Since the Common App has become the main platform for which undergraduate applicants post their materials, their standard list of essay prompts have become a universal challenge for students around the globe. While the questions may change annually, there are still some main threads connecting topics to give a general sense of what admissions officers are hoping to hear from potential students.
The current trends of the Common Application essay prompts show a broadened level of specificity for applicants hoping to gain admissions. This shift in essay prompt type may have potential consequences for this year’s applicant.
First, lets have a look at the prompts, which have been posted for this years applicants.
- 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.
- The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
- Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
- Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
- Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
* Italicized words are new statements or ideas that have been added to this years prompts.
*Missing from the list completely is the essay prompt “Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
These changes are based on nearly 6,000 individual survey responses. In general, these questions leave more answers open to interpretation, and create space for projecting ideas about future success. They tend to talk less about the present or past and more about the future. While simultaneously this shift has the potential to allow for more effective responses, even from individuals who are idealists with big dreams who have not yet actualized them. However, on the other hand, they dig deeper by asking the writer to apply more of their inner selves to their essay; to show how they have changed, would like to change and why these are meaningful changes.
So what does this mean for this year’s applicant?
The majority of survey respondents wanted to open up last year’s prompts to a boarder interpretation. While the new prompts appear to be more comprehensive, they are also more open, which may make it more difficult for this year’s applicant than applicants of the past. Often it is the case that more specific questions are easier to respond to.
In either case, these prompts will change annually to give students a fair chance, prohibiting them from being able to prepare for essay too far in advance.
Charleslek
The principle purpose of the introduction is to present your position (this is also known as the “thesis” or “argument”) on the issue at hand but effective introductory paragraphs are so much more than that. Before you even get to this thesis statement, for example, the essay should begin with a “hook” that grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to read on. Examples of effective hooks include relevant quotations (“no man is an island”) or surprising statistics (“three out of four doctors report that…”).
Only then, with the reader’s attention “hooked,” should you move on to the thesis. The thesis should be a clear, one-sentence explanation of your position that leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind about which side you are on from the beginning of your essay.
Following the thesis, you should provide a mini-outline which previews the examples you will use to support your thesis in the rest of the essay. Not only does this tell the reader what to expect in the paragraphs to come but it also gives them a clearer understanding of what the essay is about.
Finally, designing the last sentence in this way has the added benefit of seamlessly moving the reader to the first paragraph of the body of the paper. In this way we can see that the basic introduction does not need to be much more than three or four sentences in length. If yours is much longer you might want to consider editing it down a bit!
Here, by way of example, is an introductory paragraph to an essay in response to the following question:
“Do we learn more from finding out that we have made mistakes or from our successful actions?”
ssilko
Nicole Andersen
Yes, CharlesLek! That is spot on! Thank you for giving an adequate description of how to respond the the common application prompts!