For high school seniors, fall doesn’t just mean time to reunite with friends and back-to-school shopping—complete with sparkly notebooks. It means super serious college prep and the scary realization that many college admissions essay deadlines are eminent—as early as November 1 for early decision. When admissions essays rank as one of the most important components of your college application (made even more so by many colleges and universities making test scores optional for this year’s round of admissions), it’s important to get your essay right. With more than 6 million first-year applications submitted each year, through the CommonApp alone, you can imagine there are some themes that are repeated among applicants’ essays. Knowing how to avoid these college admissions essay clichés and stand out from the crowd can tip the scales in your favor, leading to a beautiful, thick acceptance envelope to your first pick arriving in your mailbox (email or even snail mail).
Why You Should Avoid College Admissions Essay Clichés
College admissions essays are 650-word documents that can make or break a student’s admission. A compelling application essay should show passion, purpose, and character—especially empathy and resilience. Colleges need to believe a candidate will be a star in their college communities and ultimately be a good investment in advancing the university’s reputation and esteem. Students need to set themselves apart from a lengthy list of applicants and be remembered for the right reasons, not because they offer yet another cliché essay about being an athlete, scholar, community servant, or child of an inspirational parent. Instead, students need to pique their interest with the unexpected.
So, what exactly is a clichéd essay topic? According to Merriam-Webster, it’s a “common thought or idea that has lost all originality, ingenuity, or impact by long overuse.” If you want your application essay to have an impact, you’ll want to learn how to avoid these common clichés.
How to Avoid These 5 College Admissions Essay Clichés
So, what’s the major advice to students crafting these pithy descriptions of what makes them tick? Avoid cliché college admissions essay topics. Paint a picture of your personality and experience. Individuals are unique, so it’s crucial to describe a unique point of view toward these five topics. The topics are predictable, so your approach needs to be distinctive or the admissions officer will toss your essay, and you, aside. Ouch.
Sports—The Big Game
“The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.” Count the short stories, novels, and movies based on this lesson: the winning basket or home run in the last seconds or inning. They are endless. The popularity of such accounts makes sense because the lessons are inspirational. The problem is these lessons can be formulaic: winning isn’t everything, never give up, practice pays off, being a team player is crucial. The message is predictable, which makes it clichéd. With that being said, I understand how formative these moments may be in the lives of the students I work with. So how can you still write about how your dedication to your sport has positively impacted who you are? Read on.
What to do:
Consider writing about how you turned a negative situation into a positive one. Did your sports injury “force” you into pursuing a special activity you had never tried before? Did the pressure to perform backfire? Think about recounting the unexpected. Make sure your story does not follow the standard “formula” and surprises your readers.
Death
I’m sorry be flippant about this, but by the time students apply for college, they’ve probably been affected by a death, whether of a parent, grandparent, friend, or pet. These experiences often affect us profoundly and shape our character. Unfortunately, writing about them often results in trite lessons, such as “make each day count” or “life is too short.” And often the approach to the topic is too broad.
What to do:
Focus on a specific way in which the death changed your life, such as altering your role in the family. Did a profound awareness of a disease turn you into an active advocate or fundraiser?
Added note: Other Ds—divorce, depression—also fall into this category.
Immigration
Immigrant stories in the U.S are plentiful. We are, after all, the land of the dreamers. So, you had to learn a new language—so, you had to figure out how to fit in—so, you had to adjust to a new lifestyle—you and thousands of others. That is not to discount how challenging it can be to make a new place your home, but how is your experience different?
What to do:
Be specific. Choose a stand-out moment of conflict or distinctive experience and put the admissions officer in your shoes. For example, what was the dialogue between you and your new best American friend about the 4th of July? Or maybe you can freeze the moment when your neighbor launched a slur into your ears.
Role Model
So, you adore your mom—you and everyone else (at least many students). While a student’s personal relationship with a parent, teacher, or coach is just that—personal—the way the student tells the story is the key to standing out. Simply being influenced by someone is not special, and the influence is often predictable: self-discovery, life discovery, world discovery.
The focus needs to be on the student, not totally on the role model, unless Mom is the first female whatever and Grandpa is the inventor of the latest gizmo.
What to do:
Focus on how you exemplified a quality you admire in another person. How are you trying to model someone else’s ethics?
Community Service
So, you volunteered—so what? Community service is pretty much a requirement for high school students these days, so the act of volunteering alone doesn’t show remarkable initiative. So, you volunteered at the local food bank or helped build a house in Nicaragua. Yawn. So have thousands of other students.
Trust me, college admissions officers want to see evidence of compassion, but they don’t want to read yet another essay in which the aha moment is predictable such as:
- I now realize how fortunate I am.
- I didn’t realize such poverty existed.
This approach might also come across as privileged—which is so not impressive and memorable in a negative way.
What to do:
Zero in on a specific person you helped in a specific way. Recount a conversation you had. Freeze a moment in time. And be sincere.
Bonus Category: Rehashing Your Resume
Never rehash your resume. This is a wasted opportunity because you’re only presenting 650 words on information that appears somewhere else in your application—your activities, your grades, your test scores.
Bonus Tip: Avoid Cliché Language
Scratch off lessons learned such as:
- Don’t judge a book by its cover.
- If at once you don’t succeed, try, try again.
- Never bite off more than you can chew.
- Never give up.
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
- When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Avoiding these cliché topics and phrases will keep admissions officers from nodding off or rolling their eyes. Be original. And don’t forget to start working on essays early (like, now), get help, and develop a plan.
Are you gearing up to tackle a stack of college applications but are stuck on creating your starworthy college admissions essay? The Savvy Red Pen offers a full line of student services to guide you along the way. Contact us today to see how we can help!
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