Essay Topic

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

Hey everyone!

I hope that this is the correct forum to be posting this in… I continually hear about a need to have your application essay stand out a great deal.

For a long time I’ve always been told to write about my father, perseverance, independence, etc., because he left when I was six, moved to Mexico, and I see him maybe once a year. He’s really nomadic, downright bizarre, and incredibly mentally unstable.

However my mother is imploring me to consider a very different story about my youth for a college essay; when I was in middle school, I bought baby chickens for Easter. We ended up building a chicken coop and deciding to keep the birds, and I really really liked having chickens around. Unfortunately they were illegal in my neighborhood and were taken from us, but I, at the age of 11, decided to hijack an HOA meeting with a petition I had gotten over half the neighborhood to sign, asking for the legalization of chickens. It worked, surprisingly.

Can anyone give me any insight about which one would be a better or more alluring story to a college admissions officer?

2

This may be obvious, but I’ll state it anyway. The essay needs to be about you.

NOT about your father (although how your family situation has influenced/shaped/made you who you are could work…again, just be very careful that you’re not spending a lot of your essay describing those other people. To repeat: it needs to be about YOU.)

It also needs to be about who you are NOW. Not who you were when you were 10 or 11. The chicken/HOA story could be a great jumping off point for revealing the early makings of who you are now - for example if you can connect it to a current interest in government or law, or more recent “activism”. How did your interest/activity continue, or was it re-ignited at some later time?..etc.

3

The essay should be about you, so I wouldn’t talk about your father- but maybe the impact it has had on you and how it has made you the person you are today? Since with the chicken story- it has to relate to who you are now, as you are applying to colleges.