Wondering what’s not to include in your college admission essay? In that case, our article will be extremely useful to you. We’ll go over and discuss the following points:
- What you shouldn’t talk about in your essay.
- Why it’s a bad idea to mention some topics.
- How to know if you’ve found a good topic to discuss.
- Clichés that you shouldn’t pick as the main topic for the essay.
The Main Things to Eliminate
First, we’ll start with the points you shouldn’t even include in your essay text. These are not topics per se, but they still have no place in an admission essay. They will give you a bad look and possibly destroy your chances of successfully being admitted to the college.
1. Other people’s secrets and unpleasant facts about others
Most despise gossipers, especially those who are not used to prying into other people’s affairs. Also, if you try to bring yourself up by talking smack by others, then you’ll broadcast your inconsistency, trying to gain recognition by compromising someone. Negative information always carries negative energy, which unsettles both those who read it and those who spread it. Wise people prefer to keep such information to themselves because no one will benefit from their disclosure.
2. Bragging about personal property
Some people are incredibly vain. They always brag about their home, car, clothes, influential acquaintances, in a word, everything that money can buy. This behavior indicates low self-esteem. Those who at every step repeat about what they own have a serious personality disorder. They try to show strength and attract attention by talking about property, connections, and other nonsense. From the outside, they look obsessed with material goods. In fact, these are just little souls who worship things and power, which isn’t how you want to present yourself.
3. Mentioning politics, especially extremist views
In a civil discussion where you present your personality, it is not customary to talk about politics. Yes, each of us has a solid stock of knowledge and views in the field of history, political science, and a whole specter of preferred actions in certain conditions. Yes, everyone considers themselves the holder of the only correct point of view. But if you prefer to present yourself in a good light rather than push the admissions officer away, refrain from discussing political events.
4. Displaying religious views
You rarely know your interlocutor’s religious views and their relationship to religion in general. Therefore, any of your statements on this topic can accidentally offend, upset or angry them. A believer may not appreciate your jokes on religious topics, and an atheist will not always support a conversation about the intricacies of the sacrament of confession or the history of Orthodoxy.
The admissions officer will read your essay and conclude that you’re not fit to attend their college due to your views being too much “out there.” Therefore, you should be careful. By the way, don’t congratulate the admissions officer with any religious events because it’s just not appropriate. Also, yet again, you don’t know their personal religious views, and you can definitely lose out quite a lot if you start assuming things about them.
5. Arguing about individual tastes
No, of course, tastes in music, literature, painting, clothing, cinema, etc., can be discussed, but carefully. Loudly declaring that you hate the Beatles or think that contemporary Korean pop music is the only worthy music, you present yourself as extremely narrow-minded. You want to avoid this because universities want open-minded students attending courses. So do not give reasons for any disputes, talk about personal addictions carefully, and not go to extremes.
6. No socially dividing topics
Yet again, you can mention them if you’ve been affected by some heavy topics, including the following subjects:
- Racial.
- Ethnic.
- Gender.
- Personal freedom.
You don’t want to formulate your thought and be considered discrimination and chauvinism badly, do you? Besides, touching on such topics, you can provoke the admission to just dismiss your application entirely without thinking twice.
Determining an Appropriate Topic
To determine if a topic is appropriate for a particular situation, try to answer the questions:
- Will the admission officers be interested in reading this?
- Will they be comfortable while reading this?
- Does what you’re discussing in any way relate to you directly?
If all the answers are positive, feel free to discuss the chosen topic. If not, do not start on the idea of a paragraph you’ve selected to write and think it over again. Choose something else entirely to talk about or rephrase what you’ve already written to be socially acceptable.
Clichés to Stop Including in the Essays
In this section, we’ll talk about the overused points and even whole topics for admission essays. Many students fall into the trap of thinking that these ideas will present them in a good light. However, they’ll either bore the admissions officer or even give them a bad impression of them.
Many young students utilize college essay editing EssayEdge after completing the essay to ensure nothing is wrong with it. Below are the most commonly overused and plain bad clichés that you usually find in an essay. Try to get rid of them in your writing.
“My main drawback is being overly pedantic.”
False modesty will do nothing for you, and an essay on such a topic will be very boring. Don’t forget: the selection committee reads thousands of essays. Try, at least, so that your creativity does not catch up with sleep. No boss would fire an employee for being “too perfect.” Anyone who writes an essay on such a topic realizes that they are shying away from actually expanding on the topic.
“After coming to the USA, I experienced a culture shock and had to learn the language.”
There have literally been hundreds of thousands of students who came to the USA and learned the language seriously. Suppose being in a new language environment is the most difficult problem that you have had to face, and it is the one that influenced the development of your personality. In that case, you are very lucky. Essays are written to show their uniqueness and so that the selection committee could get to know the applicant better. We’ve all felt out of place. How has this experience influenced you, how has it helped you develop your leadership skills? Now we are interested.
“For the last three years, I have been employed as part of a team on such and such a project – we made it on time and did not exceed the budget.”
Wonderful – so why are you going to business school again? Rather than simply restating what you’ve done, you must discuss future opportunities and objectives you want to achieve. Talk about what projects you’d like to take on after graduating. What opportunities would open up for you, and so on.
“The main thing for me is to help others.”
That’s very nice, but if your motivation is that, then you have to prove it. Have you ever had any volunteering experiences? Did you help your local community? Tell the admissions officer how you’ll use your newly acquired degree to help people.
“I want to study at your establishment because you have a great program, interesting students, and awesome professors.”
Yes, and everyone else is doing it for the same reasons. The number of words in the essay is limited – do not waste them on something already clear. If you didn’t like the program and the teachers, you wouldn’t go to this university. It is better to tell us what you could give this school and what you want to get from the program.
“Management is my best feature.”
Words won’t help here – let your actions speak for themselves. For example, you can demonstrate leadership by choosing an original topic and expanding it with concrete examples. An essay like this will impress the admissions officers. Write about your personal experience, and do not repeat what we can already read on your resume. Show that you are the right person for them.
Show That You’re Unique and a Perfect Fit
Remember that your essay will be one of at least a thousand others (if not a lot more). Try to avoid making logical, stylistic, and grammatical mistakes as much as you can. Of course, you’ll have to balance these restrictions with showing what a unique personality you have and how much use you’ll get from the degree.
