According to the , the common app essays topics are as follows:
The personal statement might just be the hardest part of your college application. Mostly this is because it has the least guidance and is the most open-ended. One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually worked. After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.
In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great. I've also compiled an enormous list of 100+ actual sample college essays from 11 different schools. Finally, I'll break down two of these published college essay examples and explain why and how they work. With links to 187 full essays and essay excerpts, this article is a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay! Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they do share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay. Want to know the secret sauce behind the best Common App essays our students have written? The best writers aren't gifted with natural talent—. Join Stacey and Becca as they discuss the Common App’s seventh and final prompt option, which asks applicants to share an essay on any topic of their choice. Join Stacey and Becca as they discuss the 2023-24 Yale University supplemental essay prompts and explain what admissions is really looking for in winning responses. Part 1 of 2!
This essay example comes from the , our digital college essay course. It has a really unique structure and uses shapes as a metaphor. It's also written in response to Common App Prompt #2.
How do you write a great common app essay?
It may seem counterintuitive, but college essays aren’t about showing only showing successes. There’s also room for showing growth. Of course, you want your Common App essay to ultimately communicate a strength about you, but it’s okay to show vulnerability and humility—just like this student does. At the beginning of the essay, we see them start to struggle: their strategy breaks down, and they detail a period of their life when they struggled to keep up.
This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.
Join Stacey and Becca as they discuss the 2023-24 Yale University supplemental essay prompts and explain what admissions is really looking for in winning responses. Part 2 of 2!
But this isn’t simply a collection of college essay examples.
But by the end of the essay, our writer has found their way. They’ve found new strategies and are more sure of who they are now—a gateway. The writer doesn’t dwell on their struggles. They use the struggles to show growth, adaptability, and strength.
This essay could work for prompts 1, 2 and 7 for the Common App.
Knowing how to tell a story. Some of the experiences in these essays are one-of-a-kind. But most deal with the stuff of everyday life. What sets them apart is the way the author approaches the topic: analyzing it for drama and humor, for its moving qualities, for what it says about the author's world, and for how it connects to the author's emotional life.
Why does the Common App Essay—and other college essays—matter?
First, we should start out by looking at the Common Application essay prompts. Sometimes the prompts change slightly from year to year, but they tend to remain fairly similar.
Common App Essay Prompts 2024–2025
The Common App essay prompts are just that. Prompts. They prompt you to write an essay by giving you a place to start. They ask questions to help you reflect on important moments in your life. You only have to choose one prompt to answer.