How to not write about in college essays
How to Brainstorm a Great College Essay Topic
Timecodes:
hey friends college essay guy here so
today i want to talk to you about
brainstorming how do you find a topic
that works i want to start off by
sharing with you
why i tell students to pretty much
ignore the common app personal statement
prompts as a starting point for the
essay then i want to talk to you about
what makes a great topic after that i'll
share a quick assessment
that'll help you decide if you have a
topic in mind whether or not that topic
is likely to help you stand out i'll
talk to you about some of the most
common personal statement topics topics
that i wouldn't necessarily recommend if
you're writing your personal statement
then i'll share with you
three exercises that are pretty simple
but will help you generate
a pretty broad list of topics i'll talk
to you about how each of those different
exercises
led to actual great personal statements
and finally i'll share with you a quick
tip for those of you who are over
thinkers
like me if that's you stay tuned to the
end of the video i've got something to
say to you all right let's do this
[Music]
so the reason i tell students to pretty
much ignore the prompts
for the common app personal statement is
that i feel like it puts you in the
wrong headspace and if you're starting
to generate ideas
for a creative piece in this case your
personal statement i think thinking
about what they want
is gonna maybe run you into trouble here
give you a quick example
if i was trying to decide like what
shirt to wear this morning
if i tried to think about okay well what
would x y and z person what would
everybody like the most
then i think it's gonna get me out of my
self and thinking about well what does
everybody else want and trying to please
them so
rather than think about the prompts in
this case for the personal statement i
want you to start with great
brainstorming exercises that'll get you
inwardly focused
about what you have to offer and i'll
show those exercises in a few minutes
another question students often ask is
what makes a great topic
and simply put i feel like a great
personal statement topic
is one that allows you to demonstrate
the skills qualities
values and interests that you're going
to bring with you to a college campus
now i'm about to share with you an
assessment for deciding if your topic
might help you stand out or not but
before i do that a few quick caveats
number one there's no perfect answer for
this
because this is really more art than
science second
the way that you can determine if a
topic is going to work is if you're me
or your counselor
was probably developed over reading
hundreds or more likely
thousands of essays and third the biases
i'm about to share with you
are mine only so not every admissions
reader is going to agree with what i'm
about to tell you
but hopefully this is going to give you
some sense in a few minutes
of how to know if your topic's going to
work or not so first of all it depends
on the kind of structure that you're
using and if you've watched any of my
other videos you've heard me talk about
narrative structure
and montage structure so narrative
structure is basically
if you're writing about a challenge or a
series of challenges and what you did to
overcome those
and montage structure is if you're
writing about a set of experiences
skills qualities values
and you're finding some thematic thread
to connect them so if you're trying to
determine let's start with montage if a
montage essay is going to stand out the
two qualities that i look for
are number one is your topic elastic and
i'll explain that in a second
and number two is your topic somewhat
hopefully uncommon so what do i mean by
elastic
i'm talking about topics that are
stretchy enough to talk about lots of
different sides of you for example for
me
one of the things i know a lot about is
you know self-help books
i could probably write a pretty good
essay on self-help books because i've
read a bunch of them
whereas i haven't read many books on
gardening gardening probably wouldn't be
as good of an essay topic for me because
it's not as elastic i can't stretch it
to talk about
a bunch of different values or sides of
me now when it comes to thinking about
this for your
own essay it's not like a certain topic
is elastic or is not elastic it's not
binary like that
it's usually on a spectrum so if you
imagine on a spectrum
elasticity where we've got very elastic
topics which is to say
stretchy enough to talk about lots of
sides of you on this side of the
spectrum
and we've got less stretchy topics here
and then we've got the other thing i
mentioned
how common your topic is with common
topics down here
and uncommon topics up here you can kind
of chart these on
x and y axes i know this is like super
math all of a sudden but
we're kind of looking for topics that
are maybe more elastic
and more uncommon okay an example of
that would be a student
who i met not too long ago who wrote
about parkour and this was something
that he'd spent a lot of time doing so
it was very elastic
and it was somewhat uncommon because not
a lot of students write about parkour
now having said this
it's still possible to stand out with a
common topic that's very elastic
cooking for example might be an essay
topic that is
you know pretty common but if you can
connect it to lots of different sides of
you it could be a pretty cool topic
now second we've got narrative essays
which is to say essays that are
primarily about a challenge or a series
of challenges you've been through the
first quality i look for
is are these compelling challenges and
the second quality i look for is
is there insight in the essay that's wow
now how do we chart those
again kind of a similar x-axis we've got
essays that are on compelling challenges
and it's up to you to kind of decide
what a compelling challenge is
and then we've got less compelling
challenges but to give you a sense of
this
students sometimes write about extreme
challenges experiences they've been
through with their family
some have experienced you know really
tough things and then you've got
students who've written about things
like
oh i you know got a bad grade in physics
which is like not as compelling and then
you've got insights
that range from wow to like oh my gosh
that's an incredible thing to learn from
this experience
to like that's kind of what i expected
you to say so again you can kind of use
this graph to determine
whether or not your essay is likely to
stand out having said this
with a narrative essay i have seen
essays that are on
not too compelling challenges work but
the level of craft
which is to say the details in the
language they used was very high
and in some cases pretty funny and i've
also seen essays that had just okay
insights at the start
be leveled up over the process of
writing so an essay that initially was
like just okay insights
improve the insights along the way and
turned out to be a pretty great essay so
you're probably wondering okay ethan
you're talking about comment topics what
are these common topics the three most
common ones that i see
are number one students writing about
common sports or extracurricular
activities
and i'm talking here about you know
basketball football soccer
activities i'm talking about you know
volunteering at a hospital in fact you
know what let me just give you a whole
list check it out
so baseball basketball boy scouts debate
filmmaking music model united nations
marching band track and field student
government
i'm sharing these with you not to say
that you 100 shouldn't write about these
but i would maybe steer away from
writing about these common topics
because number one a lot of students are
writing about them so it's harder to
stand out and number two
oftentimes schools will ask for what are
called supplemental essays which is to
say essays that are written
in addition to your main personal
statement and many times the prompt is
asking you to write about an
extracurricular activity
so i say save your extracurricular
activities
for your extracurricular activity essay
and write about something else for your
personal statement now okay you're
probably wondering alright ethan so
you've told me all this stuff about what
not to do
how do i actually find a great personal
statement topic here are three exercises
that i like to recommend
that'll help you generate some ideas and
then i want to share with you some of
the example essays that they led to
the first exercise is called the five
things exercise
and it's pretty simple you basically
make a list
of five things in your life that somehow
connect so it could be for example
uh the five photographs that you keep
you know behind your bed
or it could be you know five pairs of
shoes that you wear
and each one shows a different side of
who you are it could be
five different places that you've been
to that meant a lot to you five
souvenirs
each one connects to a different place
that you've been to you see where i'm
going with this so basically you're
gonna sit for
let's say five minutes and think about
what are some different five things
that might link to different areas of my
life so let's take a look at an example
essay
this is from the student who wrote about
the five photographs on the wall behind
her bed
golden light streaks my bedroom it's 6
a.m
before my family rises i'll have
completed half my day's to-do list
but before i start i look to my wall
where 84
and counting 2x4 by 1.8 glossy
polaroids hang in 14 uniform rows top
row four polaroids over
i sit beside my chinese grandmother
speaking mandarin so you see where she's
going with this
now there were 84 different photos above
her bed but she chose five of them in
her essay to write about and each one
shows a different side of her
in the first one she talks about her
family in this case her chinese
grandmother
and what she's meant to her in the next
paragraph she says
images of acrylic paints calligraphy
pens and camera equipment are woven into
the sea of snapshots
so this shows her artistic or creative
side and this five things
is not limited to the things i mentioned
it could be almost five anything
the key is making sure at the start of
your essay whatever your topic is
five photographs five decisions that you
make it clear in the first
or second paragraph the second exercise
that i like to recommend
is what i call the 21 details exercise
and again it's dangerously simple so you
take a blank sheet of paper
and you fill it with 21 random facts
about yourself
it could be something about an
experience you had a long time ago that
you forgot until you started writing
this exercise it could be something like
uh just a quirk that you have like a
thing you like to do every morning
it could be something connected to uh
something that you're really proud of so
you're gonna make a big list of these
and again try to get to 21 because when
you do four or five it's fine but when
you start to get to like 17 18 19 they
start to get a little weird
and a little bit more interesting and
you never know what might come out of
this so i've seen students write for
example you know
cheers the 80s tv show is my favorite tv
show
and that actually led to a personal
statement topic where the student wrote
about how each of the characters and
cheers
represented some different aspect of the
student i've seen students write about
things like
you know their love for the game
settlers of catan and that ended up
turning into like a personal statement
topic i've also seen this exercise yield
things like
a student writing about his happiness
spreadsheet which is to say a
spreadsheet that he keeps with two of
his friends
where he tracks what he did that day and
how on a scale of 1-20
how happy he was that i thought made a
great essay topic because of course he
could jump around to all these different
moments in his life
and show all these different sides of
himself another thing that i love about
this exercise
is yes it can help you generate
potential personal statement topics
but it's also going to help you generate
topics for those supplemental essays
which again are those essays you're
going to need to write
potentially if you're applying to
selective schools besides your personal
statement so let's take a quick look at
an essay that was generated from the 21
details exercise
so this is a student who identified as
having a natural quote unquote mom
vibe and in fact that became her first
sentence of her essay so it could be
that your 21 details line
ends up becoming the first line on my
volleyball team she writes
i am team mom in every way as a natural
warrior
i like to make sure everyone has all
their necessities knee pads water bottle
hair elastic uniform did everyone go to
the bathroom before leaving on the bus
did we count to make sure all 14 of us
are here so you kind of see where she's
going with this right
she says at the start and this is her
topic i have this mom vibe and in the
first paragraph she talks about how it
manifests
with her volleyball team notice the next
paragraph a few years ago
i transitioned from looking after only
my teammates to also helping actual
children
i started volunteering at my former
elementary school as a teacher's
assistant
now you can see how this is going to
show another side of her not just
volleyball
but also working as a teacher's
assistant in the rest of this essay she
basically talks about how this natural
mom vibe manifests itself in different
areas of her life so this is a great one
and like i said you never know where the
21 details are gonna go
the third exercise is called i love and
it's really simple the way it works is
basically sitting for a minute or two
and just making a list of things that
you love so for me
you know i love the color blue i love
uh making these videos i love teaching i
love
the mountains i love ping pong and i
would just make a random list and if i
was doing this with a friend
they might type for me while i talk and
then vice versa and what i love about
this exercise
is that this can be a great opportunity
to generate some potentially
elastic topics which is to say if you
love it chances are you know a lot about
it in fact you can do a part two of this
exercise
where you make a list not only of things
you love but things you know a lot about
and this could actually lead to a
montage essay topic here's a quick
example
so this student wrote about pranks she
begins her essay
once a teacher challenged me to make an
assignment as difficult to grade as
possible
what he failed to remember is that i am
a programmer
it was quite a simple program taking my
answers translating them into morse code
and spitting them out
oh and repeats were allowed by my
calculations it would have taken him at
least eight hours to grade and could
last for days
you see the monotony of life is enough
to drive a girl crazy
everyone copes with this with some
activity i keep saying
with pranks and so what she does here is
she basically she loves pranks
and she talks about how different pranks
have you know demonstrates basically
different sides of her personality
so this was an elastic topic it's
something that she knew a lot about and
allowed her to show different sides of
herself what's great about this topic is
that
one it's somewhat uncommon so you won't
see a lot of students writing about
pranks
and for her it was also very elastic
which is to say
it was stretchy enough to talk about
different sides of herself so that's
kind of what you're looking for when
you're looking for it like i said
earlier
a montage topic now having said all this
there are some of you out there
who are maybe thinking about this and
going i don't know if x is going to work
or if y
is going to work here's the thing don't
overthink this too much
do these simple exercises spend five to
ten minutes on each one and then pick
something
and try it try creating a simple outline
so you might take something like pranks
for example and think okay
what are three to five pranks that i
played and could they connect to
different sides of me
if so great if not don't worry about it
but if you're thinking that it might
work
go ahead and try it just spend 20
minutes and jam out either a more
comprehensive outline or just try a
draft if it's not working
don't worry about it now some of you out
there are over thinkers like me
and you're like well i want to make sure
i get the right topic before i start
working on it
chances are you're not going to know if
a topic is going to work until you try
it
so if you've got something that you
think might work go ahead and write a
quick outline
to see if you think okay i feel like i
could get some paragraphs in here
and then try it if it doesn't work try
something else
spend maybe five to 10 minutes on each
of these exercises you should have a
bunch of options i hope you found this
video useful you'll find tons more at
collegeesseguy.com
if you've got any questions or if
there's a particular thing you'd like me
to cover in a future video
you can write that in the comments below
hit me up with a little like or
subscribe if you'd like more videos
and have an awesome week
foreign
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