How to Answer the Common App Essay Prompts
How to make your Common App essays stand out!
Common App essay prompts for the 2023-24 admissions cycle are now available - learn how to select the correct essay and to write original, authentic, beautiful essays that reflect your talents and abilities. See personalised advice for selecting and answering each of the seven 2023-24 Common App essay prompts.
What is the Common App essay?
The Common Application is the portal through which you submit college admissions essays to more than 900 US and Canadian colleges. The Common App essay is an up to 650 word essay or personal statement.
Is the common application the only essay needed?
No. Besides choosing one of the seven Common App essay prompts, you will also need to answer supplemental essays and questions required by the individual US colleges to which you choose to apply.
How should I decide which Common App essay prompt to answer?
The short answer is: whichever question you believe will allow you to bring your story to life - to share your narrative, vision, talents, story and plans with admissions committees. To explain why you deserve to be admitted above other candidates and to explain what makes your application unique. We’re all different: the Common App is one of the spaces within the college application to really shine and show a dimension of yourself beyond statistics such as grades and standardised tests. Choose a topic that is meaningful and relevant to you and don’t try to think up the ideal answer or story you think admissions committees want to read. You’ll always stand out more if you’re authentic and natural!
How should I start writing the Common App essay?
Different prompts allow you to prioritise aspects of your story and focus the narrative in different ways. Remember, though, they’re only springboards: you’re in charge of the narrative here and of how to lay out your case! Begin almost without thinking, running through each of the prompts and scribbling bullets you might use to answer them. Pay particular attention to if one particular prompt jumps out at you, or you feel inspired to focus on that one.
See our personalised tips for each prompt below, as well as the seven prompts to choose from.
The Common App Essay Prompts for 2023/24
You must choose one of the following seven essay prompts. Here are J&J Education's best tips for answering each Common App Personal Essay prompt.
Prompt 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.
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 1?
J&J’s top tips:
1) Here’s your chance to think through your upbringing and background and understand the pivotal moments or themes in your life. If a friend asked you what matters most to you/what has most shaped you, what’s the immediate, instinctive answer that comes to mind? This could be a clue of where to focus!
2) Consider any topics, people, books or places that matter to you greatly. Those could be a great place to begin - a springboard from which to move to the next layer of this essay: why whatever it is has shaped you/is central to your identity.
Prompt 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?
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 2?
J&J’s top tips:
1) Adverse events - things not going our way, rejections, setbacks, losses - can scar us deeply and may be unwanted. But they also contain the seeds for deep personal transformations: changes in how we think, what we value, what we want out of life, who we are.
2) Start this essay prompt by reflecting for yourself, genuinely, on how setbacks have impacted you and have a clear sense of the dynamics before trying to construct the narrative and put this into essay form.
Prompt 3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 3?
J&J’s top tips:
1) Consider the tension between your own values - what you consider to be valuable, of meaning, right - and those of other people and institutions. Have you experienced a clash between these two? What did that feel like? How did you navigate that? Dare to be vulnerable and controversial - there’s no correct answer here; the only wrong approaches are those that aren’t sufficiently meaningful.
2) One way to think about this essay prompt is that admissions officers want to understand how your views and aspirations have been shaped and to know that you’re both a self-reflective person (you understand and question what matters and your own biases and impulses) or, also, perhaps someone who has strong values and ideas about what matters in the world - about how to make our societies and communities better and fairer.
Prompt 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?
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 4?
J&J’s top tips:
1) US admissions officers want to select a student class that is not only academically promising but also diverse - with students who will contribute to the campus and the world.
2) This question is a deceivingly complex one that requires us to reflect on deeper psychological dynamics: do we notice what’s good in the world in our lives? How do we relate to other people? What do we value? Why are particular acts surprising and how do we wish to relate to others?
Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 5?
J&J’s top tips:
1) This essay prompt may use similar material to Common App Personal Essay Prompt 2 (on overcoming challenges and setbacks). But it’s not necessarily limited to what we might view as adverse events. The essay invites us to consider how we respond to events - how our views are shaped, how and why we grow. But through the prism of our own personal, concrete experience, not in the abstract/as an intellectual exercise.
2) The specific events are much less important than the ‘deeper internal narrative’ - the story of your responses. You could think of the question in this way: how have you come to be shaped and what has made you the person you currently are, with a certain set of views, ideas, hopes etc.? Can you tell this story through one particular turning point or event?
Prompt 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.
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 6?
J&J’s top tips:
1) Don’t fall into the trap of pontificating, or of thinking about this as an intellectual question. This isn’t an opportunity to ponder concepts or ideas in an analytical way but reflect on what brings you alive and why? It might be helpful to think of this question emotionally (when do you feel most alive/doing what) and to convey your engagement with the subject in the narrative.
2) Make this essay unique to you - how do you think about this topic, idea or concept and what is your engagement with it that would stand out. And the best way to answer this is to write honestly - the engaging narrative will then flow naturally.
Prompt 7: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
How do you answer Common App Personal Essay prompt 7?
J&J’s top tips:
1) Make sure to structure this essay like you would the others - and to set yourself an equivalent mental prompt for focusing. This essay is your opportunity to go wild and bring in any area you like, but make sure to be disciplined if you’re choosing it.
2) What all of the essays have in common is a desire to understand you beyond your grades; to get to know you, what you care about and how you engage with others, yourself and the world. Keep this ‘psychological’ focus in mind while drafting if you choose this more flexible prompt.
Final J&J tip for all Common App essays
Be honest! Don’t make your whole focus on crafting the kind of essay you think admissions officers would like to read; they wish to know you and what makes you different from other applicants. The art is to bring yourself to life in a natural way and shine through.
