Stanford University. She approaches essay editing from both a data perspective (applying successful patterns from hundreds of essays read) and a creative perspective (making each individual student stand out) and has personally helped students get into top schools like Princeton, Yale, Brown, UCLA, Duke, Stanford, Columbia and many more.