What’s the Best Topic for a College Essay?

During a recent essay workshop at our local high school, a parent asked, “Which is more important: The topic of the essay, or the quality of writing?”

It was an excellent question. Are you ready for the answer? Neither.

The most important thing in a college essay is how well you can engage in self-reflection. After all, that’s why you’re going to college in the first place. Can you dig deep into one thing – an embarrassing moment, a boring job, a cherished object, a weird quirk – and discover something deeper? Can you make meaning of your lived experiences?

That’s why writing this essay is so difficult; it’s hard to dig deep. But that’s also what makes writing the college essay so poignant. Rarely do we get the opportunity to examine the stuff that makes us … us. What makes us curious. What repels us or motivates us. The bumpy, messy ways that we may have learned a hard truth, or discovered an inner strength. The things we’re maybe just beginning to understand … about the world, but more importantly, about ourselves.

Can we invite the reader in – for just a few minutes, in just 650 words – to see through our eyes? To glimpse at what we notice, what we value. Can we step into our own vulnerability so that someone else can step into our shoes and feel comfortable being there? The goal is not to convince an admissions officer how great you are, but to share something about you that is likeable. That you realize what makes you likeable. 

The best college essay topics aren’t values or grand truths floating somewhere out there, above or around you. They are granular details inside of you. They are of your own story and no one else’s. 

Here are just a few of my students’ topics (shared with permission): Leis, larping, origami. An unfortunate text, an ugly dance, a clumsy nature. Blue hair dye, keychains, cardboard boxes …

Random, right? What they all have in common, though, is that they reveal so much more. They are the vehicles by which these students explored something deeper about themselves, the springboard to something bigger than that random topic itself. 

What’s the best topic for your college essay? It’s the little kernel that leads the reader –- and you — to an ‘aha’. Even if that ‘aha’ is still a work in progress, or a hope for the future.