brainstorming ideas for college essays

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December 3, 2020

Academic Writing Tip: 8 Brainstorming Techniques

So, you’ve read and re-read the academic writing assignment that you received from your professor, and now you’re staring at a blank page.

Does your mind feel as blank as the page? Are you Frozen by fear? Rubbing your eyes with exhaustion?

Whether you’re writing an essay for a community college in Boston, Massachusetts or a university in New England, USA, you need to start somewhere. Brainstorming means you use your imagination and prior knowledge to collect thoughts. After gathering a great quantity of ideas, you select the highest quality ideas.

Filling that empty white document can feel like leaping into unknown icy water. Brainstorming is the way to warm up for a deep dive into the EAP topic.

Brainstorming begins with simple questions. What do you know about the topic? What do you want to learn about the topic?

As you brainstorm, you journey farther down the academic writing quest. How do you narrow down a topic into a thesis? How do you gather the examples and evidence necessary for an academic essay?

Here are EAP brainstorming strategies to jumpstart the engine of your creativity.

Brainstorming tip #1: Freewriting

Do you have no ideas? Or the opposite problem—too many ideas?

Freewriting means what it sounds like—you’re free to write whatever comes to mind. The point is not to make it perfect—not even necessarily to make it good—but just to put thoughts on paper—no rules, no revising. You can even write about how you don’t know what to write about.

The only limit you should set for yourself is that you write for a specific period of time—let’s say 30 minutes—or for a specific number of pages—let’s say 2 pages. Non-stop activity gets the juices flowing, and a concrete goal gives you satisfaction. Here’s an example of freewriting:

This essay is supposed to be about the Boston Tea Party but I don’t know anything about US history except that the American Revolution happened a long time ago (when???) somewhere in Massachusetts or maybe I’m wrong. I can’t think of anything else to say and now the clock says two minutes, I’ll keep babbling anyway. Boston, MA, politics, tea. My grandmother used to make tea when I stopped by after my English courses. But that’s not useful for this essay. Or maybe there’s a connection. Hmmm… I remember the professor talked about the taxes in the New English states (colonies?) and my grandmother used to complain about paying high taxes at the market and…

Freewriting stimulates your brain the same way physical exercise wakes up your mind.

Brainstorming tip #2: Making a Cube

Draw a cube in your notebook. Each of the six sides has a task:

Side 2: Compare the topic.

Side 3: Connect the topic.

Side 4: Classify the topic.

Side 5: Argue for or against the topic.

Side 6: Personalize the topic.

Instead of those 6 tasks, you could replace those verbs with other academic tasks: apply, analyze, question, connect, define, classify, associate, or explain cause and effect—whichever inspire ideas.

Imagine your topic is attending university in the U.S. Next to each point on the cube, you would write words and phrases inspired by the verb at hand:

Side 1: Describe: Exciting, difficult, expensive, growing opportunities, expensive, valuable.

Side 2: Compare: Different from my country. USA = more essay writing, dorms with roommates, critical thinking, fewer standardized exams and lectures, smaller classes.

Side 3: Connect: student visa policies, US immigration law, IELTS, TOEFL iBT, travel restrictions from covid-19, globalization means more English at work.

Side 4: Classify: community colleges (Holyoke, Greenfield), state universities (UMASS Boston), private ivy league (Harvard) graduate schools, MBA, BA, MFA programs.  

Side 5: Argue for : opens doors, better jobs, international workplace, investment in future, social networking, broadens horizons.

Side 6: Personalize: my cousin > engineering degree, MIT internship, campus resources help with culture shock (which worries me.) IELTS stresses me out!!!!  Way to avoid?

This brainy approach works if you like approaching topics from different angles.

Brainstorming tip #3: Clustering

When you cluster, you draw bubbles and connect words and concepts associated with the topic—anything that comes to mind.

This visual method works when you have a lot of random thoughts and you are trying to “see” connections.

Brainstorming tip #4: Bulleting

With this technique, you make bulleted lists with concepts, terms, and ideas. This can help you narrow down from the first list to a second list. The list on the left contains general bullet points, while the list on the right expands on a single bullet to delve deeper.

This method works great if you’re an orderly person who likes making lists.

Brainstorming tip #5: Venn Diagram

  The famous Venn diagram technique works well for brainstorming differences and similarities between two topics. You draw two intersecting circles and write the qualities they share in the middle where the circles intersect and the qualities that are unique in the left and right spaces. For example, let’s say you’re brainstorming differences and similarities between two cities in Massachusetts, Boston and Northampton.

This famous brainstorming method is used in the academic and business worlds because it so clearly shows differences and similarities.

To analyze relationships among three topics, you can make a Venn diagram with three circles. The 3-circle helps visualize and understand complex connections. You brainstorm three basic questions. Which qualities are unique to each? Which traits do any two topics have in common? Which similarities are shared by all three topics?

Brainstorming tip #6: Tree diagram

Imagine you’re brainstorming different types of schools in US higher education.

Tree diagrams are perfect for brainstorming classification essays. You could also draw tree diagrams to brainstorm effects, starting with a cause at the top and branching off into increasingly specific downstream effects. Pretty cool, huh?

Brainstorming tip #7: Journalist Dice

Dice aren’t just toys for games and gambling–they can be a tool for writing. Rolling journalist dice is a stimulating way to flesh out narrative essays. Each side of the die corresponds to one of the 6 question words. To make the game fun, roll a die, and write down one answer the question every time you roll. Roll at least a dozen times to write down a variety of details and ideas.

In addition to building a narrative essay, this brainstorming technique can help you develop a compelling story for your college application essay. For the tired and uninspired writer, the game element of rolling dice makes the writing process more engaging and enjoyable. 

Brainstorming tip #8: T diagram

This method works well if you like thinking in terms of opposites.  Can you say “On the one hand” and “On the other hand”? 

What’s next in the writing process?

After your fast and furious brainstorm, the next step is to create an outline. When you outline, you pick your best and brightest ideas. Then you begin organizing them into a coherent, linear argument. You select and sort supporting points, evidence, examples, and elaboration. To learn more about outlining, click here for the next article in our academic writing series. 

The best way to improve your writing is to join an academic or business English course. With guidance from an expert instructor and feedback from a community of peers, you can master the art of academic writing.

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• Academic Writing Tip: Making an Outline

Brainstorming

What this handout is about.

This handout discusses techniques that will help you start writing a paper and continue writing through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help you choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic’s potential.

Introduction

If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain’s energies into a “storm,” you can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm.

Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help you to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project that hasn’t reached completion. Let’s take a look at each case:

When you’ve got nothing: You might need a storm to approach when you feel “blank” about the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of anxiety about the topic, or just too tired to craft an orderly outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs up the dust, whips some air into our stilled pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.

When you’ve got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain and need to bring in some conscious order. In this case, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you some concrete words or schemas that you can then arrange according to their logical relations.

Brainstorming techniques

What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time brainstorming about…well, how to brainstorm.

Try out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on; some techniques might suit a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment better than others. If the technique you try first doesn’t seem to help you, move right along and try some others.

Freewriting

When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing down whatever comes into your mind. You don’t judge the quality of what you write and you don’t worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you can’t think of what to say, you write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write if you were being too self-conscious.

When you freewrite you can set a time limit (“I’ll write for 15 minutes!”) and even use a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit (“I’ll write until I fill four full notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!”) and just write until you reach that goal. You might do this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.

The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:

“This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to all the lectures and read the book I can’t think of what to say and I’ve felt this way for four minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I’ll keep thinking nothing during every minute but I’m not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don’t know what else to say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather’s study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn’t farm tobacco…”

When you’re done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read back over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste them into your draft or onto an “ideas” sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if you don’t find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic.

Break down the topic into levels

Once you have a course assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:

• the general topic, like “The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers”
• a specific subtopic or required question, like “How did the availability of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?”
• a single term or phrase that you sense you’re overusing in the paper. For example: If you see that you’ve written “increased the competition” about a dozen times in your “tropical fruits” paper, you could brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main terms: “increased” and “competition.”

Listing/bulleting

In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. You can base your list on:

• the general topic
• one or more words from your particular thesis claim
• a word or idea that is the complete opposite of your original word or idea.

For example, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time, and your specific thesis claims that “the 20th century presented a large number of inventions to advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century society,” you could brainstorm two different lists to ensure you are covering the topic thoroughly and that your thesis will be easy to prove.

The first list might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on society. The second list might be based on the opposite claim, and you would instead jot down inventions that you associate with a decline in that society’s quality. You could do the same two lists for 19th-century inventions and then compare the evidence from all four lists.

Using multiple lists will help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, sure enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you’d better alter your claim to one you can prove.

3 perspectives

Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completely—or at least in a completely different way, sort of like laying on the floor makes your desk look very different to you. To use this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives, then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore:

• Describe it: Describe your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your subject from those that are similar to it. How is your subject unlike others?
• Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has it changed over time? Why? What are the significant events that have influenced your subject?
• Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How? What does it influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields do you draw on for the study of your subject? Why? How has your subject been approached by others? How is their work related to yours?

Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is six-sided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six “sides” or approaches to the topic. Take a sheet of paper, consider your topic, and respond to these six commands:

• Describe it.
• Compare it.
• Associate it.
• Analyze it.
• Argue for and against it.

Look over what you’ve written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your topic? What interactions do you notice among the “sides”? That is, do you see patterns repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis? Does one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side help you draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a way that serves your topic. It should, at least, give you a broader awareness of the topic’s complexities, if not a sharper focus on what you will do with it.

In this technique, complete the following sentence:

____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.

In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then try to brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second blank, writing them down as you come up with them.

After you have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come forward? What patterns or associations do you find?

Clustering/mapping/webbing:

The general idea:

This technique has three (or more) different names, according to how you describe the activity itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together into a sort of “map” or “web” that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start with chaos. After the chaos subsides, you will be able to create some order out of it.

To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or tape two pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you are working with a group of people. This big vertical space allows all members room to “storm” at the same time, but you might have to copy down the results onto paper later. If you don’t have big paper at the moment, don’t worry. You can do this on an 8 ½ by 11 as well. Watch our short videos on webbing , drawing relationships , and color coding for demonstrations.

How to do it:

• Take your sheet(s) of paper and write your main topic in the center, using a word or two or three.
• Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way you are driven to fill it, start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or terms as you can associate with the central topic. Jot them quickly, move into another space, jot some more down, move to another blank, and just keep moving around and jotting. If you run out of similar concepts, jot down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down your grandpa’s name, but try to keep moving and associating. Don’t worry about the (lack of) sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
• Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, you can start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and then draw a line connecting the circles. Find some more and circle them and draw more lines to connect them with what you think is closely related. When you run out of terms that associate, start with another term. Look for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and then link them with a connecting line. Continue this process until you have found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might end up uncircled, but these “loners” can also be useful to you. (Note: You can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If that’s not possible, try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to see what goes with what.)
• There! When you stand back and survey your work, you should see a set of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this point you can start to form conclusions about how to approach your topic. There are about as many possible results to this activity as there are stars in the night sky, so what you do from here will depend on your particular results. Let’s take an example or two in order to illustrate how you might form some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you’ve decided to keep. At the end of the day, what you do with the particular “map” or “cluster set” or “web” that you produce depends on what you need. What does this map or web tell you to do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!

Relationship between the parts

In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of one sheet of paper:

Looking over these four groups of pairs, start to fill in your ideas below each heading. Keep going down through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that comprise the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions can you draw according to the patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see? For a related strategy, watch our short video on drawing relationships .

Journalistic questions

In this technique you would use the “big six” questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also record yourself or use speech-to-text if you’d rather talk out your ideas.

Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth and content? Was there one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness help you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might it reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or further note-taking?

For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more about “where” and “why” something happened than you know about “what” and “when,” how could you use this lack of balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might you organize your paper so that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the field of study? What else might you do with your results?

Thinking outside the box

Even when you are writing within a particular academic discipline, you can take advantage of your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Let’s say you are writing a paper for an English course. You could ask yourself, “Hmmm, if I were writing about this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history course, how might I see or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer point of view?”

For example, when discussing “culture” in your English, communications, or cultural studies course, you could incorporate the definition of “culture” that is frequently used in the biological sciences. Remember those little Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those dishes are used to “culture” substances for bacterial growth and analysis, right? How might it help you write your paper if you thought of “culture” as a medium upon which certain things will grow, will develop in new ways or will even flourish beyond expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly altered, or stopped altogether?

Using charts or shapes

If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists or phrases as you try to shape or explore an idea. You could use the same phrases or words that are central to your topic and try different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a graph, on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty old flow chart. The important thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and see how different spatial representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If you can’t imagine the shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the page and then draw lines between or around them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square? umbrella? Can you put some ideas in parallel formation? In a line?

Consider purpose and audience

Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking act: purpose and audience.

What is your purpose?

What are you trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose will lead you to a different set of information and help you shape material to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you are writing this draft in this form. For more tips on figuring out the purpose of your assignment, see our handout on understanding assignments .

Who is your audience?

Who are you communicating with beyond the grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience need first, second, third? Write about who you are writing to and what they need. For more on audience, see our  handout on audience .

Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias

When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all stripe. Visit the library reference areas or stop by the Writing Center to browse various dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online counterparts. Sometimes these basic steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that you’ll learn several things you did not know.

If you’re looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your most important terms and see what sort of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help you to appreciate the term’s breadth or realize how much its meaning has changed as the language changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?

If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see what suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug “good” into a thesaurus search, you will be given 14 different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the film Good Will Hunting, imagine how you could enrich your paper by addressed the six or seven ways that “good” could be interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various aspects of “good.”

An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, get quick background, or get a broader context for an event or item. If you are stuck because you have a vague sense of a seemingly important issue, do a quick check with this reference and you may be able to move forward with your ideas.

Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what do you do now?

Take the next step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps you’ve been brainstorming about to complete your “almost ready” paper. If you’re a fan of outlining, prepare one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you’re not a fan, don’t make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups of sentences or full paragraphs) to expand upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep building from there into larger sections of your paper. You don’t have to start at the beginning of the draft. Start writing the section that comes together most easily. You can always go back to write the introduction later.

We also have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as reorganizing drafts and argument .

Remember, once you’ve begun the paper, you can stop and try another brainstorming technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to find what suits you or the particular project you are working on.

How can technology help?

Need some help brainstorming? Different digital tools can help with a variety of brainstorming strategies:

Look for a text editor that has a focus mode or that is designed to promote free writing (for examples, check out FocusWriter, OmmWriter, WriteRoom, Writer the Internet Typewriter, or Cold Turkey). Eliminating visual distractions on your screen can help you free write for designated periods of time. By eliminating visual distractions on your screen, these tools help you focus on free writing for designated periods of time. If you use Microsoft Word, you might even try “Focus Mode” under the “View” tab.

Clustering/mapping. Websites and applications like Mindomo , TheBrain , and Miro allow you to create concept maps and graphic organizers. These applications often include the following features:

• Connect links, embed documents and media, and integrate notes in your concept maps
• Access your maps across devices
• Search across maps for keywords
• Convert maps into checklists and outlines
• Export maps to other file formats

Testimonials

Check out what other students and writers have tried!

Papers as Puzzles : A UNC student demonstrates a brainstorming strategy for getting started on a paper.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Allen, Roberta, and Marcia Mascolini. 1997. The Process of Writing: Composing Through Critical Thinking . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cameron, Julia. 2002. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity . New York: Putnam.

Goldberg, Natalie. 2005. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within , rev. ed. Boston: Shambhala.

Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

University of Richmond. n.d. “Main Page.” Writer’s Web. Accessed June 14, 2019. http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb.html .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to come up with great college essay ideas.

College Essays

Writing the college application essay is a tough gig. You've got to be charming, personal, memorable, and insightful--all in under two pages! But I'm going to tell you a secret: half of a great personal essay is a great topic idea. If you're passionate about what you're writing, and if you're truly documenting something meaningful and serious about yourself and your life, then that passion and meaning will come alive on the page and in the mind of your reader.

So how do you come up with an essay idea? The best way is to brainstorm your way to an event from your life that reveals a core truth about you. In this article, I will help you do just that. Keep reading to find 35 jumping off points that touch on every possible memory you could harness, as well as advice on how to use your brainstorming session to fully realize your idea for an essay topic.

What Makes an Essay Topic Great?

What does your application tell admissions officers about you? Mostly it's just numbers and facts: your name, your high school, your grades and SAT scores. These stats would be enough if colleges were looking to build a robot army, but they aren't.

So how do they get to see a slice of the real you? How can they get a feel for the personality, character, and feelings that make you the person that you are? It's through your college essay. The essay is a way to introduce yourself to colleges in a way that displays your maturity. This is important because admissions officers want to make sure that you will thrive in the independence of college life and work.

This is why finding a great college essay topic is so hugely important: because it will allow you to demonstrate the maturity level admissions teams are looking for. This is best expressed through the ability to have insight about what has made you into you, through the ability to share some vulnerabilities or defining experiences, and through the ability to be a creative thinker and problem solver.

In other words, a great topic is an event from your past that you can narrate, draw conclusions from, explain the effect of. Most importantly, you should be able to describe how it has changed you from the kind of person you were to the better person that you are now. If you can do all that, you are well ahead of the essay game.

How Do You Know If Your College Essay Topic Is Great?

Eric Maloof, the Director of International Admission at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas has a great checklist for figuring out whether you're on the right track with your essay topic . He says, if you can answer "yes" to these two questions, then you've got the makings of a great essay:

• Is the topic of my essay important to me?
• Am I the only person who could have written this essay?

So how do you translate this checklist into essay topic action items?

Make it personal. Write about something personal, deeply felt, and authentic to the real you (but which is not an overshare). Take a narrow slice of your life: one event, one influential person, one meaningful experience—and then you expand out from that slice into a broader explanation of yourself.

Always think about your reader. In this case, your reader is an admission officer who is slogging through hundreds of college essays. You don't want to bore that person, and you don't want to offend that person. Instead, you want to come across as likable and memorable.

Put the reader in the experience with you by making your narrow slice of life feel alive. This means that your writing needs to be chock-full of specific details, sensory descriptions, words that describe emotions, and maybe even dialog. This is why it's very important to make the essay topic personal and deeply felt. Readers can tell when a writer isn't really connected to whatever he is writing about. And the reverse is true as well: deep emotion shows through your writing.

Coming Up With Great College Essay Ideas

Some people know right off the bat that they have to write about that one specific defining moment of their lives. But if you're reading this, chances are you aren't one of these people. Don't worry—I wasn't one of them either! What this means is that you—like me—will have to put in a little work to come up with the perfect idea by first doing some brainstorming.

I've come up with about 35 different brainstorming jumping off points that ask questions about your life and your experiences. The idea here is to jog your memory about the key life events that have shaped you and affected you deeply.

I recommend you spend at least two minutes on each question, coming up with and writing down at least one answer—or as many answers as you can think of. Seriously—time yourself. Two minutes is longer than you think! I would also recommend doing this over several sittings to get your maximum memory retrieval going—even if it takes a couple of days, it'll be worth it.

Then, we will use this list of experiences and thoughts to narrow your choices down to the one topic idea that you will use for your college essay.

Brainstorming Technique 1: Think About Defining Moments in Your Life

• What is your happiest memory? Why? What was good about it? Who and what was around you then? What did it mean to you?
• What is your saddest memory? Would you change the thing that happened or did you learn something crucial from the experience?
• What is the most important decision you've had to make? What was hard about the choice? What was easy? Were the consequences of your decision what you had imagined before making it? Did you plan and game out your choices, or did you follow gut instinct?
• What decision did you not have any say in, but would have wanted to? Why were you powerless to participate in this decision? How did the choice made affect you? What do you think would have happened if a different choice had been made?
• What the most dangerous or scary thing that you've lived through? What was threatened? What were the stakes? How did you survive/overcome it? How did you cope emotionally with the fallout?
• When did you first feel like you were no longer a child? Who and what was around you then? What had you just done or seen? What was the difference between your childhood self and your more adult self?
• What are you most proud of about yourself? Is it a talent or skill? A personality trait or quality? An accomplishment? Why is this the thing that makes you proud?

Brainstorming Technique 2: Remember Influential People

• Which of your parents (or parental figures) are you most like in personality and character? Which of their traits do you see in yourself? Which do you not? Do you wish you were more like this parent or less?
• Which of your grandparents, great-grandparents, or other older relatives has had the most influence on your life? Is it a positive influence, where you want to follow in their footsteps in some way? A negative influence, where you want to avoid becoming like them in some way? How is the world they come from like your world? How is it different?
• Which teacher has challenged you the most? What has that challenge been? How did you respond?
• What is something that someone once said to you that has stuck with you? When and where did they say it? Why do you think it's lodged in your memory?
• Which of your friends would you trade places with for a day? Why?
• If you could intern for a week or a month with anyone—living or dead, historical or fictional—who would it be? What would you want that person to teach you? How did you first encounter this person or character? How do you think this person would react to you?
• Of the people you know personally, whose life is harder than yours? What makes it that way—their external circumstances? Their inner state? Have you ever tried to help this person? If yes, did it work? If no, how would you help them if you could?
• Of the people you know personally, whose life is easier than yours? Are you jealous? Why or why not?

Brainstorming Technique 3: Recreate Important Times or Places

• When is the last time you felt so immersed in what you were doing that you lost all track of time or anything else from the outside world? What were you doing? Why do you think this activity got you into this near-zen state?
• Where do you most often tend to daydream? Why do you think this place has this effect on you? Do you seek it out? Avoid it? Why?
• What is the best time of day? The worst? Why?
• What is your favorite corner of, or space in, the place where you live? What do you like about it? When do you go there, and what do you use it for?
• What is your least favorite corner of, or space in, the place where you live? Why do you dislike it? What do you associate it with?
• If you had to repeat a day over and over, like the movie Groundhog Day , what day would it be? If you'd pick a day from your life that has already happened, why would you want to be stuck it in? To relive something great? To fix mistakes? If you'd pick a day that hasn't yet occurred, what would the day you were stuck in be like?
• If you could go back in time to give yourself advice, when would you go back to? What advice would you give? Why? What effect would you want your advice to have?

Brainstorming Technique 4: Answer Thought-Provoking Questions

• If you could take a Mulligan and do over one thing in your life, what would it be? Would you change what you did the first time around? Why?
• Or, if you could take another crack at doing something again, what would you pick? Something positive—having another shot at repeating a good experience? Something negative—getting the chance to try another tactic to avoid a bad experience?
• Which piece of yourself could you never change while remaining the same person? Your race? Ethnicity? Intellect? Height? Freckles? Loyalty? Sense of humor? Why is that the thing that you'd cling to as the thing that makes you who you are?
• Which of your beliefs, ideas, or tastes puts you in the minority? Why do you think/believe/like this thing when no one else seems to?
• What are you most frightened of? What are you not frightened enough of? Why?
• What is your most treasured possession? What would you grab before running out of the house during a fire? What is this object's story and why is it so valuable to you?
• What skill or talent that you don't have now would you most like to have? Is it an extension of something you already do? Something you've never had the guts to try doing? Something you plan on learning in the future?
• Which traditions that you grew up with will you pass on? Which will you ignore? Why?

Brainstorming Technique 5: Find a Trait or Characteristic and Trace It Back

• What are three adjectives you'd use to describe yourself? Why these three? Which of these is the one you're most proud of? Least proud of? When did you last exhibit this trait? What were you doing?
• How would your best friend describe you? What about your parents? How are the adjectives they'd come up with different from the ones you'd use? When have they seen this quality or trait in you?
• What everyday thing are you the world's greatest at? Who taught you how to do it? What memories do you have associated with this activity? Which aspects of it have you perfected?
• Imagine that it's the future and that you've become well known. What will you become famous for? Is it for something creative or a performance? For the way you will have helped others? For your business accomplishments? For your athletic prowess? When you make a speech about this fame, whom will you thank for putting you where you are?
• What do you most like about yourself? This is different from the thing you're most proud of—this is the thing that you know about yourself that makes you smile. Can you describe a time when this thing was useful or effective in some way?

How to Turn Your Brainstorming List Into an Essay Topic

Now that you have a cornucopia of daydreams, memories, thoughts, and ambitions, it's time to thin the herd, prune the dead branches, and whatever other mixed metaphors about separating the wheat from the chaff you can think of.

So how do you narrow down your many ideas into one?

Use the magic power of time. One of the best things you can do with your stack of college essay topics is to forget about them. Put them away for a couple of days so that you create a little mental space. When you come back to everything you wrote after a day or two, you will get the chance to read it with fresh eyes.

Let the cream rise to the top. When you reread your topics after having let them sit, do two things:

• Cross out any ideas that don't speak to you in some way. If something doesn't ring true, if it doesn't spark your interest, or if it doesn't connect with an emotion, then consider reject it.
• Circle or highlight any topics that pop out at you. If it feels engaging, if you get excited at the prospect of talking about it, if it resonates with a feeling, then put it at the top of the idea pile.

Rinse and repeat. Go through the process of letting a few days pass and then rereading your ideas at least one more time. This time, don't bother looking at the topics you've already rejected. Instead, concentrate on those you highlighted earlier and maybe some of the ones that were neither circled nor thrown away.

Trust your gut instinct (but verify). Now that you've gone through and culled your ideas several times based on whether or not they really truly appeal to you, you should have a list of your top choices—all the ones you've circled or highlighted along the way. Now is the moment of truth. Imagine yourself telling the story of each of these experiences to someone who wants to get to know you. Rank your possible topics in order of how excited you are to share this story. Really listen to your intuition here. If you're squeamish, shy, unexcited, or otherwise not happy at the thought of having to tell someone about the experience, it will make a terrible essay topic.

Develop your top two to four choices to see which is best. Unless you feel very strongly about one of your top choices, the only way to really know which of your best ideas is the perfect one is to try actually making them into essays. For each one, go through the steps listed in the next section of the article under "Find Your Idea's Narrative." Then, use your best judgment (and maybe that of your parents, teachers, or school counselor) to figure out which one to draft into your personal statement.

How to Make Your Idea Into a College Essay

Now, let's talk about what to do in order to flesh out your topic concept into a great college essay. First, I'll give you some pointers on expanding your idea into an essay-worthy story, and then talk a bit about how to draft and polish your personal statement.

Find Your Topic's Narrative

All great college essays have the same foundation as good short stories or enjoyable movies—an involving story. Let's go through what features make for a story that you don't want to put down:

A compelling character with an arc. Think about the experience that you want to write about. What were you like before it happened? What did you learn, feel, or think about during it? What happened afterwards? What do you now know about yourself that you didn't before?

Sensory details that create a "you are there!" experience for the reader. When you're writing about your experience, focus on trying to really make the situation come alive. Where were you? Who else was there? What did it look like? What did it sound like? Were there memorable textures, smells, tastes? Does it compare to anything else? When you're writing about the people you interacted with, give them a small snippet of dialog to say so the reader can "hear" that person's voice. When you are writing about yourself, make sure to include words that explain the emotions you are feeling at different parts of the story.

An insightful ending. Your essay should end with an uplifting, personal, and interesting revelation about the kind of person you are today, and how the story you have just described has made and shaped you.

Draft and Revise

The key to great writing is rewriting. So work out a draft, and then put it aside and give yourself a few days to forget what you've written. When you come back to look at it again look for places where you slow down your reading, where something seems out of place or awkward. Can you fix this by changing around the order of your essay? By explaining further? By adding details? Experiment.

Get advice. Colleges expect your essay to be your work, but most recommend having someone else cast a fresh eye over it. A good way to get a teacher or a parent involved is to ask them whether your story is clear and specific, and whether your insight about yourself flows logically from the story you tell.

Execute flawlessly. Dot every i, cross every t, delicately place every comma where it needs to go. Grammar mistakes, misspellings, and awkward sentence structure don't just make your writing look bad—they take the reader out of the story you're telling. And that makes you memorable, but in a bad way.

The Bottom Line

• Your college essay topic needs to come from the fact that essays are a way for colleges to get to know the real you , a you that is separate from your grades and scores.
• A great way to come up with topics is to wholeheartedly dive into a brainstorming exercise. The more ideas about your life that tumble out of your memory and onto the page, the better chance you have of finding the perfect college essay topic.
• Answer my brainstorming questions without editing yourself at first. Instead, simply write down as many things that pop into your head as you can—even if you end up going off topic.
• After you've generated a list of possible topics, leave it alone for a few days and then come back to pick out the ones that seem the most promising.
• Flesh out your top few ideas into full-blown narratives , to understand which reveals the most interesting thing about you as a person.
• Don't shy away from asking for help. At each stage of the writing process get a parent or teacher to look over what you're working on, not to do your work for you but to hopefully gently steer you in a better direction if you're running into trouble.

What's Next?

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications .

For more detailed advice on writing a great college essay, read our guide to the Common Application essay prompts and get advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you .

Thinking of taking the SAT again before submitting your applications? We have put together the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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How to Brainstorm Your College Essay Topic

The college essay is perhaps the most challenging—and intimidating—part of the college application process. Staring at a blank sheet of paper (or a blank computer screen) can feel overwhelming. You might think you have nothing to write about or nothing new and exciting to offer. If you’re wondering just how to brainstorm your college essay topic, then keep reading!

Here’s the good news: You are uniquely you, and you have stories to tell that nobody else can write. If you can uncover one of those stories, you’ve found your perfect college essay topic.

The process of considering what makes you unique, reflecting, and trying on different ideas until you find “The One” is called brainstorming . In this article, you’ll find useful tips , ideas, and exercises to help you brainstorm your way to a great college essay topic.

What makes a great college essay topic?

First, let’s talk about what makes a great topic for your essay. Remember that most of your application is made up of impersonal numbers: your GPA, your SAT/ACT scores, your class rank, etc. Admissions officers will also see a list of your activities and accomplishments. But when it comes to showcasing who you are as an individual, the essay is your big chance to make an impression.

With that in mind, a great topic is one that:

• Offers insight into who you are as a person

Admissions officers suggest students should “write about a specific experience, hobby or quirk that reveals something personal, like how they think, what they value, or what their strengths are.” Think of your college essay topic as a window or lens that admissions officers can use to get a glimpse into who you are and how you think.

On the other hand, your topic does NOT have to be:

• About something extremely extraordinary

In fact, admissions officers say that sometimes the most ordinary topics make the most memorable essays. These include topics like fly-fishing, a student’s commute to and from school, and even a family’s dining room table. So, shift your focus from trying to impress or trying to be extraordinary. Instead, try to zoom in on a slice of your life that reveals something important about you.

Wait—do I even get to choose my college essay topic?

Good question. The Common Application and most individual college applications give you a few prompts to choose from. However, these prompts are so broad and open-ended that you still have the freedom to write about almost anything .

For instance, the current Common App prompts ask you about your background, identity, talents, interests, obstacles you’ve faced, problems you’ve solved, events or realizations from your life, and more. And if you can’t manage to make your topic idea fit into those categories, the final prompt is: “Share an essay on any topic of your choice.”

Of course, before you begin brainstorming, look over the prompts you’ve been provided. See how specific or broad they are. Are there any guidelines you need to keep in mind as you brainstorm your topic? Go from there.

How to Brainstorm a College Essay Topic That’s Right for You

Brainstorming is a very personal and very creative endeavor. What sparks inspiration for you may not spark inspiration for someone else, and vice versa. So, read through the ideas, questions, and exercises for brainstorming your college essay topic below, and choose a few that appeal to you.

Keep going until you land on a topic idea that gets you inspired and excited. If you’re excited about your college essay topic, your passion and personality will naturally shine through.

1. Free Write About Yourself

On the top of a piece of paper or a Word document, write the question, “Who am I?” Set a timer for three minutes, and write until the timer goes off. Don’t second guess or edit. Write anything that comes to mind. Remember that no one else will read your college essay topic brainstorm.

Writing freely without overthinking is an important way to unleash your ideas. What would someone need to know in order to really know about you?

2. Explore Your Home

Take a tour of your home. Look closely at the objects in each room. Which objects are especially meaningful to you? As you look around your house, do any important or interesting memories come to you? Is there anything special or unique about your home that catches your eye?

Find photos, scrapbooks, and old journals or diaries if possible. If you come across any significant memories, jot them down or free write about them for a few minutes. Make a note of anything that inspires you.

3. Listen to a Playlist of Your Favorite Songs

Make a playlist of around 10 songs that you love. These can be songs you loved at different points in your life, or they can be your 10 favorites right now.

Often, our favorite songs resonate with us because we relate them to a memory, a feeling, or a core value. And music in general is an excellent source of inspiration. As you listen to your songs, does anything meaningful come to mind?

Do you think of a special person, place, or event in your life? Did a particular song help you through a challenging time in your life? Do you think your favorite songs say anything important about you? As with the previous exercise, record or free write about anything that catches your attention.

4. Ask Your Friends and Family

Sometimes, it’s hard to think or write objectively about ourselves—after all, we’re a little too close to the subject. It’s helpful to ask your friends or family members for ideas and inspiration too.

Ask questions like:

• If you had to describe me in three words, what words would you use?

Ultimately, you need to choose a college essay topic that appeals to you. But gaining some perspective from the people who love you might get your ideas flowing.

5. Reflect on Highs and Lows

Good college essays show maturity, reflection, and growth. They demonstrate your ability to think about the events that have happened to you, the lessons you have learned, and the impact these events have had on who you are as an individual. Often, we can find great stories of growth in the best and worst moments of our lives.

Think about the following:

• When did you first feel like you were no longer a child? Why did you feel that way? How do you think you’ve changed from your childhood self, and why?

Some of these answers might feel too personal. That’s OK—remember, your brainstorm is for your eyes only. You don’t have to share anything with admissions officers that makes you uncomfortable, but reflecting on the most important moments in your life can help you come up with some excellent material.

6. List Your Top 5 Traits

It’s tough to describe ourselves in a few words, especially because all of us are complex. But if you had to choose just five defining characteristics or traits to describe yourself, what words would you use?

First, list your five words. Then, try to trace your characteristics back to defining experiences or events. For example, if you’re curious , how do you think your curiosity began? Did anyone in your life influence you to be curious? Can you think of the first time or the most recent time that you exhibited curiosity?

Sometimes, a story that highlights one of your key personal traits can make an excellent college essay. Whether it’s an example of how you’ve displayed that trait, or an “origin story” of how you developed that characteristic, you’ll show admissions officers an important piece of who you are.

7. Think About Places

Essays about place, even one as simple as a dining room table, also make a compelling college essay topic. See if you have any meaningful “place” stories by answering the following questions:

• Are any of your favorite memories associated with a specific place? Which memories? Describe the place in detail.

Remember that no matter what you write about, you are ultimately the star of your essay. So, if you choose to write about a place, consider what this place means to you, how it has impacted you, and what it can tell readers about your personality, beliefs, and values.

8. Think About People

Similarly, you may choose to write about an influential person in your life. But the bulk of the essay should focus on how this person has impacted you and how you have changed or grown as a result of your interactions with this person.

Answer these questions:

• Who is someone in your life who is very different from you? How have you navigated those differences? What have you learned in the process?

Again, your essay shouldn’t simply describe another person. The admissions officers want to know more about you . But if you have a compelling story about an important person, and if that story provides meaningful insight into you, then you might have a stellar topic on your hands.

9. Answer Questions About Yourself

You’re probably thinking that you’ve already answered a lot of questions about yourself. But here are some more that might spark inspiration for the right college essay topic:

• What are you most curious about?

You don’t need to answer all of these questions. But if a few of them speak to you, start writing and see what emerges.

Remember that it’s important to “zoom in” on your ideas. So, don’t write an essay about all the traditions you’ve grown up with. Write about one tradition and a specific memory associated with it. The more you zoom in, the more detailed you can get. The more details you include, the more your essay becomes one that only you could write.

10. Write a Hook

If you’re still having trouble getting started, focus on writing a strong hook . What’s an interesting first sentence about you that could really grab a reader’s attention?

Here’s an example of a good hook : “I first got into politics the day the cafeteria outlawed creamed corn.”

Doesn’t that sentence make you want to know more? Imagine being a college admissions officer, slogging through essay after essay, many of them very similar. Many of the essays sound stiff, full of high-level vocabulary words but lacking in personality. Then you get to an essay about how creamed corn sparked a student’s interest in politics. Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air?

Try writing a few interesting hooks. One might hook you too, and before you know it, you’ll have written a whole first draft!

Next Step: Narrow Down Your College Essay Topic Ideas

Let’s say you’ve completed several of these exercises, and now you have a list of ideas. What’s the next step?

Narrow down your college essay topics like this:

• Does your top idea speak to you enough to run with it? If so, get going! If you’re stuck between 2-3 top choices, outline a beginning, middle, and end for each topic idea. List several specific sensory details you would include. Now, which idea speaks to you the most? Which provides the strongest and most compelling narrative? That’s your topic!

Once you’ve decided on a topic, it’s time to tell your story. Remember to focus on being honest, authentic, and very much you . Zoom in as much as possible, and give clear details that bring your story to life. Show a character arc—who you were at the beginning, how you grew and changed, and who you are now. Feel free to use personality and humor. The admissions officers want to hear your voice!

Final Thoughts: How to Brainstorm Your College Essay Topic

It’s hard to come up with a college essay topic that’s unique, exciting, and impressive. So, take that mindset and throw it far, far away.

Now, approach your college essay with the goal of helping admissions officers get to know the real you. If you’re authentic and write about something that’s meaningful to you, your essay will naturally stand out.

Complete several exercises to brainstorm your college essay topic without editing yourself . Eventually, you’ll find a topic that gets you excited. It’ll be a topic that accurately represents you and that makes you want to think, write, or talk about it more.

That passion, enthusiasm, and authenticity will shine through to admissions officers and make your essay truly memorable. I hope these tips on how to brainstorm your college essay topic were helpful. Good luck and happy writing!

Jason Patel is the founder of Transizion , a college counseling and career services company that provides mentorship and consulting on college applications, college essays, resumes, cover letters, interviews, and finding jobs and internships. Jason’s work has been cited in The Washington Post, BBC, NBC News, Forbes, Fast Company, Bustle, Inc., Fox Business, and other great outlets. Transizion donates a portion of profits to underserved students and veterans in of college prep and career development assistance. Jason is a Brazilian Jiujitsu martial artist, outdoorsman, and avid reader. You can find more content on his blog and YouTube channel.

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Home / Guides / Writing Guides / Writing Tips / How to Brainstorm for an Essay

How to Brainstorm for an Essay

Once you get going on a paper, you can often get into a groove and churn out the bulk of it fairly quickly. But choosing or brainstorming a topic for a paper—especially one with an open-ended prompt—can often be a challenge.

You’ve probably been told to brainstorm ideas for papers since you were in elementary school. Even though you might feel like “brainstorming” is an ineffective method for actually figuring out what to write about, it really works. Everyone thinks through ideas differently, but here are some tips to help you brainstorm more effectively regardless of what learning style works best for you:

Tip #1: Set an end goal for yourself

Develop a goal for your brainstorm. Don’t worry—you can go into brainstorming without knowing exactly what you want to write about, but you should  have an idea of what you hope to gain from your brainstorming session. Do you want to develop a list of potential topics? Do you want to come up with ideas to support an argument? Have some idea about what you want to get out of brainstorming so that you can make more effective use of your time.

Tip #2: Write down all ideas

Sure, some of your ideas will be better than others, but you should write all of them down for you to look back on later. Starting with bad or infeasible ideas might seem counterintuitive, but one idea usually leads to another one. Make a list that includes all of your initial thoughts, and then you can go back through and pick out the best one later. Passing judgment on ideas in this first stage will just slow you down.

Tip #3: Think about what interests you most

Students usually write better essays when they’re exploring subjects that they have some personal interest in. If a professor gives you an open-ended prompt, take it as an opportunity to delve further into a topic you find more interesting. When trying to find a focus for your papers, think back on coursework that you found engaging or that raised further questions for you.

Tip #4: Consider what you want the reader to get from your paper

Do you want to write an engaging piece? A thought-provoking one? An informative one? Think about the end goal of your writing while you go through the initial brainstorming process. Although this might seem counterproductive, considering what you want readers to get out of your writing can help you come up with a focus that both satisfies your readers and satisfies you as a writer.

 Tip #5: Try freewriting

Write for five minutes on a topic of your choice that you think could  be worth pursuing—your idea doesn’t have to be fully fleshed out. This can help you figure out whether it’s worth putting more time into an idea or if it doesn’t really have any weight to it. If you find that you don’t have much to say about a particular topic, you can switch subjects halfway through writing, but this can be a good way to get your creative juices flowing.

Tip #6: Draw a map of your ideas

While some students might prefer the more traditional list methods, for more visual learners, sketching out a word map of ideas may be a useful method for brainstorming. Write the main idea in a circle in the center of your page. Then, write smaller, related ideas in bubbles further from the center of the page and connect them to your initial idea using lines. This is a good way to break down big ideas and to figure out whether they are worth writing about.

 Tip #7: Enlist the help of others

Sometimes it can be difficult coming up with paper topics on your own, and family and friends can prove to be valuable resources when developing ideas. Feel free to brainstorm with another person (or in a group). Many hands make light work—and some students work best when thinking through ideas out loud—so don’t be afraid to ask others for advice when trying to come up with a paper topic.

Tip #8: Find the perfect brainstorming spot

Believe it or not, location can make a BIG difference when you’re trying to come up with a paper topic. Working while watching TV is never a good idea, but you might want to listen to music while doing work, or you might prefer to sit in a quiet study location. Think about where you work best, and pick a spot where you feel that you can be productive.

Tip #9: Play word games to help generate ideas

Whether you hate playing word games or think they’re a ton of fun, you might want to try your hand at a quick round of Words With Friends or a game of Scrabble. These games can help get your brain working, and sometimes ideas can be triggered by words you see. Get a friend to play an old-fashioned board game with you, or try your hand at a mobile app if you’re in a time crunch.

Tip #10: Take a break to let ideas sink in

Brainstorming is a great way to get all of your initial thoughts out there, but sometimes you need a bit more time to process all of those ideas. Stand up and stretch—or even take a walk around the block—and then look back on your list of ideas to see if you have any new thoughts on them.

For many students, the most difficult process of paper writing is simply coming up with an idea about what to write on. Don’t be afraid to get all of your ideas out there through brainstorming, and remember that all ideas are valid. Take the time necessary to sort through all of your ideas, using whatever method works best for you, and then get to writing—but don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board if a new inspiration strikes.

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Where to Begin? 6 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises

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The Common App publishes a list of 7 prompts each year. They ultimately ask for similar types of responses, regardless of slight alterations year-to-year. The Common App prompts provide you with a forum to write about yourself, using whatever anecdote or vehicle you wish in order to communicate something profound and genuine about yourself to adcoms.

If this feat seems daunting or spellbindingly vague to you, you are not alone. For virtually every student applying to college, the moment when you sit down to draft your personal statement is likely the first—and may end up being the only—time in your life when you are pushed to describe your entire identity succinctly and eloquently. So, where to begin?

As with any writing assignment, the best way to approach the personal essay is to brainstorm what it is you want the entire essay to communicate about you to the adcom that will be considering you for admission. Read on for 4 surprising brainstorming exercises that will lead you to an effective personal statement strategy.

1. Consider the four core questions.

When writing your personal statement, there are four questions that your essay should answer:

• “Who am I?”
• “Why am I here?”
• “What is unique about me?”
• “What matters to me?”

These questions are important because they help bring awareness to the kind of person you are and touch on things such as your personality traits, your journey throughout high school, the interests and skills that make you unique, and what’s important to you. Colleges want to understand how you became who you are, and where you’re going (successful alumni reflect well on their school, after all!).

2. Try freeform writing.

To help answer these questions and start brainstorming, freeform writing is a good place to start. Begin by writing down 3-5 aspects of your personality or experiences and spend some time constructing narratives out of these different combinations.

This process of getting some ideas on paper and seeing how they can relate to each other can help you better identify a prompt that works for you. For example, you might note that you enjoy tutoring students in STEM, and are now working with a local school to create a Women in STEM initiative in your school district. You may also have tried previous initiatives that failed. These experiences could be constructed and applied to a number of Common App prompts. You could address a specific identity or interest you have associated with STEM, discuss what you learned from your failed initiatives, explore how you challenged the lack of women in STEM programs in your school district, envision solving for the lack of women involved in the science and mathematics fields, etc.

3. Make a list of opinions you firmly hold and explain them.

This exercise requires you to think about aspects of your identity that you have actively chosen. While exercise #4 asks you to consider what parts of your identity you have struggled to overcome, this exercise asks you to consider what aspects of your identity you are most proud of—those opinions that you hold because you chose to believe in something specific of your own accord.

This is an important brainstorming exercise because it should get you thinking about things you are passionate about. Ultimately, you will want to write your personal statement about something that defines you, gets you excited, and can exhibit your ability to think and speak for yourself. So now, before you start writing, make a list of the things that you care about most, and explain why you feel that way about them.

This list can include everything from your political affiliation to your stance on McDonald’s decision in the past year to serve breakfast for longer. The point of this exercise is that there is no right or wrong way of going about it, no topic that is more worthwhile than any other so long as you are passionate about it.

4. Make a list of your character flaws.

While the ultimate goal of the personal essay is to present yourself in as positive a light as possible to adcoms, the challenge is to do so in a way that is realistic and genuine. To do this, you’ll need to do some serious thinking about what types of character flaws accompany your best traits.

There are two main reasons why we suggest that students not shy away from talking about their own shortcomings as well as their achievements. The first reason is quite simple: a personal statement that paints a picture of its writer as perfect and without flaws will come across as dishonest and unrealistic. Obviously, you want to avoid this at all costs. Second, and even more important, if you are able to write a personal statement that acknowledges your flaws and recognizes that you are imperfect, it will reflect positively on you and vouch for your maturity.

If it feels counterintuitive or scary to dwell on anything other than successes, do not fret: that is the expected reaction to this advice. But if done correctly, acknowledging that you are not perfect can add genuineness to any personal essay. So, how to discuss character flaws? There are several ways to go about this.

One way is to discuss a character flaw that you have always struggled with and worked to improve upon throughout your life. In this scenario, discussing flaws can help introduce a discussion about growth or maturation and give your personal statement a nice narrative arc. Yet another way to discuss your character flaws is to acknowledge how certain struggles or personal shortcomings have shaped your identity, allowing you to go into more detail about the ways in which you were able to better yourself by identifying a flaw in yourself and being willing to fix it.

The thinking here is that students have no difficulty remembering all of the accomplishments, productive experiences, and glowing achievements that they want to include in their personal statements. After all, it is easy to write about these things. It is much harder to force yourself to think about aspects of your identity that rankle, and to think about how these things have shaped you.

5. Reflect on your choices and why you made them.

Another brainstorming exercise that can help you think of a topic is to reflect on what choices you’ve made and why. Once you come up with a list, it will be easier to see what you value and the direction in which you can take your essay.

Think about some of these questions to get the juices flowing:

• Why are they my best friend?
• Under what circumstances did we become friends?
• When did we last fight?
• If I had to spend 10 days doing the same exercise or physical activity, what would I choose? Why?
• Say I had to pick one food, and my three closest friends or family members could only eat that food for one week. What would that food be and why?
• Say I had to start a business selling something, and I would achieve the average level of success (financially, socially, etc) within that business, what would I choose to do?
• What movie would I want to take the place of a character in and which character would I want to play? Why?
• What class or teacher did I like most, and why? What class or teacher did I dislike most, and why?
• If I had to choose between singing, doing standup comedy, or dancing in front of 18,000 people, what would I choose? Why?

6. Make a list of anecdotes, childhood memories, or stories about yourself. Then choose one and make it your “vehicle.”

Finally, you should conclude your brainstorming session by searching for a vehicle: an anecdote that you can use to frame your personal statement.

You can use anecdotes in your personal statement in a number of ways. Some students choose to open with one, others close with one, and still others will use two or three anecdotes in order to add color and rhetorical flair to the points they are trying to make about themselves. The best types of anecdotes are the ones that tell the most about you or give insight into your character.

When we help students write their personal statements, we usually begin by brainstorming a few potential anecdotes to use in your essay. But if you are wondering what the point is of using an anecdote— Why use one at all when I could save words and just talk about myself ?—it’s useful to first understand why telling a story or two makes your personal statement stronger.

Ultimately, you will want your personal statement to communicate something about your character and personality that is unique and appealing to schools. When an adcom reads your personal statement, they are looking to hear about you in general, they are looking to learn something unique or special about you (so they can differentiate you from other applicants), and they are also looking for evidence that you would be a valuable addition to their community. But the fact of the matter is that these are fairly broad and vague directives to write about if you don’t have something specific to focus on.

This is where the anecdotes come in to save the day! They help instigate a conversation about yourself, your personality, your identity, and your character while also giving you something concrete to talk about. This is why we call it a “vehicle”—it can exist in its own right, but it carries with it important information about you as well.

Now that you know what the purpose of this vehicle is, it should be a little easier to brainstorm the anecdote(s) that you choose to frame your personal statement with. If you are not yet sure what to write about in your personal statement, you can start brainstorming anecdotes from your childhood, from favorite family stories to fond memories, from hilarious vacation mishaps to particularly tender moments. Do your parents have favorite stories to tell about you? Write those into your list as well.

Once you have a collection of stories to work with, you may begin to see certain patterns forming. Perhaps all of your favorite stories take place in the same setting—a vacation home that meant a lot to you or in the classroom of your favorite teacher. Maybe, you will realize that all of your fondest memories involve a certain activity or hobby of yours. Or, alternatively, you may notice that one story from your childhood mirrors or foreshadows a like, dislike, or accomplishment that would come to fruition later in your life.

If you already know what you want to say about yourself, you can come at the same exercise from another angle: try to think of several anecdotes that could be potential vehicles for the message about yourself that you want to transmit. If you want to illustrate that you love to learn, try to think pointedly about where that love comes from or what you have done that proves this. In this case, remember that any given anecdote can reveal more than one thing about you.

It is hard to imagine all of the possible personal statements that could come out of this brainstorming session, but it is almost certain that this exercise will help you come up with several concrete points to make about yourself and provide you with a tangible way to say those things.

Final Thoughts

If after doing these six brainstorming exercises, you still don’t feel ready to write your personal statement, fear not! Writing a personal essay is daunting and won’t be done in three steps, or even three days! 

For more guidance, check out these blog posts:

How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges

How to Come Up With an Idea for a Personal Statement

How to Write the Common App Essays

Mastering the Personal Statement

5 Tips for Editing Your College Essays

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College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start

Bonus Material: College Essay Brainstorming Questions  

The college essay is an extremely important component of your college application. Yes, college admissions officers do care about standardized test scores, academic transcripts, extracurricular activities, and letters of recommendation.

All of these application components can help officers assess a student’s academic and professional potential (and much more).

The college application essay, however, gives students a chance to share their unique voice with an admissions officer. It’s like a brief interview, where students can give officers a powerful glimpse of who they are outside of their application in roughly 650 words.

So what do you say in those 650 words? How do you pick the right essay topic?

It’s all about the brainstorming process. In general, the more time you can devote to gathering potential essay topics  before  you start writing, the better. Gathering this material can also be helpful for writing supplemental essays down the road.

In this post, we provide actionable tips for guiding your college essay brainstorming process. After reading this article, students will be well poised to gather topics and eventually select the “right” essay topic .

We also give students access to 30 free college essay brainstorming questions to get started. Grab these below.

Download College Essay Brainstorming Questions

Here’s what we cover:

The Importance of College Essay Brainstorming

• 8 College Essay Brainstorming Tips
• Bonus : 30 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

We define the college essay as a “demonstration of character, values, and/or voice.” It is an introspective, personal essay that (ideally) adds significant value to a student’s overall application.

Many students are not well-versed in writing this kind of essay. Indeed, most students are familiar with the concept of the academic essay, with its neat five paragraphs. Very few have had a lot of time in high school classrooms to write deeply reflective pieces, and concise ones at that. (Remember: you only have 650 words or fewer to craft your response!)

That’s why brainstorming is so essential  to the college essay writing process. It’s your key to pinpointing the right topic, which we define as one with the potential to generate an essay that aligns with these 7 winning qualities .

It can also be valuable for gathering potential topics for supplemental essay responses, which many competitive colleges require.

For these very reasons, we spend a significant amount of time brainstorming in our college essay mentoring programs and summer workshops. Students who are able to gather a lot of material in this time tend to have an easier job down the road choosing the right topic, creating an outline, and eventually writing that first draft.

What’s more, they might surprise themselves in what they are able to pull from their many life experiences! It’s not uncommon for an essay student to choose a certain topic they never would have considered prior to brainstorming.

The tips outlined in the next section reflect this great value of brainstorming, and are the same we offer our college essay students at the start of their process.

8 College Essay Brainstorming Tips

Don’t let that blank page intimidate you! Follow these tips to guide your brainstorming process and remember that this stage should and will take time.

1. Know the standards

Students should feel very comfortable with colleges’ general expectations for the essay  before  they start brainstorming. If you haven’t done so already, please check out the following PrepMaven posts:

• What is the College Essay?

7 Qualities of a Successful College Essay

• 11 College Essays That Worked
• What College Admissions Officers Look For

It can also be helpful to review the Common Application’s essay prompts . While students don’t necessarily have to respond to a  specific  prompt, these provide insight into the type of essay colleges are seeking.

2. No topic is “too small” (but some are “too big”)

Students only have 650 words (or fewer) to write their essays. That’s not a lot of space! For this reason, don’t shy away from seemingly “small” topics as you brainstorm.

One student who earned Ivy League acceptance, for example, wrote about her passion for hot sauce in her college essay!

On the same note, if you come up with “big” topics, such as cultural identity, a long-term extracurricular activity, or a religious belief, do your best to highlight specific components of these topics, or one representative experience. The best college essays don’t say everything there is to say about such large topics. Rather, they focus skillfully on one smaller component of a potentially bigger picture.

3. Write down all the details for every topic

When you land upon a topic, mine it for details. Write down everything you can think of about that experience, idea, or memory. Many of our students like to use bulleted lists in a Google Doc for doing this.

It’s important to squeeze out every possible detail so that you can fully assess a topic’s potential! In many cases, such details will become college essay topics themselves.

4. Work by category

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the possible topics out there–and don’t worry, this is common–gather ideas by category. Here are some sample category examples:

• Travel experiences
• Extracurricular activities
• Family life
• Culture and heritage
• Interests and hobbies
• Challenges (non-academic)

Categories can help you build a general portrait of who you are, at least to start. Once you have a few ideas per category, start diving deeper into those ideas and generating further details about each one.

5. Ask the right questions

It is often easier for students to generate a rich pool of potential topics by answering questions designed to encourage deep reflection and introspection. Of course, this begs the question: what should I be asking myself?

Take a look at these 30 questions  we ask our students in our college essay workshops and mentorship programs at the beginning of their process.

Once you’ve answered these questions fully and to the best of your ability, you’ll be poised for essay topic selection.

6. Keep it to yourself, mostly

Many college essay students risk writing about what their parents, friends, or teachers want them to write about. Others risk writing “what colleges want to hear.” Yet authenticity is one of the most important qualities of a successful college essay!

That’s why we encourage students to brainstorm independently. You are the only one in the world most familiar with your life experiences, after all! Consult family members, friends, or mentors only once you are further along in the essay writing process, or if you need clarification on the details of a specific experience. This will ensure you gather topics that are true to you first and foremost.

7. Maintain orderly notes

Brainstorming can be messy. Establish a system early on for maintaining orderly notes! Some tools that can come in handy:

• Bulleted or numbered lists
• Index cards
• Color-coding (digital or manual)
• Google Docs

8. Consider takeaways for each topic

As you compile topics, save time and start thinking in terms of “takeaways” for each. This will allow you to assess a topic’s potential for demonstrating your character, values, and/or voice.

Ask yourself for each topic : What values does this showcase? What does this say about me specifically? What meaningful reflections does it invite? What aspect of my voice is apparent here?

Download 30 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

You can jumpstart your college essay brainstorming process right now by downloading our college essay brainstorming questions.

With this free download, you’ll get:

• 30 of the best brainstorming questions we ask our students
• Guidance for next steps

Kate is a graduate of Princeton University. Over the last decade, Kate has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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20 Brainstorming Ideas For College Essays

Why? Because I’m working on essays with several seniors right now and, for the most part, it’s a painful process for them. Between homework and assignments for school, activities, and sports, it’s hard to find time to write your essay .

And while it’s hard to sit down and turn that blank piece of paper into something poetic, it’s ten times harder if you don’t even know what you want to write about. Sure, you have the Common App essay prompts to work off of, but which one is going to help you write the essay which will propel your application from good to great?

If this is you and you’re having a tough time just getting some ideas on paper, here are a few prompts to get your creative juices flowing:

• What is your favorite subject and why?
• How do you spend your time outside of school?
• What are your most unique talents?
• What is important to you?
• How has a moment in your life inspired you to be a different person?
• What is a life lesson that you’ve learned (especially if you learned it the hard way)?
• What are your greatest strengths?
• What are your weaknesses?
• What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever done?
• What is the most interesting place you’ve ever visited or travelled to?
• What is an accomplishment or achievement you are most proud of?
• What is an obstacle or challenge you have had to overcome?
• Who is someone in your life you are inspired by and why?
• What jobs have you held and what have you liked and disliked about them?
• How are you different from your friends or classmates?
• What is your relationship like with your family (think immediate and non-immediate family)?
• How would your best friend describe you?
• How would your parents describe you?
• How would your brother or sister (if you have either) describe you?
• If you had a “do-over” in your life, what is something you would do differently and why?

Some of these prompts require you to dig a little deeper than others, but at the end of the day they are all designed to do one thing: get you thinking about yourself. Because that’s what your essay is for; an opportunity to tell admissions counselors about awesome and wonderful you.

If you have questions about writing your college essay or would like some help getting unstuck from writer’s block, use the comment box below or email me directly at [email protected] . I would love to hear from you!

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How to Write a College Essay | A Complete Guide & Examples

The college essay can make or break your application. It’s your chance to provide personal context, communicate your values and qualities, and set yourself apart from other students.

A standout essay has a few key ingredients:

• A unique, personal topic
• A compelling, well-structured narrative
• A clear, creative writing style
• Evidence of self-reflection and insight

To achieve this, it’s crucial to give yourself enough time for brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.

In this comprehensive guide, we walk you through every step in the process of writing a college admissions essay.

Table of contents

Why do you need a standout essay, start organizing early, choose a unique topic, outline your essay, start with a memorable introduction, write like an artist, craft a strong conclusion, revise and receive feedback, frequently asked questions.

While most of your application lists your academic achievements, your college admissions essay is your opportunity to share who you are and why you’d be a good addition to the university.

Your college admissions essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s total weight一and may account for even more with some colleges making the SAT and ACT tests optional. The college admissions essay may be the deciding factor in your application, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

What do colleges look for in an essay?

Admissions officers want to understand your background, personality, and values to get a fuller picture of you beyond your test scores and grades. Here’s what colleges look for in an essay :

• Demonstrated values and qualities
• Vulnerability and authenticity
• Self-reflection and insight
• Creative, clear, and concise writing skills

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

It’s a good idea to start organizing your college application timeline in the summer of your junior year to make your application process easier. This will give you ample time for essay brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.

While timelines will vary for each student, aim to spend at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing your first draft and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Remember to leave enough time for breaks in between each writing and editing stage.

Create an essay tracker sheet

If you’re applying to multiple schools, you will have to juggle writing several essays for each one. We recommend using an essay tracker spreadsheet to help you visualize and organize the following:

• Deadlines and number of essays needed
• Prompt overlap, allowing you to write one essay for similar prompts

You can build your own essay tracker using our free Google Sheets template.

College essay tracker template

Ideally, you should start brainstorming college essay topics the summer before your senior year. Keep in mind that it’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic.

If you want to write about a common essay topic, such as a sports injury or volunteer work overseas, think carefully about how you can make it unique and personal. You’ll need to demonstrate deep insight and write your story in an original way to differentiate it from similar essays.

What makes a good topic?

• Meaningful and personal to you
• Uncommon or has an unusual angle
• Reveals something different from the rest of your application

Brainstorming questions

You should do a comprehensive brainstorm before choosing your topic. Here are a few questions to get started:

• What are your top five values? What lived experiences demonstrate these values?
• What adjectives would your friends and family use to describe you?
• What challenges or failures have you faced and overcome? What lessons did you learn from them?
• What makes you different from your classmates?
• What are some objects that represent your identity, your community, your relationships, your passions, or your goals?
• Whom do you admire most? Why?
• What three people have significantly impacted your life? How did they influence you?

How to identify your topic

Here are two strategies for identifying a topic that demonstrates your values:

• Start with your qualities : First, identify positive qualities about yourself; then, brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities.
• Start with a story : Brainstorm a list of memorable life moments; then, identify a value shown in each story.

After choosing your topic, organize your ideas in an essay outline , which will help keep you focused while writing. Unlike a five-paragraph academic essay, there’s no set structure for a college admissions essay. You can take a more creative approach, using storytelling techniques to shape your essay.

Two common approaches are to structure your essay as a series of vignettes or as a single narrative.

Vignettes structure

The vignette, or montage, structure weaves together several stories united by a common theme. Each story should demonstrate one of your values or qualities and conclude with an insight or future outlook.

This structure gives the admissions officer glimpses into your personality, background, and identity, and shows how your qualities appear in different areas of your life.

Topic: Museum with a “five senses” exhibit of my experiences

• Introduction: Tour guide introduces my museum and my “Making Sense of My Heritage” exhibit
• Story: Racial discrimination with my eyes
• Lesson: Using my writing to document truth
• Story: Broadway musical interests
• Lesson: Finding my voice
• Story: Smells from family dinner table
• Lesson: Appreciating home and family
• Story: Washing dishes
• Lesson: Finding moments of peace in busy schedule
• Story: Biking with Ava
• Lesson: Finding pleasure in job well done
• Conclusion: Tour guide concludes tour, invites guest to come back for “fall College Collection,” featuring my search for identity and learning.

Single story structure

The single story, or narrative, structure uses a chronological narrative to show a student’s character development over time. Some narrative essays detail moments in a relatively brief event, while others narrate a longer journey spanning months or years.

Single story essays are effective if you have overcome a significant challenge or want to demonstrate personal development.

Topic: Sports injury helps me learn to be a better student and person

• Situation: Football injury
• Challenge: Friends distant, teachers don’t know how to help, football is gone for me
• Turning point: Starting to like learning in Ms. Brady’s history class; meeting Christina and her friends
• My reactions: Reading poetry; finding shared interest in poetry with Christina; spending more time studying and with people different from me
• Insight: They taught me compassion and opened my eyes to a different lifestyle; even though I still can’t play football, I’m starting a new game

Brainstorm creative insights or story arcs

Regardless of your essay’s structure, try to craft a surprising story arc or original insights, especially if you’re writing about a common topic.

Never exaggerate or fabricate facts about yourself to seem interesting. However, try finding connections in your life that deviate from cliché storylines and lessons.

Admissions officers read thousands of essays each year, and they typically spend only a few minutes reading each one. To get your message across, your introduction , or hook, needs to grab the reader’s attention and compel them to read more..

Avoid starting your introduction with a famous quote, cliché, or reference to the essay itself (“While I sat down to write this essay…”).

While you can sometimes use dialogue or a meaningful quotation from a close family member or friend, make sure it encapsulates your essay’s overall theme.

Find an original, creative way of starting your essay using the following two methods.

Option 1: Start with an intriguing hook

Begin your essay with an unexpected statement to pique the reader’s curiosity and compel them to carefully read your essay. A mysterious introduction disarms the reader’s expectations and introduces questions that can only be answered by reading more.

Option 2: Start with vivid imagery

Illustrate a clear, detailed image to immediately transport your reader into your memory. You can start in the middle of an important scene or describe an object that conveys your essay’s theme.

A college application essay allows you to be creative in your style and tone. As you draft your essay, try to use interesting language to enliven your story and stand out .

Show, don’t tell

“Tell” in writing means to simply state a fact: “I am a basketball player.” “ Show ” in writing means to use details, examples, and vivid imagery to help the reader easily visualize your memory: “My heart races as I set up to shoot一two seconds, one second一and score a three-pointer!”

First, reflect on every detail of a specific image or scene to recall the most memorable aspects.

• What are the most prominent images?
• Are there any particular sounds, smells, or tastes associated with this memory?
• What emotion or physical feeling did you have at that time?

Be vulnerable to create an emotional response

You don’t have to share a huge secret or traumatic story, but you should dig deep to express your honest feelings, thoughts, and experiences to evoke an emotional response. Showing vulnerability demonstrates humility and maturity. However, don’t exaggerate to gain sympathy.

Use appropriate style and tone

Make sure your essay has the right style and tone by following these guidelines:

• Use a conversational yet respectful tone: less formal than academic writing, but more formal than texting your friends.
• Prioritize using “I” statements to highlight your perspective.
• Write within your vocabulary range to maintain an authentic voice.
• Write concisely, and use the active voice to keep a fast pace.
• Follow grammar rules (unless you have valid stylistic reasons for breaking them).

You should end your college essay with a deep insight or creative ending to leave the reader with a strong final impression. Your college admissions essay should avoid the following:

• Summarizing what you already wrote
• Stating your hope of being accepted to the school
• Mentioning character traits that should have been illustrated in the essay, such as “I’m a hard worker”

Here are two strategies to craft a strong conclusion.

Option 1: Full circle, sandwich structure

The full circle, or sandwich, structure concludes the essay with an image, idea, or story mentioned in the introduction. This strategy gives the reader a strong sense of closure.

In the example below, the essay concludes by returning to the “museum” metaphor that the writer opened with.

Option 2: Revealing your insight

You can use the conclusion to show the insight you gained as a result of the experiences you’ve described. Revealing your main message at the end creates suspense and keeps the takeaway at the forefront of your reader’s mind.

Revise your essay before submitting it to check its content, style, and grammar. Get feedback from no more than two or three people.

It’s normal to go through several rounds of revision, but take breaks between each editing stage.

Also check out our college essay examples to see what does and doesn’t work in an essay and the kinds of changes you can make to improve yours.

Respect the word count

Most schools specify a word count for each essay , and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit.

Remain under the specified word count limit to show you can write concisely and follow directions. However, don’t write too little, which may imply that you are unwilling or unable to write a thoughtful and developed essay.

Check your content, style, and grammar

• First, check big-picture issues of message, flow, and clarity.
• Then, check for style and tone issues.
• Finally, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Get feedback

Get feedback from 2–3 people who know you well, have good writing skills, and are familiar with college essays.

• Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your content, language, and tone.
• Friends and family can check for authenticity.
• An essay coach or editor has specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and can give objective expert feedback.

The checklist below helps you make sure your essay ticks all the boxes.

College admissions essay checklist

I’ve organized my essay prompts and created an essay writing schedule.

I’ve done a comprehensive brainstorm for essay topics.

I’ve selected a topic that’s meaningful to me and reveals something different from the rest of my application.

I’ve created an outline to guide my structure.

I’ve crafted an introduction containing vivid imagery or an intriguing hook that grabs the reader’s attention.

I’ve written my essay in a way that shows instead of telling.

I’ve shown positive traits and values in my essay.

I’ve demonstrated self-reflection and insight in my essay.

I’ve used appropriate style and tone .

I’ve concluded with an insight or a creative ending.

I’ve revised my essay , checking my overall message, flow, clarity, and grammar.

I’ve respected the word count , remaining within 10% of the upper word limit.

Congratulations!

It looks like your essay ticks all the boxes. A second pair of eyes can help you take it to the next level – Scribbr's essay coaches can help.

Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.

Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.

A standout college essay has several key ingredients:

• A unique, personally meaningful topic
• A memorable introduction with vivid imagery or an intriguing hook
• Specific stories and language that show instead of telling
• Vulnerability that’s authentic but not aimed at soliciting sympathy
• Clear writing in an appropriate style and tone
• A conclusion that offers deep insight or a creative ending

While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.

You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

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Brainstorming for College Essays

Introduction

As the number of college applications submitted each year continues to grow exponentially and competition stiffens among the thousands of high- achieving students seeking admission, it has become increasingly important for applications to illustrate a complete, holistic picture of themselves. That has put a great deal of emphasis on the essays, which indeed, are vital pieces of the puzzle. While your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities begin to show who you are on paper, the personal statement essay and other supplemental essays bring you into three-dimensional form for college admissions officers. The essays are your chance to make your voice heard and if executed properly, will help colleges determine whether you are a good fit for their university.

Please Note: This guide is intended to help you brainstorm and begin writing your college essays. This is a part part detailed guide. This is the first part, the other three parts are below:

• Part 2: The Perfect College Essay Structure
• Part 3: Sample College Essays
• Part 4:  Supplemental College Essays

Through exercises, worksheets, and discussions of sample essays, my hope is that by the end of this course, you will have in-depth knowledge of what colleges want to see in your essays, at least one or two (and hopefully more) essay ideas, and a solid start to your first draft.

To get the most out of this course, take your time with the exercises and the overall process. A large part of writing a successful essay is self-exploration and self-reflection. Another large part is understanding that an outstanding application essay requires thought, patience, lots of rewriting, and more rewriting. But most of all, you can and should have fun with this. You get to write about you and the things that interest and move you.

Enjoy the process!

2020 Common App Essay Prompts

The Common Application, known as the Common App ( commonapp.org ), is accepted by close to 900 schools, and will likely be the main tool you use for applying to schools. It allows you to compile all your information in one  place and easily disseminate it to the colleges of your choice. Other alternatives include the Coalition Application and applying directly using the school’s own application, but for this course, we will focus on the more popular Common App. Once you’ve written the essay for the Common App, it can be easily adapted to fit other applications.

On the essay portion of the Common App, you will be required by most colleges to answer one of the prompts in 650 words or less.

The 2020-2021 Common Application Essay Prompts are: ‍

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• 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?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea.What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Describe a problem you solved or a problem you like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Which prompt should you choose?

Unless bells and whistles went off when you read a particular prompt because you’re certain you have the perfect story that fits it, then don’t worry about choosing just yet. It’s best to start with your brainstorming and then decide if you have an idea that matches a prompt. Meanwhile, the Common App gave students a gift when they added prompt number seven a few years ago, allowing you to submit any kind of essay on any topic. So, if your idea does not accurately and completely answer a certain prompt (which it must do), then play it safe and choose the last “freebie” option.

What are colleges looking for in your essay?

Before beginning your brainstorming and drafting, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of what kinds of things you should be communicating through your essay. The college admissions officers reading your essay can learn a lot about you through your words, overall theme, and depth of thought. The story you choose to tell is merely the backdrop and framework for a bigger picture. Your ultimate objective is to create a portrait of yourself in 650 words or less that shows your persona, unique aspects of your character, and why and how you will contribute to a university community.

For example, your essay can show colleges that you are:

• Intellectually curious about the world you live in Introspective
• Someone who takes initiative Motivated
• Hard working Creative Compassionate
• Someone who will contribute ideas, service, collaborative efforts, leadership
• Someone who brings a unique perspective or cultural experience An innovator
• Someone who loves to learn (even beyond school subjects) Committed (to a cause, to family, to friends, a belief, etc.) Able to adapt to new environments, overcome challenges

While these are the types of qualities colleges often want to see in students, this is not an exhaustive list and it doesn’t mean that you should fabricate or embellish information to fit into one of these categories.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR YOU TO DO IN YOUR ESSAY IS TO BE AUTHENTIC! ! Colleges want to know who you are and that you’ve taken the time to personally reflect on who you are and who you desire to be.

So let’s start with an exercise that will help you with that reflection process and uncover some of your personal qualities that could shine through in your essay.

Worksheet 1:  Self-Exploration

Part 2: Ask 2 other people (a parent, relative, or friend) for 3 adjectives they would use to describe some of your character/personality traits. Record them below

Worksheet 2: Self-Exploration

For this next section, set aside at least 30 minutes when you will be undisturbed and can give your full attention to contemplating each question. Remember to answer genuinely and not from the perspective of what you “think” colleges want to hear. Take your time and write as much as you can to fully answer the questions. Sometimes the best nuggets/ideas/revelations come toward the end after you’ve gotten some of your initial thoughts down on paper. Use a separate paper or document to record your answers if needed.

• What do you love to do so much that when you’re doing it, you lose track of time?
• How are you unique or different in some way? Maybe you have a unique perspective, belong to a certain culture or group, or have a unique hobby.
• What moves you? What makes you angry? Or joyful? Why?
• What do you want colleges to know about you that they won’t find on the rest of the application?
• What is your superpower? What superpower do you wish you had?
• What is your ultimate goal in getting a college education? (be honest)
• What/how would you contribute to a college community? (think broadly here – could be a diverse perspective, cultural tradition, friendship, collaboration, leadership, new ideas, school spirit, etc.)
• What positive impact do you hope to have on others/society?

Worksheet 3: Creating Your Personal Purpose Statement

Now, using your adjectives from Worksheet 1 and the answers in Worksheet 2, let’s create a Personal Purpose Statement. You can actually create more than one statement if you feel you can’t narrow yourself down to one. The idea is to loosely define the kind of person you are and what you hope to achieve. It can serve as a guiding vision of what you want to communicate through your essay.

Complete the following statement:

I am a _____________, ______________, and _______________ person who loves _________________ and hopes to make a difference/impact by _______________.

Example: I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma

In this example, the student might decide that their essay should display their sense of humor because that’s one of their unique personality traits. Maybe they can talk about how humor has healed them in some way. Keep in mind that your essay should “show” rather then “tell.” So you wouldn’t just say, “I’m funny and make people laugh.” You’d write an essay that perhaps make the reader chuckle or talks about a humorous situation or a time you made someone laugh or did something silly.

This Personal Purpose Statement can serve as an anchor for you as you move through the essay process. Return to it often to make sure you are communicating these core ideas in your essays. You may even want to check your overall application to review if it is reflecting these important qualities. 

Ideas For Your Essay

Again, make sure you have some quiet time and space without distractions. For this exercise, refer back to your Personal Purpose Statement from Worksheet 3. You may want to have Worksheets 1 and 2 on hand as well for added inspiration.

The next step is to come up with some stories/personal experiences that relate to your Personal Purpose Statement since these are the main things you want the colleges to know about you. Below you’ll find some questions to help guide you in brainstorming and mining your memory for ideas. It can also be helpful to ask family members for stories they might remember about you. Keep in mind you want to be honest and vulnerable and while you may reference things from your childhood, colleges are interested mainly in events that have impacted you during or just before your high school years.

Using our previous sample statement, “I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma,” the student should think of personal experiences that demonstrate that they are kind, outgoing, or funny, as well as events and people that inspired them. For instance, maybe they’ve volunteered cheering up young children who are ill. In this case, they could tell a story about a certain child they interacted with who had a particular impact on them.

Okay, your turn.

Answer the following questions based on your Personal Purpose Statement:

Note: If you don’t have an answer directly related to your statement, answer the question anyway as best as you can. Every bit of information is helpful!

• What stories or experiences have I had that demonstrate the adjectives that describe me in my statement?
• Do I have any interests, hobbies, passions that relate to the statement? Is there a moment when I was doing those things that changed me, made me think differently, learn something, or choose to be or do things a certain way?
• What led me to know that this was how I wanted to make an impact? Try to zero in on the smaller moments or feelings that might have influenced you – hearing a friend’s personal story, a dog licking you in the face, some hurtful words you never forgot.
• Is there a person who inspired me to be this way or helped me know I wanted to pursue a certain path?
• What has been my greatest challenge/obstacle and how did I overcome it? Did it help create who I am or was I able to get through it because of who I am?
• What have I learned about myself over the last five years? What have I proven to myself? How did my personal characteristics contribute to this or were they created or changed somehow? Is there a story that demonstrates this?
• What have been my biggest accomplishments (not necessarily academic or school related)? What did they teach me? Is there a story you can use without bragging about the accomplishment that shows how you were transformed in some way? For instance, maybe you started a club to help homeless people. Tell us about how you befriended “Joe” and how he gave you a whole new perspective on homelessness.
• Have my family, culture, traditions, or identity contributed some way to my understanding of myself and the world, and/or who I want to be in the world? How?

Additional Brainstorming

Not every student has a story about a challenge, obstacle, or moment that changed them. If this is you, do not worry, because everyone does indeed have some kind of story to tell about themselves. Sometimes it’s challenging to think and talk about yourself, or you may think you don’t have something “interesting” to share (you do!). Often you just need to keep exploring. Some of the best ideas come when you least expect it – like when you’re taking a shower, or playing a sport, or doing chores.

So use the previous and following questions to get you started thinking, then put them away for a couple days and see if any inspirations come. Come back and review the questions again with a fresh mind. You can do this as many times as you need. Take your time and write down EVERY idea, even if you think it’s not a great one. You’ll end up with a good list that will be helpful for your supplemental essays as well.

• What’s your favorite movie? Book? Podcast? Show? Why?
• What’s hanging on the walls in your bedroom? What’s on your shelves?
• What’s your favorite app? Video game? Why?
• Where is your favorite place to hang out?
• Is there a special place you visit on a regular basis?
• What is something you learned/taught yourself just for the fun of it?
• What is something about you that few people know? (Maybe you love watching horror movies or have a collection of sports memorabilia or spend every afternoon baking with your grandmother….)
• What’s your favorite kind of music?
• What’s your favorite thing to do with your friends?
• What fictional character would you love to spend the day with?
• What real-life person, dead or alive, would you love to spend the day with?
• If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?
• What is your least favorite activity?
• What’s one of your fondest memories?
• List a couple of times where you failed at something and a couple of times you succeeded.

Some Ideas You Could Work With

Review your answers on both sections and list at least 3 ideas you could use for your essay:, the power of storytelling.

The best essays rely on one of the most natural, but powerful, techniques storytelling. Everyone has stories. You tell stories all the time when you talk about something that happened to you today. You listen to your family’s stories. You have stories that stick with you because they are especially memorable.

Often stories, especially in books and movies, follow the classic Hero’s Journey, which basically takes the character from an ordinary life, through a challenge or obstacle, and then through some transformation. This is a great reference point when thinking about how you might tell one of your own stories in an essay. In addition, you can find some great inspiration on storytelling on “The Moth” podcast or at themoth.org, which hosts storytelling competitions around the world. Watch some of the storytellers and see how they use description and detail, build interest and suspense, and then tie it all together so the story has a clear purpose and message.

Ultimately, what makes stories such an effective device in your essay is that they “show” rather than “tell.” You don’t want to say in your essay, “I’m funny. I like to make people laugh.” By telling a story that shows your sense of humor and how you felt making another person laugh, you make that point in a much more meaningful way.

Keep this in mind as you begin to explore further for the story or stories you can showcase in your essay.

Developing Your Ideas

Time to dive in! Let’s pick an idea and start coming up with some details that you could use in the essay. This process should help you get a feeling about whether you have enough material to work with on a certain topic/theme. Remember this is a trial-and-error process, so you may switch directions several times before finding the essay you want to write. In addition, as you spend some initial time fleshing out your topic here, pay attention to how you feel about the subject. This essay should be something you will enjoy writing.

See ”Example Answers” following this questionnaire if you need a little more help.

Answer the following questions to help you elaborate on the idea:

• How does this story illustrate what you want colleges to know about you?
• List at least 3 points you can make with this story:
• Write at least a paragraph summarizing your main story/theme.
• Describe some of the background leading up to the story.
• Zoom in on some details. Pretend you are taking a photograph of a moment from this story. Describe it in detail. Who was there? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What are the images, colors, environment in the scene?
• What was the major turning point/highlight in the story?
• Discuss in more detail the outcome and how it impacted you. What did you learn? How were you changed?
• What is the life lesson? How will use this going forward? Is there something in this story that helps guide you in the way you will approach your life in college?

Example Answers

Here are some sample answers that our sample student might come up with. Remember the student’s personal purpose statement is, “I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma.” Main Idea/Story/Theme: Volunteering at All Children’s Hospital – How Jill’s laughter healed me and made me realize what I wanted to do for others

1. How does this story illustrate what you want colleges to know about you?

• I believe laughter and comedy are healing
• I’m a kind person, volunteering/spending my free time with Jill, other kids
• I’ve done research on laughter as a healing medicine
• I have a goal to expand comedy programs/therapies in hospitals

2. List at least 3 points you can make with this story:

• Comedy is a valuable artform
• Healing modalities don’t always need to medicinal or serious
• I would contribute to a college by living this philosophy/perhaps creating similar programs

3. Write at least a paragraph summarizing your main story/theme (doesn’t have to be perfectly written at this point; these are just notes). The summer after my freshman year, I joined a couple of friends in the Healing Hearts program. We visited sick children twice a week. They wanted us to read to them, keep them company, play games. I met Jill on my second visit. She was 7 years old and had a rare lung disease. We didn’t even talk about that much. Mainly, she told me about what a pain it was to be poked and prodded and tested all the time. She just wanted to be a normal kid playing with her friends at home. That part of me that just wants to see people smile kicked in. I started coming up with jokes, books, and other things that I thought would entertain Jill. That one day, Jill finally broke out into an all-out giggling attack I saw her so differently. She was, if even for a moment, not feeling or thinking about pain or being sick. She looked completely different too. Then I got caught up in the laughing too and I felt it too. Relief. It clicked right then. Maybe I had always wanted to make people laugh because it made me feel better when they were happy. Was that selfish? As we kept laughing, I realized we were giving each other a mutual gift. Laughter is contagious. I also started wondering about its real healing effects.

4. Describe some of the background leading up to the story. ‍ I’ve always loved watching a good comedy, stand-up comedians and making people laugh. When someone isn’t happy, it becomes my mission to turn their frown upside down. I never really understood the power of humor, however, until ironically, I started what some would consider a very sad volunteer job spending time with young children who have major and sometimes life-threatening diseases. Even my mom tried to talk me out of doing it, thinking I’d end up depressed.

5. Zoom in on some details. Pretend you are taking a photograph of a moment from this story. Describe it in detail. Who was there? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What are the images, colors, environment in the scene? Moment with Jill laughing. Sitting in her room which was drab white and gray. Only color was from a few pretty pictures she had drawn that were hanging on the wall. Her mom was sitting in the corner reading a book on her kindle. I had brought my own joke book that day, determined to get her to laugh. The jokes kept bombing though. She’d chuckle politely. Then the nurse came in to check on her. She took her temperature and blood pressure, said a few words to the mom, and left. Jill rolled her eyes. Then I rolled my eyes dramatically. Jill rolled her eyes and this went back and forth a few times until I just crossed my eyes and pretended to pass out on the floor. Jill started to laugh so much I saw tears forming in her eyes. I started laughing too and then I snorted. That was it. We both lost it. Even her mother couldn’t help but laugh too.

6. What was the major turning point/highlight in the story? Jill transformed before my eyes when she was laughing. This little girl who always looked sad and in pain was suddenly light and free. I witnessed the power of a good laugh and felt it for myself as well.

7. Discuss in more detail the outcome and how it impacted you. What did you learn? How were you changed? I wanted to investigate and learn if there was any real data to support laughter being healing. I did a research paper and found some interesting studies (can give some stats). It also made me realize this was something I would always participate in, whether as a volunteer or hopefully as more of a career.

8. What is the life lesson? ‍ How will use this going forward? Is there something in this story that helps guide you in the way you will approach your life in college? I will definitely pack my sense of humor and my desire to make others smile when I go to college. There’s plenty of seriousness in the world. I prefer to see the brighter side.

What Makes A Good Essay?

As mentioned previously, a good college admissions essay is authentic, reveals something about the student that can’t be found in the rest of the application, and shows that the student is introspective and self-aware.Remember that the admissions officers are reading hundreds of essays, so at the minimum, you want to submit a well written, well-thought-out essay that is error-free. At best, you are hoping to give them an interesting essay that holds their attention and is memorable for them. Don’t let that intimidate you. As an essay advisor who has read countless essays, I never tire of reading the fascinating stories students share. Everyone has a story to tell and there are infinite ways to weave your own personal tale and introduce yourself to the reader.

Some of the basic elements that comprise a “good” essay are:

• An attention-getting opening line or paragraph (the “hook”), which we will discuss in more detail later
• A strong conclusion
• Conversational tone – this essay is not a research paper or literature essay with a strict structure. Think of it as a blog entry.
• Clean writing, meaning there are no spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors (make sure your essay is proofread several times by different people before you submit it)
• Overall, it flows well and makes sense
• Accurate word count (you don’t have to be exact, but don’t go over or way under)
• If answering a prompt, make sure your essay stays focused on the subject of the prompt
• It’s written in your voice, meaning it sounds like you (readers can tell when parents, advisors, or teachers have helped a little too much)

What Makes A Bad Essay?

I’d love to say there are no bad essays, but there are occasions where students veer off track. here are some common pitfalls you should avoid:.

Don’t brag about yourself or your accomplishments. Example: Here’s a line from one student’s first draft: “Even though I was one of the smarter kids in the highest class…” Now, even though the student was trying to make a point about how shy they were, this line comes across as boastful. Stay away from these kinds of statements or find a way to say it that doesn’t sound like you are bragging. Exceptions would be if it is part of a bigger story in which the actions or outcomes are revealing something about your character or a lesson learned. Along the same lines, don’t list your accomplishments in your essay. That’s what the other parts of the application are for. Don’t use words or ideas that don’t sound like you. It’s nice to stretch yourself a bit in your writing, using synonyms to avoid repetitive words and showing that you have a wide vocabulary. But some students get caught up in impressing the readers and sprinkle their essays with complicated words they don’t even understand. Again, admissions officers read right through that. Be yourself! Don’t rush through the essay writing. It will show. Don’t get too cutesy. There’s a fine line between originality/creativity and trying so hard to be different that it misses the mark. Don’t use too many clichés. For instance, “life is hard,” “you don’t appreciate things until you lose them,” “every cloud has a silver lining.” Communicate these things in your own original thoughts and words. I would add that using quotes at the opening of essays is also cliché if not executed properly. Don’t use profanity, discuss bodily functions in too much detail, or overshare about personal situations, such as your sex life. (Yep, people do these things.)

There are also some topics that are best to avoid if possible, mainly because they are overused or not well-executed. The caveat here is that I have seen some exceptional essays on these subjects so don’t get discouraged if you want to tackle one of these. Just make sure your essay has a personal twist and demonstrates an insightful, mature view of how you were affected and changed.

Some of these “tricky” topics include:

• Sports stories . A lot of students tell the common story about a great victory or defeat. Not only is it overused, but students also fall into the trap of giving more of a play by-play account, rather than speaking about themselves and their emotions and perspectives. If you’re going to use an athletic experience, make sure it tells something about you as an individual – how you were transformed, what you learned, how it affected who you are today.
• Personal tragedy stories . Again, you may have a poignant story to share about loss, illness, grief and those do make for some compelling, heartfelt essays. If you choose to write about it, make sure to focus mainly on the personal growth and transformation you experienced as a result of the tragedy. The mistake students sometimes make is getting bogged down in the minute details of the event. You’ll want to give no more than 25 percent of the essay to relaying the tragic details and spend the rest of your word count letting the reader know what role this tragedy played in your life on a broad scale and perhaps, how it influenced you to a certain path.
• Volunteer/mission/community service experience. This has just been done too many times. But if you have a unique twist that covers more than “it opened my eyes to things I never knew,” then go for it. Maybe you made a lifelong connection or chose a career because of it.
• Writing about a person who has influenced you . The biggest pitfall here is spending too much time talking about the other person so the reader learns more about the person you’re writing about than they do about you. This type of essay is successful when you show how that person influenced your values or character and how that’s being expressed in your life.
• I’m going to add Covid-19 to the list this year as no doubt, thousands will write about this issue. Keep in mind that the Common App has added space for a brief optional response on this topic (see Part VI for more on this). My fear is that on the personal statement, admissions officers’ eyes may begin to glaze over when they see another Covid-19 essay. On the other hand, I do think there will be some powerful stories that emerge from this shared global experience. If you have a compelling personal story related to the pandemic that truly changed/impacted your life, thinking, or life path in some way – and requires more than the 250 words you’re being allotted on the Covid-19 essay – then just make sure to tell it in a way that focuses mostly on your unique experience/ transformation. Similarly to the personal tragedy subject, you shouldn’t spend time talking about details that everyone is already familiar with; focus on the impact it had on you.

What makes an essay stand out from the rest?

The French phrase, je ne sais quoi , comes to mind when trying to answer this question. It means, “an indefinable, elusive quality, especially a pleasing one.” Often, it’s difficult to pinpoint what makes an essay special or memorable; it just has that je ne sais quoi and you know it when you read it.

That said, there are some common elements that are typically found in outstanding essays:

• Creativity/originality – something new that the reader hasn’t seen a hundred times
• Compelling storytelling
• They evoke emotions, perhaps inspire
• Show depth of thought
• Include vivid descriptions and details

The good news is that you don’t have to be a master writer, have experienced an earth-shattering experience, or have all life’s answers to create an excellent essay that the reader will appreciate. Simply being willing to be vulnerable and share honestly goes a long way. And some of the best essays I’ve read are based on simple, everyday stories and experiences. The following section has a few exemplar essays with comments following each to point out what makes them successful.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, best resources for college essay brainstorming.

Hi everyone! I'm a high school junior starting to think about writing my college essays. Can anyone recommend some resources or methods to help brainstorm ideas and topics? I'm slightly overwhelmed and any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hey there! It's great that you're already thinking about college essays. Brainstorming ideas can be a bit overwhelming, but there are several resources to help you out.

One way to generate ideas is to write down any significant experiences, challenges, or accomplishments you've had and think about how they've shaped your life. Reflect on any lessons you've learned or personal growth that resulted from these experiences.

Additionally, you can check out websites like CollegeVine ( https://www.collegevine.com) , which offer blog posts and resources on essay writing, tips, and topic brainstorming.

Another helpful avenue is to ask for guidance from your teachers, counselors, or even friends and family members who might know your strengths and have unique perspectives on potential topics.

The main goal is to be authentic and let your personal voice shine through your essay. Good luck with your brainstorming process!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Brainstorming Topics For The College Admissions Essay: Quick Tips

From the Common App’s personal statement to the more specific supplemental essay questions, the hardest part of writing a college admissions essay is often brainstorming and topic selection. “What do I write about? And where do I start looking for these magic ideas?”

The answer is, you think. You let tiny idea bubbles grow in your brain, until they are accessible, and you capture them all. You give these ideas time to percolate and grow beyond their original incarnations. Eventually, the winning topic reveals itself- trust us, it always does.

That said, we know it can be hard to turn on the faucet, especially under pressure. Here are five helpful tips for kicking off that brainstorming session and coming up with creative and compelling college essay topics:

• Relax.   Take a walk while you think.  Eat an ice cream cone.  Do something you really enjoy doing while pondering the proposed essay question. Engaging in an activity you enjoy (versus sitting at the kitchen table in frustration) helps alleviate some of the pressure that comes along with starting the process and gets the creative juices flowing.
• Identify key milestones.   It often helps to talk this out with your family members and friends, but try and jog your memory for the most meaningful events in your life thus far.  Think about birthdays and anniversaries.  Special visits from long lost friends.  Competitions you won (or lost).  Up to this point in your life, what have been your most cherished memories and why?  You might not end up writing about your seventh grade science fair, but there could be a smaller, more significant story to mine from there.
• List the things you love.   What do you like to do in your spare time? Where is the place, big or small, that you feel most at home?  Try to list for yourself the things that make you tick- the things you would choose to engage in/with every day if you had no other obligations.  Why do you love these things?  What do they say about you?  Your passions can often be a helpful launch point for identifying small stories about what makes you a valuable asset in an academic/social environment.
• Dig to the details.   Often students think the subjects of their essays have to be broad umbrellas for their all-encompassing life stories.  This is not the case.  In fact, oftentimes the most effective essays tell tiny stories that illustrate a larger personality trait or passion.  An essay about your general passion for music is much less effective than the story of how you washed three hundred cars in twenty days in order to save money to see your favorite artist.  Find the compelling stories within your stories.  You often have a very small space in which to express yourself, which is why these essays lend themselves to bite-sized tales that are representative of the whole, versus broad subjects that say very little in-depth about your inherent nature.
• Don’t self-edit.  Get it all down.   The brainstorming process, in order for it to be truly effective, has to be one devoid of self-criticism and judgment.  You never know which ideas are going to spark inspiration for others, so as you begin to come up with topics, take notes on everything.  You’re not allowed to cross an idea off the list until you’ve squeezed your brain dry of inspiration over the course of at least three separate brainstorming sessions.  Give yourself some time to cultivate and build upon your initial thoughts.  The subjects that pop into your brain first are floating at the surface for a reason, even if just to lead you one step closer to your final, brilliant idea.

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Getting Started: Essay Brainstorming

Gain the tools you need to identify strong essay topics for your general and supplemental college essays.

Webinar Transcription

2021-09-01 Getting Started Essay Brainstorming

[00:00:00] So, hi everyone. Welcome to the CollegeAdvisor’s webinar on Getting Started Essay Brainstorming. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll start off with a presentation. Then answer your questions in a live Q and a on the sidebar. You can download our slides and you can start submitting your questions in the Q and a tab.

Um, next, uh, let’s get you to meet her presenter. I’m gonna, you can’t see her video right now. She actually has a flash flood, but she’s still gonna be with us via audio. Um, yeah, if you want to give a quick introduction to me. Hi, everyone. Sorry about my virtual presence. Um, I tried to connect with the camera, but it didn’t work out unfortunately, but my name is Tamara.

Um, I graduated from Georgetown university, um, in 2019. Um, and I majored in international history at the school for in service. Um, I’ve since gone on to complete a master’s degree in human rights as well. And I’ve been with c CollegeAdvisor for about a year. [00:01:00] Um, prior to that, I also worked in college advising with another company for about two years.

Okay. Alright.

Okay. So the subject of. Our webinar today is, um, getting started with your essay brainstorming. Um, so I’m just going to go through some of the more common essay types that you will encounter, um, and, um, share some examples. Um, and, um, I will ask Lily to let me know if my audio is not, um, cooperating. So my apologies in advance.

Um, so one of the. As Izzy you will encounter is the common app essay, which is also commonly referred to as your personal statements. Um, your personal essay, they’re kind of different ways to, to talk about it, depending on who you ask. Uh, but this is going to be the major essay that you will write, um, that the majority of universities will ask of you.

Um, it will be 650 words. Um, [00:02:00] and if you are applying to a school that uses the common app, um, you will have seven prompts to choose from, and you can find this from online. Um, they. Sometimes vary year to year, but for the most part, they stayed pretty consistent for the last four or five years. Um, at least for as long as I’ve been in this, uh, college advising space, um, you will also have supplemental essays for some university.

So this will be questions that are specific to the college you are applying to. In addition, usually to your common app essay, um, they will vary in length anywhere between 150 words to 500 words, sometimes more, um, and prompts will also vary. Uh, but there’s some common themes that I will touch on later in the webinar.

And lastly, you might also come across additional essays if you are applying for merit scholarships. So this could be or scholarships that are specific to a college or private scholarships. Um, in any case, if you’re applying to those, um, there would likely be at least one additional essay you will have to write okay.

Onto the next [00:03:00] slide, on the personal statement versus supplemental. So for your personal statement, um, this is going to be, um, you can think of it as a, sort of a big picture essay about who you are. Um, what are some important characteristics or values that you hold? Um, and the college admissions panel or reader will really look to this essay to better understand sort of how you tick what’s important to you.

You know, these could be a variety of different aspects of your personality. It could be talking about a value. So for example, um, if you are someone who is really passionate about community service or for whom family, um, is very important, that’s, those are examples of values. Um, you could also use your personal statement to share a pivotal event or experience in your life.

So, uh, for instance, if you’ve moved to town schools or in countries, um, during high school, right before high school, that could be a pivotal experience that you choose to, um, write your essay about. [00:04:00] Um, you could also write about, um, any aspect of your identity, so that could be cultural identity, spiritual, religious identity, ethnic identity.

Um, it could be your identity as an athlete, as a musician. Um, so anything that you deem to be an identity is kind of a valid example of what you could share in your essay. Um, In terms of supplemental essays. Um, as I mentioned, there will be a variety of questions, um, that you will encounter, but some common themes include your motivation for applying to a particular college or a particular major.

So, you know, they will ask you, for instance, why are you applying to hail? Why are you applying to the university of Maryland? So why do you choose us as opposed to all the other colleges that are out there? And similarly, why are you wanting to study biology, math, English, whatever it may be. Um, what compelled you to choose this, this subject?

These lessons could also ask you about your general qualifications. So prior interest in the major you’re planning to choose or an experience in a subject, um, extracurricular experience, [00:05:00] personal experience, um, you could also see some supplemental essays that, um, ask you about your plans for the future.

So those could be kind of first to medium term plans for examples. What clubs would you join? How, um, how will you get involved in your, in your community, what your study, um, and it could be more long-term plans. So kind of, how do you see this degree contributing to your future career, um, and where you see yourself after college, and finally, um, how would you touch on this, but, um, how will you contribute to the campus?

Community is a prompt that is very common. Um, and it can take a variety of different angles. Sometimes it will look at it from the angle of diversity. So sort of what unique, um, experiences or identities do you bring to campus that will. Um, enrich the experience for everyone who attends and it could be more sort of straightforward.

Um, as I mentioned, how do you plan to get involved, um, on campus, beyond just attending classes? [00:06:00] Great. All right. Next slide. On examples of supplemental essay prompts. So, um, let me just go through now, some of the examples that I mentioned and share a little bit more detail about, um, what those will be and how you could approach them, um, if, or rather when you encounter those, when you apply to college.

So the first one is I mentioned is why do you want to attend a specific school? Um, and I try to include. Uh, an example from a real university from 2021, not all colleges have updated all of their supplemental essay prompts for this admission cycle, but the majority of them have, so these are up to date.

So an example of a why school XSA is one from duke. So as you can see on the slide, um, it asks you to share why you consider duke a good match and then asked you if there’s anything particular about Dick’s offerings that attracts you. So this is a very classic example of the way that the separate question would be formulated.

[00:07:00] Obviously then Haim will differ, but the essence of it will be the same. And we’re asking you to provide specifics specific details about that university that appealed to you. So not just to say that it’s a great school, but to provide examples of how the school is a good match for you. The second question in a very similar vein is why do you want to study a specific major?

So say you want to be, you want to major in history, which is what I majored in. Um, you will want to, uh, justify your interests. Now it’s important to remember that when you’re asked about your majors, it’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule that you will major in what you say, you plan on majoring in and that’s okay, no one will hold you to this.

But when you do apply, you need to have some sort of explanation justification as to why you’re interested in the subject matter. So this admission cycle, according to the Mellon, asks you to explain what passionate inspiration led you to bloody to [00:08:00] choose this area of study. I’m getting a message that there is an issue with the audio potentially.

Um, Lily, can you hear me okay? Yeah. I’m your audio cut out for like a second, but we can still hear you. So I will continue that case. Um, I think we can continue to the next slide. All right. Um, but on the next slide, fantastic. Um, so, uh, another common prompt, as I mentioned, we’ll ask you about your extracurricular activities, um, extracurricular activities, um, as broadly defined as you can think.

So it doesn’t necessarily mean a school club. It can mean an activity that you engage in outside of school. So maybe in your community, maybe you’re helping out in a family business. Um, maybe you’re helping out with siblings or, or supporting your family in some way. Maybe you have a job. So all of those are examples of extracurricular activity.

So don’t just think, you know, um, afterschool newspaper or a school sport, [00:09:00] um, at MIT and example of this type of question, um, as you can see on the slide is. Tell him tell him about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. So that’s kind of a fun twist on extracurricular activity. Um, taking it even beyond sort of the realm of what do I do?

Um, that’s an addition to my schoolwork too. What do I do for fun specifically? So that can be anything from, you know, having your own beauty, YouTube channel or knitting, any sort of hobby. Um, you can discuss in a type of question, some of them are going to be more straightforward where they will ask you to discuss, uh, extracurricular activity in school or outside of school.

But, um, sometimes you get more flexibility, um, next prompt or an example of a supplemental prompt, um, is how will you contribute to your campus community? Um, and. UNC this coming cycle, um, is asking you how you could [00:10:00] actually, what you would actually change, how you would better your community and why it’s important to you and how will you work to sort of implement it.

And the idea behind these questions is to assess, um, that you have, that you’re a team player that you and or that you have leadership skills and that you have clear ideas about issues that are important to you, whether that’s in your hometown or on your future campus, which will become your home community for four years.

And that you’re able to articulate why something is meaningful and important to you and, um, how you would want to work to prove it, essentially, which is. Which is how UNC phrases it. Um, and the last category is a fun one. So this is going to be your creative prompts or a grab bag. Uh, it’s hard to summarize what you will come across here simply because, you know, by nature of this category, um, it can vary, but these are the ones, the prompts that will ask you to be a little more creative, to have a little bit more fun with it.

Um, university of [00:11:00] Chicago is infamous for their essay prompts because they’re always quite funky. Um, one, um, infamous example is what’s so easy about PI. Um, I applied to the university of Chicago back in 2015. When I applied to colleges, I to this day, cannot frankly tell you where they get some of these questions and why they asked them, but they’re always very fun and engaging, and they kind of get your creative juices flowing, which is a welcome change of pace.

After, you know, you’ll have turned out many why college X, a supplemental. And another, uh, creative prompt. It’s a little bit less say more conventional is from GW. Um, which asks you, you know, if you could change the course of history, what would you change? Um, they used to have a fun prompt asking you what historical figures it would have dinner with.

Um, I remember it because I, when I applied, I, I chose that one as my supplemental essay prompts. Um, I think we can go to the next slide [00:12:00] now. Yeah. Great. So that was a great overview of a few different, like really common essay prompts that you might be seeing and also the different I see that you should be planning for.

Um, so next I have a question for every in the audience. Um, so just to have a, uh, do a quick check-in, have you guys started brainstorming for your college equities and you guys can let us know in the poll, um, if you started for your personal statement or your supplemental essays or your scholarship essays, um, and then also it’s totally okay.

If you haven’t started yet, um, this webinar will help you basically figure out how to get started. Um, and also answer any questions that you guys might have about getting. All right. So I’m looking at the pool so far. It looks like a lot of people are kissing me. Haven’t studied yet, but they planned, you’ve seen just great.

Um, or they’ve already certain their personal statement, which is also awesome. So I’ll leave the poll open for a few more seconds before I get back to,

okay. Uh, I’m going to close the poll and then I’ll put you on the next slide.[00:13:00]

All right. Um, so next, uh, next site is Wednesday essay brands. Great. So it sounds like the majority of our listeners are starting to think about brainstorming, but maybe having actually kind of sat down to, to get that writing started, which is totally okay. You’re in a good place in the application cycle.

Um, so, um, in terms of pacing and, and timelines, uh, you’re going to want to start when you start your essay brainstorming, you’re always going to want to start with your personal statement or your common app essay as it’s going to be most likely the longest essay you write, you will send that essay out to the majority, if not all schools that you apply to.

So you want to devote more time to it and you want to start with it rather. Um, and so on the personal statement, you want to start early. Um, as I mentioned, this is an essay. It is a little bit more focused on who you are, your identity and your personality, um, which are presumably [00:14:00] something you’re already quite familiar with.

Um, They likely will not change in the next one to three months between now and sort of your college essay deadlines, so you can already get started on it. So then rather than later, uh, the common app application, um, has opened, it opened August 1st, the essay prompts are available, so you can freely begin up restarting process.

Um, today, tomorrow after this webinar, um, w generally speaking though, to the pay thing, the summer between your junior and senior year is, is a good time to start reflecting and planning your personal statement essay. Um, so if you’re a rising senior and you’re getting started now, it’s September 1st, um, you’re in a good place if you’re a rising junior or sophomore, and you’re trying to figure out, you know, if you should already hurry up and get started, don’t worry.

You still have some time to go a year or two. Uh, but the summer before senior year, um, is a good place. Both place to begin brainstorming now on supplemental essays. Um, there is [00:15:00] a few, a few pointers for deciding when to get started. So first of all, uh, if you’ve already completed your personal statement, you’ve, you’ve done your brainstorming.

You’ve already written it. Um, the next sort of logical step is to, to move on to your supplemental essays. Um, if you have any, um, Overall, you want to know you would have a pretty good idea of what colleges you want to apply to. So you want to have your list of colleges ready. It doesn’t have to be 100% done, but you want to have a good sense of some of the schools you’re going to be applying to because supplemental essays will of course depend on the school and you might be hearing thunder.

My background, I apologize. There’s there’s a lot going on outside today. Um, now for supplemental essays, prompts are not posted consistently. So when these prompts are shared, will really vary by school. Most of them we’ll try to get them out around July, August. So by the time the common app opens, especially if they’re a common app school, they want to have their prompts updated.

But almost always nearly all colleges will [00:16:00] hop their prompts updated before the end of summer. So that’s the end of your rising senior summer. Um, so you already have them on hand. Um, but I also don’t recommend you trying to brainstorm your supplemental essays for all colleges at the same time. Um, I really encourage you to pick one college, work on it, do your brainstorming, do your writing, and then move on to the next one.

You will see some common themes across supplemental essays, and you will be able to kind of reuse and recycle and adopt. Uh, but you don’t want to overwhelm your brain and sort of try to plan everything out all at once. Um, my next slide is on brainstorming strategies. So this, these strategies are useful for all essays.

Um, common app supplements. Um, obviously some of the points may not apply depending on what the question is asking, but these are some good rules of thumb. So first start is, you know, if you’re really kind of. Um, sitting in front of a blank, blank sheet of paper or in 2021, a blank screen, most likely, um, [00:17:00] some of the exercises that you can do to sort of get your creative juices flowing, um, is number one, you could just write out some adjectives that you think best describes you.

So these can be adjectives that you yourself would use. Um, you can pull your friends, your parents, your siblings, um, ask them for, you know, top two, top three adjectives they would use and write them all out. Good, bad. I mean, you don’t want to say anything negative about yourself, overtly negative about yourself in an essay, but for brainstorming purposes, you want to go get all of it down on the page.

Another good strategy is to make a list of your interests. So these can be school, subject interests. So you really like math, maybe you really hate physics. Um, these can be strong likes or strong dislikes, um, but focus more on your likes and your interests and things that drive you and inspire you. Um, and you can also pull from your extracurricular activities and your hobbies, anything you do on your own time, for fun to just write out some things you enjoy doing [00:18:00] so they can be activities.

So for example, you like skiing or they can be, um, more about skills. So maybe you enjoy languages and learning new languages. You may not be in a language club, but that might be something that excites you. And that works for you. And had this strategy is to think back to your whole life, but really the last three to four years of your life to see if there were any really key events or moments, maybe you won, maybe you’re an athlete and you won an important competition.

Um, maybe as I mentioned, um, at an early age, during an earlier slide, you know, you moved to another town or another school, um, and it was a big pivotal moment, um, because it exposed you to a new community. You made new friends, et cetera. Uh, maybe you had an important milestone in a relationship or a friendship.

And this is something I can touch on. Um, a little bit more. I think it’s a common question. I get about essays in, in QA, you know, about topics not to write on, but, [00:19:00] um, so there’s some caveats to writing about your relationships with your friends or your family members or your siblings. Um, but, um, for your brainstorming, you know, it’s a good idea to, to visit revisit those as well.

Um, and finally, you can also talk about finding a new passion or an interest, you know, um, through an activity or on your own time, that can also be a formative experience. Um, as I mentioned before, you want to, you want to talk to your best friend, your siblings, your parents want to brainstorm with them because sometimes things that you maybe wouldn’t, um, necessarily.

Think about yourself or maybe it would be so obvious that you wouldn’t even think to put them down on a page or things that stand out to people who know you best. Um, so it’s a good idea to consult them. You can also ask your teachers, um, you know, anyone your work with you’re close with. Um, and finally, a more common out personal statement.

Specific strategy is to take a look at the prompts, the common app prompts, and really pick one or two. So rather [00:20:00] than trying to brainstorm for every single of the seven prompts that are out there, pick one or two that stand out to you as either interesting or perplexing or provoking, um, or that very clearly speak to you as, oh, I know exactly.

You know what I would say to this question and then make a little draft outline. It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy or formal, just bullet points about, you know, what, how would you answer this question? What story would you tell if, for example, a friend of yours, you know, At a sleepover asked you this question, which is not a very likely scenario, but in a kind of, not a too formal settings.

How would you answer this question? The next slide is on brainstorming to get started on writing specifically. So one of the big, uh, fear is that, you know, my, my own students, my own clients that I request asked me about is sort of, well, what if I don’t know how to get started? So this is, this is your [00:21:00] classic writer’s blog situation where you, you’ve kind of done your homework, you’ve done your research, you know, where you want to apply, but when it’s time, time comes to start writing you kind of freeze.

Um, and as kind of cliche, as it may sound a really good strategy for, for writing is to, to just start writing. Um, and these can be nonsensical strings of words. They can be bullet points. They can be, um, Numbered lists, whatever works for you, but, uh, start mapping out, um, some kind of structure for your, for your essay.

Um, try, try trying to answer the question. Um, you can use some of the brainstorming strategies I mentioned to get you started kind of in that, in that writing, get to get you in that writing mindset. Um, this also allows you the strategy of kind of putting everything down in paper. It allows you to get some of them, you know, chatter out of the way and [00:22:00] make room for more creative ideas.

So what that means is, you know, maybe the first couple of ideas you have for answering the prompt are a little bit silly or a little bit too general. Uh, but by writing them out, which will allow your brain to sort of shift its attention away from those and to dig a little bit more deeper into, um, other answers that you might have for any given prompt.

Okay. These allergies, these brainstorming strategies allow you to, um, reflect a little bit on your life as well, which is not something we get to do often or to everyday life. We tend to kind of go through it and just do things. And we don’t necessarily think about why we do them or what motivates us. Um, so kind of get yourself in that creative, um, rather reflective mindset and start thinking about, okay, what are some, some key highlights from my past couple of years in high school, um, that I would want someone to know about.

Um, and my last, um, last point that [00:23:00] I do want to stress is that there is such a thing as overthinking your essays. So if you spend too much time in this brainstorming stage, um, where, you know, you’re mapping and remapping and outlining and making extended outlines of every single, um, essay prompt questions, Um, you, you risk getting stuck there because of course you’re never going to get a perfect answer.

Um, none of us are perfect. Um, you want to do your best, you want to put your best foot forward, but you also don’t want to get so stuck in the brainstorming that you can never bring yourself to actually sit down and start writing, you know, full sentences, full paragraphs and answering a question. Great.

Um, my next slide is on how to brainstorm to write better essays. So, um, some of the most important points to keep in mind, um, for writing strong essays, um, is to make sure, first of all, that you have, um, a sense of a narrative that you’re [00:24:00] trying to put forward on the page so that you’re not just stating a series of facts.

So if, for example, you’re writing about a formative. Formative experience like moving to a new country. Um, I use this example often because that’s what I wrote one of my essays about, because that’s, that was my experience. Um, so if you’re writing about that, um, you want to make sure that there’s an overarching point or seem to, or message to your essay.

So you’re not just saying, you know, when I was 14, I moved to another country. Um, and then I went to a new school, um, had learned, um, to study a new language and it was difficult. Um, you know, I’m, I’m really simplifying here, but you want to make sure that there’s kind of a takeaway, right? So you want to ask the sub that, so what question, so what this happened to you, but what does it mean?

What did it, um, make you feel? What does make you think, uh, was kind of a person, did it make you to have had this experience? Um, [00:25:00] it helps to have a narrative because it allows you to. Not get stuck in the middle of your writing process, because you can always reference back to your main message, or you can almost think of it as a thesis statement.

If that’s something that you’ve learned in high school, you know, to register the statement for each essay in social studies or English, um, you can always reference back to that main message. Um, if at any point you get stuck and ask yourself, okay, is what I’m writing right now are the examples of providing right now contributing to that main message or are they heading to it or are they taking me on a tangent in a completely different direction?

Um, and not helping me to get my main point of. Um, another important aspect of essay writing is to make sure that, you know, I told you not to over-prepare, but you still want to prepare, um, you want to have sort of a grab bag of examples, um, for different types of [00:26:00] questions. Um, you saw some of those different questions you might encounter earlier.

Um, so you want to have, rather than writing about one example over and over again, um, maybe you write about a sports injury, for example, um, as a formative experience, or it’s an important moment in your high school career. Um, you don’t want to just write about that example for every question that you receive, because one you’ll get tired, you’ll get tired and you’ll get sloppy and you’ll run out of details to share and to.

When you apply to colleges, it is very likely that you will write more than one essay per college. So you will have your personal statement and one to two to three to four supplemental essays and one your essays to be a coherent package. So you want them to tell a big overarching story about who you are as an applicant.

Um, and so if every one of your essay talks about the same one or two examples, [00:27:00] activities, life events, then you know, your reader’s going to get bored and they’re not going to glean anything new about you. Um, and they’re going to move on to the next applicant. So think of every essay in an application as a sort of one part of a big hole, right?

So if one essay talks about, um, an important value that you hold in another one, add to that by talking about, um, an interesting fashion that you have, and another one talks about maybe your family and. Formative experience your family. So you want each essay to reveal a new sort of sight of you, um, as opposed to hammering kind of the same point over and over again.

Um, so I think, I think we’re through to the end of this slide. Um, yeah. Um, after this section, as soon as he tells me a bit more about smell for on personal experiences when it comes to the essay brainstorming process, um, before we actually get to that section, I have one last question for you [00:28:00] guys. Um, so just to gauge how prepared everyone feels, um, my question is how prepared do you feel about the college application process?

Um, so you guys can let us know in the polls sort of where you are right now. Um, and also it’s totally okay if you don’t feel prepared, um, this webinar will help you guys basically, um, just, just know what to do next for the essay branching process. So that way, if you’re getting started now with your college apps, you can really just go into.

Um, all right, so it looks like maybe a third of you guys are feeling not prepared, but you’re also feeling ready for anything just, okay. Um, and then the other three are also feeling prepared, but it has some questions. So as a reminder, you can start dropping questions now in the Q and a section, and you don’t have to wait until the QA starts.

Um, and then we’ll be sucking your questions, um, throughout the second half of the webinar. Right? So I’ll give you guys a few more seconds. I, before I close the poll,

um, back to you tomorrow on how you have been shunned for your college. [00:29:00] So, um, I already alluded a little bit to some of the topics that I wrote about when I was applying. So I applied in 2015, which was more than six years ago, which is crazy to imagine. Um, and I. Was a first-generation student in my family to go to college in the United States.

So my family is from Russia and we immigrated when I was in middle school. So I was the first one to go through the American college applications process. Um, and I didn’t really know how to approach it at all. You know, maybe I Googled around, I’m not even sure at this point. Um, I talked to my friends, um, some of whom had older siblings or parents who went to college in the U S um, so, you know, their information was usually also outdated.

Um, and then I figured out sort of what goes into an application and I pulled up my essays and I just started writing. So my common app, I looked at the prompts and I thought, you know, first prompt, um, prompt number one, which has not changed since 2015, [00:30:00] um, was easiest for me to respond to. And I took it and basically I just sat down and I started writing whatever came to me.

Um, I also definitely have this idea in mind. And that there sort of the quote unquote right. Or best ways to write an essay, sort of what I was trying to get into the mind of an admissions officer and say, what type of student would they want to admit to this school? Um, and what type of essay would that type of student.

Right. And I was trying to sort of cater to that imagined need, um, and to write in a way that I felt they would like, and of course I had no actual conception of what they wanted to see or what they would like or who else would apply together with me to the universities I was applying to. But I was trying to do that anyway, because I was anxious and stressed and I wanted to get into college.

And that felt like a good idea at the time. Um, and [00:31:00] in keeping with that theme, um, I was always trying to, you know, I didn’t lie or invent anything on my applications, but I was trying to take what I experienced and sort of fit into that mold of what is a good college essay or what is an essay that a top ranking university would expect from me.

Um, so rather than just reflecting on what were my takeaways from any given experience? So one supplemental essay I wrote, I remember it was about, um, my quality paper or school newspaper at that point. Uh, although I did newspaper in college as well with going this paper and my involvement in it and why I was passionate about it.

Um, and I distinctly remember, um, you know, trying to essentially make myself sound more impressive than I felt that I was as opposed to just being authentic and, and writing about why I liked writing, why I like taking photos, um, what my newspaper community gave me. Um, so, [00:32:00] you know, that last bullet point really summarizes it really well.

I was kind of trying to fit myself to their college as opposed to simply speaking about my own experiences in an authentic way. Um, and what’s even a bigger do not do is I know that I had a few top choices in mind. And so when I was writing my essays, I was really writing almost all of my essays to those top choices, even when those essays were going to other universities, maybe my safety schools, which is definitely not, um, not as strategy I endorse in retrospect.

Um, and with that, we’ll move on to the next slide.

Go ahead. Yes. So this is, um, I told you what I did and how I’m going to tell you, um, how to do better than 2015 tomorrow. Um, you know, all that said I did get into Georgetown, so, you know, I did something right. But, um, I think that the asset rating [00:33:00] process was much more stressful for me than maybe you needed to have been.

Um, if I had known, um, how to approach it better. So, as I mentioned before, one of the most important things that you can do when you’re planning your essays is to really start with where your eye, um, in your own experiences. So not trying to do what your friends are doing, not trying to do what your friends, older siblings did, uh, not trying to do what Google or college confidential tells you to do, but to just reflect on your own lived experiences, um, and try to pull out a few key moments and key themes in your own.

Um, you don’t want to be organized. So, you know, you don’t want your essays to be kind of a very confusing collection of everything that’s ever happened to you. That was important. Um, you want to make sure that you identify some themes, um, that I mentioned before. So, um, some common themes that I, I come across with my own students, um, include, but are not limited to writing about giving back to your community, [00:34:00] um, community service, how your identity or your faith informs your desire to give back to your community.

Um, writing about, um, perseverance or endurance in the context of a particular experience in extracurricular, in a sport, um, in a challenging academic course. Um, those are just some kind of ideas for what could be a theme that you could organize your, your thoughts around. Um, and of course, you know, you’ll, you’ll come up with your own themes.

Um, the possibilities are endless. I just want to give some concrete examples. Um, As I mentioned before, before you start writing, you want to figure out what is your narrative? What is the main story you were trying to tell and what angle you want to tell it from? Um, so going back to that newspaper example, um, you know, if the story that I want to tell is that I’m really passionate about uncovering the truth.

Um, if we’re going to speak about journalism, um, there is a few ways that you can approach that, right? You can approach it, um, by describing [00:35:00] an interesting story that you had to write for that newspaper and why that inspired you to want to pursue journalism as a major or potentially as a PA a career, or you can write about it from the angle of community.

So how being part of the newspaper helped you find a community of like-minded students and, and connect with them. So, you know, you’re talking about the same activity, the same ultimate main theme, but you’re tackling it from different directions. Um, as you’ve done all that, then you want to look at the prompts and see.

If you’re given the choice as with the common app, you’re given seven prompts. If you’re given the choice to pick one, you pick one that best fits with the seat you already identified for your story, right? Sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes your supplemental essay question is what it is, and you have to find your best way to answer it.

But if you’re given some options, which you often are, you pick one that debt sort of resonates with you, the most resonates with you and with your narrative. Um, and as I [00:36:00] mentioned before, if you only have one prompt, um, you want to focus on your experience. You don’t want to try to guess what the admissions officer’s going to one, because there’s so many factors that go into their decisions that it’s absolutely impossible to ever predict or game out what they will want from a successful applicant.

Um, it’s a nightmare to try to do so. And I have to literally do not recommend trying, um, ultimately. You, you want to get into university because it is excited about you as an applicant, um, and authentic applicant, right? So you don’t want to try to tell them what they want to hear.

Right. I’m on the next slide. And, um, this is, I can’t really can’t stress that point enough. This is my main, if you take one thing away from this webinar, this is the one you will never be able to guess what a college wants or what are the best type of applicant is for any given college or for colleges in [00:37:00] general.

Um, so really just focused on, on reflecting and on, on figuring out the best, the best story that fits who you are and on what experiences you’ve had because experienced admissions officers are always going to know if you’re. Trying to impress them either by using really kind of Sansi pompous language or by kind of overstressing, maybe your importance, um, as a member of a particular school club, or really just doing anything to, to impress them.

Right. Impress them too much, too hard. Um, similarly they will always know for lying. Um, if you’re trying to invent experiences that you didn’t live because you think they’ll sound more impressive, um, you will not be able to write about them. Well, and any reader who’s, you know, had multiple years of experience reading these types of essays and your reader will know, um, they will know, and they will not.

Oh, that’d be a good outcome [00:38:00] for your application. Um, and finally, I think I eluded to this before admissions is kind of like dating. If a college doesn’t want you for who you are, then you’re, you’re better off without it. And you know, it wasn’t meant to be so really if you approach it with that kind of mentality, there are so many colleges out there and you are going to be able to find one that matches your interests, uh, matches your preferences and, and is what you need.

And that is also just as excited about you as your. Yeah, thanks Tamara for that great overview on brainstorming essays and also the essay writing process. Um, so that’s the end of the presentation part of our webinar. Um, just as a reminder, you can download the slides if you go to on the handouts tab and now we’re going to move on to the live Q and a.

Um, so for this section, I’ll read through the questions that you guys submitted in the QA tab. Um, and if for any questions that are selected, I’ll paste them into the public chats. You can see them and then I’ll read them out loud before tomorrow. Cause you guys can answer. Um, if you guys have any troubles submitting to the QA, you can also send [00:39:00] me a private and a chat message with your question.

Um, all right, so let’s go on the first question. Um, I just lost the question. Give me one second. All right. So the first question that we have is how do I make a college essay stand out?

That’s a good question. That is a fantastic question. Um, so you know, there’s a few things, some are a little bit more technical and kind of. Um, yeah, technical I’m detail oriented in somewhere a little bit more big picture. So in terms of technical questions, I mean, first and foremost, you want to make sure that it’s well-written, that is proof-read that there’s no grammatical errors that it’s well structured and it may not sound like something that would make it stand out.

But, um, it’s almost the opposite, right? If those things are not mad, if those boxes are not checked, it will stand out in a bad way. So you want to make sure that your kind of style grammar and flow are laid out, [00:40:00] um, and clear and well done. Um, other than that, um, in terms of big picture kind of setting yourself apart from other applicants, it’s it’s, as I mentioned before, it’s, it’s really trying to find something that is unique to you.

And I recognize in saying that. A lot of you who are here in this webinar, and a lot of other students, your age are going to have similar experiences on paper. So you will be playing similar sports. You will be, you know, in the same school clubs because many schools have the same clubs. Um, and so it can feel really stressful to try to figure out a way to be unique in that context.

But remember, you may be in a club with 20 other people, and they’re all going to have the same club on their resume, and they’re going to write about it potentially, but how w what you took away from that club, how you participated in it and what [00:41:00] conclusions you drew and how you developed as a person is going to be unique to you.

So really trying to bring it back to that idea of authenticity, um, and speaking, um, I mean, really speaking from the card and, and sharing the experiences that you know were impactful to you, as opposed to what others may think should have been impacted. Um, my next question is, are there any bad essay topics?

Can your essay be too political? That is a great question. Um, and it’s a question I get every year. Um, well, it’s really two questions. So in terms of bad essay topics, there are a few topics that are not recommended. Um, mostly because they are either overdone and too general or are so difficult to execute well that it’s usually best not to attempt them.

So some of those examples include writing about topics that are too personal. So, um, [00:42:00] things like, um, divorcing a family or a bad break. I am so sorry. This was a flood warning message. I don’t know if you’ve heard the beep. So. Right. So a divorce and family, a bad breakup with group, significant other, um, or a bad fight with a best friend.

Those are very intensely personal. And I don’t want to take away from the, you know, the difficulty of such an experience, but when it comes to writing college essays, um, you do want to remember you’re writing for a stranger, um, and 600 words or less. It’s really hard to convey some of the intricacies of these kinds of more personal subjects, and it can make a reader show uncomfortable.

Um, it can come off as oversharing. So you want to make sure that you’re picking topics that, um, yes. Speak to two formative experiences, but sort of keeping in mind your audience and who you’re writing for and why you writing. Um, can they be too political? Um, [00:43:00] That is, that is a great question. And especially, you know, in the last few years, uh, in, uh, are quite polarized political environment, um, it can be stressful to try to navigate that side of things.

And, um, I think if I’m not mistaking, there should be, um, a few good blog posts on our, on our CollegeAdvisor blog that touch exactly on the question. Um, but I will say now that if you write about something political, you want to make sure you’re writing about it because through a lens, through a personal lens, right?

So you’re not just stating a political opinion, but maybe you’re explaining why a particular issue is important to you. And you’ve worked really hard to advocate, um, for that issue and how that was impactful for you, how you grew as a person. Um, you know, did you mean. New people through this [00:44:00] political engagement.

Did you learn something or realize something that you didn’t realize before? So really bringing it back to that personal lens, right. As opposed to just a pining on a hot button issue, that’s kind of in the news cycle at any given moment. Great. Um, a few questions before we take a quick break. Um, next question is, should you include or avoid dialogue in your narrative?

Um, for that, I would say, honestly, it’s completely up to you. Um, it depends on who you are as a writer and sort of what you’re trying to do with your essay. Um, if it feels right, if you feel that it would add value to what you’re trying to say and get your message across better, by all means do it. I’ve had students who wrote a lot of dialogues students who wrote no dialogue, um, and both groups have been successful, um, in admissions.

So it’s really about. Um, another question, how long does it take to write an essay? Oh, that will be really [00:45:00] dependent on, uh, as well, uh, some on your process, really. So for some students, you know, they’ll spend a lot of time brainstorming. Um, and then when they sit down to write, it will be really smooth sailing for others.

Um, they will take time to edit and rewrite and copy edit. It depends on, you know, how strong of a writer you are. Also. It depends on whether you like writing or not quite frankly, because maybe you’re someone who’s really into physics, math, and those are the subjects you’ve been pursuing for four years, really.

And when you have to sit down and suddenly write, you know, these pages and pages of texts, when you combine all of the essays together, you know, that might be slow going for you. So it’s really, really hard to get an estimate. Um, I. Quantitative metric I can give is on average, my students for any given essay, they usually go through about 2, 3, 4 drafts of an essay [00:46:00] before they’re satisfied with it.

But how much time those drafts take really depends on the person. Okay, great. And before we get back to QA and I also do, and I tell you guys more about how you can get help and also more about CollegeAdvisor. Um, so I’m going to send out, um, a offer and if you guys can go and click the link and learn more about CollegeAdvisor, um, and how to get one-on-one help.

So if you want to work one-on-one with an advisor and we have a ton of advisors here on over 155, um, of both advisors who are current students or alumni from colleges and also former admissions officers. Um, so you can click the link if you want to sign up for free consultation. Um, all you have to do is click on the green chat button at the bottom of the screen.

And then if you write in the word consultation, alight, you know that we’ll come back to you and it we’ll be able to help you set up your free competition. Yeah, this is a really great resource. Um, he worked with people like Tamara, um, who really know a lot about, um, project missions and the essay writing process.

So especially if you didn’t get your answer, um, insert into QA on [00:47:00] today on puzzles, they’re a great place to find some answers and get some help. Um, right. So back to the Q and a, um, the next question that we had was how do I make sure my essay doesn’t sound sad and attention seeking? That’s that’s a really good question, uh, as well.

And I think the biggest tip there, um, I know I mentioned, um, a few topics that, you know, might be a little bit too personal to write about, but, um, it, regardless of what you just write about, what you want to keep in mind is, um, you don’t want to just stop at sort of telling the reader what happened to you, right?

So if you just lay out the situation, it is true that you run the risk of coming off as. Um, what, what was the question side and efficiency? Can you re you run a risk of, of coming off in a less favorable light, but you want to take it that one step further and say, okay, so this happened to me where I lived this experience and how has it [00:48:00] made me better or stronger or more resilient resilience.

So what did it add to me that I can talk about in a more positive light? And it doesn’t need to be that you had some challenging experience. Um, you don’t need to force yourself to pretend that you’re okay with it or to kind of brush it off as, oh, this hardest thing happened to me, but it’s fine. Uh, that’s not at all what I’m suggesting you do, but it’s more about kind of what, how has.

Helps you grow as a person, right? So if you take it that extra step forward, then you won’t come off as sad or attention seeking. You will come off as a resilient person who is able to take things that come at them and, um, and turn them around to, to evolve and grow. Great. Um, next question we have is how can we create an attention grabbing hook?

Um, that’s a really hard question to [00:49:00] answer broadly kind of in a webinar without, um, having some idea of what you’re writing about. Um, a few common strategies. Um, so let me, let me share two, uh, kind of off the top of my head one, um, is going back to that dialogue question is to kind of start off with aligned from a dialogue you’re having or something that was said to you.

If it’s really attention grabbing, if it really gets at the heart of what you’re writing about. And the second, which is really an extension of the first is to start in the moment. Right. So if you’re describing an event or situation to, to open your essay by putting the reader, just dropping them in that situation, what was it like to be there?

What did it smell like? What did it sound like? What did it feel like to be you in that moment in time? So, you know, there are ways to do that poorly. Um, so you want to be careful that you don’t, uh, disorient the [00:50:00] reader too much, but starting with that kind of in the action hook, uh, can help them to, to stay engaged with, with your essay as you then kind of zoom out and start to give a little bit more analysis of what’s going on.

Okay. Um, our next question is a little bit similar. It’s how should I start my essay? I heard I’ve heard that you can start off with a story and then end with that story. I just know that coats are good to start off with. Um, what are some other good things. Oh, you stole a whole of my good examples. You’ve already listed all of them, so you’re already in a good place.

Um, so we mentioned a quote, um, mentioned story. Um, you know, there is really as many ways to start an essay as there are people who write those essays. Um, I’m trying to think back to some of the essays I recently edited. And a lot of them do start either with a quote or a story is a very common [00:51:00] refrain.

Um, yeah, tomorrow I think I’ll be jumping here. Um, it can also be super helpful to see examples and just see how they end up starting, um, like their first sentences. Um, like sometimes you can also create a first sentence that sort of want to hear. Yes. So if there’s some kind of contradiction or just something that sounds really intense, Um, I know one that I’ve heard from years back was, um, every time I walk into a Starbucks, I use a different name on from there.

You sort of just want to hear what the rest of the story will be. Um, and so you can, you can sort of, I guess, create something where if you read the first sentence, it’s gonna make me be intrigued and angry, but to hear the rest of the story for thank you, Lily. That was much better answer. Yeah, no worries.

Um, okay. The next question you have just to keep going through, um, someone asks, how should I tweak my essay to cater to different colleges? Um, for example, like a public school, if she’s a religious school so for your main comment, FSA, um, you know, you will send one essay out to all [00:52:00] schools. So there you won’t be making any tweaks.

Um, especially if you’re going through the common app platform, you won’t physically be able to make tweaks. Um, That, when it comes to supplemental essays, um, the best advice you can give there is to really do your research with each university. So, you know, you want to see if there were some really important values or messages that are on the website of the university.

So you can frame your answers around those values. So here, I’m thinking of Georgetown, my Alma mater, uh, it’s a Jesuit university, um, and they have a few kind of big mottos, if you will. One of which is men and women for others. So they’re really big on community service and giving back to the community, um, and using your education to improve the world around you.

Right? So, um, when you go on their website, those Jesuit values are kind of plastered everywhere on many pages. So it’s kind of very clear what the focus and ethos of a university is when you go on their websites. So to tweak your [00:53:00] essay, to cater to different colleges, you, you really do your research. You see.

Well, the university’s values are what interesting offerings. They may have unique academic or extracurricular offerings. And then when you write the supplemental essays, you kind of, you try to work that into your responses. Great. Next question is any advice for students who need help putting their unique voice in the personal statement?

I just put my voice in other essays, but for my college, I see. I can’t. Okay. Um, here, you know, I’d be interested to see, you know, what you mean by other essays, but, um, I can definitely still, still answer your question. Um, you, you want to start with examples, right? So I know it’s, it’s, it’s challenging or rather I make it maybe sound simpler than it is, but you want to start with a few very concrete examples of, of moments in your life that speak to.[00:54:00]

Moments in your life, which you reacted in a way that’s really unique to you, right? So you want to, you want to take things that actually happen and build from there. But when you’re talking about the actual writing style, um, if you wanting to make sure that your voice comes across and you’re not coming off as sort of formulaic or robotics, uh, one of the best devices I can give you is to share your writing with a trusted friend or a teacher who already have seen some of the schools.

You mentioned you you’re able to put your voice across another essay. So people who have seen your other work and who kind of understand, um, what it is that you’re aspiring to do with your college essay and to get a second pair of eyes on, on the text, um, and see if they can give you any guidance or advice and help you to, to put your essay together in a more way, in a way that’s more unique, unique to you and reflective of your voice.

Okay. Um, my next question is what advice would you give to people who are not great writers. [00:55:00] Um, plan, organize and proofread. I’ve had a number of students for whom writing is not kind of natural skill is not something that comes easily. It’s something that’s hard work and takes a lot of patience and practice and that’s totally okay.

And, you know, do be mindful that college admissions officers don’t expect everyone. Who’s, who’s applying to college to be sort of connects, you know, having way, not at all. Um, but, um, if. Sure. Writing something you struggle with. You want to set aside ample time to make sure you plan and organize your thoughts very clearly that you know what story you’re telling, what is your main point, how you’re getting from point a to point B to point C and then you’ll want to leave a lot of time for editing.

So your first draft may not be so great. Your second draft may not be so great, but, um, if you put in the work, um, and potentially seek support from teachers or friends or parents, and you revise continuously, you will see that, you know, [00:56:00] between even your first and third draft, there will be a lot of improvement, but you want to make sure you give yourself the time to do that.

And you don’t procrastinate until the last minute, especially if you know that writing is something that’s a challenge for you. Great. Um, my next question is should credentials be included in our essays? And if so, how long. Um, I assumed by credentials, you mean sort of your big achievements, um, in your academic career or your extracurriculars?

Um, you can definitely mention them if they’re relevant to the story or to the point you’re trying to make. So you don’t want to write sort of a cover letter, right? The types you would do when you apply for a job. So you don’t want to just list off multiple achievements. Um, Um, mostly connect them, you know, with, with some freezes and call it a day.

Um, if you’re going to mention a credential, there needs to be context in which it’s relevant, right? So maybe it was a very hard earned credential. Maybe there was a challenge you to overcome in order to [00:57:00] acquire it, or maybe that credential speaks to your role as a leader, um, or to a particular skill that you have.

And that case, of course you can and should mention it, but you don’t want to just overload your essay with, you know, president of this club, co president of this other club. Um, if it doesn’t serve a greater purpose, um, in your story, um, our next question that we have is, is there such a thing as being too reflective?

I know that when I first heard it answering a prompt, it came off as a rant or therapy session. How can I avoid this? So, um, One way they can, uh, that can help. Um, one strategy that can help is, um, what I mentioned earlier, which is maybe giving yourself the space to kind of ramble on paper, um, and get it all out at first.

Um, as opposed to trying to filter it or, or force yourself to be immediately, you know, very well structured, but once you’ve done, so going back through and highlighting or pulling out [00:58:00] pieces of information that are most, um, most important and most telling rights. So, and kind of getting rid of some of the additional noise, um, so organization, so you want to make sure that your everything get on paper.

Um, thing gets restructured organized in a little bit more of a, of a kosher way. And as I mentioned before, when you’re treating. Your topics and your answer is you do want to ask yourself a question of, you know, in my, is what I’m sharing a little bit too personal, um, knowing that this is going to be a stranger reading this for two, three minutes at most.

Um, yeah. Am I giving them too much information, um, that they don’t need to know essentially? Um, probably just a few more questions before we wrap up on next question is what are some good ways to show and not tell? Interesting. That’s a great question. And one, I get every day of my work as a [00:59:00] CollegeAdvisor.

Um, so the first thing you want to make sure to do, or rather not to do is not to explain. So think of it as sort of. Uh, uh, reading or writing an instruction manual, right? You do this, then you do this and then you do this, this happened, this happened. And then this happened, um, that’s an example of telling.

Um, so you can tell the reader, um, being, um, being the president of this club made me more appreciative of diverse opinions, or you can tell them an anecdote in which a club member had a very unconventional idea about how to fundraise for an upcoming event. And you were not sure about it, but you decided to give it a go and here you’re kind of describing what the idea is [01:00:00] and what you were doing and how you were setting it up.

And then the outcome ultimately was so successful and everyone was so happy that you realized, wow, I should really give my, my teammates more room to improvise or to share, to share their ideas. Right. So. Simply saying that without, without giving the detail and without putting the reader sort of in your, in your shoes, in the room with you, you would be telling, but, but that additional level of, of, of, of detail and of sort of sensory examples, right?

What was it like to be there? What did it feel like? Um, that’s, that’s what makes for a good show. Don’t tell essay or paragraph, for example. Great. Alright, thanks commissioner. It looks like we’re at the end of our webinar time. Um, yeah, big, thank you Tamara, for telling me so much write essay, brainstorming, essay writing, and then also answering all of all of everyone’s questions.

Um, looking ahead at the [01:01:00] calendar, when you guys leave, you guys will be connected to a landing page that has all of our September webinars on. So if you look at this page, our next overnight, it’s going to be the ultimate guide to supplemental essays. So if you guys come to the future webinars, a lot of them are gonna be focused on essay writing.

Um, you know, we hope that you found this helpful and I’ll let you see what a few more in the future. All right, everyone have a great night. Thank you everyone. Have a great night.

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