<p>^ I don’t know if that’s an overused topic, but it would definitely be easy to start sounding haughty.</p>
<p>So I’m guessing that’s bad toward adcoms…but what if, just out of curiosity, you were a haughty person?</p>
<p>being a karaoke queen and finding my “voice.” NYU was my only reach and i got in.</p>
<p>I wrote about playing Fantasy Football and got into NYU stern</p>
<p>I wrote about how much I suck at bike riding and got into MIT, Columbia with some scholars award, Harvey Mudd, bunch of other places…</p>
<p>I also wrote about the time I pepper sprayed myself for my Swarthmore essay and got an early write there. Hahaha I think that proves that it’s not your essay topic that matters, so much as how you write it…</p>
<p>spazattack, i would just be worried that there’s not enough about you and too much about other ppl in general if you used that topic. (and i guess there is the potential problem of haughtiness/pomposity but i dunno…)</p>
<p>the most effective essays i’ve read are “slice of life” essays, ones that describe a particular incident or facet of life that really describe a person’s characteristics, flaws, tastes, ect. after reading them, even if i didn’t know the person, i felt like i did. the worst ones i’ve read talked about a dramatic incident (and RANTS, those were the worst) and said nothing about the person. i’d say start brain storming and writing down ideas as you go through the day, random things that pop into your mind. that’s what i did lol, wrote about cooking, whistling, tripping over a gravestone, and fighting with my siblings, got into yale, swarthmore, nd, amherst, williams, tufts and bunch of others. good luck. pm me if you want anymore help.</p>
<p>Wrote about my feet & love for walking barefoot and got into my ED school – Wellesley.</p>
<p>Also, it was about 1,018 words long, so don’t worry about the length (although many people may disagree). Just make sure you get your point across clearly and that everything flows.</p>
<p>For realz, my essay came from this thought: “Wait, so what the hell is unique about ME?”</p>
<p>And my first thought: “Shower curtains. I am terrified of closed shower curtains.”</p>
<p>So I wrote about it. And it worked.</p>
<p>The Tucson City Bus System…
I liked it haha.</p>
<p>Lol. Some of the essay topics made me laugh…wish I could read them 
</p>
<p>I proofread most of my friends’ essays, all of which were really nicely written but there was one common theme…there was always an obstacle, and everyone seemed to overcome that and be better for it. Then I looked at my own essay (about a month teaching seventh grade) and the basic angle of that was the same. </p>
<p>In the end, I changed it to reflect the frustrations I felt as a teacher, the problems I think exist in the middle school education system etc. I guess my essays didn’t really reveal much about me, but they did expose some of the things that I think about. I got into all my reach schools except Vanderbilt, where I’m waitlisted :p</p>
<p>For an essay on leaders I wrote about Kurt Cobain and got commended for it! :D</p>
<p>I think you really can write about anything…the only essays I don’t like are the <ahem> verbose, dramatic, overreaching ones…really…But I suppose it has a lot to do with where you’re applying?</ahem></p>
<p>Wow. Some of these essays are really… sketchy…considering they were topics in books like “100 Essays that got into Harvard” …especially the shower curtain/bathroom one. Lame.</p>
<p>I wrote about my Aunt being stung by scorpion and Godzilla, got into Dartmouth, Duke, Stanford, JHU, Cornell, Upenn, Case-western, Rutgers, Northwestern, Harvard,</p>
<p>WL at Princeton, and WashU (***.)</p>
<p>i wrote about 1. not being able to think about something to write about (then realizing you can only realize the significance of things by looking back at them) and 2. getting lost while following mapquest directions (and learning the significance of making your own experiments/trials) both were loosely based on science which was like my focus through HS </p>
<p>got into duke columbia northwestern tufts uchicago emory hopkins nyu (merit scholarship) </p>
<p>rejected/waitlist yale harvard princeton upenn dartmouth brown</p>
<p>I wrote about The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and how it made me examine my own life and my own name.</p>
<p>I wrote about the struggles that the greatest influence in my life had to deal with and how that affected me throughout my life…I got into Princeton Harvard Columbia NYU and Penn to name the top schools…I can’t say that it was because of my essay…however I did receive a direct comment about my essay from and Admissions rep so I’m assuming that it made some impact…</p>
<p>museums.</p>
<p>i got into wellesley.</p>
<p>my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich…which i ate while writing the essay. got me into tufts, which was the only really hard school i applied to</p>
<p>can i write about how school bores the hell out of me?</p>
<p>i wrote about my dad, grandpa, and school…got into MIT, JHU BME, UCSD BME, UT Engineering Honors, Northwestern, Case Western, Cornell, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Notre Dame, and BU</p>
<p>I asked myself the question “how does it feel to be colored me?” off of zora neale hurston’s essay about being a black woman…and I wrote about how purple describes me.</p>