Should I write a sad college essay?

Students should not tell a sad or harrowing story simply for the sake of its shock value or emotional impact—a strong essay is forward-thinking and deliberate, showing admissions committees who a student is and what they will contribute to the college's campus.

Is it OK to write a sad college essay?

If your "sad" topic is truly significant to your life and has shaped your character or values, then it might be a strong choice. However, be mindful of the following considerations: 1. Avoid writing a sob story: Your essay should not be an attempt to gain sympathy from the admissions officers.

Should your college essay be emotional?

Try including an emotional impact in your college essay – it can help create a powerful and memorable experience for the reader. Don't be afraid to share moments of vulnerability and honesty to create a genuine emotional connection with the reader.

Should your college essay be a sob story?

In recent years, we've observed many students becoming fixated on discovering or manufacturing a hardship or "sob story" to incorporate into their college applications. Unfortunately, this approach is more likely to result in rejection.

What shouldn't you write about in a college essay?

Some people think rolling with an inappropriate topic and shocking the admissions committee is a great idea: but it's not. Stay far, far away from anything to do with illegal activity, alcohol, substance use, and anything else following these themes. You don't set yourself up for success using topics like these.

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Can a college essay hurt your application?

The essay is not the most important part of your application—your transcript is—but the essay can be a critical factor in the process, and a poorly written college essay is, at best, a wasted opportunity. So your essay has to be good.

What is considered a bad essay?

If an essay is poorly structured, then it will be very difficult to comprehend and to evaluate the quality of its content. Therefore, a poorly structured essay is almost always also a substantively bad essay.

Do colleges care about your essay?

Now more than ever, college essays are incredibly important in the college admission process, an opportunity to share who the student is outside of the classroom and how they can be an asset to their selected campus. The college essay is one of the best ways to showcase a student's strengths beyond their academics.

Do college essays have to be happy?

The college essay should relate one moment, one characteristic, one experience, or one single thing that succinctly captures the student's persona and motivation. It can be happy. It can also be sad or challenging as long as the student shows growth, self-awareness, and hope by the end of the essay.

Do colleges look at your essay?

However, selective colleges receive applications from many worthy students with similar scores and grades—too many to admit. So they use your essay, along with your letters of recommendation and extracurricular activities , to find out what sets you apart from the other talented candidates.

Is it OK to trauma dump in college essays?

Don't just trauma dump.

Simply writing about your trauma will not showcase any of your positive traits, which is what colleges are really looking for. Instead, be sure to discuss how the trauma affected you as a person, and what you did to move past it. This will illustrate your introspection, and resilience.

Should you trauma dump on a college essay?

If a student does decide that they want to write about trauma in their essay, they should be cautious of how they frame it. Students should make it clear that their goal is not to seek sympathy from the admissions officer, but to demonstrate how they've grown from their trauma.

Is it OK to talk about depression in a college essay?

Mental health history or a disability might be an integral part of who a student is, but that doesn't necessarily make it relevant to a college application. Keep in mind that it is actually illegal for colleges to ask for these types of details about your life because it can be considered discrimination.

Do colleges want sob stories?

Instead, writing such sob stories will more likely lead an admissions officer to think just what you may fear they will think — that you're sharing this woe-is-me story to sway them to offer you admission. Students made this mistake in 2003. They continue to make this mistake in 2023.

Is depression a bad college essay topic?

This is perhaps the trickiest exception to the general rule of avoiding discussion of mental health. But, if having a mental health disorder is central to a student's life story and they feel that their personal statement would be unreflective or incoherent without it, they should reframe their diagnosis as a strength.

Is it bad to write about mental health in college essays?

Conventional wisdom would caution students against discussing mental health issues in their applications. College essay consultants have discouraged students choosing it as a topic in the past. However, we also encourage students to be bold, speak their truth, and stand out from the crowd.

Do admissions officers read your entire essay?

Yes, admissions officers do actually read essays, but they might have already screened candidates first in a preliminary round. Every admissions office has a different process and it's impossible to sum up the exact step-by-step process for each admission office in one blog post.

What do colleges want to hear in essays?

Colleges look for three things in your admission essay: a unique perspective, strong writing, and an authentic voice.

Is it OK to use quotes in a college essay?

Quoted materials should generally be used sparingly, so quote as little material as possible. In many cases, you might just need to quote a particular phrase or maybe a sentence.

Is 65% in a uni essay good?

Anything in the 60% range—what is known as a 2:1—is considered a “good” grade. Half of all UK university students graduate with a 2:1. Here's a simplified breakdown of the grading scale: First-class honours – typically 70% or higher (called a 1st)

Is 92% on an essay good?

A 92 is generally considered a good grade, as it usually falls within the range of an A or A- in the typical grading scale.

How serious should a college essay be?

The point of a college essay is to convince the reader that you would be a good person/an asset to have at the institution. It doesn't have to be serious; it just has to showcase YOU.

What is the most common college essay topic?

Why is college essays so hard?

Oftentimes, the reason writing the college essay is so difficult is because the student doesn't spend enough time picking the right topic before they start writing. Students look at the Common App essay prompts to generate ideas. And then they choose a topic that they spent mere moments thinking about.

Is lying on a college essay illegal?

First, we will deal with the easy bit: if you knowingly employ deception (stating something on the application that you don't believe is true) in order to receive an advantage (admission to college), then that is most definitely fraud.