We’ve spent the last few weeks breaking down the Common App essay prompt by prompt, and today we’re going to give you our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. There might be seven different prompts, but ultimately, all schools want the same thing from their applicants’ Common App essays: a story.
We’re almost through our series on all seven Common App essay prompts, and today we’re talking about Prompt #6. A sleeper hit prompt, we actually really love this one. As you all probably are well aware by now, our favorite prompt is always #7, but we know that a lot of students really value having the structure a traditional prompt offers them. If this prompt is right for you, we think it’s a great one to write.
As the summer continues, so does our series on various prompts of the Common App essay. If you’ve spent any time on our blog, you’re probably aware that we’re huge prompt #7 fans—aka, write an essay of your own design, but we know not all students are ready to embrace a structureless prompt. So today, we’re going to give you our takes on prompt #5, and give you some tips and tricks on how to write it.
We're continuing our dive deep into each of the seven Common App essay prompts and guiding you on how to brainstorm, write, and perfect your Common App essay. As you may know by now, we don’t follow the conventional college essay-writing rules, so what you’ll find here might be fairly different from other advice you’ve seen. But trust us, our methods get results! Today, we’re talking about the newest (albeit, like three years old) Common App prompt, Prompt #4.
We’re back with another post in our series decoding and exploring each prompt in the Common App, and this time we’re tackling prompt #3. Honestly, we’ve typed the word prompt so much it’s lost all it’s meaning, but we press on. Here at TKG, we are huge prompt #7 people (aka, write an essay of your own design) because we love that you can do so much with it. But, we know some students don’t love something so unstructured. Prompt #3 might be a good option for you, but we have some caveats to mention.
The 2024-2025 college application season is about to start, so we’re starting our series on our favorite thing: the Common App essay. For those of you just now learning about and exploring the Common App, it’s a unified college application portal that allows you to work on and apply to up to 20 colleges, but not all colleges exist in their system (cough UCs cough Georgetown cough MIT). One of the great so-called perks of the Common App is the Common App essay – one essay that gets sent to all the schools on your list. While most schools also require supplements, the Common App essay is something almost every school on your list will require, which means it needs to be perfect.
We have many rules of thumb when it comes to writing an excellent Common App essay. That’s because we take all of our clients’ writing—every word that they put on an application—very seriously. College admissions have gotten to be incredibly competitive, verging on absurd. And whether or not you think it’s morally correct that it’s so hard to get into an elite school these days, if that’s where you want to go, you have to stand out above thousands of other qualified applicants.
Many people think that they need a fancy internship or an international community service trip to make a competitive resume. We disagree! In fact, we love it when our students have jobs. And they don’t need to be prestigious-sounding jobs, either. Many, many, many students across this country work in order to help their families, save for college, or just accrue a little spending cash. And admissions counselors (who have jobs themselves) will not only understand, but they will respect the effort.
We get it. The college admissions game can put a lot of pressure on you to spill your guts about your most impactful traumas and experiences in your Common App essay. While some students may genuinely wish to tell their story, many more feel compelled to do so merely because they think they have to. So, we started a series on how to tackle those big topics in your Common App essay, and now we’re talking about how to write a Common App essay about having a parent in jail. First, if you find yourself in this situation, we hope you’re doing okay, and we understand the difficulties and uncertainties you must face. We genuinely hope that you have access to support, that you are coping well, and that your well-being is being prioritized. If you need help writing this essay, please reach out here.
If you’re applying to college, you are in the midst of an experience that is all about you. It is you applying to college, after all. These are your grades. Your activities. Your test scores. And your essay. And it is all about you. Which takes us to the title of this post: How to write a college essay about yourself.
If there is one thing you should know about us at The Koppelman Group, we love food. We love cooking food, we love eating food, and we love working with students to write about food for a college essay. Food is a truly universal subject. We all eat, and so we each have a relationship with food. Over the years, we’ve helped dozens of students incorporate the universal nature of delicious (or not so delicious) carbs and condiments into acceptance-winning essays.
Moving is a nearly universal experience, which is actually a really good thing when it comes to writing college essays. One of the biggest misconceptions about college essays is that if you don’t have something truly unique to say, you and your essay are going to fall into a pit of half-read applications from which no acceptances ever materialize. If you didn’t hear us say “misconception,” let us reinforce that this is a myth. The idea that a 100% unique never-done-before totally-novel essay is a winning essay is a total lie.
The people who know you the best are probably, for 99% of people, your family. You’ve spent more time with them than anyone else, whether they are biological, adopted, or chosen. So, you have the most history with them, and the deepest stories with them. There is a lot of fodder in there for essays! It makes sense, then, that you would think to write about your family in your college essay.
What do you think of when you hear the word “community”? Does a specific organization, group, team, or even class pop into your mind? Or maybe it’s a feeling — a sense of closeness, support, and reciprocal care. The coolest thing about community, though, is that there isn’t one kind of community. Communities come in all shapes and sizes, and what one person looks for in a community (let’s say, loudly supporting cheerleaders) might be the exact opposite of what someone else is looking for (bookworms with that quite kind of confidence). No matter who the community is comprised of or why it has come together, though, communities all have one thing in common: they bring people together.
Death is a universal human experience, but, while we love when students write about something universal for a college essay, death isn’t like other universals. This is because it’s almost always, and practically unavoidably, dark. Writing about other universals, like food or friendship, are assumed to be positive by the reader. As soon as they get a sense of the topic, they feel a warm fuzzy feeling. But writing about death isn’t like this. It gets depressing fast. Like literally from the get-go.
For much of America, sports rule people’s lives and pack their calendars. Whether it’s football, baseball, golf, horseback riding, freestyle skiing, or parkour, sports as an overarching category are this thing that fills a huge amount of our collective mental space. It makes sense, then, that you may be thinking about writing a college essay that intersects with the world of sports. And it’s not a bad impulse. Sports are a potent essay topic, and there’s so much you can draw on to lead to a stellar essay.
If you’re sitting down to write your college essay but have no idea what to put on paper (or, more likely, the screen), we’re here to help. Writing a college essay can be scary and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. One of the ways to make it fun is to write about something you love, something you cherish, and something that is close to you — and often that means your culture.