Blog

Blog

You are currently browsing the college essay ideas tag archive.

by Steven Tagle

Deciding What to Write About for Your College Essays

The Common App opens on August 1 for the 2025-2026 application cycle, so the summer is the perfect time to start drafting your college essays. Your essays show admission officers the person behind the application. They highlight and elaborate on your personal context, what drives you, the challenges you’ve faced, and how you might contribute to campus culture. They can be the deciding factor that gets you into your dream school. But figuring out what to write about can be difficult, so I’ve got a couple of low-stakes tips and exercises that can help you brainstorm ideas for a winning college essay. 1. Read lots of sample essays. Reading is an essential part of the writing process. Specifically, reading sample college essays can teach you how other students have approached the challenge of communicating their identities, obstacles, and passions on the page. By reading a sample essay carefully, you can learn a lot about how to catch a reader’s attention from the first sentence, how to frame hurdles you’ve faced in your life, how to incorporate specific details and dialogue, how to weave a unifying theme through your essay, and how to reflect on life experiences and key ideas. We’ve curated a collection of exceptional college essays on the Accepted website that you can read free of charge. Each essay also includes an analysis from an expert college consultant, so you can understand exactly what makes each essay stand out and how it might be improved. For more sample essays, I recommend visiting your local library or bookstore. There are several collections of winning college essays from Stanford and Harvard students that offer lots of well-written, diverse examples. They are organized by theme and contain helpful analysis from the editors. You can also search online. Some colleges, including Johns Hopkins University and New York University, share essays from admitted students. You can also search YouTube: students who have been accepted to different schools often post videos of themselves reading and analyzing their college essays. 2. Create lists of key memories, values, and challenges. In my experience, making lists is an easy way to visualize the things that are most important to you. Start by making lists on your phone or computer. This is a helpful and fairly simple way of narrowing in on an essay topic. I suggest creating “Top Five” lists of the following topics: Top five most important people in your life Top five moments that changed your life Top five things a friend should know about you Top five characteristics you value in a friend Top five challenges or obstacles you’ve faced Top five words you would use to describe yourself In addition to these lists, I also recommend an exercise adapted from Joe Brainard’s book I Remember. The book is a memoir composed of statements that begin with the words “I remember.” The book is associative: it moves from memory to memory, not in chronological or thematic order, but as they come to the writer’s mind. Try to freewrite for 15 minutes, putting down different memories on the page, beginning each line with “I remember.” Focus on specific moments and sensory details, including sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. 3. Analyze and reflect on your lists. Now look at all your lists side by side. Do you notice any connections between the items on your lists? For example, do the moments that changed your life often involve the same friend or family member? Is there any overlap between the moments that have changed your life and challenges or obstacles you have faced? Are any of the characteristics you value in a friend connected to words you would use to describe yourself? Also take a second look at the memories you’ve written in the “I remember” exercise. What do the memories you’ve shared have in common? How are they related to items on your other top-five lists? Focusing on patterns or repetitions between the lists can lead you to an essay topic that’s meaningful to you. Asking yourself these questions and finding connections between your lists is part of the process of self-reflection. Analyzing the significance of the experiences you describe in your essay and showing readers how the experiences affected you is a strong sign of maturity and authenticity. It demonstrates that you are able to process your feelings, think deeply about your context and personal history, and make informed decisions about your life path. Once you think you have a topic for your essay, use the circular brainstorming method or create an outline to start fleshing it out. Then you’ll be ready to write your first draft. A Stanford graduate and the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Institute of Current World Affairs, as well as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Steven Tagle has taught and mentored students for 20 years. As a published writer, journalist, and former speechwriter for the U.S. ambassador to Greece, he knows how to draw out applicants’ unique stories and craft compelling personal statements that help their applications stand out from the pack. Click here to get in touch. Related Resources Can You Use the Same Essays for Different Schools? High School Freshman Year Game Plan: Eight Ways to Kick-Start Your Passions College Admissions: Exploring Your Identity for Your College Essays and Personal Statements

The Common App opens on August 1 for the 2025-2026 application cycle, so the summer is the perfect time to start drafting your college essays. Your essays show admission officers the person behind the application. They highlight and elaborate on your personal context, what drives you, the challenges you’ve faced, and how you might contribute …

Read More

College

Categories

Tags

2023 Med School Applications Chicago Booth college application essays Columbia Business School COVID-19 MBA Dartmouth Tuck diversity Duke Fuqua EMBA entrepreneurship GMAT grad application essays Grad Financial Aid GRE Harvard Business School INSEAD international student law application essays Magoosh MBA Adcom podcast mba application essays MBA Financial Aid MBA Interview MBA Student Interviews MBA Video Tips MCAT Med Adcom Podcast med application essays Medical School Interview med school student interview Michigan Ross MIT Sloan Northwestern Kellogg NYU Stern optimize your med admissions profile PhD Physician Assistant podcast Rankings residency Stanford GSB UC Berkeley Haas UCLA Anderson Wharton Yale SOM

Your Free, 30-Minute Consultation

Sign up for a free consultation to ask your most pressing admissions and application-related questions, get a profile evaluation, and find out how our team of professional admissions consultants can help you get accepted.

Start Now!