Whether you’re prompted to write about a formative experience, why you think you’d be a good fit for the university or about a person who has influenced you greatly, answer the question honestly. Don’t just write what you think the admissions office wants to hear. Very often they are inundated with essays that cater to “what they want to hear,” making such essays exactly what they don’t want to hear.
Take a notebook and write a page or two on each of your possible subjects. Which ones felt easiest to write? Where were the ideas pouring out and where were they feeling stuck? Let this exercise be the compass that points you in the direction of your topic.
Make an outline in three sections with horizontal lines. The top section is your introduction, the middle section is the body, and the lower section is the conclusion. Write bullet points for what you want to include in each section.
Once you have a revised draft of your college essay, call in your friends and family to take a look. Have them give you comments and encourage them to be honest.
A step by step guide to writing a great college essay
An introduction like this is colorful and intriguing. It gives the reader a sense of expectation and excitement, without giving too much away from the beginning.
The conclusion finishes off the whole essay by nodding towards what came before without being repetitive and summarizing the takeaway.
As you put together your final draft, make use of the resources at your disposal.
Your job, if you’ve started this early, is not to start writing your draft immediately, or even to choose which Common App prompt you plan to select. First, you’re going to freewrite using the above prompts as a guide—choose the ones you like, or print them out, cut them up, and put them in a hat
What values did you grow up holding dear? Are they the same ones today? Tell the story of the first time you learned about these values—say, a morning at Sunday School or a conversation with a grandparent. If they’ve changed, tell the story of the moment (as best you can place it) when they changed—say, in a classroom, in a conversation with a friend, etc.
Prompt 3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Last week of October: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)
What are these mystical college essays, anyway?
Prompt 2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Review the Common App prompts and identify which ones get your juices flowing. You can also use our expanded prompts, given in the bulletpoints below, to help you brainstorm and freewrite over the summer. We’re starting with Common App Essay Prompt 7, since it is the broad, general question. Then we’ll circle back and go through Prompts 1–6.
2. Tension, conflict, and opportunity to show growth. Josh might write a lovely reflection on how close he and his brother were, or how much he likes his little sister—but that doesn’t give the admissions committee much to work with. Why? Because your topic needs to display your ability to grow and show change over a period of time. If Josh has always had a perfect relationship with his sister, well—first, no one will believe that, and second, Josh is not really telling a story.
Why? Take the cartoonist Lynda Barry’s wise words here: “There is a kind of story that comes from hand. Writing which is different from a tapping-on-a-keyboard-kind-of-story. For one thing, there is no delete button, making the experience more lifelike right away. You can’t delete the things you feel unsure about and because of this, the things you feel unsure about have a much better chance of being able to exist long enough to reveal themselves.”
In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.
You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.
Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.
The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction. It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.
Checklist: Essay introduction
I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.
When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion, you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.
- It gives your writing direction and focus.
- It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.
This introduction to a literary analysis essay, about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.
Your essay may be the ultimate product, but before you start worrying about the final edition you’ll send off to colleges, take some time to work on the process. Free-writing will help you hone your skills and practice for the real thing.
Once you have a revised draft of your college essay, call in your friends and family to take a look. Have them give you comments and encourage them to be honest.
Take a notebook and write a page or two on each of your possible subjects. Which ones felt easiest to write? Where were the ideas pouring out and where were they feeling stuck? Let this exercise be the compass that points you in the direction of your topic.
The introduction needs to set up the whole essay. It should establish for the reader a sense of expectation for what’s to come without giving it all away.
A step by step guide to writing a great college essay
Next, be original. I don’t think that originality should come at the expense of honesty. If you’re worried that your essay topic is a bit run-of-the-mill, you have two options. The first is to find another topic that feels authentic to you. The second is to find a unique angle within the topic.
The body is for your main points and narrative. The outline is not for writing perfect sentences but rather for putting your ideas in the right sequence. Make sure you arrange your thoughts so that they make sense and lead one into the other.
The third might then provide an end to the essay’s narrative frame: the encounter with the lion.
- The best thing you have learned in your school years.
- Difficulties a single parent faces in life
- A special family tradition
- An argument with a close friend
- The first time you were a helping hand to someone
- Your motivation in life
- A day with your family you can’t forget.
- Your first video game experience ever
- A great personality
- Your personal experience with siblings
- Your favorite perfume
- A necklace you lost in a hurry
- A boating experience
- A train ride that went bad
- A visit to the hospital
- A construction experience that you will always remember
- A business you always wanted to start for yourself
- Your favorite childhood cartoon show
- The seven wonders of the world, and you
- A visit to the moon and the stars
- The most important principle you live by
- Something that annoys you to your core
- An encounter with a feminist
- Your best survival strategies that have kept you going
- How did you counter depression?
- The art of learning to control your anger
- An encounter with a stand-up comedian
- Your last day at high school
- An impactful act that you made in someone’s life
- Something that makes you feel good
- The time when you cried yourself to sleep
- An unconscious move that you regret
- The best reflection of your life
- A momentary lapse in the worst habit you had
- One thing you would change about yourself
- How to keep moving against the odds of life
- The worst struggle you have had to go through
- Reasons why you look at online reviews and trust them blindly
- The need to have perfect bodies is a farce
- A lie that got you in trouble for a long time.
When you are thinking of a topic for a narrative essay, make sure you consider the following topics:
- An act of kindness you can’t ever forget
- A good deed
- A saddening experience
- How much do you love your parents?
- My first pet
- My favorite school teacher
- The worst subject I’ve ever studied
- A heartbreaking demise
- A conflict with my sister
- The most hurtful statement someone has made about you
- A day you with you slept through
- An animal you could be
- If you had nine lives, what would you do in them?
- A lousy game
- A painting that calls out to you
- Give yourself a break from the hustle-bustle of life
- An imaginary friend you would want
- A spaceship you wanted as a child
- Your first helicopter ride
- The first time you went to an airport alone
Narrative Essay Topics for Grade 9
- The time when you made a difficult decision
- Why is French a beautiful language?
- Academic pressure can result in a higher rate of suicide attempts.
- A time when you were quick to judge someone and turned out to be wrong
- A historic event that you will never forget
- The time when you ended up breaking a bone
- Your first vacation away from home
- Your role model let you down
- A serious misunderstanding that caused much trouble
- Share your personal experience as a rebel against your elders
- Your ambition in life
- A day as a shopaholic
- The biggest confession ever
- The first time you tried to clean your house
- A party that distracted you from your goals
- A ray of hope
- The downfall of the century
- War is detrimental for the world
- A career as a comedian is fun and profitable
- Ways to help yourself grow
How can we forget grade 6 when it comes to topics for writing a narrative essay?
Personal narrative essays are easier to write because they’re related to your personal experiences