How To Write Common App Essay

As you can see from this prompt, it gives students an inordinate amount of freedom to talk about whatever they want!

How to Write an Amazing Common App Essay (2023–2024) — Examples Included

Learn how to come up with a unique topic and choose the right Common App Essay prompt to write a strong personal statement and get into your dream college. Plus, a full-length Common App Essay example

(Note: This guide can also be found in our free, 110-page comprehensive guide to top college admissions, How to Get Into America’s Elite Colleges: The Ultimate Guide.)

Part 1: Introduction

• What is the Common Application?
• Why does the Common App Essay—and other college essays—matter?
• What are these mystical college essays, anyway?
• Common App Essay Prompts 2023–2024

Part 2: Pre-writing your Common App Essay

• Brainstorming Common App Essay topics
• Freewriting
• Essay writing timelines: how to write your Common App personal statement if you have six months, three months, one month, or even less

Part 3: Choosing your Common App Essay topic

Part 4: Writing your Common App Essay

• What ‘type’ of essay do you have to write?
• Outlining
• Writing and revising: common errors

Part 5: Common App Essay example

Part 6: Frequently asked questions

Part 1: Introduction

Applying to college: the phrase alone can instill terror in the hearts of high school seniors, and even in those of us who have lived through the experience.

Every year, the college application process seems to get more complex, and more intense. If you’re a student, you might be reviewing rumors and horror stories about that classmate of yours with perfect grades and a 1500 SAT score who somehow got rejected from every Ivy League school. If you’re a parent, you might be afraid of how much the college admissions system has changed and grown more competitive since you were your kids’ age, or perhaps you never had to navigate this system at all.

One of the biggest fears of many students and parents is the sheer anonymity of the process. You, the college applicant, have worked hard through high school, earning great grades, expanding your worldview through extracurricular activities, and contributing to your community… and now, it can seem pretty unjust to throw yourself at the mercy of an application system that seems arbitrary, blind to your personality, or even uncaring.

There’s good news, though.

The college application process has a logic to it—and it’s one that you, the applicant, can both navigate and trust. All those essays, all those forms, all those questions? They’re about getting you in touch with the most authentic and vibrant version of yourself. In fact, if tackled with intelligence, reflection, and organization, the college process can actually offer you a chance to make the admissions process about you as a person, rather than about a distant name on a screen.

What is the Common Application?

You might be familiar with the Common Application, Common App for short, which serves as a single application shared by over 900 colleges, including every Ivy League school and similarly elite universities like Stanford, Caltech, and the University of Chicago. The Common App allows you to enter information like your name, demographics, extracurricular activities, and more just once for every school that uses it. It’s also where you’ll encounter “The Common App Essay,” otherwise known as your personal statement (PS), which is what this guide will focus on.

Though not every school uses the Common App—many state or public schools often have their own systems—the work you do in writing your Common App Essay will serve you in every other component of the process, including applying to non-Common App schools and writing the secondary and supplemental essays that often accompany both types of applications.

Why does the Common App Essay—and any other college essay—matter?

You may have heard the phrase “holistic admissions” thrown around—many universities follow this model, which means they don’t necessarily have an ACT or SAT cutoff score, nor do they require a certain number of AP/IB/Honors courses. Instead, they’re trying to get to know candidates as humans. Admissions officers are people—people who would be horribly bored if their job came down to just numbers, statistics, cutoffs, and counting up your AP, SAT, and ACT scores.

In order to get into your dream school, you’ll need not only great grades and test scores, but also a strong personal statement.

Why? Your personal statement is the single loudest ‘qualitative’ element of your application. It brings to life the student—you!—behind your statistics and demographics. It’s the way you communicate with the admissions committee as a person and potential member of the campus community. With more people applying to colleges every year, admissions officers know they can have their pick of bright and motivated students. In addition to seeing your talents and achievements on paper, they need a chance to imagine what you might be like as a walking, talking human being.

Many students and parents wonder how big of a role essays play when it comes to college admissions decisions. While the importance of college essays—which are written over a period of a few weeks or, ideally, a few months—varies from school to school, most experts estimate that they make up for anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of admissions decisions!

In other words, your four years of schoolwork, AP, IB, ACT, and SAT exams, community service, volunteering, and so on account for only 70 to 90 percent. These estimates are provided not to scare you, but rather to emphasize how critical it is for you to spend at least as much time on your college essays as would on any other high school pursuit.

Fortunately, we’re going to talk about every aspect of your personal statement in this guide and reflect on some of the lessons we’ve taken from nearly 20 years of coaching students through the college application process and getting into their dream schools.

Gain instant access to essay examples for every supplemental essay prompt from the top universities and BS/MD programs in the United States.

What are these mystical college essays, anyway?

Let’s define our terms:

• Personal statement (PS): When people refer to the personal statement, they’re talking about the 650-word Common Application Essay, which all schools using the Common App will see. Your personal statement is your major chance to articulate the qualitative aspects of yourself to the admissions committee and the admissions committee’s major chance to get to know you as a person. Throughout this guide, “Common App Essay,” “Common App personal statement,” and “personal statement” are used interchangeably.
• Secondary or supplemental essays: These are the essays that schools can choose to have you write on top of the core Common App Essay. They might invite you to talk more about an extracurricular activity on your resumé, to reflect on a quote from a famous alumna/alumnus of the college, or to share your thoughts on any number of wide-ranging topics.

Common App Essay prompts 2023–2024

Here are the 2023–2024 Common App Essay prompts—all seven prompts are exactly the same as last year. We’ll address how to think about them shortly, so just lodge them in your brain for now.

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
6. 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?
7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Broad, right? You’ve got 650 free words to articulate what moves you, what excites you, what animates or explains you.

This means your essays are not a place to restate what can already be found on your resumé, CV, or Common App Activities section. They’re also not a place to prove that you’ve had some major epiphany, changed the world, or seen the truth of reality at age eighteen. They can be but do not have to be—by any means—about a major traumatic experience. They can but need not discuss family, identity, race, gender, or class.

Instead, they are a place to give the admissions committee a chance to see the you that your friends, classmates, teachers, teammates, and family know. We’ve seen students write about the New England Patriots, the poetry of John Keats, their grandparents’ village, their obsession with keeping too many Google Chrome tabs open, how grilling meats represented a rite of passage, and many more topics that range from the super-serious to the lighthearted but still meaningful.

The Common App Essay prompts are diverse enough that they allow you to write about pretty much anything. Therefore, we encourage you to brainstorm your best stories first and then think about which question to answer. Admissions committees have no preference for which prompt you choose. Additionally, we encourage you to review additional successful college essay examples.

Furthermore, keep in mind that the Common App Additional Information Section contains an optional, 250-word space to describe how COVID-19 has impacted you. Therefore, you do not need to use your Common App Essay to provide this context. That said, it’s also perfectly fine to write about or touch on COVID-19—if the pandemic is a backdrop that allows you to shine a light on what’s unique and interesting about you in the manner we described above.

Let’s meet our students

Throughout this guide, we’re going to refer to a few Common App Essay examples. These examples are closely based on essays we have worked on with students over the past two decades—students who successfully met their admissions goals, including getting into multiple Ivy League and other top-tier schools.

Let’s meet our students now.

Student #1: Ramya: Ramya intends to be premed in college, but isn’t sure if she wants to major in biology or something else entirely. She’s spent her high school years participating in a variety of activities. She played soccer, but wasn’t the star player. She was involved in student government, performed in cultural shows as a dancer, and did speech events.

What’s not on Ramya’s resumé? She is a rabid fan of the New England Patriots, despite living in California for most of her life. And, she’s very close to her father and has a tight-knit group of friends.

Student #2: Anita: Anita has an aptitude for English and history. She likes writing, but she’s not on the school newspaper, nor has she ever published a piece of fiction or poetry, which makes her nervous about calling herself a writer. She spends much of her time on mock trial—in fact she’s nationally competitive at it—and lots of people tell her she’d make a great lawyer. But she doesn’t think she wants to major in political science or philosophy; she may not even want to do anything associated with mock trial in college.

What’s not on her resumé? She loves the outdoors, though she has nothing concretely extracurricular to prove it—she’s never been a camp counselor or a Girl Scout.

Student #3: Josh: Josh isn’t sure what he wants to study. He’s a solid student, though no particular subject gets his pulse racing. In his free time he draws comic strips, and he’s had a few on display at various community events in his town. He plays basketball and piano.

What’s not on his resumé? Josh has a complicated relationship with piano—his parents pushed him into it, and he’d like to quit as soon as possible. And, he’s very close to his big brother, who recently left for college. He also has a little sister, who he’s never been tight with.

Student #4: Michael: Michael lives in a small coastal town and attends a big public high school. After school he has a job scooping ice cream, and though he’s not expected to contribute to his family’s income, he doesn’t have much time for clubs or sports, which aren’t very important at his school. He generally likes chemistry, but he isn’t sure what he wants to do with that. He doesn’t want to be premed, and he can’t imagine being a chemist, so he’s undecided about what to major in.

What’s not on his resumé? Michael is no great surfer by competitive standards, but he learned how to stand up on a board at a young age because his grandfather, who’s from Hawaii, taught him. His grandfather recently passed away.

Part 2: Pre-writing your Common App Essay

Of course, the terrifying part of starting any new piece of writing—whether you’re a professional, seasoned author, or a high schooler planning for college—is the spooky glare of the blank page, that blinking cursor that doesn’t quite seem to yield to you.

One of the major challenges many students face when applying to college is knowing that they are full of passion and potential energy which hasn’t yet been converted into kinetic energy. That can make trying to communicate who you are, as well as who you hope to become, a daunting task. You might worry about sounding generic or not sounding like yourself or not sounding “smart” or “wise” enough.

The best antidote to all of these concerns, from writer’s block to finding your voice, is to prepare yourself emotionally and creatively well before you sit down to type out your personal statement.

Here’s how you can attack your Common App personal statement and secondary essays if you have a few months before they’re due. We are big proponents of starting early—ideally in June.

Why so early? You may not be thrilled at the prospect of spending the summer before your senior year on college applications. But getting going in June after your junior year and committing to a few exercises over the summer will be like spring training for summer athletes. By the time you get to August, when you’re drafting your Common App Essay and your secondary essays in full, you will be warmed up, and much of the hardest work—that is, the reflection and figuring out what you want to say—will be done for you.

Starting early will also give you time to hand a strong draft of your essay to the teachers from whom you plan to request letters of recommendation for college. If your recommenders know what you’re saying about yourself, they can help tell the same story about you but from a different perspective. This is crucial because your application is a chance to offer not only the facts about you but also a narrative of you—a sense of who you are, how you move through the world, and what you hope to become. That means that each component of your application—your Common App personal statement, your supplemental college essays, your teacher recommendations, and the classes you’ve taken—is like an episode in your story.

Nevertheless, we’ve also offered some adjusted timelines lower down in case you don’t have the whole summer to work with.

Brainstorming Common App Essay topics and working with prompts (2–3 weeks)

Review the Common App prompts and identify which ones get your juices flowing. You can also use our expanded prompts, given in the bulletpoints below, to help you brainstorm and freewrite over the summer. We’re starting with Common App Essay Prompt 7, since it is the broad, general question. Then we’ll circle back and go through Prompts 1–6.

Prompt 7: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

• Make a list of themes and broad topics that matter to you. What do you, your friends, and family spend a lot of time thinking about or talking about? (Note: This is not the same as asking for your list of extracurricular activities.) Tell the story of an important day or event in relation to one of these topics.
• Who’s a family member who lives with you and is important to you? Think of a specific time they helped you with something. Tell the story. What’s an important conversation you had with them? Tell the story.
• Think of any person—family, friend, teacher, etc.—who has been important to you. When did you first meet them? Tell the story. When did you have a crucial, meaningful, or important conversation with them? Tell the story.
• Make a list of experiences that have been important to you. These do not have to be dramatic, tragic, traumatic, or prove that you changed the world, though they can be any of those. Perhaps a particular summer that mattered a lot? Or an experience with a friend or family member who shaped you—it could be a specific day spent with them, or a weekend, summer, or year.

Remember: Specific anecdotes are your friend when drafting your Common App personal statement. Try to think of a story you often tell people that shows something about you. One of the best pieces of advice we can give you—and something you’ll see reflected in all of the following prompts—is to anchor things in anecdote or story as much as possible.

Prompt 1: 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.

• Where did you grow up? Describe your neighborhood, town, or community. Big or small? What makes it unlike other parts of the world? How has it affected you? What images are important for someone who has never been to your hometown/neighborhood/community to see? For instance, is there farmland all around you, grain silos, cows? A Chick-Fil-A on every block?
• Where is home for your parents? Does their home impact your day-to-day life? Describe the first time you saw their home, in story form.
• Did you grow up considering another place that is not where you currently live home? Tell the story of the first time you went there or the first time you remember going there. Was there a particular time—a summer, or a year—when that place became important? Tell that story.
• What’s the most memorable thing about you? What do people in your community or school know you for? Tell the story of the first time you did this thing. Tell the story of the most meaningful time you did this thing—it might be, say, when you won a game, but it also might be when you lost a game, or when you quit the team.
• How have you spent your summers in high school? In childhood? Tell a story of a memorable day during a memorable summer. Where were you? Why did it matter? Does what happened that day influence you today? How?

Prompt 2: 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?

• What major changes have you been through? A move? Changing schools? Losing a loved one or a friend? (Avoid writing about romantic relationships and breakups in your essays, but feel free to mine them in your freewriting.) Tell the story of the day that change occurred—the day you moved, the first day at the new school or the last day at the old school, the day you got bad news about a family member or a friend, etc.
• Did you ever quit an extracurricular activity or a job? Why? Tell the story of the day that happened, and of the day you decided to quit.
• What class was hardest for you in high school? Why? Tell the story of a specific class assignment that was difficult. Now tell the story of a specific class assignment that caused you to have a breakthrough, or changed your mind about something.
• Have you ever been forced to try something you weren’t good at? How’d it go? Tell the story of the day you tried it. Who encouraged you to? Where were you?
• Have you faced a disability, a mental or physical health issue, or other significant challenge while in high school? Think of a day when you are proud of how you handled or carried yourself in the face of this challenge. (Recommended reading: How to Effectively Write About a Disability in a College Essay)

Prompt 3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

• What values did you grow up holding dear? Are they the same ones today? Tell the story of the first time you learned about these values—say, a morning at Sunday School or a conversation with a grandparent. If they’ve changed, tell the story of the moment (as best you can place it) when they changed—say, in a classroom, in a conversation with a friend, etc.
• Is there a prevalent belief in your family or community with which you disagree? How did you come to disagree? Tell the story of an argument—cordial or not—that you’ve had with someone about this issue. Tell the story of a time you are proud of how you handled conflict in relation to this disagreement.
• When were you wrong about something? Tell the story of how you figured out you were wrong. Who helped you get there?

Prompt 4: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

• Have you ever had an interaction with a stranger or someone whom you didn’t know well that left a profound impact on you?
• How has your relationship to gratitude changed over time, either recently or in an earlier period of your life? What events spurred this change?
• Have you ever been the recipient of an unexpected gift or favor that inspired you to “pay it forward” and help someone else who wasn’t anticipating it?
• What are you thankful for in your life right now? Make a list of things, people, or circumstances for which you are grateful, no matter how big or small. You might even complete this exercise daily over a period of several days or weeks, similar to a gratitude journal.

Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

• They say a piece of short fiction is about a moment after which nothing will be the same again. Have you lived through one of those moments? What was it? Tell it the way you’d write a short story.
• Eureka! Have you ever had a moment when everything just *clicked*? Tell the story of that realization—set the scene, down to every image, who was or wasn’t in the room.
• Forget medals, victories, grades—what intangible, off-your-resumé quality or moment of your life are you proudest of? Tell the story of the day that happened.

Prompt 6: 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?

• Let’s say you’re left alone an entire weekend in your house. What do you get up to? Tell the story of a time that’s happened—or imagine, on the page, what that would be like. Set the scene: what rooms are you in in your house, or are you in your house at all? Where do you go? What do you bring with you?
• What activities have you self-started—that is, what have you done without ever being told to? Tell the story of the first day you started doing that thing.
• What do your friends come to you seeking help with? Tell the story of a time when you think you did a great job of helping another person. Now, to make sure you stay humble, tell the story of when that person helped you.

At the end of this brainstorming exercise, our students, Ramya, Anita, Josh, and Michael, will have discovered even more things not on their resumé that can expand what all they might write about.

Freewriting (3–4 weeks)

Your job, if you’ve started this early, is not to start writing your draft immediately, or even to choose which Common App prompt you plan to select. First, you’re going to freewrite using the above prompts as a guide—choose the ones you like, or print them out, cut them up, and put them in a hat; each day, shake up the hat and grab one at random!

Freewriting is one of the fun parts, so the more you can do it, the better.

There are a number of ways to approach freewriting, and all of them are meant to keep you limber, loose, and free. You want to sound authentic in your essay—which means not stiffening up under pressure, trying to sound formal, or more stereotypically “adult” or “learned,” as many students do. The more you can sound like you while freewriting, the stronger position you’ll be in when it comes to drafting the personal statement.

1. Buy a few composition notebooks: Those $1 things, available at Walmart or the like. Work in these for the summer. No need to get precious—no fancy Moleskines here, and no laptops or tablets unless you are physically unable to write by hand. Why? Take the cartoonist Lynda Barry’s wise words here: “There is a kind of story that comes from hand. Writing which is different from a tapping-on-a-keyboard-kind-of-story. For one thing, there is no delete button, making the experience more lifelike right away. You can’t delete the things you feel unsure about and because of this, the things you feel unsure about have a much better chance of being able to exist long enough to reveal themselves.”
2. Set aside six minutes each morning, or a few times a week, for the period of time you’re freewriting. Six minutes, that’s it! Put your timer on, put your pen to paper, and don’t stop writing until the timer goes off. If you run out of things to write, write, “I don’t know I’m bored I don’t know help help I hate writing!” until new words come. What are you going to write about during those six minutes? You can try thinking about those Common App essay prompts—they’re so broad that they should let you in in some way. Think: what’s my obstacle, my identity, the thing I love? Note that Anita isn’t sitting down to write her disquisition on “how my life as a mock trial champion makes me prepared to go to law school.” Instead, what might come out as she writes by hand is, “I remember the rush the first time I stood up at a mock trial tournament. I was wearing a blazer and my mom’s heels and they were so uncomfortable. It was so overheated in the room and I’d drunk way too much Mountain Dew. But why did I love playing this role of attorney? Was it the theater? The chance to finally argue without getting in trouble at the dinner table?” If six minutes doesn’t work for you, or if you think you’re not getting in the zone in that amount of time, try doing three pages in your composition notebook instead. Write in big letters and double-space. Let your hand roam free.
3. Don’t show anyone anything you have written yet. And don’t reread it immediately. Let all that you’ve written sit, latent, so you’re not tempted to edit it right off the bat. Why? Allowing your writing to breathe away from you can prevent you from committing one of the cardinal sins of personal statement-writing—but also all writing!—trying to force the story into what you think it should be instead of what it is. To get more concrete: let’s say Michael wrote about his grandfather teaching him to surf in answer to several of those prompts (about a crucial summer and a person important to him). But now he’s so excited about that that he immediately wants to turn it into his draft. As he’s writing, he gets self-conscious, thinking, Why am I writing about surfing when I’m not a competitive surfer, and when it’s only something I do occasionally? Or say Michael shows it to an English teacher, who gets distracted by the quality of Michaels prose—which was meant to be free and unedited—and tells him to choose another topic, since this one isn’t “singing” yet. Respect your process and let these things sit.

In order to have this kind of time freedom, you’ll have to start early. And if you spend your summer warming up and training for the main event, you can start rereading your body of freewriting by the end of July.

Essay writing timelines: How to write your Common App Essay if you have six months, three months, one month, or even less

In an ideal world, you can start writing and planning for your college essays the summer before your senior year. But many students have prior commitments that make following a six-month (June–December) timeline difficult. So here are a few adjusted timelines that can allow you to take advantage of the brainstorming and freewriting process even if you don’t have the full six-month window.

Six months—June to December (ideal if you are applying early action or early decision anywhere):

• June: Brainstorm and work with prompts, 2–3 weeks
• July: Freewrite, 3–4 weeks
• End of July/beginning of August: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement
• Week two of August: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)
• Weeks 3–4 of August: Complete third and fourth drafts
• Beginning of September: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor
• End of September: Complete final draft

Now you have October to complete your secondary essays. November is usually when early action/early decision deadlines hit. So by the end of October, you will have completed your application for anywhere you’re applying early; now you can use the last few weeks of November to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December or January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

Three months—August to October (barely making the early application/early decision deadline):

• First two weeks of August: Brainstorm and work with prompts
• Second two weeks of August: Freewrite
• First week of September: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement
• Week two of September: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)
• Weeks 3–4 of September: Complete third and fourth drafts
• Beginning of October: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor
• Week two of October: Complete final draft

Now you have the second two weeks of October to complete your secondary essays for anywhere you are applying early with a November due date, and the rest of November to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December and January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

One month—October to November (for regular decision schools):

• First week of October: Brainstorm and work with prompts
• Second week of October: Freewrite
• Third week of October: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement
• Last week of October: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)
• First two weeks of November: Complete third and fourth drafts
• Mid-November, before Thanksgiving break: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor
• Last week of November: Complete final draft

Now you have December to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December and January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

Mega crunch time—starting in November (in case you get started on your application really late and are down to less than one month, use the following timeline):

• 2–4 days: Brainstorm and work with prompts
• 2–3 days: Freewrite
• 48 hours after freewriting ends: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement
• 72 hours after first draft: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in). In addition, seek feedback between your second and third drafts, if you have not already done so, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor
• 48 hours after receiving feedback: Complete third draft
• 48 hours after third draft, if time permits: Complete fourth and final draft

Note: Some elite public universities, such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, have November application deadlines, so make sure that you write down your college list, with deadlines and requirements, by the end of September to ensure that you don’t miss anything.

Part 3: Choosing your Common App Essay topic

With all this free-written raw material in hand, it’s time to choose the right topic. What notes should your essay hit? Here are some characteristics that a good Common App Essay topic contains:

1. Anecdote and specificity.

As you saw in the prompts above, we’re big advocates of beginning with a particular story or anecdote. This is not the only way to start an essay, but it’s a classic one. Journalists call this a “lede”—it’s a hook that brings the reader into a wider topic. Your essay will always go beyond the anecdote, but an anecdote offers a reader an easy, smooth way into your personal statement.

A good Common App Essay topic can relate, as much as possible, to a particular anecdote, story, or even scene. Let’s say Josh found himself writing about his siblings—his older brother who just left for college, and his little sister who he’s spent more time with since his brother left. His essay shouldn’t start, “I love my little sister,” but instead, “I remember the first time my younger sister and I connected. It was July, and our older brother had just gone to college, leaving the two of us alone at home together for the first time.”

A good essay begins at a specific point in time and revolves around a specific event. An essay without an anecdote or specific story is an essay topic, not an essay. So, pull from your freewriting: where did you find yourself writing about a particular event, story, anecdote, or point in time?

Another way of thinking about this is: does your potential topic contain a person (other than you), a setting, and a beginning/middle/end? That gives you a character, a place, and a plot—all crucial elements of an essay.

One important note is that you don’t have to start with the anecdote—it doesn’t have to be your “lede.” That might make you formulaic. But you’ll want one to work with, to anchor the piece at some point.

2. Tension, conflict, and opportunity to show growth.

Josh might write a lovely reflection on how close he and his brother were, or how much he likes his little sister—but that doesn’t give the admissions committee much to work with. Why? Because your topic needs to display your ability to grow and show change over a period of time. If Josh has always had a perfect relationship with his sister, well—first, no one will believe that, and second, Josh is not really telling a story.

So as you’re identifying the right anecdote for your essay, make sure you have a point of tension—a point where we, the reader, wonder if everything will turn out okay. For Josh, this might mean beginning with a time before he and his sister were close—say, when all the siblings were in the house and there wasn’t much time for the two to connect. Then Josh would tell us about what changed as soon as the brother left, and in there he might find an opening anecdote.

3. A wider relevance or a ‘lesson.’

Your essay doesn’t have to demonstrate that you underwent some great metamorphosis or epiphany as a child or teenager, but does your possible topic have a takeaway to work with? You’re looking for something that you can put in your pocket and carry into the future, and in an impressive and ideal world, something that makes the reader of the essay say, “Wow, I like that way of thinking, and I might even return to that one day.”

Another way of thinking about this is: your essay is about how your past influences your future, or the way you think now. Michael has settled on his grandfather teaching him to surf. That’s a fruitful topic, not just because it contains two characters (Michael and his grandfather), but also because it contains a place (the ocean, or, say, a surf shop), a plot (Michael couldn’t surf in the beginning, then learned in the middle, now at the end Michael can surf and tell us about it), but also because the end includes a lesson and a chance to spin that forward, perhaps by talking about how the sport has taught Michael how to be calm and collected under pressure.

4. Some connection between your past, your present, and your future.

It’s common to see a student choose an important experience in their past, narrate the whole thing beautifully, but then forget to tie it to the present. Before you even start writing, think about whether your potential topic is influencing the way you think about the present, and, crucially, the future. Take Michael, again. He writes beautifully about his grandfather teaching him about the waves, but he’s not a pro surfer, and might even be going to college in the middle of the country. Does that matter? Not as long as he tells us how surfing influences him—as he did in extracting a wider lesson.

You might be afraid of picking that mythical ‘wrong topic,’ say, the one thing every admissions officer is secretly sick of reading about but which no one will tell you. Students often ask us: Should I not write about a dying grandparent? About coming out? About the meaning of my name? About politics?

Here’s a secret: the success of your topic almost always lies in the delivery—so absent writing about something flagrantly offensive, violent, or irresponsible, you’re unlikely to hit on that rumored thing the admissions officers can’t stand.

It is good to be afraid of cliché—but one of the truisms about clichés is that they become trite because they reiterate feelings we’ve all had. That also means that buried beneath many clichés is some authentic, particular, and personal relationship you have to your topic. If you’re working with a teacher, counselor, or advisor on your statement, they can help you discern whether you’re in cliché territory or whether you’ve bypassed it to a more fruitful realm.

But wait. There is one big rule. Be humble. Don’t try so hard to sound adult or beyond your years, that you end up coming across as a know-it-all. It’s better to show the admissions committee that you are capable of finding and making meaning through the experiences you’ve had as a young person, no matter how small or limited they may seem to you. If you’ll let us wax philosophical for a moment: that ability to make meaning from something that isn’t pompous or dramatic—and to do so without being aggrandizing—is the stuff of great art. So, you’re in a good tradition if you stick to humility and take a deliberate and honest approach to your essays.

5. Make a list of everything that seems like a fruitful topic.

From the questions and prompts, you should find that you have 3–5 strong topic areas and stories—stuff that got you thinking and feeling, and which produced what Hemingway called the “honest sentences” that comprise good writing. Start with the one that moves you most—that’s your personal statement—but save all the others as fodder for your secondaries, or as backup material in case someone you trust tells you to consider switching topics for some reason.

(Tip: the stuff that isn’t always linked to an anecdote or story but is important to you can often be useful for those secondaries.)

Let’s find out what our sample students chose to write about.

Essay #1: Ramya on the Patriots

Ramya could try to write something about medicine. Or she could write about soccer, dance, or speech. But none of those things seem to tell the admissions committee what they wouldn’t already know from simply reading her list of extracurriculars.

So we decide that Ramya is going to write about the Patriots. The question is how she’s going to demonstrate—through her football fandom—that she is a mature and thoughtful person who will be a good member of any college’s community. An ode to Brady won’t do the trick here—but what will is Ramya’s thoughtful reflection on how spending time watching the Patriots at a sports bar every Sunday with her dad has given her a relationship with her father that most of her friends have never enjoyed with their families.

Essay #2: Anita on the outdoors and poetry

The obvious thing—and the thing most teachers and advisors told Anita to do—is write about mock trial. It would be a good opportunity to give the admissions committee some insight into her psychology behind the success. She took a couple of stabs at it during free-writing, though, and it didn’t flow.

So instead Anita decides to write about a wilderness solo she took in North Carolina on a school trip, and about how it influenced her relationship with poetry.

Essay #3: Josh on piano and mistakes

We talked a lot about whether Josh would do best avoiding writing about piano—it’s the main thing on his resumé and sometimes it can be good to show things off-resumé, as Ramya and Anita plan to. Josh did some writing about his relationship with his sister and his brother, and that might find a home in the secondary essays. But it became clear that Josh has an obsessive, if not always positive, relationship with piano, and so there’s something there.

But how to write “about piano?”

We look at the themes that came up during Josh’s reflection. He found himself writing a lot about mistakes, public performance anxiety, and the pressure to get a piece just right. Focusing in, Josh thought about a specific piece which helped him get over some performance anxiety, so he’ll write about learning that piece and facing the fear.

Essay #4: Michael on surfing

We’ve already referenced Michael’s essay a few times, but he’ll be writing about his grandfather teaching him to surf and the lessons surfing has given him off the board and out of the waves.

You’ll see us return to these students’ ideas as we work through outlines.

Part 4: Writing your Common App Essay

If you’ve spent your summer freewriting and then carefully selecting the right essay topic, you’re now in a strong place to start writing—ideally at the end of July or early August. (Remember that if you are applying early action or early decision to schools, your deadline will come at the start of November, whereas regular decision applications will generally have December and January deadlines.)

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of this organized pre-work—it’s incredibly frustrating for a student to write an entire draft and then find that it’s just “falling flat” or “doesn’t sound like them” or “is clichéd.” Using the criteria we’ve already set out, though, you can avoid that scary feeling of having done a lot of work that you’ve got to shelve.

What ‘type’ of essay do you have to write? (a list of narrative strategies)

It’s important to remember that there are as many narrative strategies as there are television shows, books, movies, plays, and poems. We can’t exhaustively discuss all of them, or even most, but we can give you a few “modules” to play with.

At 650 words, each of these will be best understood as a five-paragraph essay, so a basic structure stays the same, but the way things begin and end will not.

1. The Specific Experience Essay: This module is one of the most flexible and powerful types of essays. It begins with a scene, memory, or anecdote, and then tells us what that scene, memory, or anecdote continues to mean to the writer. It’s a classic, and should not be underestimated. Michael’s essay about learning to surf with his grandfather will use this structure, but so too will Anita’s about taking a wilderness solo. Anita will use a slightly more subtle version of this, but both essays begin with a scene: “I was eight when my grandfather first took me to the water,” “The happiest two hours I have spent were on a boulder jutting into a stream in North Carolina.”

Resolving the Specific Experience Essay requires a student to point to some kind of realization garnered as a result of the experience. It doesn’t have to be an enormous Eureka! or epiphany, and in fact, it can come later. Michael’s reflection on the experience of learning to surf with his grandfather occurs over a decade after he first hit the waves. Anita’s comes during an English class two years later when she first reads the poetry of John Keats and William Wordsworth and realizes these writers were engaging with exactly what she experienced during her solo in the wilderness.

The trick Michael and Anita each pull off is spinning the experience forward so that it means something for the rest of their lives. Michael writes about how he understands meditative headspace as a result of standing on the board all those hours with his grandfather, and how his grandfather’s legacy will always be with him. Anita goes small with her reflection: she talks about how she learned to see art, and artful experiences, in her everyday life, and in small, quiet moments (this is especially good for Anita because it expands her away from just the hyper-intense mock trial competitor she might come across as).

2. The Patterned/Iterative Essay: This module is a little more advanced. Let’s take Josh’s essay about piano playing. He might want to open with a scene of him playing piano on stage, but that’s a little obvious. The essay he’s going to write is actually about practice, and learning to stop making mistakes. So, what if he started each paragraph with a different mini-moment of him playing piano and making a mistake?

• Paragraph 1: My first time erring on stage—I am six, and I’m playing Chopsticks. Then he’ll introduce the theme of the essay.
• Paragraph 2: My second time messing up—I am thirteen, and… etc.

Then, the natural place for Josh to end it is the time he almost messes up but doesn’t, which shows us how he’s grown overtime.

3. The Circular Essay: In this essay, the writer begins with a scene or image or concept and then will circle back to that scene or image or concept before the end of the essay in order to make sense of the initial opening. This essay deploys suspense. Take Anita’s essay, which might open, “I spent my happiest moments lost and alone in the wilderness. How did I get here? To understand that, you’ll have to understand X, Y, Z about me…” and which might close: “. that’s how I found myself, at sixteen, lost—but entirely at home in the wild.”

4. The Mini-Odyssey Essay: The last classic and powerful module is the good old problem-driven essay. In this type of essay, our hero (you, the writer) meets a challenge in the first paragraph, and then the essay is devoted to showing us how it is solved. Let’s say Michael wanted to write not about learning to surf from his grandfather, but about learning that his grandfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

There’s a lot of narration that will be required for Michael to tell us about losing his grandfather—it’s too much to cram into the first paragraph. So Michael might distribute the narration chronologically, showing us first the bad news (the problem), then zooming out to reflect, then showing us how he faced it (addressing the challenge), probably failing to adequately face it perfectly the first time, and then eventually facing it successfully (the solution).

Those are just a few more narrative possibilities for structuring your essay. Right now, we’ll focus on Ramya’s.

Outlining

Now, taking your chosen topic, it’s time to outline it. Outlining works great for some people as a pre-writing tactic, and we always recommend it. For others, it can be harder than simply getting down to writing. If you’re really struggling to outline and would rather just follow the pen to a first draft, that’s fine, but do yourself a favor and make outlining your second draft step. At some point, everyone needs an outline, but it’s your call when to do it. Let’s follow this through with Ramya’s essay on the Patriots. The model we’ll use for this essay is a five-paragraph, anecdote-driven essay.

By the way, here’s the prompt that helped Ramya settle on the Patriots: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? While this one isn’t among the current Common App essay prompts, it—or any other prompt—can be used to generate an essay that fits under the umbrella of the open prompt, Prompt 7.

So, with that in mind, Ramya’s going to write about the sports bar where she watches her team play every Sunday during football season.

1. Introduction: Ramya has a fun advantage to her essay: it’s unexpected. The heart of it takes place in a sports bar, and she may seem, on paper, to the admissions committee, to be an unlikely diehard football fan. So we begin at the bar and Ramya sets the scene with an anecdote:

It had been a rough week at school—drama with my friend group, hard tests, orchestra practice, exhausting soccer drills—but I knew where I belonged on a Sunday. At Dee’s Sports Bar in San Jose, with my dad, watching our team…

She also tells us about Dee’s itself, taking the chance to show the admissions committee that she has narrative skills in just noticing things:

By the end of the football season, the staff knew where we wanted to sit… we were loyal to Dee’s, just as we had to be loyal to the Patriots, even when they seemed to be letting us down.

In telling this as a story, Ramya has given the admissions committee a human being to relate to from the jump.

2. Billboard/nutgraph/thesis paragraph: In the magazine world, they call the second paragraph in a piece the “billboard paragraph” because it broadcasts—as loud as a billboard—what the piece is about. Newspapers call the same thing a nutgraph, and academic papers might refer to it as your thesis statement. All these terms point to one thing: this is where you shout, HEY! THIS IS WHAT MY ESSAY IS ABOUT! This is where you meld the scene and characters of paragraph 1 with the thematic concerns you’ll address for the rest of the essay.

For Ramya, it goes something like this:

Dee’s is where I learned to be loyal—to my team, the Patriots, from across the country—but also to my father, to my friends, and to myself.

Ramya’s essay is going to focus on loyalty: a big theme, one that would sound terribly weak if she introduced it in the first line or even paragraph, but one that is surprising and interesting here because she’s juxtaposed it against a unique setting and seemingly light fare—sports at a bar. (Ramya has, at some point, assured the admissions committee that she’s not drinking in this bar!)

3. Body paragraph #1: In this paragraph, Ramya will tell us something more about loyalty, and why it matters. She’ll add context. So she will zoom away from Dee’s and tell us that, throughout high school, she started noticing a lot of her friends getting caught up in social drama, becoming competitive with one another, fighting about romantic situations; set against all this, as well as bullying, depression, and other difficult parts of high school, Ramya’s loyalty to the Patriots and Dee’s served as a sanctuary—one of the things that kept her sane.

Now, it’s crucial to note that this isn’t enough for Ramya to write an essay about. “Here’s something that is important/valuable/meaningful to me” is sometimes where students stop. Ramya needs to advance that—to tell us something that shows maturity, shows an ability to reflect and introspect that will come in handy in college and adulthood…

4. Body paragraph #2: . so she uses her next paragraph to make a bigger point: what other types of loyalty being at Dee’s on a Sunday causes her to reflect on.

5. Conclusion: Now, Ramya will spin the whole thing forward and point our eyes toward that ‘lesson’—the thing that she can put in her pocket, which will serve as a kind of talisman throughout life.

Writing and revising: Common errors

Most people don’t outline. And even after outlining, many people fail to follow their outline. It’s natural that you’ll want to stray here or there, towards or away from the initial plan, but below are a few common errors that people make when they either don’t outline or ditch the guiding hand of their outline. As we go through some of these errors, we’ll also make a list of a few general tips and tricks for managing some of the toughest parts of your essay, including time, scene, epiphany, change, character, and more.

Here’s an excerpted version of how Ramya’s essay began at first:

As a 5’1.75” Asian girl, not many people would expect me to spend every Sunday in a bar watching football. I was tired of streaming the games on my computer, and having it lag before every major play.

I want to thank Dee’s Sports Bar for teaching me life lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Thank you for showing me the importance of loyalty, relationships, and laughter.

I have always been loyal to the Patriots….

It’s not a bad start, but it brings us to Common Error #1: beginning the essay by introducing oneself, instead of introducing the story, AKA, starting too broad. Ramya begins by trying to tell us who she is in a big, introductory, throat-clearing way, instead of choosing a specific route into who she is. It’s sweet that she’s small, but there’s a lot in here that we don’t need: we don’t need her height, nor do we need to know that she used to get the games in one particular way or another. We just need to know that she’s at the bar.

She’s only got 650 words. Which leads us to Tip #1: Take refuge in the anecdote, in the specific, in the particular. Everything gets easier if you choose something specific. Many writers—of college essays and other media—get stressed out, believing that they must convey their entire selves in an essay. This just isn’t possible to do in the capsule of space that is your Common App personal statement. And, it will ironically accomplish the opposite, causing your essay to look shapeless and meandering, therefore communicating very little about you.

If you instead use an individual story as a stand-in for something larger, or for something else, your essay becomes a kind of parable or lesson that educates your reader both about you and, hopefully, about a part of the world they’ve never previously considered.

Now, think about the first declarative sentence Ramya makes in that initial draft: “I have always been loyal to the Patriots.” Tip #2: Struggling to define your thesis statement? Look for your first declarative statement! Ramya’s essay can’t be about her perpetual loyalty to the Patriots—that won’t be enough. But the fact that her prose naturally settled on that as its first short, sharp sentence tells us that she’s making a statement she probably believes in. Loyalty now becomes really important as a theme.

Common Error #2: Hiding your thesis statement or burying it too low. Since we know that loyalty will have something to do with Ramya’s thesis statement, we now know we want it to arrive at the end of the first paragraph or at the start of the first.

Here’s how Ramya’s essay began at the end of 3-4 rounds of edits and revisions:

Just before 5 pm on Sunday, October 13, 2013, I was sitting in a bar, holding on to a feeling of optimism that was fading fast. But wait: it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn to drink; I turned to the TV screen. The score was 27-23, and the Patriots had missed too many opportunities. With just over a minute left to play, my dad—the man responsible for bringing me, a 15-year-old, to a bar—dejectedly asked me if we should leave. I reminded him a true sports fan never gives up on her team, no matter the situation. And after a miracle of a drive finished with an unforgettable pass into the corner of the endzone by my idol, Tom Brady, a swell of elated cheering and high-fiving from the fans in the bar ensued regardless of whether we had previously known one another. Loyalty brought us all together.

Another Common Error (#3!) that Ramya made was: Mixing up the conclusion’s sentiment with the billboard paragraph. Her second paragraph, in the original essay, read: “I want to thank Dee’s Sports Bar for teaching me life lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Thank you for showing me the importance of loyalty, relationships, and laughter.” That’s a sentiment, but it’s not a thesis. And that sentiment is fine—it may have a place at the end of the essay—but it doesn’t belong in the second paragraph, because it doesn’t guide our reading of the rest of the essay. It isn’t strong and declarative yet.

This was the billboard paragraph Ramya reached after a few rounds of edits:

There are a few different kinds of loyalty. Loyalty to a team, to an establishment, to other people—even to oneself. Sitting in that bar over the last year, I feel like I’ve glimpsed them all.

A lot is working here! It’s short, clear, and leads us to Tip #3: define your terms. Ramya wants to talk about an abstract concept—loyalty. Many young writers wish to reflect on things like charity, service, leadership, loyalty, friendship, kindness, morality, etc—these are big topics. But Ramya isn’t just talking about loyalty, a word which could mean many different things to many different people. She’s defined loyalty for the purposes of this essay, which means now we are playing in her house.

As Ramya’s original first draft moved on, it stumbled into a very Common Error #4: the curious case of the missing lesson. Initially, Ramya’s penultimate paragraph offered a kind of ode to Dee’s instead of showing the admissions committee that she has a bigger life takeaway from her time spent supporting her team—a problem we could see would happen as soon as we noticed the sentiment of “Thanks Dee’s’” occupying the place that should have been reserved for a billboard paragraph. Returning to the outline, or making the outline partway through, would remedy that.

But don’t get stressed if your first outline feels like it’s getting away from you. Tip #4: Try a reverse outline. Once you’ve written one draft of your essay, print it out. (By the way: Tip #5: print stuff out! Don’t get stuck in an endless spiral of copy-and-paste—by printing out your draft, you can keep a draft next to you and then open a new document so that you feel free to rewrite entire paragraphs, or delete sections entirely.)

Then take your printout and write out what the function of each paragraph is in the margin. Might get a little tough, right? If you can’t answer the question, “What is the goal of this paragraph?” or, “What do I want the readers to garner from this paragraph?” then you’re probably missing a topic sentence.

Everything we’re talking about here—writing, noticing mistakes, correcting them—will take you at least three and as many as five or six drafts to get right. So, Tip #6: Don’t treat your early drafts like anything close to final. That means you’re going to have to get comfortable with simply putting idea to paper, and with cutting entire paragraphs or “points” within the essay. You’ve probably never written anything like the personal statement before, and you have to promise yourself to be iterative. Otherwise, you’ll lock yourself into a weaker version of the essay.

As you’re iterating, try Tip #7: Read your drafts aloud so that you can tell when things feel stiff or weak; this should sound like you. Reading aloud can help you catch things like Common Error #5: tonal errors—sounding too formal or too glib/casual. Ramya never suffered from either of these problems; she sounded like herself even in early drafts.

But many students feel that they either have to sound either formal to the point of stuffiness (“On a Sunday afternoon, my father would pick me up from my room and take me down to the kitchen, whereupon we would adjourn to Dee’s Sports bar…”) or “authentically young” to the point of disrespecting the reader (“On Sundays my dad’s like, let’s go to Dee’s Sports Bar, and I go okay so I come on down and we get going. ”). When you’re staring at the blinking cursor until your eyes cross, it can be easy to fall into one of these traps, and to write in a voice that isn’t yours. When you read aloud, you can catch it.

Tip #8: The right essay-voice is the most polished version of your speaking-voice. You shouldn’t sound like you swallowed a thesaurus, but you should sound a little more formal than your text messages to your friends would.

Part 5: Common App Essay example

Here’s what Ramya’s essay looked like, in the end:

Just before 5 pm on Sunday, October 13, 2013, I was sitting in a bar, holding on to a feeling of optimism that was fading fast. But wait—it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn to drink—I turned to the TV screen. The score was 27-23, and the Patriots had missed too many opportunities. With just over a minute left to play, my dad—the man responsible for bringing me, a 15-year-old, to a bar—dejectedly asked me if we should leave. I reminded him a true sports fan never gives up on her team, no matter the situation. And after a miracle of a drive finished with an unforgettable pass into the corner of the endzone by my idol, Tom Brady, a swell of elated cheering and high-fiving from the fans in the bar ensued regardless of whether we had previously known one another. Loyalty brought us all together.

There are a few different kinds of loyalty. Loyalty to a team, to an establishment, to other people—even to oneself. Sitting in that bar over the last year, I feel like I’ve glimpsed them all. As a Boston-born girl, my loyalty to the Patriots seems natural—even if it’s not so common for a teenage Indian-American-Californian girl to be as much of a sports junkie as I am. But I’ve seen that loyalty tested plenty of times. I’m completely invested in the Pats; I’ve been known to be giddy when they win, and tearful when they lose. However, finding a true home to watch Patriots games in California isn’t easy. So I owe Dee’s Sports Bar a surprising amount. By the end of the season, the staff knew what we wanted to eat, and where we wanted to sit, so the sports bar felt like a second home.

My dad and I have a typical father-daughter relationship; I get mad when he doesn’t let me go out, he gets mad when I neglect responsibility. But in the year since we began staking out the bar, we’ve gotten so much closer. On the rides to and from, we talked about everything from school to politics to pop culture. And we talk about sports as equals. My best friend once told me that neither she nor her dad were willing to make the extra effort to find common ground. And I realized how lucky I was: sports offers my dad and me an inexhaustible topic that we can always turn to.

The bar also helped me figure out still another kind of loyalty—to myself. Junior year was an emotional year, full of difficult academics and the inevitable social drama that comes with high school. The bar showed me that I needed to look forward to something comfortable—a place with no drama, no obligations, and a common goal. or at least, a common desperate desire for victory. At the bar, nobody cared what I got on my last math test or which boy was asking my friend to prom. All that matters is the game. This realization isn’t limited to just sports; I figured out that I need a place to be completely myself—with my team and my dad. This included deciding that I only wanted to stay friends with people who make a positive impact on my life. These were such simple revelations, yet they made all the difference.

I have always been loyal to the New England Patriots. From my toddler days, as I sat mesmerized in front of the screen to today, as I analyze every statistic that I can get my hands on, I love every aspect of the team. But all of those trips to the sports bar taught me important lessons that apply beyond football. And for that, I am grateful.

How to Write the Common App Essay [With Examples]

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Our updated guide on how to write the Common App essay contains everything you need to steer your students through the 2023/24 application cycle, including annotated examples.

One of the most effective ways of learning is by seeing things in action. And that’s no different when it comes to university applications. That’s why so many students – and their advisers – are keen to see things like Common App examples of essays and other application materials.

Well, you’re in luck. We’ve got just that, and much more advice and guidance, in this handy guide!

If you have students who are looking to study at a university in the US, then there is a high probability they will submit some of their applications through the Common App. After all, it’s the most widely used admissions platform for US university applicants (though it’s also possible to apply to destinations outside the US).

Over 800 higher education institutions accept applications through the Common App. This helps to speed up the admissions process, since students only have to submit relevant personal information once.

Download your free Common App essay worksheet

Download our free worksheet, complete with templates and tips designed to help your students plan and write a truly original and individual Common App essay.

In addition to relevant high school transcripts, test scores, information on extra-curricular activities and parent/legal guardian information, all students applying to university through the Common App must submit a standard application essay.

The Common App essay prompts changed back in 2021 for the first time since 2017, reminding us just how important it is to stay up-to-date with the latest developments.

But don’t worry, we’ve got your back!

In our updated guide to the Common App essay for the 2023/24 application cycle, we’ll explore the updated essay prompts and explain how you can support your students as they write their applications. We’ve also included some Common App examples for maximum clarity!

What are the Common App Essay Prompts 2023/24?

There are seven Common App essay prompts for 2023/24. Each is designed to give students the opportunity to explore who they are, what they want from a college education, and their core beliefs and values.

Each of the Common App essay prompts will encourage students to explore a different facet of their background and their personality.

Let’s explore each in more detail

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 1

“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.”

This is a wonderfully open Common App essay prompt.

What’s it asking? In short, it’s inviting students to talk about any aspect of their culture, experiences or education that they feel is deeply meaningful to them.

Specifically, college admissions committees want to know how student’s experiences have shaped them and defined them. Let’s break up each component part of this essay prompt, and look at how students could approach them.

Background

In short, this is anything about a student’s background that they feel has shaped them. It could be something about their family history, background or lineage. It might be a sport, interest or talent they had when they were younger that has informed them as a teenager.

Identity

This could be racial identity, sexual orientation, or even a religious belief. But students shouldn’t be afraid to expand their definition. Being a member of a sports team, a band, or even an online gamer could constitute an ‘identity’ for some of your students.

Interests

Again, a student’s interests can cover all manner of things. What’s most important when writing about interests is that it has to be something without which their application would be incomplete.

To use an example, you may have a student who is an avid bookworm. This is quite a general interest, so it would be necessary for students to talk about something very specific. What have they learned from their favourite books? How has reading shaped their worldview, or their sense of themselves?

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 2

“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?”

This prompt, fundamentally, is trying to get students to think about how they overcome adversity and how they learn from their mistakes. Can students prove that they confront setbacks without giving up?

There are a number of ways students can approach this prompt. They could talk about one, big failure that completely redefined who they are, or a series of smaller, inter-connected failures that are somehow linked.

Examples of ways that students could answer this question are by talking about a class they failed, or a subject at school they have continually failed to master.

Alternatively, encourage students to think about a more social/emotional failure. Maybe they’ve had a falling out with a friend because they failed to consider the other person’s point of view or feelings, or maybe they’ve fallen out with a family member.

Again, the key here is specificity. Students who opt for this prompt shouldn’t spend a lot of time sweating what failure they pick – they need to focus on the specificity of what they learned, and how it changed them as a person.

How to Write Common App Essay Prompt 3

“Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?”

Some students might be put off by this prompt because they may (mistakenly) feel that they haven’t been sufficiently politically active or championed a particular social cause.

But it’s important not to misunderstand this prompt. As with all of the Common App essay questions, this is an invitation for a student to talk about a more personal, singular worldview.

There are arguably two ways a student could approach this prompt.

• By discussing a time they took a minority view against the majority opinion.
• By reflecting on a time that their own deeply-held belief was challenged or placed under scrutiny.

Again, you should encourage your students to look for very specific, real-world ways that they can answer this question.

For example, it may be that they have done some voluntary or community work that has affected how they feel about political issues like homelessness or care for the elderly. They might have completed an internship that has taught them something about how to run/operate a business. They could even have run a social media campaign for a school event, and learned something about the power of marketing!

In short, there’s probably a story in their recent past somewhere, they just need to know where to look!

But here’s the most important thing to remember: this prompt is about the writer going on a journey. In a relatively short space of time, a student needs to tell a story of change, reflection and growth.

Our advice? Don’t tackle this prompt unless there’s a good story in there somewhere!

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 4

“Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?”

This was a new prompt added in the 2021/22 application cycle and it replaces the old prompt 4 from previous application cycles.

“Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d 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.”

The Common App recently explained that they retired the old prompt because it wasn’t being widely chosen by college applicants.

Common App introduced this new prompt by explaining that it was “inspired by scientific research on gratitude and kindness, specifically the benefits of writing about the positive influence of other people in our lives,” with President and CEO Jenny Rickard adding: “particularly at this challenging time, we can help students think about something positive and heartfelt in their lives. And we can do it explicitly.”

In other words, this prompt is designed to encourage students to think about the role gratitude has played in their lives!

Particularly at this challenging time, we can help students think about something positive and heartfelt in their lives. And we can do it explicitly.”

Jenny Rickard: President & CEO, The Common App

“But, as with all of the Common App essay prompts, it’s important for them to reflect on how this gratitude has changed them. Remember that, as with all of the Common App essay prompts, it’s important for students to tell a story.

As ever with Common App essay prompts, you should encourage your students to be creative in their definition of something they’re grateful for.

For example, it could be a physical gift or a gesture of kindness, support or selflessness from someone. They could have learned a valuable or life-altering lesson from a significant person in their lives – and this person could be someone they’re very close to (e.g. a family member or close friend) or even a stranger or passing acquaintance who has shaped their life in some way.

But it’s important for any of your students tackling this prompt to remember that the ‘something’ or the ‘someone’ of their story isn’t the point of the story. Instead they should reflect on how that something or someone, that unique moment of kindness or inspiration has affected their personal growth.

And don’t forget that the prompt asks students to reflect on a moment that made them “happy or thankful in a surprising way”. The key word here is ‘surprising’. So encourage your students to think about a story that’s really unique to them.

Finally, remember that this story, whatever it may be, has to relate back to the sort of person that your student is today! How did this unexpected moment of gratitude impact their life?

Example

Let’s say that one of your students decided to write about a time that a teacher was particularly harsh about an assignment or piece of schoolwork they handed in.

Perhaps the teacher’s feedback was so negative, it made the student feel very deflated or demoralised at that moment in time. Perhaps they worried that they were going to fail in this particular class, or questioned their ability.

But then this setback had the effect of making the student work harder, set their standards higher and meant that they really improved in that particular class or subject.

The student’s unexpected gratitude could come from the fact that their teacher taught them a resilience or a commitment to high standards, that they’ve found useful in their subsequent time at school. Maybe this newfound resilience defines who they are today – and has informed their higher education aspirations.

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 5

“Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.”

Prompt 5 is designed to get students to talk about a key milestone in their life, and how it affected them. In short, this question is asking a student – “when and how have they grown as a person?”

Again, situations that are as specific and meaningful as possible will really help an essay stand out. Some examples of some useful milestones students could write about for this prompt include:

• Voting for the first time.
• Passing an important test or exam.
• Becoming an older sibling.
• A religious ceremony or rite of passage, e.g. a baptism or Bar-Mitzvah.

It doesn’t have to be a big milestone either. Students could equally write about a small, but nonetheless significant moment in their lives, such as the moment that a parent or family member taught them to cook, or even just a memorable birthday.

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 6

“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?”

This is a great prompt to encourage students to share their intellectual passions and interests. After all, it’s important to remember that US universities and colleges are interested in students who are intellectually engaged!

For students interested in this topic, the world is their oyster! But it’s important that, if they choose to answer this prompt, they approach it from an intellectual perspective. A student could write about their love of the Star Wars universe if they want to – but they need to explain why they find this intellectually stimulating or engaging.

For this prompt, it’s also important that students pick a topic that they are genuinely passionate about. It’s important they don’t choose this question because they want to show off!

How to write Common App Essay Prompt 7

“Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”

As you can see from this prompt, it gives students an inordinate amount of freedom to talk about whatever they want!

If you are working with students who want to use this as a topic, then make sure that they are linking their essay back to them, their intellectual interests, personal achievements and background.

It’s important to remember some of the secrets to success in Prompts 1-6. Students should keep their answers specific, personal to them and, most importantly, find a way to tell a good story.

Tips for students brainstorming the Common App essay

Before your students start their Common App essay, it’s worth encouraging them to make notes on how they can demonstrate the core qualities which admissions officers will look for in any application. Students need to think about how they can demonstrate the following.

Teamwork

The ability to collaborate, and demonstrate teamwork is something which university admissions staff will be looking for. Encourage your students to think about a moment where they learned the value of teamwork.

Work Experience & Extracurricular Activities

Ask your students to make a note of any extracurricular activities which may connect with their academic passions and interests. Extracurricular activities are a great way for students to demonstrate relevant leadership and organisational skills and reflect on any experiences or challenges which they have overcome.

Leadership & entrepreneurial activities

The Common App essay needs to be a truly individual piece of work, and the ability to demonstrate leadership, or entrepreneurial drive, will in turn help students to illustrate that they have the ability to be innovative and forward thinking. Ask students to make notes on the following:

• Can they demonstrate the ability to put an idea into action?
• Can they name a time when they’ve started something (a business venture, a club, a creative project), and/or pushed it to be bigger and better?
• Have they achieved something noteworthy or unusual?

Community service

Students should think about how they can demonstrate a care for the wider community and/or the welfare of others, whether it’s through volunteering or any of their other extracurricular activities. Community service is a great way to demonstrate citizenship and a sense of social responsibility.

Global perspective

Students writing their Common App essay will be asked to demonstrate an understanding of other cultures, or the ability to speak another language. Encourage your students to think about any traveling or time abroad which may inform their university application.

Bonus Resource:

Download our free worksheet and template that will help your students plan and write a truly original and individual Common App essay.

How to write the Common App essay [top tips for your students]

Whilst students have a range of essay topics to choose from, it’s also worth remembering that all the Common App essay prompts are designed to encourage respondents to cover several important themes.

So, as your students prepare to write their Common App essay, it’s important that they ask the following questions.

• Which personal experience from my life will make an interesting story?
• How can my essay tell a story and keep a reader interested?
• How can I best illustrate moments in my life which have changed/defined me?
• Will this story show me in my best light?

These questions should inform every section of the Common App essay, and will allow students’ responses to be that much more structured and coherent.

How to get the opening line right

The importance of the opening line in the Common App essay can’t be understated. It’s a chance for applicants to demonstrate flair, originality and wit, and to really grab the reader’s attention. That’s why brainstorming the opening line is an important exercise in itself.

Check out these powerful Common App opening lines from students at some of our BridgeU partner schools. These openers also come highly rated from US admissions staff.

“I almost didn’t live through September 11th, 2001 – Stanford University

“I have a secret. Every day, after school, I come home late.” – Harvard University

Both these opening lines have short, sharp sentences which instantly grab the reader’s attention and offer intrigue as to the potential topic the essay could be covering. Both immediately offer the promise of an essay which will be story-driven and dramatic. Both openings also suggest a story which will be about a life-changing event in the writer’s life.

In short, these opening lines make the reader want to know more.

How to tell a vivid story

Vivid storytelling, and the ability to hone a narrative is vital when writing the Common App essay. Here are some essential components of a great essay which are worth considering and practicing.

Descriptive language and vivid imagery

“Swinging open the door of my sheltered dorm room, I dashed through the corridor, veering towards the lounge. My sister, intermittently coherent, was acquainting me with the morning’s events. It was the 7th of July, and four suicide bombs had detonated in London. The city itself, typically a bustling, urban jungle, had been paralysed; tourists, office-workers, and residents were trapped like foxes in their holes.”

This is a sample from an essay that discusses the terrorist attack in London on July 7, 2005. Not only does this essay tell a compelling story of the applicant’s experience of what was a traumatic and newsworthy event, but its use of vivid imagery and descriptive language is very powerful.

For example, consider the description that London “had been paralysed”; personifying the city of London in this way helps to demonstrate the writer’s empathy and awareness. It’s also a much more effective use of imagery than simply saying something like “London was at a standstill”.

Getting personal – sharing passions/things that are important to the writer

Each day, I was used to reading and talking about current events. Understanding world events is my passion. Evaluating their importance is my responsibility. Today, however, these same events were threatening to tear my life apart.

I tried to imagine how any religion could not only condone but encourage these actions. I thought about how our Western culture had become irredeemably intertwined with other cultures, all of which seemed mutually uncomprehending. Wasn’t achieving a greater level of cross-culturalism meant to be a good thing?

These are two further excerpts from the same essay. In this extract, we gain an insight into the writer’s personal passions. These two extracts tell us about a time where the writer realised that something they were normally passionate about could, in their own words, tear their life apart.

The writer prides themself on their ability to make sense of world events – this was an event they struggled to make sense of, a moment when their status quo was challenged.

Storytelling techniques

Collapsed on the sofa, I realised that the mission I had chosen, to convince my school community to connect with the rest of the world, to some extent was no longer necessary. July 7th, like September 11th, would do the job for me. I got through that day, as did my family, physically unscathed, but emotionally charged. We all have a choice: to connect with the rest of the world or to cut it off. The events of that morning reaffirmed my choice. Non-interventionism is no alternative. Hell is not other people.

The writer uses powerful storytelling techniques to end their essay, and shows that they end their account of the July 7 having gone on a journey. Having faced a moment where their life was thrown into chaos, the writer reaffirms their decision to connect with the rest of the world.

So why is this Common App essay so successful?

Put simply, it creates a compelling picture of both the writer’s worldview, and their aspirations for the future. It effectively demonstrates the writer’s core values by dramatising a moment when those values were called into question.

Did You Know? – BridgeU is integrated with the Common App

BridgeU’s integration with the Common App allows for an easier transfer of data, enabling counsellors to more easily send supporting documents, via BridgeU, to Common App institutions. This will help to smooth the application journey for students wishing to study at a Common App university.

Writing the Common App essay: final checklist

As your students prepare to submit their Common App essays, make sure that they are paying attention to the following checklist.

• Is their Common App essay telling a compelling story about them?
• Does their essay contain a powerful opening line?
• Are they using descriptive language and vivid imagery?
• Are they writing with passion?
• Is the essay portraying them in the best possible light?

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