College Essay Topics To Avoid

No one cares about your dead turtle. Or the spelling bee you won in second grade. Or that life-changing experience you had while backpacking through Europe. Or that time you led your team to victory on the Quidditch fields. So let’s look at why some essays have become cliche. Tragedies are universal and tricky to write about because it is tempting to focus on the tragedy and not how it has shaped who you have become. Learning about another culture falls into this same trap of telling a predicable story without revealing who you really are. Sports themes generally fall into the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat without much room to tell your story. But every rule has an exception. If you can tell a truly revelatory story about how your dead turtle transformed your way of thinking, causing you to backpack even stronger in Europe and make your team’s winning touchdown, give it a shot.