Raising the Stakes: The entire second and third paragraphs, which describe how living without a father meant money was tight. Things improved for a while after his mother remarried, but his stepdad’s chronic alcoholism (raise the stakes) plus a new little brother (raise the stakes again) made things even tougher. As if that weren’t enough, the author raises the stakes even further by revealing that his family was undocumented at the time.
Heads-up: Some people are really good at this—counselors are often great at this—while some folks have a more difficult time. Good news: When you practice the skill of thread-finding, you can become better at it rather quickly.
Pick 10 of your favorite photos or social media posts and write a short paragraph on each one. Why’d you pick these photos? What do they say about you? Then ask yourself, “What are some things these photos have in common?” Bonus points: Can you find one thing that connects all of them?
Effects: Author and his brother shared the mental strain, father was arrested, funds were tight, mom worked two jobs, brothers took care of one another, they kept to themselves when dealing with financial and medical issues, avoided going on certain school trips, at times author was discouraged from meeting new people, grades started to slip
Narrative Structure
If you’re writing a “Why I want to be an engineer” essay, for example, what 3-5 common “engineering” values might other students have mentioned in connection with engineering? Use the Values Exercise for ideas.
You’ll find some here, here, and here. While you may be tempted to steal those thematic threads, don’t. Try finding your own. Have the courage to be original. You can do it.
I’ve been known to have terrible spatial awareness despite being a dancer. Just last week, my shoelace got caught in an escalator and I tripped about 20 people.
The final third contains lessons and insights she learned through those actions, reflecting on how her experiences have shaped her. (Again, with the caveat that What She Did and What She Learned are somewhat interwoven, and yours likely will be as well. But the middle third is more heavily focused on actions, and the final third more heavily focused on insight.)
Your essay can be the difference between an acceptance and rejection — it allows you to stand out from the rest of applicants with similar profiles. Get a free peer review or review other students’ essays right now to understand the strength of your essay.
- What’s the last news story you read and found interesting? This question can help you identify an issue that you are passionate about or a cause that matters a lot to you.
- What is your proudest accomplishment so far? What about it makes you feel proud? This question can reveal what you consider most important about yourself and what you want colleges to know about you.
- When have you been the most nervous, and why were you nervous? What was the outcome of the situation? This could cover anything from an important performance to a big test to standing up for an issue you care about.
- What’s the most recent topic you researched on your own just for fun or self-improvement? Have you found yourself in a downward spiral of reading Wikipedia articles recently? Colleges would love to know what you found so fascinating and why.
- What have you learned from the community you grew up in? What do you value about that community? This topic can not only make for an interesting essay, but can also give colleges some valuable background information about you.
- When have you most recently changed your mind about something important? This topic will not only allow you to talk about an issue about which you have strong feelings, but will also allow you to present a narrative of growth about how you became the person you are today.
Your essay can be the difference between an acceptance and rejection — it allows you to stand out from the rest of applicants with similar profiles. Get a free peer review or review other students’ essays right now to understand the strength of your essay.
In addition, you should be aware that under certain circumstances, colleges may be required to report certain crimes, such as child abuse, if they are divulged in an essay or elsewhere in the application. See our post on Notre Dame University for an example of one such policy.
Does your Common App essay actually stand out?
While writing your essay on an unusual topic may make you stand out to some extent in the applicant pool, college admissions isn’t simply a contest where the person who has had the most exciting experiences wins. In fact, even if you have had an extraordinary experience, you may not want to make it the topic of your college essay if it doesn’t fit the prompt or reveal much of significance about you.
If your essay topic doesn’t have to be an unusual or exceptional experience you’ve had, then what can it be? The most general answer to that question is that your essay can be about almost anything, as long as it fits the prompt you’ve chosen or been given.
You should also avoid essay topics that involve obscene language, illegal activities, violence, or graphic subjects. While writing a strong essay about one of these topics may be theoretically possible, it’s extremely difficult, and attempting to do so is generally not successful. If you’re considering writing about anything that could be considered controversial, keep in mind that the people reading your application may very well disagree with you completely, so don’t make personal attacks on or assumptions about those with different opinions.
Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire.
“Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?”
That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.
Currently, the Common Application asks students to answer the following prompt in 650 words or less:
Tips for Writing an Essay About Overcoming Challenges
“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?”
The “Overcoming Challenges” essay can be especially, well, challenging, as you want to strike a balance between explaining the challenge, and showing how you grew from it. It’s important to avoid writing in a tone that may come off as gloomy or whiny.
Essays account for around 25% of your admissions decision, as they’re your chance to humanize your application and set yourself apart from other applicants with strong profiles.
Students often assume the Overcoming Challenges essay requires them to detail past traumas. While you can certainly write about an experience that’s had a profound effect on your life, it’s important to remember that colleges aren’t evaluating students based on the seriousness of the obstacle they overcame. On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task.
A college application essay is basically a glimpse into how your mind works and how you view the world. If you want your essay to be credible, you need to make sure everything you write supports that viewpoint. Spend some time figuring out how the essay question relates to your personal qualities and then write from a specific angle.
After you’ve read through the instructions a few times and gathered your notes, you can start creating an outline to organize your essay and decide what message you want to send. Now you're ready to write your first draft.
You will have a maximum number of words, so the secret is not to try to cover everything in your essay. Create a plan before you actually start writing, organize your essay in three parts (introduction, body and conclusion), and decide on the main ideas you want to express.
They say starting the essay is the hardest part. You may think it’s redundant to mention that you need to read the instructions carefully, but with all the excitement and stress that characterizes this period of your life, it needs to be highlighted.
5. Give good examples to support your ideas
If you don’t follow the application essay guidelines, the admissions officer may assume that you won’t be able to follow the directions of the university’s program. Page and word limits are mentioned for a reason and you must be able to organize your submission by following the rules.
The application essay is your opportunity to impress an admissions officer with your determination and existing knowledge of your chosen subject. Make sure it reflects all of your skills and ambitions, and show how your chosen program will help you achieve future goals.
Universities are looking for authenticity and quality of thinking, so don’t try to shape your essay around phrases or ideas that people have used many times before, but base it on your genuine beliefs.
However, if you are the type of person who likes to start with the don’ts, check out our blog post on How Not to Write a University Application Essay.
While there aren’t many hard-and-fast rules for choosing an essay topic, students should avoid topics considered commonplace or banal. Experiences like struggling to pass a class or winning a tough soccer game are typical enough that admissions officers have likely read numerous essays on the subject. Similarly, students may not want to write about an obstacle that adcoms could perceive as low stakes, such as getting into a quickly-resolved fight with your friend. If you do choose a challenge that is a bit more everyday, it should be a tool to explain a larger aspect of your life and personality.
You can also choose a challenge that can be narrated in the moment, such as being put on the spot to teach a yoga class. These challenges can make particularly engaging essays, as you get to experience the writer’s thoughts and emotions as they unfold.
Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire.
Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses.
Sample Prompts of “Overcoming Challenges” Essays
Your essay can be the difference between an acceptance and rejection — it allows you to stand out from the rest of applicants with similar profiles. Get a free peer review or review other students’ essays right now to understand the strength of your essay.
The “Overcoming Challenges” essay can be especially, well, challenging, as you want to strike a balance between explaining the challenge, and showing how you grew from it. It’s important to avoid writing in a tone that may come off as gloomy or whiny.
“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?”