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How to Come Up With Great College Essay Ideas

College Essays

Writing the college application essay is a tough gig. You've got to be charming, personal, memorable, and insightful--all in under two pages! But I'm going to tell you a secret: half of a great personal essay is a great topic idea. If you're passionate about what you're writing, and if you're truly documenting something meaningful and serious about yourself and your life, then that passion and meaning will come alive on the page and in the mind of your reader.

So how do you come up with an essay idea? The best way is to brainstorm your way to an event from your life that reveals a core truth about you. In this article, I will help you do just that. Keep reading to find 35 jumping off points that touch on every possible memory you could harness, as well as advice on how to use your brainstorming session to fully realize your idea for an essay topic.

What Makes an Essay Topic Great?

What does your application tell admissions officers about you? Mostly it's just numbers and facts: your name, your high school, your grades and SAT scores. These stats would be enough if colleges were looking to build a robot army, but they aren't.

So how do they get to see a slice of the real you? How can they get a feel for the personality, character, and feelings that make you the person that you are? It's through your college essay. The essay is a way to introduce yourself to colleges in a way that displays your maturity. This is important because admissions officers want to make sure that you will thrive in the independence of college life and work.

This is why finding a great college essay topic is so hugely important: because it will allow you to demonstrate the maturity level admissions teams are looking for. This is best expressed through the ability to have insight about what has made you into you, through the ability to share some vulnerabilities or defining experiences, and through the ability to be a creative thinker and problem solver.

In other words, a great topic is an event from your past that you can narrate, draw conclusions from, explain the effect of. Most importantly, you should be able to describe how it has changed you from the kind of person you were to the better person that you are now. If you can do all that, you are well ahead of the essay game.

How Do You Know If Your College Essay Topic Is Great?

Eric Maloof, the Director of International Admission at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas has a great checklist for figuring out whether you're on the right track with your essay topic . He says, if you can answer "yes" to these two questions, then you've got the makings of a great essay:

• Is the topic of my essay important to me?
• Am I the only person who could have written this essay?

So how do you translate this checklist into essay topic action items?

Make it personal. Write about something personal, deeply felt, and authentic to the real you (but which is not an overshare). Take a narrow slice of your life: one event, one influential person, one meaningful experience—and then you expand out from that slice into a broader explanation of yourself.

Always think about your reader. In this case, your reader is an admission officer who is slogging through hundreds of college essays. You don't want to bore that person, and you don't want to offend that person. Instead, you want to come across as likable and memorable.

Put the reader in the experience with you by making your narrow slice of life feel alive. This means that your writing needs to be chock-full of specific details, sensory descriptions, words that describe emotions, and maybe even dialog. This is why it's very important to make the essay topic personal and deeply felt. Readers can tell when a writer isn't really connected to whatever he is writing about. And the reverse is true as well: deep emotion shows through your writing.

Coming Up With Great College Essay Ideas

Some people know right off the bat that they have to write about that one specific defining moment of their lives. But if you're reading this, chances are you aren't one of these people. Don't worry—I wasn't one of them either! What this means is that you—like me—will have to put in a little work to come up with the perfect idea by first doing some brainstorming.

I've come up with about 35 different brainstorming jumping off points that ask questions about your life and your experiences. The idea here is to jog your memory about the key life events that have shaped you and affected you deeply.

I recommend you spend at least two minutes on each question, coming up with and writing down at least one answer—or as many answers as you can think of. Seriously—time yourself. Two minutes is longer than you think! I would also recommend doing this over several sittings to get your maximum memory retrieval going—even if it takes a couple of days, it'll be worth it.

Then, we will use this list of experiences and thoughts to narrow your choices down to the one topic idea that you will use for your college essay.

Brainstorming Technique 1: Think About Defining Moments in Your Life

• What is your happiest memory? Why? What was good about it? Who and what was around you then? What did it mean to you?
• What is your saddest memory? Would you change the thing that happened or did you learn something crucial from the experience?
• What is the most important decision you've had to make? What was hard about the choice? What was easy? Were the consequences of your decision what you had imagined before making it? Did you plan and game out your choices, or did you follow gut instinct?
• What decision did you not have any say in, but would have wanted to? Why were you powerless to participate in this decision? How did the choice made affect you? What do you think would have happened if a different choice had been made?
• What the most dangerous or scary thing that you've lived through? What was threatened? What were the stakes? How did you survive/overcome it? How did you cope emotionally with the fallout?
• When did you first feel like you were no longer a child? Who and what was around you then? What had you just done or seen? What was the difference between your childhood self and your more adult self?
• What are you most proud of about yourself? Is it a talent or skill? A personality trait or quality? An accomplishment? Why is this the thing that makes you proud?

Brainstorming Technique 2: Remember Influential People

• Which of your parents (or parental figures) are you most like in personality and character? Which of their traits do you see in yourself? Which do you not? Do you wish you were more like this parent or less?
• Which of your grandparents, great-grandparents, or other older relatives has had the most influence on your life? Is it a positive influence, where you want to follow in their footsteps in some way? A negative influence, where you want to avoid becoming like them in some way? How is the world they come from like your world? How is it different?
• Which teacher has challenged you the most? What has that challenge been? How did you respond?
• What is something that someone once said to you that has stuck with you? When and where did they say it? Why do you think it's lodged in your memory?
• Which of your friends would you trade places with for a day? Why?
• If you could intern for a week or a month with anyone—living or dead, historical or fictional—who would it be? What would you want that person to teach you? How did you first encounter this person or character? How do you think this person would react to you?
• Of the people you know personally, whose life is harder than yours? What makes it that way—their external circumstances? Their inner state? Have you ever tried to help this person? If yes, did it work? If no, how would you help them if you could?
• Of the people you know personally, whose life is easier than yours? Are you jealous? Why or why not?

Brainstorming Technique 3: Recreate Important Times or Places

• When is the last time you felt so immersed in what you were doing that you lost all track of time or anything else from the outside world? What were you doing? Why do you think this activity got you into this near-zen state?
• Where do you most often tend to daydream? Why do you think this place has this effect on you? Do you seek it out? Avoid it? Why?
• What is the best time of day? The worst? Why?
• What is your favorite corner of, or space in, the place where you live? What do you like about it? When do you go there, and what do you use it for?
• What is your least favorite corner of, or space in, the place where you live? Why do you dislike it? What do you associate it with?
• If you had to repeat a day over and over, like the movie Groundhog Day , what day would it be? If you'd pick a day from your life that has already happened, why would you want to be stuck it in? To relive something great? To fix mistakes? If you'd pick a day that hasn't yet occurred, what would the day you were stuck in be like?
• If you could go back in time to give yourself advice, when would you go back to? What advice would you give? Why? What effect would you want your advice to have?

Brainstorming Technique 4: Answer Thought-Provoking Questions

• If you could take a Mulligan and do over one thing in your life, what would it be? Would you change what you did the first time around? Why?
• Or, if you could take another crack at doing something again, what would you pick? Something positive—having another shot at repeating a good experience? Something negative—getting the chance to try another tactic to avoid a bad experience?
• Which piece of yourself could you never change while remaining the same person? Your race? Ethnicity? Intellect? Height? Freckles? Loyalty? Sense of humor? Why is that the thing that you'd cling to as the thing that makes you who you are?
• Which of your beliefs, ideas, or tastes puts you in the minority? Why do you think/believe/like this thing when no one else seems to?
• What are you most frightened of? What are you not frightened enough of? Why?
• What is your most treasured possession? What would you grab before running out of the house during a fire? What is this object's story and why is it so valuable to you?
• What skill or talent that you don't have now would you most like to have? Is it an extension of something you already do? Something you've never had the guts to try doing? Something you plan on learning in the future?
• Which traditions that you grew up with will you pass on? Which will you ignore? Why?

Brainstorming Technique 5: Find a Trait or Characteristic and Trace It Back

• What are three adjectives you'd use to describe yourself? Why these three? Which of these is the one you're most proud of? Least proud of? When did you last exhibit this trait? What were you doing?
• How would your best friend describe you? What about your parents? How are the adjectives they'd come up with different from the ones you'd use? When have they seen this quality or trait in you?
• What everyday thing are you the world's greatest at? Who taught you how to do it? What memories do you have associated with this activity? Which aspects of it have you perfected?
• Imagine that it's the future and that you've become well known. What will you become famous for? Is it for something creative or a performance? For the way you will have helped others? For your business accomplishments? For your athletic prowess? When you make a speech about this fame, whom will you thank for putting you where you are?
• What do you most like about yourself? This is different from the thing you're most proud of—this is the thing that you know about yourself that makes you smile. Can you describe a time when this thing was useful or effective in some way?

How to Turn Your Brainstorming List Into an Essay Topic

Now that you have a cornucopia of daydreams, memories, thoughts, and ambitions, it's time to thin the herd, prune the dead branches, and whatever other mixed metaphors about separating the wheat from the chaff you can think of.

So how do you narrow down your many ideas into one?

Use the magic power of time. One of the best things you can do with your stack of college essay topics is to forget about them. Put them away for a couple of days so that you create a little mental space. When you come back to everything you wrote after a day or two, you will get the chance to read it with fresh eyes.

Let the cream rise to the top. When you reread your topics after having let them sit, do two things:

• Cross out any ideas that don't speak to you in some way. If something doesn't ring true, if it doesn't spark your interest, or if it doesn't connect with an emotion, then consider reject it.
• Circle or highlight any topics that pop out at you. If it feels engaging, if you get excited at the prospect of talking about it, if it resonates with a feeling, then put it at the top of the idea pile.

Rinse and repeat. Go through the process of letting a few days pass and then rereading your ideas at least one more time. This time, don't bother looking at the topics you've already rejected. Instead, concentrate on those you highlighted earlier and maybe some of the ones that were neither circled nor thrown away.

Trust your gut instinct (but verify). Now that you've gone through and culled your ideas several times based on whether or not they really truly appeal to you, you should have a list of your top choices—all the ones you've circled or highlighted along the way. Now is the moment of truth. Imagine yourself telling the story of each of these experiences to someone who wants to get to know you. Rank your possible topics in order of how excited you are to share this story. Really listen to your intuition here. If you're squeamish, shy, unexcited, or otherwise not happy at the thought of having to tell someone about the experience, it will make a terrible essay topic.

Develop your top two to four choices to see which is best. Unless you feel very strongly about one of your top choices, the only way to really know which of your best ideas is the perfect one is to try actually making them into essays. For each one, go through the steps listed in the next section of the article under "Find Your Idea's Narrative." Then, use your best judgment (and maybe that of your parents, teachers, or school counselor) to figure out which one to draft into your personal statement.

How to Make Your Idea Into a College Essay

Now, let's talk about what to do in order to flesh out your topic concept into a great college essay. First, I'll give you some pointers on expanding your idea into an essay-worthy story, and then talk a bit about how to draft and polish your personal statement.

Find Your Topic's Narrative

All great college essays have the same foundation as good short stories or enjoyable movies—an involving story. Let's go through what features make for a story that you don't want to put down:

A compelling character with an arc. Think about the experience that you want to write about. What were you like before it happened? What did you learn, feel, or think about during it? What happened afterwards? What do you now know about yourself that you didn't before?

Sensory details that create a "you are there!" experience for the reader. When you're writing about your experience, focus on trying to really make the situation come alive. Where were you? Who else was there? What did it look like? What did it sound like? Were there memorable textures, smells, tastes? Does it compare to anything else? When you're writing about the people you interacted with, give them a small snippet of dialog to say so the reader can "hear" that person's voice. When you are writing about yourself, make sure to include words that explain the emotions you are feeling at different parts of the story.

An insightful ending. Your essay should end with an uplifting, personal, and interesting revelation about the kind of person you are today, and how the story you have just described has made and shaped you.

Draft and Revise

The key to great writing is rewriting. So work out a draft, and then put it aside and give yourself a few days to forget what you've written. When you come back to look at it again look for places where you slow down your reading, where something seems out of place or awkward. Can you fix this by changing around the order of your essay? By explaining further? By adding details? Experiment.

Get advice. Colleges expect your essay to be your work, but most recommend having someone else cast a fresh eye over it. A good way to get a teacher or a parent involved is to ask them whether your story is clear and specific, and whether your insight about yourself flows logically from the story you tell.

Execute flawlessly. Dot every i, cross every t, delicately place every comma where it needs to go. Grammar mistakes, misspellings, and awkward sentence structure don't just make your writing look bad—they take the reader out of the story you're telling. And that makes you memorable, but in a bad way.

The Bottom Line

• Your college essay topic needs to come from the fact that essays are a way for colleges to get to know the real you , a you that is separate from your grades and scores.
• A great way to come up with topics is to wholeheartedly dive into a brainstorming exercise. The more ideas about your life that tumble out of your memory and onto the page, the better chance you have of finding the perfect college essay topic.
• Answer my brainstorming questions without editing yourself at first. Instead, simply write down as many things that pop into your head as you can—even if you end up going off topic.
• After you've generated a list of possible topics, leave it alone for a few days and then come back to pick out the ones that seem the most promising.
• Flesh out your top few ideas into full-blown narratives , to understand which reveals the most interesting thing about you as a person.
• Don't shy away from asking for help. At each stage of the writing process get a parent or teacher to look over what you're working on, not to do your work for you but to hopefully gently steer you in a better direction if you're running into trouble.

What's Next?

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications .

For more detailed advice on writing a great college essay, read our guide to the Common Application essay prompts and get advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you .

Thinking of taking the SAT again before submitting your applications? We have put together the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Navigating the Brainstorm: A Student’s Guide to College Essay Preparation

Embarking on the journey of college admissions, the essay emerges as a pivotal element, reflecting a student’s personality, aspirations, and intellectual curiosity. The challenge, however, lies in the initial phase of brainstorming, where ideas must be nurtured and given direction. This article serves as a comprehensive guide for students on how to effectively brainstorm and prepare for their college essays, transforming a daunting task into a journey of self-discovery and articulation of thought.

1. Understand the Prompt

The first step in brainstorming for your college essay is to thoroughly understand the essay prompt. Colleges often seek to understand who you are beyond your grades and test scores. Reflect on what the prompt is asking you to share about yourself. Is it asking about your personal growth, a challenge you’ve overcome, or perhaps it’s open-ended, allowing you to share something significant about yourself? Grasping the essence of the prompt is crucial before you begin to brainstorm ideas.

2. Self-Reflection

Begin with introspection. Take a moment to reflect on your experiences, achievements, challenges, and what you’re passionate about. Consider aspects of your life that have shaped you—these can be moments, people, or even books and projects that have left a lasting impact. Creating a list of these elements can be incredibly helpful. Ask yourself questions like:

• What experiences have been transformative for me?
• What challenges have I overcome, and what did I learn from them?
• What am I passionate about and why?

This process of self-reflection is invaluable in identifying topics that are not only meaningful to you but will also resonate with your readers.

3. Mind Mapping

With your reflective notes at hand, engage in mind mapping. This technique involves visually organizing your thoughts around your central idea or theme. Place your central idea or theme in the center of a page and draw branches to other ideas, experiences, or qualities about yourself that relate to it. This visual representation of your thoughts can illuminate connections between different aspects of your life and help you identify a coherent theme for your essay.

4. Free Writing

Free writing is a liberating approach to brainstorming. Set a timer for 15-20 minutes and write continuously about anything that comes to mind when you think about the essay prompt. Don’t worry about grammar, structure, or even making sense at this stage. The goal is to get your thoughts out and explore different angles of your story. After the time is up, review what you’ve written to see if there are any compelling ideas or narratives that emerge.

5. Seek Feedback

Discuss your ideas with teachers, mentors, family, or friends. Sometimes, a fresh perspective can provide insights into your life and experiences that you might not have considered. Feedback can also help refine your ideas, ensuring they are clear, engaging, and reflective of who you are.

6. Narrow Down and Focus

After exploring various ideas, it’s essential to narrow down your focus. Choose an idea that feels authentic and offers a deep insight into who you are. Remember, the quality of reflection and personal insight in your essay is more important than the breadth of topics covered.

7. Create an Outline

Before diving into writing, create an outline based on your chosen idea. An outline will help you organize your thoughts and ensure your essay has a clear structure, including an introduction, body paragraphs that explore your theme, and a conclusion that ties everything together.

Brainstorming for your college essay can be a journey filled with self-discovery and creativity. By following these steps, you can develop a compelling and personal narrative that stands out. Remember, the college essay is an opportunity to showcase your unique voice and story. Embrace the process, and let your genuine self shine through.

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Blog > Common App , Essay Advice > 25 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

25 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University Admissions

Key Takeaway

If you’re in the process of starting your college essay, you know how hard it is to come up with a good topic.

Should you go the lighthearted, humorous route? Or should you reveal something serious about yourself? Of all your experiences, how do you know the best one to write about? 

Worse, how do you know if your idea is cliche? Or, alternatively, what if you’ve tried too hard to be unique?

And with all the conflicting advice out there about what should and shouldn’t be in a college essay, the process gets even more confusing.

But there’s a foolproof method to cut through the noise and find a college essay topic that’s right for you.

It all starts with a brainstorming exercise.

Let’s get into it.

What is brainstorming?

Have you ever tried to turn nothing into something? It’s almost like writing defies the laws of physics. But that’s what you have to do when you come up with a topic.

Brainstorming helps you get there. It is a type of pre-writing process. We call it a “brainstorm” because it’s a way to corral the thought tornado that’s spinning out of control in your brain.

Like its counterpart “free writing,” brainstorming is a place for anything and everything. It’s a chance for you to do a brain dump and get your thoughts on to paper.

Brainstorming is the main way writers go from no ideas to lots of ideas in a short amount of time. It also saves you time and effort in the long run because it helps you weed out all the bad ideas before you waste your time trying to write an essay around them.

When you brainstorming, you’ve got two goals: 1) identify the thoughts that come to you, and 2) write them down. Some people do image-based mind maps, others create linear outlines, and others have their own individual processes altogether.

Today, your brainstorming process will consist of answering some pointed questions to get you thinking about the best college essay topics for you.

How do you brainstorm a college essay?

Brainstorming your college essay is an essential step because your essay topic determines how much an admissions officer is able to learn about you.

Picture yourself as an admissions officer. You’ve already read 25 applications today, and now you’re on your 26th. You flip to the essay, and you see immediately that it’s an essay about winning a soccer tournament. You’ve already read three essays about soccer tournaments today. Hopeful, you proceed through the essay. To your dismay, the essay’s message—that hard work and determination will get you far in life—is almost exactly the same as the previous three. The soccer essays start to blend together, and you can’t quite remember whose is whose.

That’s the problem with overused, cliche, and surface-level topics. They aren’t interesting or memorable. Because they remain on the surface of who you are, they don’t tell an admissions officer the information they need to know to admit you.

Instead, we believe that all college essays should revolve around one of your core strengths.

A core strength is an inherent and positive trait, talent, or characteristic that shapes how you live in the world.

Here are a few examples:

• Social intelligence
• Intellectual curiosity
• Passion for justice
• Positive outlook

Whether your strength is your wisdom, entrepreneurial spirit, compassion, or problem-solving skills, your college essay should reflect a strength that makes you you.

Because the purpose of a college essay is to help you get admitted to college. (If you need a refresher on the ins and outs of college essays, look to our How to Write a College Essay guide.) Writing an essay that speaks to your strengths gives admissions officers more reasons to admit you.

A strengths-based essay will help them get to know the real you, and they’ll be able to envision how your strengths will contribute to their college community. It’s all about crafting a cohesive application narrative .

So when it comes to brainstorming, you need to think of topic ideas that accomplish two tasks:

Showcase one (or two) of your core strengths.

Give admissions officers meaningful and vulnerable insight into who you are.

Much easier said than done, right? That’s where brainstorming comes in.

Brainstorming relieves the pressure of getting it right the first time. It helps you compile and sort through all your memories, experiences, strengths, and values until you find one that works.

Let’s talk about the college essay brainstorming exercise.

Brainstorming Exercise Breakdown

To help you brainstorm college essay topic ideas that are strengths-based and meaningful, we’ve put together a list of questions.

These questions come from some of the most common college essay topics. They aren’t essay prompts, and they’re not intended to be the question from which you write your final college essay.

Instead, they are leading questions that will get you thinking about what strengths you have and how they show up in your life. You’ll be able to use your answers as a starting point to find your topic and write your first draft.

Feel free to copy and paste these questions into a word processor and answer each of them in turn. Or answer only the ones that call to you the most. Write down as much or as little as you want for each, but try to focus on concrete experiences and genuine reflections.

We’ll go over a couple of examples, but let’s first look at the questions.

25 Brainstorming Questions

• What are your biggest strengths? Why?
• If you could only choose one topic to talk about for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• Have you traveled? If so, what did you do or learn?
• If you could choose any meal to represent you, what would it be and why?
• What is the most interesting part of your daily life?
• Describe a time when you felt inexperienced at something.
• Is there a question about the universe that keeps you up at night?
• Where do you feel most at home?
• What’s the most sensory experience you’ve ever had?
• Have you had a job? What was your most memorable experience? What did you learn?
• What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you?
• Write about a time when you felt out of place.
• Are there any social issues you’re passionate about? If so, what have you done to contribute to the cause?
• Finish this sentence: “I feel most creative when I…”
• Write about your most memorable classroom experience.
• Describe a time when you felt like you genuinely helped someone.
• What would your friends say is your greatest strength? What would your family say is your greatest strength?
• What role do you play when working in a group or team?
• What’s the most profound thing that’s happened to you?
• Are you a leader? If so, how, when, and in what parts of your life?
• What about yourself makes you proud?
• Explain the hardest problem you’ve ever solved.
• Picture yourself at 90 years old, nice and wrinkly. What would your 90-year-old self say about who you are today?
• What are three things you know to be true?
• What motivates you?

Is your brain storming yet?

To take your answers a step further, you can also ask yourself a bonus follow-up question. For each question you answer, consider this: How does what you’ve written here connect to one of your core strengths? Which core strength is it?

Brainstorm Example

Now on to the examples. Notice how each response has an associated core strength. The question responses are free-form. Not every idea they include will be usable, and grammar and organization don’t matter at all. Each response includes good sensory details and lots of ideas about what comes to mind for each question.

#14) Finish this sentence: “I feel most creative when I…”

Core strength: Creativity

I feel most creative when I play my cello. I love practicing and listening to my metronome and trying to figure out the difficult passages. It’s like a mixture of science and art. Playing in an orchestra really moves me because of the way the music comes alive and you can feel everyone’s art coming together to make new art. But my solo recitals are my favorite. I love being on stage in front of a crowd and getting to share my art with them, especially when I come up with a creative take on a classic piece. I used to hate recitals but ever since I changed my perspective from fear of failure to making art, I’ve learned to enjoy them more.

#8) Where do you feel most at home?

Core strength: Compassion

I feel most at home in my grandma’s kitchen. It always smells of freshly-baked bread, and everything has a slight but permanent dusting of flour. I feel at home there because that’s where I learned to do my favorite hobby: baking. My grandma taught me everything I know about how to bake. Nothing says “home” like a warm chocolate chip cookie with a little bit of sea salt. My grandma is my favorite person and she’s always inspired me. Now that she’s unable to bake for herself, I bake for her. Her kitchen is my office. I know every inch of the kitchen like the back of my hand. I’m learning new baking tricks on YouTube, and I tell her all about them when I visit after school. She’s taught and given me so much, so I just want to return the favor.

See how easy that was? They’re quick answers that are rich with description and ideas. When you write your own, it’ll be the kindling for your college essay.

When you’re ready, go through each question that calls to you and write down exactly what comes to mind. From there, you’ll have a list of topics to choose from.

Key Takeways

Now it’s your turn. Copy and paste the questions to get started. We use a similar brainstorming process with all the students we work with, and it’s a surefire way to find the right college essay topic for you. Once your brainstorm is done, check out the college essay writing guide or the Essay Academy to transform your brainstorm from a rough topic to a full-blown essay.

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