Essays that should be avoided at any cost or chance, those that would make a member of an admissions committee cringe.
I’m just curious 
My trip to a third world country around the world and in that short time how it changed my perspective of the world.
Death of a relative/dog. The big sports game.
Your struggle against long term depression/mental illness.
Your passion for video games. Not making video games- playing them.
Don’t write an essay for UChicago explaining why you want you love Evanston.
“Death of a relative/dog. The big sports game.”
Really… Cringe if you write about the death of a parent, which has changed you forever?
I would think writing about supporting blatant racists or racist groups would be taboo. Like KKK or something like that
On the flip side, reworking a UChicago essay for any other college. For admissions officers, UChicago prompts are like the Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog for other people. You can be sure that AO’s have those prompts memorized and will see a retread from a mile away.
My first kiss.
What about making (insert relative) proud?
My meaningful conversation with my heroic cancer-stricken relative just before I hit the winning shot in the basketball tournament despite my suffering from bone chips, a migraine, and early onset hair loss. These heroics were witnessed via video by the people whose lives I personally changed during my one week high school trip to an impoverished area, and seeing this changed their lives yet again.
I read an essay once in an application for grad school in which the student wrote about how she used to have sex with lots of guys. Then her mom said, “Why are you doing this?” and stopping to think about the answer changed the student’s life forever.
Imho, with the direction that video games have gone, I think in certain, extremely rare cases (ie professional gamers for things like League of Legends, DOTA II, the esports scene basically) that a video game-playing essay could be pulled off as its a unique topic that very few people can claim to have experience with.