Things to Write About by Tomasina DeLong

I have already written most of my college essays, but as I look back on when I first started this process over a year ago I had no idea where to begin. The first and most common response when someone has to write a college essay is, “There isn’t anything interesting about me and I don’t have anything to write about.” I have some pieces of advice when getting started: just start writing. Later in the writing process, you will want to write with an intended purpose in mind, but when just getting started it is okay to write without one. You may be in your head, but you need to just start writing because without an essay written you won’t have anything to polish or revise. You also don’t need to have experienced something traumatic in order to write a good essay. Often, essays about losing a family member or moving schools are cliche and that is something you should avoid like the plague {haha get it because “avoid it like the plague” is a cliche} Sometimes starting with one of the common app prompts can be difficult because they are so open-ended, but there are also other college essay prompts that provide more direction. These essay prompts are usually supplemental so they might tell less about you than a common app essay would. However, these prompts serve as great starting points. Some possible essay prompts to get you thinking are:

  1.  A hot dog might be a sandwich, and cereal might be a soup, but is a ______ a ______?
  2. Cats have nine lives, Pac-Man has 3 lives, and radioactive isotopes have half-lives. How many lives does something else—conceptual or actual—have, and why?
  3. Think back to a situation in your life where you had to decide between taking a risk and playing it safe. Which choice did you make? What was the outcome of your choice? Would you have made the same decision looking back on the experience or would you have made a different decision?
  4. Where’s Waldo?
  5. What is your theme song?
  6. What’s so odd about odd numbers?
  7. Little pigs, French hens, a family of bears. Blind mice, musketeers, the Fates. Parts of an atom, laws of thought, a guideline for composition. Omne trium perfectum? Create your own group of three, and describe why and how they fit together.

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