The 10 Most Overused Essay Topics
As students prepare to apply to college, writing the personal statement tends to loom large. Personally, I think this has a lot to do with feeling a lack of control in the admissions process. By senior year, you can’t go back and change your grades from freshman year. You aren’t able to add 8 activities and be the captain/president/leader of all of them. You have no control over what your teachers write about you (just pick ones who like you, and it will be fine!). But the essay… that’s where you can still have an impact. So it makes sense that applicants end up putting lots of time and energy into the writing process.
But, while essays are crucial pieces of the evaluation process, please remember that they are just one piece that admissions officers take into consideration.
It’s important to understand that “holistic review” or “whole person evaluation” means many factors are weighed in an admission decision. To name a few: academics, extracurricular involvement, letters of recommendation, essays, and (potentially) interviews are all considered. For more on this, see our post on the Anatomy of a College Application.
Ultimately, what all that means is this… The best essay in the world won’t get someone admitted if they aren’t academically qualified for that institution. And a “weak” or “overdone” essay won’t necessarily lead to a student’s denial if they’re a great fit for other reasons.
With all of that said, there’s no “secret essay topic” or formula that will guarantee an acceptance. I’m sorry! Yet, there are some essay topics you can actively avoid. These are ones that admissions officers tend to see over and over. And, when that happens, they can lose their impact.
In this blog post, I’m going to hone in on 10 of the most overused essay topics. The goal is to help you avoid some common easy downfalls! However, please take everything here with a grain of salt. Schools have absolutely admitted students who wrote about some of these topics (parents: don’t worry if this was you!), but generally these pieces don’t move the needle forward or build a strong case for admission.
Remember: schools are reading thousands of amazing applications, and they’re looking for reasons to admit students rather than deny them. So just think carefully about what you write and ultimately try to put your best foot forward.
Feel free to use this Checklist when brainstorming your essay topics!
10) Résumé Recap
Clubs, jobs, internships, research, travel… these are all topics that seem like good ideas at first. I get it! It makes sense to want to write about experiences you’ve had or involvement that’s impacted you. Yet, for some reason, when you smash them together into a 600+ word essay, it typically falls flat.
That’s because this type of essay can easily become a list of activities or cross into “braggy” territory. And that’s unnecessary. Remember, admissions officers already have your extracurricular list in the application!
The Résumé Recap is the most straightforward and frequently seen essay type on the overused list. In fact, this happens so often that you may not even realize you’ve done it at first. Or maybe your essay started out strong, but the second half turns into a list of accomplishments. Truly, it happens all the time. That’s why this one comes in at number 10: because it’s not necessarily a negative, but it rarely helps a student stand out. You can think of the Résumé Recap as a missed opportunity.
9) Telling not Showing
“I started out shy but over time became more confident.”
How did that growth happen? Why is that a good thing? What lessons were learned? What do you do differently because of it?
The Telling not Showing essay is another missed opportunity. Students often tell application readers a lot of personal traits or provide a narrative of a specific experience. But they fail to show the admissions committee how those things came to be and why that experience matters today. Admissions officers want to see the person you’ll be on their campus. So you need to show them that. Explain how an experience or interest has made you who you are today.
Did you discover a love of chemistry and use that to take a leadership position in a chemistry club or to tutor others who are struggling? Or did you simply take the class, like it, and now you want to take more in college? Those are two distinct essay paths that give the person reading your application very different views of how you might engage on their campus.
8) Shock Value Piece
From a real essay I read a few years ago: “my best friend and I injure each other about once per week.”
WHAT?! That doesn’t sound healthy. Or like a good friendship… I didn’t learn until two paragraphs later that the two friends are circus performers who practice dangerous stunts at their weekly class. Now that could have been a really interesting essay! But why did the author start the response this way?
Sometimes applicants think they need to find a way to stand out from the very first sentence. So they’ll decide to write something really wild or concerning to capture the reader’s attention. Some examples include:
Starting the essay off with an outrageous, scandalous, or offensive claim
Swearing or writing something inappropriate
Answering the “who would you be for a day” question with an antagonist (i.e. Lord Voldemort or worse)
Honestly, in all my years reading applications, I haven’t seen the Shock Value Essay ever work the way it was intended. In most cases, it becomes a hurdle that the admissions office has to overcome rather than something that gets the committee excited. I recommend staying far away from this tactic.
7) The “Grandma” Essay
When I was in high school a college rep came to visit and told us not to write our personal statement about our grandmas. I thought that was a ridiculous statement. I love my grandma immensely, but I couldn’t fathom this being a real thing people did. Yet here I am, years late, writing this paragraph. I truly can’t believe it! Years after that visit, the Grandma Essay is still here to stay.
I’ve seen so many beautifully written essays that describe a friend or family member’s journey. Parents who immigrated to the United States. A grandparent who was the first person in the family to graduate from college. A mentor who overcame incredible hurdles and now gives back to the community. These people sound amazing. I want to admit those parents, grandparents, and mentors. Yet, I often leave the essay feeling like I learned nothing about the student who is actually applying to college. The stories of others can play a role and don’t have to be avoided, but you should remain the focus of the personal statement.
6) Narrowly Focused
Otherwise known as “premed, premed, premed.” To be clear, narrow isn’t negative. But there’s a big difference between an interesting hobby that you want to dive into and discuss (i.e. your town’s annual mushroom picking event, advocating for sustainable fishing, researching the effects of body image on dancers) versus mapping out an entire life path at age 17.
Of course, the Narrowly Focused piece doesn’t just apply to premed. However, students with an interest in the professions (medicine, law, business) or engineering are where I see this happen most often. And, the funny thing is, it’s not a rare interest or hobby. For example, numerous students participate in hospital shadows, volunteer at a clinic, or have experienced a medical issue that led them to explore health as a career path.
These are all great things to get involved in if you care about others or really want to pursue medicine! Yet, in many ways, it’s the oversaturation of those experiences and writing about them that brings this to #6 on the “overused essay” list.
I also want to point out that the majority of students will change their mind and major at least once after getting to college. What you do after college is far away. I’d recommend focusing on the next four years rather than the four after that. I also encourage you to stay away from locking yourself into a certain path or career before you’ve had a chance to explore the hundreds (if not thousands) of classes available to you on a college campus.
5) Far too Graphic
Prior to 2015, the Common Application had an essay prompt that asked students to “describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content.” I cannot tell you how many essays I read that answered this question with “the bathroom.” No! Just no. How could this possibly end well?
Fun fact: even though the prompt has been eliminated, I still read at least half a dozen bathroom essays each year.
I also once read an essay where the student imagined what his own birth would have been like. In very graphic detail. I had to stop reading for the day after that one.
Even more common will be the dissection essays. Fetal pigs, cats, sharks, human cadavers… Who knew high schoolers were doing so much dissection?! Just writing this gives me shivers. While students who love science are awesome, please remember that not everyone has a strong stomach for graphic descriptions. Do us (and our stomachs) a favor and dial down the graphic descriptions just a bit. Thank you!
4) Overly Thesaurus’d
Garrulous, Inchoate, Exigent, Convivial, Ignominious, Expurgate, Phlegmatic…
Do you know what these words mean? If so, you have a much more extensive vocabulary than I do. Or perhaps, you’ve been recently studying for the SAT?
Long story short: I like to think I’m a pretty normal human being with a slightly above average vocabulary. If I have to look up the words you’re using in an essay, it’s going to be more frustrating than impressive. Admissions officers want to get to know who you are not how well you use a thesaurus or can memorize those vocab words.
See this article for 22 Hilarious Examples of How Not to Use a Thesaurus
3) The Walk Through
If we were grabbing coffee as friends, then I’d love to learn about what’s on your bookshelf, in your closet, how you organize your locker, what songs are on your playlist, what you keep in your desk, and the meaning behind the pictures on the walls of your bedroom.
As an admissions officer, reading an essay that describes these things tells me a lot about a student’s environment, but not very much about who they are as a person.
When reading applications, I am hoping to learn what applicants have experienced and how they think. I want to see the ways they apply those experiences or thought processes to everyday life. The Walk Through essay tends to get stuck on what items are in the room/bookshelf/closet/desk/playlist rather than why or how they got there and what impact they’ll have going forward.
This is the cousin of the Name Essay, where applicants connect their names to items or personal characteristics. Try to avoid this one as well!
2) Stuck in the Past
I could go on all day about this one! It’s probably the most common mistake that applicants make and takes infinite forms. Here are a few:
A chronicle that starts the day someone was born and ends in present day
A story that clearly relies on someone else’s memories (she can’t possibly remember walking for the first time! Or a thunderstorm that happened when he was 3?!)
Essays that describe a childhood event, but never quite make it to the present or future
I completely understand wanting to recall an influential past event, to start off with a narrative story, or focus on showing growth from a few years ago. This is perfectly fine! But admissions officers generally want essays to come to the present pretty quickly.
A pro tip would be to have the essay catch up to the present no later than 1/3 of the way through. We want to know who you are now rather than who you were at age 12.
1) Reflecting on Failure
It’s a trap! The end.
For real though, I’d strongly advocate for steering clear of this topic choice. It often gets stuck in the negative experience rather than the positives that have come out of it.
And every “failure” essay tends to sounds incredibly similar or has the same story arch. Generally, it goes something like “I failed to make the varsity soccer team my sophomore year. So I worked really hard over the next year, tried out again, and made it my junior year. Now, as a senior, I’m captain!” You can replace soccer with debate club, first chair violin in the orchestra, or a hundred other activities.
If we’re talking about missed opportunities, this is the biggest one in my opinion. Definitely not the way to stand out from the crowd or the queue of applications.
Bonus: The Class Paper
Don’t get me wrong, we love English teachers! But sometimes there’s a school, state, or nationwide curriculum that they have to follow. Because of this, students to tend to submit a previously written school paper as their college essay. Unfortunately, admissions officers won’t learn much about you through your beautifully written analysis of The Great Gatsby. And colleges often end up getting lots of personal statements that have the same topic or theme (and isn’t a Common Application or Coalition Application essay choice!).
I actually think this is where the Walk Through essay started back in the day. Even worse, sometimes the Class Paper is just a school report or research paper that isn’t even about the student! It might be an easy solution to submitting an essay, but it’s not worth it in the long run.
Tl;dr: If it was written for a class assignment, be careful about submitting it as your personal essay.
If all of these topics are off the table, then what should you write about? The College Essay Journal is a great place to start figuring that out!