Looking for help with the 2016-17 Common Application Essay? Below CEA’s Founder, Stacey Brook, breaks down all you need to know about this year’s prompts.
Stacey Brook, Founder and Chief Advisor
Hello parents and students! The time has come. The 2016-2017 college application season has officially begun. The 2016-17 Common Application essay topics have been confirmed and students all over the world are getting ready to warm up their creative brains and typing fingers and launch into essay-writing action.
We at College Essay Advisors love these tried and true essay questions, which are exactly the same as the ones on last year’s list. These prompts are, as always, open to creative interpretation, allowing room for personal expression while also delineating some helpful guidelines for students to follow. While it is true that the Common Application essay prompts are quite flexible, it is still helpful to know just what admissions will be looking for when they read personal statements in each of these categories.
Below, we break down all of the important aspects of each of the five essay prompts including:
Keep in mind, students only have to choose and respond to one of the five choices- unless they feel like answering the other four just for fun. To any students for whom this is the case, please contact me immediately upon your college graduation because you’re hired. Now, for the breakdown!
While students and parents have long lamented the exclusion of the “topic of your choice,” this year’s first prompt is as solid a choose-your-own-adventure option as any you’ll find. No matter what memory, personality trait, hobby or accomplishment a student chooses to highlight, it will likely be easily molded to fit this prompt. So ask yourself: What, in your seventeen years on this earth, has helped shape the person you are today?
It can be something as small as seeing an episode of a television show, or as large as the struggle of moving to a foreign country. That said, your subject and/or perspective should be dynamic; specific to you and who you are and no one else. Consider the following questions:
Let these possibilities tumble about in your brain and then let out a deep exhale. You have been given a gift, dear applicants. This prompt will serve as a fabulous catch-all for subjects that don’t fit within the confines of the other four prompts. It is, in essence, a topic of grand choice, buffered by a few helpful guidelines.
We at College Essay Advisors have always stressed that a question about failure is, in fact, a question about success. This year’s second prompt makes this point irrefutably clear. Students should aim to showcase both a sense of humility and resilience. How do you deal with hardship? Are you the kind of person who can rebound- who turns every experience, good or bad, into one from which you can learn something?
Applicants should be careful not to choose failures that may seem trite (failure to get an A on an exam and/or secure tickets to that Justin Bieber concert), or that illustrate a lapse in good judgment (that time you crashed your car or ate fifteen bags of Cheetos in one sitting). Still, if you can isolate an incident of trial in your life and how you learned from it, this can be a rewarding prompt to explore. Some examples:
Try to keep these stories as positive as possible. Remember, these essays are not really about losing the election, missing the big game and failing to meet your own academic expectations; they are about overcoming obstacles, and refusing to submit to life’s greatest challenges.
This is perhaps the most challenging prompt of the Common App’s selection. It requires a student to speak passionately about beliefs and ideology, which are often onerous topics that can be difficult to mold into a compact story. Hence, this is often one of the hardest prompts to steer in a positive, productive direction without traveling into preachy, overly didactic territory.
That said, responses to this prompt can be incisive and deeply personal, as it was for a student who stood up to her parents’ old-fashioned outlook on feminism. They can also be quite controversial, and students need to carefully assess the risks of espousing beliefs that might be polarizing for the readers of their applications. If this prompt jumps out at you because you have a very specific story to tell or opinion to voice, run with it. Consider these ideas:
These are some of the questions to which this prompt seeks answers and insight.
I’ll admit it. We at College Essay Advisors are nerdily excited about the reappearance of prompt #4, which asks students to talk about a problem and how they solved or are planning to solve it. This one is quite similar to prompt #2 in that it is meant to tease out a student’s problem-solving skills and provide a glimpse into an applicant’s frame of mind when dealing with challenges. But this question provides a few bonus opportunities for creative expression, leaving both the scale and the time frame for setting up a problem/solution wide open.
Students should think about everything from more traditional obstacles they have had to overcome to the small predicaments that have inspired them to think about what they really value.
Applicants can and should also consider this prompt from an aspirational perspective:
It is important that the problem you choose is linked to your life and world in a meaningful way. Remember, the whole purpose of this exercise is to reveal something valuable about yourself to admissions. And don’t forget to detail at least a few steps you would/could take to solve your chosen quandary. While this prompt may seem to have a lot of moving parts, it also opens the door for some incredibly imaginative approaches to the personal essay. We are excited to see how students use it as a launch pad for their stories this year.
This prompt offers endless choices and flexibility, and an essay inspired by this prompt can tackle anything from a formal event to a very small occurrence. Students should keep in mind that the words “accomplishment” and “event,” leave themselves open to interpretation. A formal event or accomplishment might encompass anything from obvious landmarks like birthdays and weddings, to achievements like earning an award or receiving a promotion. More informal examples might include something as simple as meeting a special person in your life, taking a car ride, or eating a particularly meaningful meal.
The College Essay Advisors team has often found that the smaller, less formal events make for more surprising and memorable essays; but as with any of the other prompts, as long as you can answer with originality and put a unique twist on your subject matter, all ideas, formal and informal, big and small, are fair game.
The most important thing to keep in mind when searching for these moments is that element of transition and transformation. The event or accomplishment you discuss should be something that helped you understand the world around you through a different, more mature lens.
With some brainstorming and hard work, every student can uncover a story worth telling in response to one of these prompts. Remember, admissions wants a glimpse of your personality, your values, your interests and your passions. They want to get an idea of what kind of attitude and energy you will bring to the classroom and campus life.
So take a few minutes to probe your memories, collect your stories and strike up that creative core. Every student has a fabulous essay inside of them – these prompts can help you find yours.
