It’s almost the end of summer, and if you’re a high school senior, you’re probably working on your Common App personal statement. Using advice from our team of former admissions officers, we have put together a list of common mistakes to keep in mind as you brainstorm topics and figure out how to tell the story that best captures who you are and what makes you unique.
When writing your Common App essay, remember that admissions officers will be looking at a lot of different parts of your application. You shouldn’t feel the pressure to write about everything in one place. Your main essay is not a resumé. Plus, there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss topics such as your academic interests, extracurricular achievements, and competitions you’ve won through your supplemental essays, activities list, honors section, and more.. Colleges often use supplemental essays specifically to ask you about your choice of major and places where you’ve made an impact. So, save some of your best anecdotes for those parts of the college application.
Definitely avoid topics that are overly done—essays about a sport, sports-related injury, or failed audition are fairly common among college applicants, especially if they don’t tell a deeper story about you. You can look up a list of examples of common essay topics and make sure your response doesn’t play into any tropes. Your personal statement should make you memorable, so think about what might be a story only you can tell,and ask yourself how you can stand out from others before sitting down to write the essay.
You’ll also want to avoid focusing the majority of your essay on other people. Our counselors have encountered applications where students have dedicated an excessive amount of space in their essays to talking about a grandparent, friend, or sibling. This response should be a place to highlight your strengths—make sure you’re not bragging so much about someone else that the admissions officers want to admit them instead!
Sometimes students feel like in order to capture a unique story or write a meaningful essay, they have to trauma dump—i.e., lay out the details of something really bad that happened—in order to stand out. It’s not wrong, per se, to write about a difficult experience, but you don’t have to. If you do, the focus should be on how you overcame it and what you’ve done since then that’s informed your experience. Show that you can go through difficult circumstances and turn those struggles into something positive and productive.
Admissions officers also don’t expect your personal statement to highlight an experience that has changed the world. Sometimes students feel like they might have to climb Mount Everest or find a cure for a terminal illness in order to write a unique essay. Remember, you’re only 17 or 18. Very few people much older than you have done those things! Colleges want to hear about something important and meaningful that you can reflect on personally. Your story also doesn’t have to be on a global scale—small-scale community impact matters too.
Your Common App essay should not highlight a time before high school. Of course, you can talk about something that happened in childhood or middle school, but the majority of the response should cover who you are now, even if it is as a result of something that happened earlier on. The rest of your application also covers achievements and involvements from 9th grade onwards, so keep your essay focused on that part of your life too.
Avoid any creative approaches to your essay. Keep it straightforward, because these essays get read very quickly. Don’t make the admissions officer hunt to get to the key point! Make sure it’s clear what you’re trying to say about yourself in your essay.
Don’t try to edit your essay immediately after writing it—avoid “finishing” it in one day, or calling your first draft your last draft. Take time away from your essay between edits. Take a shower or walk around the neighborhood. At most, take a couple days—whatever you have time for—but let your eyes be fresh when you come back to that page. This is especially helpful when you’re feeling like you’re getting towards a final draft. Read it out loud can also help you catch an awkward turn of phrase or some other small mistake you didn’t notice while it was strictly on the page.
An essay that truly reveals your personality and what you value will help differentiate you from students who might otherwise look similar in terms of grades and test scores. Use it as an opportunity to showcase why you’re an exemplary student that colleges strive for, and write a response that showcases your best self.
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