10 Topics to Avoid in a College Admission Essay
Picking the right topic for a college essay can be a little hard. If you are not that good at writing, you could end up picking a topic from the Internet and writing a plain old boring college essay. If you do not want to rewrite the same old college essays or create something that will get you rejected, then here are the ten topics you should avoid.
1. The Most Important Person or Thing in Your Life
When you google for ideas for college essay topics, you will probably find topics and sample essays on ‘The most important thing or person in my life.’ College administrators have probably read thousands of those and now these essays are too clichéd and boring to read.
2. Tragedies, Death, and Divorce
The problem isn’t that these topics are depressing but they are so powerful that executing them well can be difficult. Also, you may never know that your admission officer may hate the idea of a tragic topic for a college essay. If you strongly feel that a tragedy has impacted your life and should be there in an essay about you then be very cautious while writing. Keep the focus on the essay on you and talk about what lesson you learned from it instead of recalling the whole incident.
3. Sports
College essays about sports or athletic accomplishments — these could be written by essay for order sites — (for example, https://studymoose.com/basketball ) are another clichéd and predicted topic and it is better to avoid it. Admission officers have read so much about the ‘passion of sports’ and ‘the thrill of victory’ that it no longer excites them and are also sick of pretending that they do care about it. Leave the sports and school athletics and pick an interesting and unique topic.
4. Humor
Adding some humor to your story or essay can make it amusing and interesting. But you should not be making your entire essay sound humorous. If something funny comes up naturally in your essay, let it be there, but there should be no forceful humor in it. College administrators can easily discover if you are making a futile attempt to add humor and will not find your essay amusing.
5. Why are you so lucky
If you have been lucky all your life, you should be thankful but not write about it in your college essay. Reading about how your parents have provided you with everything you wanted and how you always scored top grades will be too boring to read.
6. Illegal or Illicit Activities
Stay away from mentioning any encounter with illegal or illicit behavior like alcohol, drugs, arrest/jail time, or sex. Even if you have made a mistake in the past, you would not want to be questioned, judged, or worse, rejected because of it.
7. Do-good Experiences or Voluntary Work
Writing about a time you helped someone in need or about volunteering work is another clichéd topic admission officers do not want to see anymore. You can mention some of your volunteering work if it fits the topic of your college essay, but do not create the whole essay around your do-good experience.
8. Self Expression
Some students think of writing out of the box so that their essay stands out. Some of the brightest and most creative students think that they can succeed by doing their own thing and end up writing an anti-essay. Remember that the purpose of your essay is to get you into that college.
9. Inflammatory Topics
It is certainly not a good idea to write about topics like religion or politics. These two are the most polarizing topics that must be avoided when writing a college essay. Your admission officers do not care about your opinion in any political or religious matters.
10. Accomplishments
Now, most of the so-called college essay writing guides will tell you to convince the admission officers as to why they should let you enter their college. Here is where most of the college essays fail to play their role.
You do not have to tell how perfect you are in securing good grades and how you stayed active in all the co-curricular activities in school. Admission officers are sure to know that you are bragging about yourself, which they will certainly not appreciate.
Final Word
When writing a college essay, it is very important to have a strong and engaging topic that either reflects your personality or showcases your strong points. It can be good to choose a personal topic but avoid those that are mentioned above so that you do not sound boring or increase your chances to get rejected.
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