35 College Essay Prompts and Topics The college application process can be stressful and sometimes overwhelming. A great way to stand out from the crowd and boost an application for a “reach” school is with a strong essay Common App has announced the essay prompts. Below is the full set of Common App essay prompts for Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it Essay Prompts — Your Application Adventure Begins! The University of Chicago has long been renowned for our provocative essay questions. We think of them as an opportunity for students to tell us about themselves, their tastes, and their ambitions
UChicago Supplemental Essay Questions | College Admissions
To help you tackle the Common Application essay, this post will cover:. 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. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 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 college admission prompts the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
Note: While you might be tempted to just pick one of the questions and start writing, I say hold off. This is your chance to tell a story about yourself that tells us more than your test scores and grades do … to let colleges know about the wide range of skills, qualities, values, and interests that have shaped who you are today.
Instead, think of these as a few different ways that the folks at the Common App are trying to help you talk about yourself in some interesting ways. Instead, consider that colleges want to know two basic things:. Will you make valuable contributions on our college campus and beyond?
Describe the world you come from and how it has shaped your dreams and aspirations. It starts with great brainstorming. Instead spend some time digging deep. This blog post has a list of my favorite brainstorming exercises. It continues with finding a solid structure for your essay.
There are a few ways to structure an essay, but here are two structures that might help you based on how you answer these two questions:. Will you focus on one specific moment in your life? If so, consider using what I call what I call a Narrative Structure. Or will you focus on a series of moments or images in your life. If so, you might consider using the Montage Structure. I recommend planning to do drafts after getting feedback from your counselor, a teacher, a trusted mentor, or friend.
Either way, the key is to write your deepest story and reveal insight into who you are and what you care about. Often, great personal statements work for multiple prompts. Lastly, I think it helps to take a look at essays that do a great job, college admission prompts. By seeing what other students have written and seeing a range college admission prompts topics, structures, and style, you might get some inspiration on how to tell your own story.
Here are some of my favorite sample college admission prompts, with a bit of analysis on why I like each one so much. When I was very little, I caught the travel bug.
It started after my grandparents first brought me to their home in France and I have now been to twenty-nine different countries, college admission prompts. Each has given college admission prompts a unique learning experience. At five, I marveled at the Eiffel Tower in the City of Lights. When I was eight, I stood in the heart of Piazza San Marco feeding hordes of pigeons, college admission prompts, then glided down Venetian waterways on sleek gondolas.
At thirteen, I saw college admission prompts ancient, megalithic structure of Stonehenge and walked along the Great Wall college admission prompts China, amazed that the thousand-year-old stones were still in place.
It was through exploring cultures around the world that I first became interested in language. It began with French, which taught me the importance of pronunciation. I remember once asking a store owner in Paris where Rue des Pyramides was. But when I pronounced it PYR—a—mides instead of pyr—A—mides, with more accent on the A, she looked at me bewildered.
In the eighth grade, I became fascinated with Spanish and aware of its similarities with College admission prompts through cognates. Baseball in Spanish, for example, is béisbol, which looks different but sounds nearly the same. This was incredible to me as it made speech and comprehension more fluid, and even today I find that cognates come to the rescue when I forget how to say something in Spanish.
Then, in high school, college admission prompts, I developed an enthusiasm for Chinese. As I studied Chinese at my school, I marveled how if college admission prompts one stroke was missing from a character, the meaning is lost. College admission prompts loved how long words were formed by combining simpler characters, so Huǒ 火 meaning fire and Shān 山 meaning mountain can be joined to create Huǒshān 火山which means volcano. I love spending hours at a time practicing the characters and I can feel the beauty and rhythm as I form them.
Interestingly, after studying foreign languages, I was further intrigued by my native tongue. Through my love of books and fascination with developing a sesquipedalian lexicon learning big wordsI began to expand my English vocabulary. Studying the definitions prompted me to inquire about their origins, and suddenly I wanted to know all about etymology, the history of words.
My freshman year I took a world history class and my love for history grew exponentially, college admission prompts. To me, history is like a great novel, and it is especially fascinating because it took place in my own world, college admission prompts. But the best dimension that language brought to my life is interpersonal connection. College admission prompts I speak with people in their native language, I find I can connect with them on a more intimate level.
I want to study foreign language and linguistics in college because, in short, it is something that I know I will use and develop for the rest of my life. I will never stop traveling, so attaining fluency in foreign languages will only benefit me. In the future, I hope to use these skills as the foundation of my work, whether it is in international business, college admission prompts, foreign diplomacy, or translation.
Today, I still have the travel bug, college admission prompts, and now, it seems, I am addicted to language too. This essay uses the Montage structure and uses two things—travel and language—as the thematic threads to tie college admission prompts together.
Some of the core values this author shows not tells! in his essay are: adventure, college admission prompts, curiosity, attention to detail, history, abstract thinking, human connection, and others too! This essay is also a Type B essay in that it discusses the qualities that he believes will serve him in his future career.
They covered the precious mahogany coffin with a brown amalgam of rocks, decomposed organisms, and weeds. It was my turn to take the shovel, but I felt too ashamed to dutifully send her off when I had not properly said goodbye.
I refused to throw dirt on her. I refused to let go of my grandmother, to accept a death I had not seen coming, to believe that an illness could not only interrupt, but steal a beloved life. When my parents finally revealed to me that my grandmother had been battling liver cancer, I was twelve and I was angry--mostly with myself.
They had wanted to protect me--only six years old at the time--from the complex college admission prompts morose concept of death. Hurt that my parents had deceived me and resentful of my own oblivion, I committed myself to preventing such blindness from resurfacing. I became desperately devoted to my education because I saw knowledge as the key to freeing myself from the chains of ignorance. While learning about cancer in school I promised myself that I would memorize every fact and absorb every detail in textbooks and online medical journals.
And as I began to consider my future, I realized that what I learned in school would allow me to silence that which had silenced my grandmother, college admission prompts. However, I was focused not with learning college admission prompts, but with good grades and high test scores. I started to believe that academic perfection would be the only way to redeem myself in her eyes--to make up for what I had not done as a granddaughter. However, a simple walk on a hiking trail behind my house made me open my own eyes to the truth.
Over the years, everything--even honoring my grandmother--had become second to school and grades. As my shoes humbly tapped against the Earth, the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, college admission prompts, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky reminded me of my small though nonetheless significant part in a larger whole that is humankind and this Earth. Before I could resolve my guilt, I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans.
Volunteering at a cancer treatment center has helped me discover my path. When I see patients trapped in not only the hospital but also a moment in time by their diseases, I talk to them. For six hours a day, three times a week, Ivana is surrounded by IV stands, empty walls, and busy nurses that quietly yet constantly remind her of her breast cancer.
I need only to smile and say hello to see her brighten up as life returns to her face. Upon our first meeting, she opened up about her two sons, her hometown, and her knitting group--no mention of her disease. Without even standing up, college admission prompts three of us—Ivana, me, and my grandmother--had taken a walk together. While I physically treat their cancer, I want to lend patients emotional support and mental strength to escape the interruption and continue living.
For over two years, my final class of the day has been nontraditional. No notes, no tests, no official assignments.
Just a twenty-three minute lecture every Monday through Thursday, which I watched from my couch. Professor Jon Stewart would lecture his class about the news of the day, picking apart the absurdities of current events, college admission prompts. The Daily Show inspired me to explore the methods behind the madness of the world Stewart satirized.
Reading My College Essay That Got Me Accepted Into Duke, USC, and UT Austin + Why My Essay Worked
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Jun 01, · THEY’RE HERE. The Common App Prompts have been released and it’s time to slay the beast that is the word Common Application essay Aug 28, · Not all scholarships require an essay, but those that do often have similar questions or prompts to answer. Take a look at these common college scholarship prompts and start thinking about how you would answer each one, because odds are you’ll have to soon enough Responses to the essay prompts should be uploaded to your student portal in PDF format. Supplemental Materials (if applicable) Depending on your programs of interest, supplemental materials (such as a video audition or additional short essays responses) may be required to complete your application
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