What Not to Write About In Your College Essay
Let’s talk about what not to write about in your college essay!
“What should I not write about in my college essay, Lisa?”
As you start working on your college applications, it’s easy to start getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of essays that are required: a personal statement, supplemental essays, college-specific essays (the UC application, MIT, etc.), short answers… The list of required essays just seems to go on!
A major part of getting through the college application process successfully (and with your sanity intact!) is just figuring out what to write about for each essay. That can become tough as you start juggling multiple essays because you don’t want to overlap your topics.
For example, do you write about the liver cancer research that you’ve done for your personal statement or do you save it for Stanford’s “Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning” question? Or maybe you want to write about the volunteer work that you’ve done with your church for your main essay, but would it be better to save that topic for UNC-Chapel Hill’s essay on the positive impact you have had on your community. (These were both real questions from the 2023-2024 college admissions cycle).
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: Each on in your college essay process, start keeping a spreadsheet of the colleges you’re planning to apply to, the applicable deadlines (Early Admission, Early Decision, Regular Admission, any special program/scholarship deadlines, etc.), AND all the essays required. This will go a long way to keeping your essay process organized and save a lot of headaches down the road!
For a lot of students, it can feel like a mad scramble to figure out the right thing to write about for each of many, many required essays. And figuring out what to write about in your college essays also means figuring out what not to write about.
To understand what not to write about in your college essay, let’s talk about what college admissions officers ARE looking for.
What You Should Write About in Your College Essays
Since we’re talking about what not to write about in your college essays, let’s take a step back for a moment and remember what you should be writing about. Or in other words, what admissions officers are looking for in your essays.
Despite the fact that it often feels like all these college essays prompts have been designed to discourage students from applying (or maybe just to torture you!), the prompts really are all trying to get at a sense of who you really are: what inspires you, what motivates you, how do you react to challenges in your life, how do you interact with the people around you and your community, what are your unique viewpoints and how do you think about the world, etc.
If you ever are in doubt about whether is a topic is something you should avoid in your college essay, consider how a group of admissions officers may react to it. Is this the kind of topic that is going to help them decide whether you are someone who they want to have as a student on their campus and eventually, an alum of their school?
But what does that mean in a college essay? What are some examples of what not to write about in a college essay?
7 Topics to Avoid in Your College Essay
Having read a lot of college essays, here are some common topics that really should be avoided or at least strongly rethought:
My top “What Not to Write About in Your College Essay” is writing a rehash of your resume as an essay.
1. The “My Resume” as a College Essay
This is probably the most common College Essay Topic That Should be Avoided that I come across.
It’s very understandable that students feel like they should highlight all the achievements they can as much as possible to an admissions committee. As a result, student will often write an essay which is a litany of everything they’ve done. That can include awards, prizes, and achievements down to the blue ribbon they received in second grade science, often in excruciating detail.
So for example, I’ve had students who have started successful businesses, and more than one have come to me with essays that have chronicled each step they’ve taken in building their businesses: books, they’ve read, strategies they’ve employed, online skills they’ve learned, how much revenue they’ve generated as they’ve grown their businesses, etc.
As impressive as all of that can be, it’s not what admissions committees want from a college essay, and that kind of essay will not help you in the college admissions process because it doesn’t say a lot about you, the person. That’s the kind of information that should be in your resume or activities list, not your essay which needs to be about things like your motivations and character, as opposed to your the things you can list as accomplishments.
The other problem with these overly accomplishment-oriented essays is that they can off with a very strong smell of bragging which is problematic for a couple reasons.
First, an essay that comes off as a lot of bragging is just not pleasant to read, and as a college admissions officer, why would you have someone who comes off as unpleasant on campus?
This kind of essay also often comes across as someone who is a know-it-all, which is not helpful when admissions officers are really looking for students who want to come to campus and learn and be part of a community!
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: If you’re going to write about something you did accomplish, frame it in a way that’s still reflecting on who you are: Why did you start the activity/project? Why was it important to you? What did you learn about yourself during the experience?
Another topic to avoid in your college essay is any challenge that you' can’t show yourself overcoming or growing from.
2. The “This Horrible Thing Happened to Me” as a College Essay
Another topic that needs to be avoided is the “This Horrible Thing Happened to Me” college essay. And these essays will vividly describe a horrible situation that occurred and how sad and emotional it was for the student, and how the student learned that life can be difficult.
I come across a lot of these college essays, and I think it’s because students feel like they need to write about something difficult in their life, the so-called “challenge” essay. But “a horrible thing happened to me” is not actually the way to do that in your college essay.
Yes, one of the key things that college admissions officers do want to learn about you is how do you deal with challenges in your life. They want to know how you deal with hard things and how you grow from those challenges.
The problem with the “a horrible thing happened to me” essay is when it just stops there at the horrible thing, and never gets to the “This is how I overcame this horrible thing, and what I learned about myself in the process.”
If the essay only describes the challenge and never gets to the growth part, it’s just a sad story, which while sad, doesn’t say anything about you and why you would be a good student for their college. Unless you can show growth or how you overcame a challenge, this is another topic you should avoid in your college essay.
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: If you are writing an essay about a challenge in your life, it’s very easy to get caught up in describing the challenge and never really get to how it was a growth experience for you. Remember: the challenge itself if not the important thing in the essay. You are! So devote at least as much of your essay to your growth!
Another college essay topic to avoid is “School was hard.”
3. The “School Was Hard” College Essay
This is another topic that I see when students are trying to write about a challenge in their lives. The challenge they choose to write about is school. Sometimes, it’s about a really difficult class they had to deal with or a tough project. Sometimes, it’s about moving to a new school and how painful it was to make that change.
I really try to steer students away from essays where the challenge they describe is school itself. I really think that this is one of those topics that should be avoided when writing your college essay.
The reason for that is because if you think about it, college IS school. If you write your college essay about how the greatest challenge of your life was school itself, it is inviting an admissions officer to start wondering if college is going to be really difficult for you. If some element of school was so traumatic for you, are you someone who is going to hide in your dorm room instead of embracing the transition from high school to college? How are you going to deal with all the difficult classes you’ll be facing in college?
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: Be very careful around this kind of topic for a college essay, but if you’re still considering it, try to narrow your scope to something very specific and emphasize your growth from the experience e.g. “I’ve learned to embrace new cultures and make friends…”
College essays about sports are hard to pull off successfully which is why it’s now a college essay topic that many students avoid.
4. The “Sports” College Essay
On the surface, there’s nothing really wrong with talking about your experience playing sports or being on a sports team, but this is still a college essay topic that’s incredibly hard to pull off successfully.
“I was trying so hard to make the team!” “It was the Big Game!,” “I couldn’t let my teammates down!,”… it’s hard to do this well as a college essay just because it’s such a common experience and it’s hard not to blend into the hundreds of other essays which will likely be tackling the same topic. That’s not to mention the always lurking danger of falling into sports movie clichés which have done so many times they may as well have been run over by a pick-up truck.
It’s all enough to make an admissions officer start snoring on cue!
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: This really is a hard topic to do well, but that doesn’t mean that anything you ever did related to sports is off-limits. HOWEVER, you do have to think very long and hard about what your unique experience may have been with it, why it was important to you, and how you may have grown from it in a way that makes you an especially good candidate for their college.
College essays about trips can fall into many traps which is which this is a college essay topic to avoid.
5. The “I Went on a Trip” College Essay
Sometimes I get students who want to write about a trip that they’ve taken for their college essay. This kind of essay is often around a volunteer experience or getting in touch with their cultural roots, but sometimes it’s also purely around a trip to someplace new and noteworthy for the student.
This is another college essay topic that I would strongly suggest you think long and hard about before attempting. The danger of this the “I went on a trip” college essay is that far too often, it ends up being about the trip: the place, what you say, the sights, the sounds, the smells… the essay ends up being about everything except what it most important, namely YOU.
Depending on how they are written, these essays can also fall into using language associated with colonialism and xenophobia, which is, of course, exactly what you do not want in your college essay.
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: If you do want to write about a trip for your college essay, think carefully about why it was so important to you. What was your overall growth arc at the time? How did you feel about yourself before and after the trip? Make the essay about you and what you were going through at the time, so that that trip itself is just one component of your story.
Heartbreak is a college essay topic to avoid in almost all cases.
6. The “My First Breakup as a College Essay”
Breakups can be highly emotional, and yes, they are part of our growth journey throughout life. But that doesn’t make a high school breakup a good topic for a college essay.
Frankly ,it’s just not something that’s going to register on an admissions office’s radar. Because it is such a normal part of growing up, it’s just going to say anything interesting about you, your hopes, dreams, and aspirations, and why you would be a good student at their school. In the scheme of what other students will be writing on, it’s just not going to seem that important.
And honestly, think about it. When someone you don’t know very well starts going on about their relationship drama, how interesting do you think it is?
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: This topic really is almost impossible to do well. Please skip it!
7. And Finally… Yes, Some Things Are Just Not Appropriate for a College Essay!
College essay topics to avoid include anything illegal or unethical.
You may wonder what I mean by this. After all, doesn’t this go without saying?
But because I do come across this a few times a year, there some things that you should not write about in your college essay like illegal drug use, academic dishonesty (e.g. cheating, plagiarism, etc.), or anything unethical.
Usually, students write about these things because they have realized that what they did is wrong (which is good!). But colleges take illegal and unethical activities very seriously, and there is a huge risk that your college application would be red-flagged immediately.
I would also caution you to think through anything you may answer for questions like “What song inspires you?”. Please think through both the title and ALL the lyrics to any song you want to use as your answer. As I explained to one of my students who wanted to use Run DMC’s “Walk This Way” as an answer to one of these questions, the lyrics can really easily be taken the wrong way by an admissions and you just don’t want to take the chance.
College Essay Coach Pro Tip: Just don’t.
Getting Started On Your College Essay
All that being said, one of these topics may be incredibly important and meaningful to you. Could there still be a way to make it work for your college essay?
In some cases, the answer is YES, but it’s going to take a lot of thought, reflection, and work. The key to making a possibly clichéd or ho-hum topic work is to really make the essay personal to you. What’s the unique insight or viewpoint that you’re bringing to this topic that they’ve seen before? Can you write the perfect hook for your college essay that will make an admissions office take notice?
Remember, even though there are sports movies that come out every year, a few do rise above because they say something new and interesting and do it well.
So it can be done. It’s just really hard to do and will take some time!
Need more help with your college essays?
Check out my college essay coaching!
And for additional help with your college applications, check out my college admissions consulting and college interview preparation and coaching.
Check out my blogs on popular college admissions topics like:
How to Write the Perfect Hook for Your College Essay
9 Good Questions to Ask During Your College Interview
How to Write a College Essay About Leadership (with Examples!)
How to Write a Medical School Interview Thank You Letter or Email
How to Write the NYU Supplemental Essay (with Examples!) [UPDATED FOR 2024-2025]
How to Write the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) Supplemental Essays (with Examples!)
How to Write the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) Supplemental Essays (with Examples!)
