The Common App essays: Breaking down the questions - Part 2
Examining the questions is a major key into figuring out what admissions officers really want.
Last week we took a look at one of the Common App essay topics:
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Maybe you read over it a few times and tried hard to brainstorm but came up empty. Maybe you just don’t find this topic all that exciting. Fortunately, if you aren’t digging this one, you have other options. Here’s option 2:
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Let’s break this baby down. What are the key words?
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Issue: An issue is more than just a topic. An issue has baggage. It’s alive. It’s something unresolved, in dispute, contested over or disagreed about. Not an issue: mosquitoes. An issue: Your town is divided about whether or not to spray insecticide on the local golf course to kill the mosquitoes.
Concern: A concern implies that the issue has negative implications and may cause (or is causing) problems. An issue that is not of concern: how a lot of people don’t like Justin Bieber’s new haircut. An issue that is of concern: how the media documents celebrity body image and the impact on one’s own body image.
Discuss: This is key. Discuss does not mean summarize or lecture. Discuss means tell the facts and then analyze deeply. Look at the issue from multiple viewpoints, and express the multiple viewpoints involved. Weigh them against one another; look at where they are coming from. Issues are complicated. Show that you’ve considered the issue in all its complexity. For example, repaving the decrepit parking lot at your high school will mean fewer flat tires in the long run, but it also means that for the next six months half the student drivers can’t park, and this might affect attendance.
Personal, local, national OR international: Maybe you’ve got a ton of thoughts on issues ranging from a falling out with a close friend (personal) to the new condominium being built in your town that has caused conflict within the community (local) to the question of socialized medicine (national) to global warming (international). Just pick one -- you don’t have room in a 500-word essay to write about more than one, as much as you might want to.
Importance to you: If you don’t personally care about an issue, don’t write about it. Maybe your parents talk at the dinner table about how worried they are about the election. If you don’t want to write about the election, don’t write about it. And don’t feel pressured to write about something on the national or international level, either. If it’s a topic that big, chances are the admissions committee has read about it before. What they probably haven’t read about is a hotly contested debate in your hometown or a problem your school district is facing and how you feel about it.
At its core, this question is trying to get you to reveal something unique and memorable about yourself -- your mind, your principles, your ability to problem-solve and think about complex issues. So pick the topic that you can write about with confidence and authority -- the topic that shows how you think and how you understand other viewpoints, and that demonstrates your own values and ethics and your ability to see how a wider issue impacts your own life and your future.
Emily Herzlin is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA Nonfiction Writing program and received her BA in Dramatic Literature from NYU. Emily teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University through the Columbia Artists as Teachers Program. Her writing is featured in various online and print publications including The Millions, The Women’s International Perspective, and The Under 35 Project. She is head editor of Crescendo City, a local Harlem literary magazine. Emily is a blogger and editor at Admissionado, a boutique admissions consulting company that helps students navigate the undergraduate and graduate admissions process. As a writing and academic tutor for high school students in New York City, Emily knows how tough the college application process can be, but she promises that you will get through it.
This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.