If you’re familiar with our blog, you know that we love common app essays that are relatable. We like to bring the reader into our lives, which is why we avoid alienating topics and singular experiences that don’t speak to universal truths. And while your essay should ground the reader, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

A lot of our clients are close with their families, given or chosen. Which is great. But when students come to with essays “about family,” they usually read like a book report. There are details about every member, but the applicant gets lost in the essay and it doesn’t say much about who they are as a person.

This is the most important thing to keep in mind: your common app essay should not be about one of your family members. An ode to the greatness of your sister, or the influence that one of your grandparents had on you is 1) extremely overdone and 2) entirely misses the point. You are applying to college, your family members are not. Well, they might be. But in that case, they should be writing their own college essay.

There are, however, two positives about family-centered essays:

Your family can act as a secondary character. (More on this later)
Your family can provide a setting. When we read college essays, we like to know where we are. This is what we mean by grounding the reader. Are you at the dinner table? Are you in a car? Doing an activity? Keeping the story in one place helps familiarize the reader with your surroundings.

So how do you write about family? You don’t start out with writing an essay about family as your goal. You end up there, organically. Here’s what we mean:

Figure out what personality trait you’re trying to convey in your essay. This is important! Make a list, text your friends, and come up with three characteristics you feel speak to who you are as a person.
Brainstorm stories that exemplify those traits. Let’s say you want to write about the fact that you have strong communication and mediation skills. Come up with 3-5 examples.
If (and only if) the truest and most genuine story is related to your family, then you choose that one. But you should only do so if you can tell a cohesive story about yourself, and the secondary characters won’t overshadow your presence. You might also consider telling three vignettes, one of which is centered around family.

You should approach writing this essay the same way you would any other: keep the story at the forefront, rely on secondary characters only as a way to demonstrate your personality trait, and make sure that your story has a beginning, middle, and end.

If you need help writing, contact us here.