Common College Application Essay Ideas

For high school juniors and transfer students, it is time to start thinking about your college application essays! In today’s blog, I am going to talk about a few overly common college essay ideas that I’ve seen when I was working as an External Undergraduate Admissions Reader with UC Berkeley.

This is not to say you shouldn’t write your application essays about these topics, but hopefully through this blog it will get you to reflect and think about your essay ideas in order to stand out amongst the sea of other students applying to college.

1. Creativity: Art, Dance, Music, Playing an instrument, Cooking/Baking, Playing a Sport, Fashion
These essay ideas are very common because a lot of students seem to write their essays about these topics in the same way. This kind of essay usually revolves around telling the reader about a topic or interest that you are passionate about. Put yourself in the shoes of an admissions reader or admissions team who may be reading hundreds or even thousands of essays about these topics. If you choose to write your essay about one of these topics, you may consider framing your essay in a unique way in order to help yourself stand out from those who are also writing about these same topics.

With this, you should not be dissuaded from joining clubs or organizations surrounding these topics just because they are common. A great way to stand out depends on your involvement and your impact in the common activities you join. For example, if you are interested in music and play an instrument, a common essay idea would be to talk solely about your involvement in the school band. A more unique essay idea from this music topic would be to delve deeper into your involvement. With this music theme, maybe you write your essay about how you create your own music and post your original creations to online sites like SoundCloud. From this example, you can differentiate yourself even if you are doing a “common activity.”

2. Talking Negatively about Yourself/Others
You should probably steer clear of writing negatively about yourself or others in your college application essays. Saying things like “I was always quitting tasks until I found X.” Or “I was forced by my parents to participate in X, but I ended up loving it.” Or “My teacher was a bad teacher, that’s why I have a C in Math.”

Personally, I would not mention anything negative about yourself or others because this information can easily be removed from your application essays. You don’t need to qualify your love for an activity by starting off with your disinterest in it. You don’t want to put yourself down even if you are going to build yourself up later on because it is still written in your essay that you hated school or hated an activity. You don’t know how the reader may interpret this part of your essay and you don't want anyone reading your essays to have any glimpse of negative thoughts about you through these negative comments. Be careful of your word choice when drafting your essays!

3. Shy to Not Shy Theme
Finally, a common essay idea is the shy to not shy theme. I even wrote one of my college application essays using this idea where I wrote about how I was a shy student until I found my voice through student government. Personally, if I were to rewrite my college application essays, I would not use this theme to exemplify my love for student government. I don’t think it gets my story across. Instead, I would want to edit this essay and instead of making it about the shy to not shy theme, I would focus on some other aspect of student government that I can share with the admissions team. This could be similar for you where the shy to not shy theme isn’t what would create the best essay for you, but some other theme or aspect about the activity or personality trait would be what you want to share in this college application essay.
​
Hopefully this blog will help you when you are brainstorming your college application essays. Good luck!

RACHEL

Rachel is the Founder of Study Hall College Consulting. Rachel graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2020 where she double majored in Cognitive Science and Legal Studies. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.