College admission officers and counselors agree that an individual’s personal college essay should be a reflection of themselves, their morals, values, passions, and personality. While this is definitely true, it can be difficult to come up with ways to convey this in your college essay.

When writing my college essay, I struggled, especially with how to pick a topic. I could not figure out how to fit a lifetime of stories into 600-words. After watching YouTube videos by “The College Essay Guy”, I found a set of directions that helped me brainstorm for my essay topic.

The typical approach to the personal college essay is to write about a time you have overcome a challenge. This approach is great, but if a student would like to take an alternate route, these tips teach students how to write an essay about something that is meaningful to them.

The first tip for brainstorming is to take one minute and list as many things in your room as possible that are of significant importance. The items can be photographs, desk items, or articles of clothing.

Another way to brainstorm for a topic is by taking two minutes to list your role in every community you are a part of: family, student, teammate, sibling, friend. With this information, you can categorize the different aspects of your life that are the most important to you.

Thirdly, you can take five minutes to list every hobby or quirk you exhibit that has some significance or story as to whom you are as a person. These things often set you apart from other students and can make for great essay topics if they tell a story.

The fourth tip goes along with the previous one: tell a story! Admission officers read hundreds of essays a day, so do your best to set yourself apart, and engage the reader with an interesting or funny story.

When writing your essay, it is important to touch on your academic interests and accomplishments, but try not to repeat things that you have already written in your activities section on the common app. Tell the reader something new about yourself. I have found that the previous exercises help a lot with this because they give me ideas that I never would have thought of otherwise.

Personally, I wrote a couple very rough drafts of essays before I chose my favorite one. This was helpful for me because I am incredibly indecisive and anxious, so it was calming to know that I had at least a couple ideas on paper before I ultimately chose my topic.
One tip that I wish I would’ve known sooner is that your essay does not need to have a happy or satisfying ending. There can definitely be some questions and thoughts that leave the reader wanting to learn more about you.

My eighth tip is to be as detailed as possible in your descriptions of things. This connects the reader with the material of the essay and can make them empathize with you.

Additionally, I ran my essay through Grammarly, which I found to be incredibly helpful when finalizing it. Grammarly.com is a website that assists students by fixing grammatical errors within a student’s paper or essay.

Finally, I asked my college counselor and a college graduate to read over my essay and remark on any criticism or points of contention they had with it. I found this to be especially helpful because I was able to get different perspectives and ways to improve my writing from other people.