What Should You Write Your College Essay About? It Doesn’t Have to Be Impressive
Every year, Elite Prep helps seniors through the college application process. We hope the information below is useful.
There is one piece of college essay advice that students hear more than any other. It also happens to be the least useful.
“Use the essay to let colleges get to know you.”
It’s true. But what does it actually mean?
Telling a seventeen-year-old staring at a blank document to “show us your personality” does not make it any clearer what to write. If anything, it makes the page feel emptier.
So let’s start with the answer. Write about an experience that helps an admissions reader understand something about you that your grades, scores, and activities don’t already show. It does not need to be a remarkable experience. What matters is whether the story reveals how you think, what you pay attention to, how you handle situations, and how you’ve changed.
The rest of this article walks through how to actually find that experience.
| Part | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 1 | Why admissions vocabulary makes it harder, not easier |
| 2 | The five questions that surface a topic |
| 3 | The most familiar experiences are the hardest to see |
| 4 | Does it have to be impressive? No |
| 5 | The one question to change |
| 6 | Can I write about my major or my club? |
| 7 | The most important rule — don’t prove what you’ve already proven |
| 8 | The subject and what it reveals are two different things |
| 9 | Show it, don’t declare it |
| 10 | What colleges are actually looking for |
| 11 | Frequently asked questions |
1. Why Admissions Vocabulary Makes It Harder
Students are told the essay should reveal their character, personality, voice, values, resilience, and contribution to community. All of that is true. But those words have something in common.
| What students are told | The problem |
|---|---|
| “Show us your values” | Naming your own values is the hard part |
| “Demonstrate resilience” | Which moment is even supposed to count? |
| “Write in your own voice” | Voice is an outcome, not a starting point |
| “Show your contribution to community” | It sends students hunting for service hours |
Every one of them is abstract. Starting from an abstract goal sends a student searching for an event that matches the word, and more often than not, that search ends in something invented rather than something true.
📌 A better approach is to set the admissions vocabulary aside for a moment and think about real life instead. The question isn’t “how do I show my values.” It’s “what have I actually lived through that I can remember clearly and describe?”
2. The Five Questions That Surface a Topic
Sit down with your student and ask these five. They aren’t questions with right answers — they’re questions that pull memories loose.
| # | Question | What it’s looking for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What do you do or think about for hours when nobody is making you? | Genuine interest |
| 2 | What do you notice that other people walk past? (something fascinating, frustrating, surprising, or unfair) | How you observe |
| 3 | Who are you when you’re around other people? | You in relationship |
| 4 | What did you do when things didn’t go according to plan? | How you respond |
| 5 | How have you changed? What do you understand now that you didn’t at fourteen? | Evidence of growth |
The third question tends to produce the fastest answers. It usually sounds like this:
- The one who organizes everybody
- The one who makes people laugh
- The one who notices when someone is being left out
- The one who is patient enough to explain it again
- The one who takes responsibility when something goes wrong
The fourth question works the same way. Did you keep going, change your approach, ask for help, admit you were wrong, or accept something you couldn’t control?
💡 These questions lead to experiences, and experiences lead to stories. That’s the order. Trying to find the story first is what leaves students stuck.
3. The Most Familiar Experiences Are the Hardest to See
There’s a reason this is difficult. The experiences closest to us rarely feel notable to us.
| Actually a strong topic | Why students skip right past it |
|---|---|
| Cooking dinner for a younger sibling | “That’s just something I do every day” |
| Helping run the family business | “That’s not an activity, that’s just my family” |
| Repairing an old computer | “I just followed a video” |
| Losing hours to one hobby | “That’s not accomplishing anything” |
Because it feels ordinary, students delete excellent essay ideas before anyone else ever sees them.
So don’t open with “what does this experience say about my character?” Start with the specific moment, the choice, the conversation, the habit, the reaction. Meaning usually shows up in the looking back, not in the first glance.
4. Does It Have to Be Impressive? No
A strong college essay does not require a major achievement, a prestigious research project, a leadership title, or serious hardship.
The scene we run into most often with our students is this one: the student throws out a genuinely good idea themselves, saying, “but that’s not very impressive.”
Every one of the following can become a compelling essay.
| Topic | What it can reveal |
|---|---|
| Weekend shifts at the family restaurant | Responsibility, how you carry obligations |
| Teaching your little brother math | Patience, the ability to explain |
| Losing at chess over and over | How you deal with failure |
| Fixing an old computer | Curiosity, refusing to let something go |
| Making dinner for the family | Your actual role at home |
| Arguing with your grandfather | Relationships, how your thinking shifts |
⚠️ The goal is not to manufacture a bigger story — it’s to find what’s meaningful in the experience you already have. A surprising number of the best essays begin with something the student first dismissed as ordinary.
5. The One Question to Change
If you take only one thing from this article, take this.
| ❌ Stop asking this | ✅ Ask this instead |
|---|---|
| “Is this experience impressive?” | “After reading this, what will someone understand about me?” |
The moment the question changes, the topics that were thrown out come back to life. And, just as usefully, the topic that sounded impressive often turns out to say nothing at all.
6. Can I Write About My Major or My Club?
Yes. But ask yourself one thing before you start.
Will this essay tell an admissions reader something they don’t already know?
Here’s an example. A student’s application contains the following.
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Coursework | AP Calculus BC, AP Physics C |
| Activities | Robotics |
| Summer | Engineering summer program |
| Experience | Engineering research |
| Intended major | Mechanical engineering |
Now suppose that student writes an essay explaining a passion for engineering. It becomes the sixth statement of something the application already made in five places. From the reader’s side, nothing new arrives.
7. The Most Important Rule — Don’t Prove What You’ve Already Proven
Turned into a rule, the example above reads like this.
Don’t use the college essay to prove something the rest of your application has already proven.
To be clear, this does not mean a STEM student can’t write about STEM, a musician can’t write about music, or an athlete can’t write about sports.
It means asking this first.
| The question |
|---|
| If I write about this activity, what will the reader learn about me beyond what my application already shows? |
If you have an answer, write it. If you don’t, pick a different experience.
8. The Subject and What It Reveals Are Two Different Things
There’s a way to follow rule 7 and still write about your own field. Separate the subject of the story from what the story reveals.
Suppose the engineering student above writes about repairing an old cassette player with their grandfather.
| Subject | Fixing a machine — that’s engineering |
| What it reveals | Patience, a relationship with a grandparent, sentiment, curiosity, how you connect across generations |
💡 The subject can be engineering. What the story reveals doesn’t have to be. Once that distinction lands, the range of usable topics gets much wider.
9. Show It, Don’t Declare It
Here’s another ending we read constantly.
“Through this experience, I learned the importance of perseverance and resilience.”
Familiar, isn’t it. The trouble is that this is a declaration. Saying you’re resilient and making a reader feel it are not the same act.
Instead of announcing the quality, show what happened in the moment you wanted to quit.
| What to show |
|---|
| What you were thinking right then |
| What you did |
| Why you kept going |
| Whether you changed your approach |
| Whether you asked for help |
| Whether something mattered enough to keep at it while frustrated |
When the story works, the reader reaches the conclusion on their own.
“This student doesn’t give up easily.”
A conclusion a reader arrives at themselves lands far harder than the same sentence written out for them.
10. What Colleges Are Actually Looking For
The application already carries a great deal of information: coursework, grades, test scores, activities, awards, accomplishments.
The essay is where the person behind that information shows up.
| What the application tells them | What the essay can tell them |
|---|---|
| What you did | How you think |
| How well you did it | What you notice |
| Which activities you chose | How you respond to situations |
| What you were recognized for | What you actually care about |
| What your grades look like | How your experiences have shaped you |
In the end, “letting colleges get to know you” means showing them what no transcript or activity list can carry.
11. Frequently Asked Questions
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What should I write my college essay about? | An experience that meaningfully reveals how you think, what interests you, how you relate to others, and how you’ve changed. Not your most impressive experience — the one that helps a reader understand you better |
| Does it have to be a major accomplishment? | No. An everyday experience is a strong topic if it shows a side of you the rest of the application doesn’t |
| Does the event itself need to be impressive? | What you did with it and how you responded matters far more than the event |
| Does it have to relate to my intended major? | It can, but it doesn’t have to. If your coursework and activities already establish that interest, the essay is usually better spent elsewhere |
| What do colleges look for in an essay? | The student behind the grades and activities — how you think, decide, respond, connect, and where you find meaning |
| Can parents choose the topic? | Helping surface memories is genuinely useful, but the choice and the sentences belong to the student |
| When should the topic be settled? | By the end of August, so September is left for revision |
Closing — It Doesn’t Have to Be Impressive
Choosing a topic and working out what your own experience says about you is one of the hardest parts of the entire application. Not because it’s a writing problem, but because it’s a looking-inward problem.
So please remember this one line.
A college essay doesn’t have to prove that you’re exceptional.
It has to make you recognizable.
Elite Prep’s college admissions services work with students individually — from building the college list and application strategy through developing and reviewing essay topics. Our counselors help students find a meaningful experience and organize their thinking so it comes across honestly, while making sure the final essay stays the student’s own writing and voice. If your student has been stuck for weeks on what to write, this is the moment to start.
For a closer look at your family’s plan, reach out to your nearest Elite Prep:
📍 Elite Prep Suwanee
From SAT prep to financial aid, and AP and college courses accredited and accepted by colleges across the United States — brought to you by Elite Prep Suwanee.
Andy Lee / Director of Elite Prep Suwanee powered by Elite Open School
- 📍 Address: 1291 Old Peachtree Rd. NW #127, Suwanee, GA 30024
- 📞 Call/Text: 470.253.1004
- ✉️ Email: andy.lee@eliteprep.com
- 🌐 Website: https://eliteprep.com/suwanee
- ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@andyssamTV
