There were a few college reps at a high school event recently and they told us about some college essays which stood out to them. Some of the ones they mentioned:
-one guy wrote about how great it would for Taylor Swift if she dated him
-one student wrote about 12 Reasons he/she would survive the Hunger Games
This was surprising to me.
What did your child write about in his/her essay?
Oh, i have strong feelings about this! (as a parent and also as a person here at CC who has volunteered to reach a bunch of these)…in a nutshell, i simply think the essay needs to 1) hold the attention of the poor ad-com who has already read 150 essays that day and 2) be well-written. If there are truly remarkable academic, etc. achievements, yes, talk about them…but otherwise…i’d recommend a strong overall essay…and then use the specific prompts “Why Princeton” to get into the heavy-lifting academic/awards/aspirations.
In my D’s case, she wrote about adopting a cat from the humane society…and it got her into uchicago, tufts, BU, Unc-chapel hill and a handful of others…
My younger kid had two essays. The one that got him into U of Chicago and rejected from Georgetown was a story imagining himself as the designer of a green skyscraper. (The UC prompt was “How did you get caught?” - he used a little twist so the last line of the story was “So did you catch me?”) He knew it was a super risky essay for G, but figured it was such a long shot that he would stand out more as a creative weirdo than writing the policy position paper that they asked for.
For every one else his essay was about teaching himself origami from youtube videos. He ended that one with a bit of a joke about his regrets at not paying more attention when he was in Japan as a kid at origami paper museum and getting impatient with his mother.
His “Why ___ college?” essays were all pretty tongue in cheek. Several began with all the reasons he didn’t like the college at first, but then discovered the good points. It was a bit formulaic, but fun to write. His “Why Tufts” essay (which was only allowed 50 words that year) talked about the chalk on the sidewalks. He figured everyone else would be writing about IR and Boston. There was an optional essay that year where he wrote an alternative history of the USA and showed some of his history/creative writing chops.
My older son sent the same essay to everyone. He wrote a computer program that combined phrases from all the sample essays on the internet. He started with a few lines of the result. Then wrote. “Well may be not”. Then went on to write about how he’d rather write a computer program than write an essay and how his family and school had allowed him to explore programming in great depth, though not enough to write a truly successful essay writing program. Hence the need to go to ___ college. It wasn’t a great essay, but pretty good for an engineer I thought.
@southernhope and @mathmom what great ideas for essays! The college reps did mention that they read so many essays about how a trip to Europe (or something similar) changed the student’s life. My son has a few months before he has to think about essays, but I will show him this thread so he know he can go outside of the box!
I love some of the ideas the reps shared. They showed true creativity.
D. wrote about her starting a sport varsity team at he HS. She was a one person team (registered with the sate) for one year, then it was 4 of them. D’s essay was NOT an important factor in her admission.
@miamidap How do you know the essay wasn’t an important factor in her admission? I’m coming at this from the a newbie perspective.
DD wrote about creating an activity at her HS…from the idea to the actual inception of the activity. She only applied to a few colleges, and she had handwritten notes about her essay on three of her acceptance letters.
My S wrote about how he feels when he is sailing solo. I never read it until after he submitted it and was accepted at all his schools. I found it in a pile of college stuff I was sorting through to throw out. He told me he wrote it in 15 minutes. If I had seen it before I probably would have suggested changes and ruined it - so I am glad I didn’t until after all was said and done.
I didn’t read any of his “Why_____College” or any of the other supplemental essays.
My son wrote about solving the Rubik’s cube blindfolded.
I like the “surviving the Hunger Games” idea mentioned by OP. I can see how that would give the student an opportunity to talk about him/her qualities in an interesting way.
These are all such creative ideas! I can see why the students stood out.
One wrote about a common but somewhat dated household object, and what using it said about him and how he approached life.
In one of D1’s essays, she tied together her favorite movie (“Titanic”) and her hobby/love/job, horseback riding. D2 wrote about singing in the car; she thinks she does not have a good singing voice and so singing along to the radio when friends were along was a big step for her in lowering her guard.
At a uPenn talk i attended, one successful applicant wrote about two grocery stores in her neighborhood…one had a line that said “10 or fewer items” and the other said “10 or less items” and she found herself unable to shop at the latter.
As someone who reads college essays for a living, 
, I have to mention that the common app currently gives 5 essay prompts which the student can choose from. They get to choose one and frankly, I’m not sure how any of the essays mentioned would fit into any of the prompts! They all sound very interesting though.
D’s Common app essay was about adjusting to a new home life after her mom had a stroke.That essay had good use of humor and things turned out fine in the end. Her Georgetown SFS essay (the best of her submissions) was about the need for development assistance rather than military aid in the Sahel region of Africa… This is the conclusion to that essay:
“To truly benefit the Sahel and its people, the world needs to realize that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was right when he said, 'We can’t stop with a single terrorist or organization; we have to root out the system. We have to go after poverty.” Helicopters cannot grow crops, F-22 Raptors cannot educate children, and no matter how many we send, M-16s cannot shoot people to prosperity. Violence won’t stop terrorism. If we are serious about making people’s lives longer and better, and I mean more than just politically serious – really serious – we need to realize that militarizing an already militarized region just doesn’t make sense. If we are serious, we will put our funds, efforts, and hopes to better use. We will invest in development, not war"
I believe it was very instrumental in her acceptance.
Back in the good old days, one of the Common App choices was “create your own prompt”. I don’t know why they got rid of it. At least one admissions officer told a group she enjoyed those essays much more than the ones that answered the prompt.
Here’s what my sil (Phd candidate in English at the time) told my older son which I thought was a helpful way to think of these essays. She said, there’s the prompt and there’s the agenda. The prompt is the question they ask. You have to appear to answer that, but the agenda is much more important. The agenda is giving the admissions officers some insight into what makes you tick, what type of a person you are. For my kids it was easier to write the essays they wanted to write and then adjust the intro to make it appear they were responding to the prompt.
One essay my younger son wrote didn’t work at all as a main essay, but it ended up being a very good answer to “What was your favorite EC and why” prompt.
My older son’s essay was in answer to an MIT prompt that asked how you were influence by your environment I think.
@momof3sons All of the"help" books say that it does not matter what the prompt is. That all prompts mean only one thing: tell us about yourself. They claim any essay that shows who you are in some way can fit under those prompts. I d love to hear your opinion about that.
Here are the current essay prompts for the Common app:
2015-16 Common Application Essay Prompts
We are pleased to share the 2015-2016 Essay Prompts with you. New language appears in italics:
Well, my D wrote about writing her first extensive research paper and my S wrote about finding a book on his bookshelf…both were targeted at the then available “Topic of your Choice.” in today’s world, I suspect she would have tweaked her essay to respond to prompt #5 and his would have targeted #1. Reality is, I believe the story is key and most essays can be made to fit one of these prompts if they achieve the desired goal, which is to present an interesting person who will add something to the campus.