The Five Most Overused Essay Topics

“Blood drive” essays.  They make a lot of admissions officers want to draw their own blood by jabbing themselves with a paper clip, as one applicant after another claims that one on-campus blood drive changed his life and made him appreciate the importance of serving humanity.  

When students try to write what they think the admissions office wants to hear, they inevitably arrive at the blood drive essay and its clichéd cousins.  Overused essay topics aren’t wrong, but they’re all the same.  They won’t help a student stand out.  So here are five topics you’ll want to avoid. 

1.  The aforementioned “blood drive essay” or “How community service taught me the importance of helping others...”
Colleges appreciate students who are concerned about their communities.  But one blood drive does not a humanitarian make.   A claim to have learned how important it is to help people needs to be substantiated with evidence of a sincere, long term commitment to helping people.  Otherwise, your message loses some oomph.  If you had an experience during your community service that really meant a lot to you, say so.  And be honest.   Otherwise, consider doing a good deed for admissions officers and avoid the community service cliché.     

2.  “Hard work always pays off,” and other life lessons learned while playing sports.
A lot of athletes try to inject meaningful life lessons into the experiences they write about in their college essays.   But if the whole point of your essay is that hard work in the off-season pays off, you’ve just written the same essay that thousands of other varsity letter holders will write.  And you probably would never say to your friends, “I feel very fortunate to have participated in athletics because it has taught me many important lessons about hard work and commitment. “  So be original.  Tell your athletic story that nobody else will be able tell. 

3.  “How my trip to another country broadened my horizons…”
A lot of applicants recount their trips to strange, uncharted lands.  Like France.  These students were inevitably confronted with the challenge of adapting to the bizarre customs of their foreign hosts.  Maintain your perspective.  Visiting a country and noticing that it is different is not a story that you own.  And if your parents took you on an African safari in which you petted lions, we’re jealous (and some admissions officers will be, too).  But a safari doesn’t make you a worldlier applicant, and it won’t help you get in.       

4.  “How I overcame a life challenge (that wasn’t really all that challenging…)”
Essays can help admissions officers understand more about a student who has overcome legitimate hardship.  But far too many other students misguidedly manufacture hardship in a college essay to try to gain sympathy or to make excuses for things like low grades.  That’s not going to work.  If you’ve had a difficult hardship and you want to talk about it, you should.  Otherwise, it’s probably better to choose a different topic.   And please don’t write a eulogy for your pet.  Ever.

5. Anything that doesn’t really sound like you.
Your essays are supposed to give the readers a sense of your personality.  So give your essays a sincerity test.  Do they sound like you, or do they sound like you’re trying to impress someone?  Don’t use words you looked up in the thesaurus (there really is no place for “plethora” in a college essay).  Don’t quote Shakespeare or Plato or the Dali Lama.  If your best friend reads it and says it sounds just like you, that’s probably a good sign.  

You can find even more advice in our video, “How to Write Great College Essays.”  It’s $12.99 and available as a streaming download.