Inspiration
Often, the hardest part of answering a given prompt is getting started. Most college application prompts are designed to be open-ended and reflective, which means you can write about almost anything. Still, there are a few ways to organize and come up with ideas for your given essays.
Disclaimer: These tips are what worked for us. Sucess may vary - always be on the lookout for your own sources of inspiration!
Brainstorming
Often, the approach for writing a given application is to think about what you want to feature. Writing an application is basically telling the story of yourself, and so it's often useful to ask "How do I want to present myself to this college?"
Take this example student:
- Staff writer for the Jacket
- Band
- Founded a club supporting local businesses
- Worked at a local restaurant
- Varsity Soccer
Now say this student is applying to a school with the following prompts:
- (The Common Application Essay) 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?
- [School] has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to [School]?
- Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you.
- Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.
- Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.
This student might try to organize the above list into each essay:
| Essay | Ideas |
|---|---|
| 1 | Journalism & your experience as a journalist. |
| 2 | Your personal experience with diversity. |
| 3 | Your experience helping local businesses, and how it motivated you to do more for your community. |
| 4 | Your experience working at a restaurant, and what that taught you as a person. |
| 5 | Fun personal facts about yourself, band, soccer, etc. |
What's nice about this format is that it also allows you to re-use ideas for different applications. Many colleges have similar prompts - organizing your ideas in this way means you know what you want to say about each of your own traits. In the long run, this saves a lot of time.
Other Sources of inspiration
Often, the best way to learn how to come up with ideas is to surround yourself with media that inspires you. Here are some of our favorite sources of inspiration:
| Source | Description |
|---|---|
| This American Life (opens in a new tab) | Long-running podcast that tells the stories of everyday people. |
| The Moth (opens in a new tab) | Personal stories, told live. |
| ??? | Want to submit your favorite source of inspiration? Reach out! |
Reading Other Essays
Reading other essays is a great way to get a sense of what works, but it's also a double-edged sword. The purpose of college essays is to discover you as a person, and what differentiates you from the crowd. For this reason, while looking at past essays can be useful, remember that 1) you need to be original and 2) anything that seems unique or creative has already been done 100s of times since that essay was released into the world.
ChatGPT & Generative AI
The Yale Admissions Podcast (opens in a new tab) has a great episode on the question "Should I use ChatGPT when writing my college applications?" TLDR: it's really the wrong question to be asking from the beginning.
Remember: applications are personal. Not only will using something like ChatGPT probably violate the honor code of most colleges you're applying to, but it also removes the most important element of your essays: you.