Writing the US application essay - Commonapp

Every year, at the start of summer, students and parents alike in the US will start to plan for the upcoming application cycle, and the first hurdle to admissions is the Commonapp essay, the compulsory, 650 words essay that you must write if you are trying to apply to any Commonapp universities.

Now let us examine the prompts.

Prompt 1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. I believe the keyword here is meaningful. If your story is interesting and special enough without being meaningful, then it fails the prompt. This type of essay then is called a gimmick. A gimmick is fine and might even be clever to most people, but your audience being admission officers might be swift to throw your essay into the reject pile. You must answer how your talent, background etc. add meaning to your life? Does it give you purpose? Does it make you proud? How is it meaningful is essentially the main question to this prompt, if your essay answers that, then it can fall into this category already. This is a very wide scope topic that most of your essays can fall into.

Prompt 2. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? Basically, the idea here is to demonstrate how you fell to the bottomless pit and how you rise up again. Do you have that fighting spirit? Do you still continue after numerous failures and oppositions? Note that failures are not lack of opportunities, so the stories that you succeeded after given a rare opportunity does not fall into this category at all. This mistake is common to all the cliched sports essay where you won the game after being given a chance to leave the bench. Hence, you can only write about the times when you fail, and the time when you try again and succeeded. What is the connection between your earlier failure and your later success? How did the earlier failure affected you is also the key as you must show that your failure really lead to your success.

Prompt 3. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? The overarching concept in this essay prompt is you having to challenge a belief or idea on some grounds. Is it because they were false? Or simply wrong on moral grounds? Anyways, you have to showcase how you fought against the belief and your reason for doing so. I believe that this essay is the hardest to write, would you challenge my belief? Being controversial here is not a good strategy unless you make sense. You shouldn't have to invoke LGBT topics or condemn some religions to write this essay. Remember, the admission officer have their own beliefs as well as you do.

Prompt 4. Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. Now let us examine what is the problem here. The theme in this prompt is problems, be it a theoretical one, a personal one or a global one and how would you like to solve it. Of course, the problem must be a good one that deserves a story. This is more of a situational prompt and not one that you can easily relate to. However, in tackling the problem you must show optimism despite your failures or theoretical obstacles. Writing a pity essay is never suggested and will immediately be discarded by any competent admission officer.

Prompt 5. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family. Ahhhhh... transition from childhood to adulthood, AKA growth. And you will also need to discuss the catalyst for this growth, i.e. the event. How does this event makes you grow? In what ways are you older/better than before? And the term adulthood here probably means maturity so you will have to imply that in your essay as well. Also, death of a loved one, as impactful as it seems, is one of most cliched topics around, so do avoid on writing that one.

Basically these are my two cents on analyzing the Commonapp prompts. Of course, a good strategy is to just write the essay and see which prompt it fits but sometimes it does not fit any prompt at all, contrary to the belief that you can write anything for the Commonapp essay. With that in mind, I hope that the aspiring writer can hopefully generate some ideas for their own essays while avoiding the topics that are italicized above.