Tackle with Common App Essay Prompts 🎓

For students in high school, writing Common App essays can be quite stressful. Dealing with Common App essays can be difficult with so much already on your plate. You shouldn’t wait for the last minute and start off writing away with your work so that you don’t have to go through the stress of doing this last minute. In this guide, you will understand how to deal with common app essay prompts in the best way. You will also learn more about how you can work your way through picking common app essay topics to make your life easier. 🎓

What is a Common App and how to use it?

The Common Application is an undergraduate college application that many universities have. They use this way to find candidates who are best suited to them. Across 900 member colleges in the USA, this application is used to get admission into different colleges. The more familiar you are with this application process, the less stressed you will be regarding the application process. This is most important for students looking to increase their chances of getting into colleges with this application process. 

Common App Essay Prompts 🧐

Common app essay prompts will remain the same for 2022-2023. The reason for this is that most people agree with the idea that these prompts allow students to put their creativity to the best use. Not just that, but they allow students to write excellent essays as well. These essay prompts allow students to write essays that say so much about themselves. 

According to Scott Anderson, who is the senior director of the Common app, “We share this news in January because it’s when some schools begin conversations about college options. It’s a time for learning, reflecting, and planning. That’s where the prompts can be useful: in helping students understand the aspects of their lives that colleges are curious about.”

Another thing that is very important to highlight here is that essay prompts are not the same as essay topics. They are simply questions that allow students to start thinking in the right direction, which allows their creativity to spark through in the right way. 

Here is the set of 2022 – 2023 Common App Essay prompts:

1. “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
6. 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?
7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, responding to a different prompt, or one of your designs.”

You can pick any of these common app essays prompts and then begin writing on them based on what you are good at. Choose the topic that you think will help you highlight all of your strong points. The most important part of writing the common app essay is for you to select the best common app essay prompt to highlight your skills in the right way. 

Common App Essay Tips

Once you have selected one of the common app essays prompts, you can start writing your essay. Here are a few tips that can help you with your essay. 

• Make sure to add a personal touch to your essay. When selecting a common app essay prompt, make sure that you select one that can help you highlight your achievements in life. That is something very important. When you write the common app essay, talk about yourself or incidents in your life that you think are worth shedding light on. Remember that the entire point of these common app essay topics is for the examiner to get to know you better. So if there is a personal touch to it, you will surely be able to impress the examiner. Add an emotional element to it as well to increase your chances of impressing the examiner. 

• Avoid all cliched topics. When you pick one of the common app essay topics that are cliched, you surely cannot write well on it, highlighting what you want to show the reader. 

• Make sure to read and re-read. That will help you check your grammar and spelling correctly, which is important here. Shabby Writing says a lot about you as a student and can give off the wrong impression. So, make sure to write accurately. Use varied sentence structure and make sensible word choices. Be consistent with your writing style so that the examiner can very well understand what you are trying to say.

• You have a maximum of 650 words to write. Make sure that you write 650 words only. This is an opportunity to showcase your talent. Writing less will mean that you didn’t avail yourself of what was given to you, hence a missed opportunity. Fulfill that entire word count and write what you think is best. Have a strategy in mind, and then write based on that strategy. All those tips are gathered to make you confident while writing an essay such as a critical thinking essay or a supplemental essay.
• This video will show some tips that would help pick Common App Essay topics.

Prompt 1

This common app essay topic talks about how your background affects your personality. In this, you have to talk about something very distinctive about your upbringing. You need to talk about an encounter you faced or something about your history that makes you different. You need to talk about experiences that shaped you and turned you into today’s person. 

Prompt 2

Here, you need to talk about a certain failure in your life. We all go through certain failures in our lives that shape us and turn us into versions of ourselves that we see today. So we need to talk about hurdles in our lives and how we tend to deal with these hurdles without letting them bog us down. Essays like these are a great way to tell the admission officers about you. They grab the reader’s attention and tell them things about you that they would indeed be very interested in knowing about. How you deal with hardship says a lot about you as a person, and hence this is a very interesting prompt to work on. ‘

Prompt 3 

This is one of those common app essay topics where you talk about yourself as a leader. Also, you can read an article on how to write a supplemental essay and be prepared in advance. This helps the leader see how you would behave in a situation that requires you to assume a position of power. You might have encountered situations where you might have had to lead a situation many times in your life. So you need to talk about one such situation here. For example, you can talk about why your opinions have been unpopular and what are the things that you would stand up for in life. 

Prompt 4

This is one common app essay topic that seems fairly easy to write on. But in fact, you need to dig deep for these and talk about things that genuinely make you happy. This will help the reader see the type of person you are and what makes you happy. You can talk about something heartfelt here. It will help move the examiner and form an opinion about you. You can talk about how you express gratitude in your life and how you repay those who have done some good to you.

Prompt 5

This is one of those common app essay topics where you talk about something that caused you to grow as a person. Again, something that you can make highly personal. You can talk about how this changed your understanding of yourself and how it helped you improve. If you write about this topic very thoughtfully, you can say great things about yourself here. 

Prompt 6 

Here, you have to talk about something that you are intellectually passionate about. You need to talk about things that enthrall you and help you think in an enhanced fashion. 

Prompt 7 

This is an ideal example of an open-ended prompt. You need to talk about anything that you like. While this may seem easy, it is indeed the trickiest one since you can write about anything you want. Remember that you have to impress the examiner. So, choose something that you like and one that can help you outshine the rest. Make sure it interests you, but at the same time also affects the reader in the way. Otherway you can also use a Common App assistance if you are stuck and stressed a lot.

Summary 😉

Now that you have a fair idea of common app essay topics pick the one you think you can write the best on and get started. Be confident and focus on doing your best. You will surely be able to make it big!