How to Brainstorm Your Common App Essay
We all know that the blank page is terrifying, especially when it comes to the Common App essay. But before you jump in and start writing, try out these 9 exercises to jog your brain and get you thinking about the most fruitful essay topics that’ll best portray who you uniquely are to admissions officers. The essay is one of the most powerful ways that you can stand out amongst a crowd of similar resumes, because you’re basically speaking directly to the officer in your own voice. So, let’s try to make that voice as genuine as possible.
First, let’s review this year’s prompts.
2025-2026 Common App Essay Prompts:
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 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?
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
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?
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
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?
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
Step 1: Values Exercise
Set a five-minute timer on your phone, and list out what you love and value in this world. Don’t limit yourself – write down anything that comes to mind! This can be anything from “a lobster roll from coastal Maine” to “horror films” to “traveling with my mom.”
Step 2: Sensory Memories Exercise
Now, take a moment to think about your memories. For each of the five senses below, write down any that come to mind. (The memory can be as small as the crackle of dumplings frying in your grandma’s kitchen when you visit her or as big as the aroma of smoke and ash during the summer wildfire, which forced your family to evacuate).
Sight:
Sound:
Smell:
Touch:
Taste:
Now, circle specific memories above that spark a vivid emotional reaction, such as joy, nostalgia, struggle, or pride.
For each memory you circled above, write down:
Why does this memory stand out?
What does it reveal about me (my values, personality, interests)?
How did it shape me or influence my choices?
Step 3: Q&A Exercise
The personal statement is the most raw, personal, and vulnerable section of your college application. It allows you to differentiate yourself from everyone else – and show who you are behind your resume in under 650 words. Let’s do a quick Q&A exercise – jot down brief answers to a few of these questions:
What keeps me up at night?
What are my greatest flaws and insecurities?
Have some of those flaws and/or insecurities turned into your superpowers? How?
When’s the last time you were genuinely excited about something?
What’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you?
Where and when do you feel most at home?
When’s the last time you felt a genuine sense of community and family?
Has your perception of yourself changed over time? How?
When’s the last time a piece of art, movie, book, song, podcast truly touched you? Why?
When did you last achieve a sense of “flow” in your life?
Who do you look up to the most?
What have been the most painful parts about growing older?
What makes you feel like a child again?
What worries you most about turning into an adult?
What excites you the most about turning into an adult?
Tell me about something you learned recently that makes you genuinely excited.
Which personal qualities or traits do I want admissions officers to understand most about me?
Step 4: Free writing exercise
Start free writing. Writing anything that comes to mind. It can be inspired by a question above, or one of the essay prompts; it can be silly or even nonsensical. Just get a few ideas on the page.
Step 5: Review the common app prompt
Spend some time with the common app essay prompts. In actuality, you can write about anything – as long as it reveals something vulnerable and true about yourself. But here are some keywords to mull over: background, identity, meaningful, lessons, challenge, obstacles, setback, failure, learn, experience, reflect, questioned, challenged, belief, idea, thinking, problem, solved, challenge, personal importance, significance to you, solution, personal growth, understanding of yourself, engaging. Highlight the words that stick out the most to you. Below are some definitions to get you thinking.
Background: Background encompasses everything that has played a role in shaping who you are: your culture, experiences, relationships, or long-term passions. This can be your experience growing up, how certain relationships shaped your perspective, your long-term involvement with activities, such as arts, music, sports, writing, or science research, or cultural traditions that have shaped your values and worldview. Some real-life examples include writing about helping out at a family restaurant, gaining deep appreciation for hard work, perseverance, and his father’s sacrifices, or about how a childhood passion for Sondheimian theatre shaped a student’s intellectual growth, where the political context of those musicals ignited her passion for social justice.
Identity: Identity refers to the qualities, characteristics, and roles that define who you are. This includes your cultural, racial, or ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, personal values, and your place within social communities. Identity can also encompass how you see yourself, how others see you, and how these perspectives influence your actions. Examples could include exploring the experience of growing up bicultural, navigating life as part of an underrepresented group, or expressing individuality through a unique hobby or passion.
Meaningful: A meaningful experience or moment is one that holds significant emotional, intellectual, or personal value to you. It’s something that has shaped your thoughts, feelings, or actions in a lasting way. Examples of meaningful experiences might include volunteering at an animal shelter, spending time with an elderly family member, or discovering a passion for research that changed the way you view your future. The key is to show why the experience mattered to you personally.
Lessons: Lessons are insights or knowledge gained from experiences, challenges, or observations. They can be practical, emotional, or moral, and often reflect growth or learning. For example, a student might write about learning patience while teaching younger students, or discovering resilience after a sports injury. The lesson should reveal a deeper understanding of yourself or the world.
Challenge/Obstacle: A challenge is any situation that tests your skills, patience, or character. Challenges can be academic, personal, or social, and they often provide opportunities for growth. Examples include adapting to a new school, learning a difficult skill, or supporting a family member through illness. Essays about challenges should focus on your response and what you learned from the experience.
Failure/Setback: Failure is the experience of not achieving an intended goal, often accompanied by reflection and growth. Essays about failure should highlight what the experience taught you and how you changed as a result. For example, failing to win a debate championship but learning how to collaborate more effectively or improve skills for the future.
Reflect: Reflection is the process of thinking deeply about your experiences, decisions, or feelings to gain insight. Essays that incorporate reflection show maturity and self-awareness. Examples include considering how volunteering influenced your understanding of community, or how a sports defeat taught patience and teamwork.
Step 6: Choosing ideas
Let’s start narrowing down on a few ideas. The best ideas are the ones that tell a story about yourself, in which you can reveal something meaningful about you—your personality, values, passions, or how you’ve grown. Admissions officers remember stories that feel authentic and give them a sense of the person behind the application. Your topic does not need to be unique, but our stories, reflections, and perspective are what will make your essay truly stand out. Jot down a few of the most promising ideas below:
Step 7: Narrowing down to 2-3 strongest ideas
Select 2-3 of your favorite ideas from above. Answer this question about them – what do we learn about you and your own growth and your values as a person through these ideas? Is it unique to you?
Step 8: Outlining
Start writing preliminary outlines for your favorite ideas. What’s the beginning (hook?), conflict, and resolution to it all?
Unlike academic essays you write in school, your Common App essay can follow any format you think is most effective for telling your story. You are encouraged to break paragraphs where they feel natural, use dialogue and sensory details, or even start in the middle of a scene to draw the reader in. However, many successful college essays contain three key sections:
Challenge: Explain the specific challenge you’ve faced, and the various effects of that challenge.
Solution: Describe the actions that you took to overcome these challenges, illustrating your impact and/or growth.
Reflection: Reflect on the lessons and insights you’ve gained from these experiences, and how your experiences have shaped you and why that matters.
While there is no set formula to how much of your essay you should spend on each section, aim to spend 25% of the essay discussing the problem, 50% of essay discussing solution, and 25% of essay discussing reflection, so that you are able to spend more time discussing your character and problem-solving skills, rather than the obstacle itself.
Below is an example of Challenge, Solution, Reflection structure:
Challenge:
For once, I loved the fact that the refrigerator was unplugged. The moment the milky giant fell quiet, silence melted through the rooms of the empty house. I’d never felt a silence so confident in my five years of life, as I entered my former bedroom and laid myself in the center of the carpet. I forgot how long I remained there, enjoying the quietness of a house that formerly teemed with commotion.
Although I participate in a world of constant noise and words tumbling easily from mouths, I’ve been lucky enough to explore many types of silence, including the anticipation before the lights fall on Hamlet’s shoulders, the sacred quiet of a library filled with readers, and the weariness of blue-and-gray-clad soldiers meeting at Appomattox. As much as I love these textures of silence, the brand I’ve come to respect the most is my own.
At the beginning of sophomore year, I had a quiet struggle with my vocal chords. There was nothing physically wrong with them, thankfully, but in my mind, they ranked as inferior to my classmates’. I’ve always known that I’m not a natural elocutionist, as words don’t land in my hand readily, but crawl over long distances to reach me. Sara, my classmate, has a voice so smooth and alarmingly noticeable that it seems to grab everyone’s attention. On the other hand, I find myself bursting with ideas and having to expend large amounts of effort and preparation to have them heard. I joined the Debate Team in October of that year, but it didn’t feel natural to me, using my tongue as a sparring weapon in structured conversations. My school values the extremely vocal and political, the staunch opinionist, and in my attempt to join the ranks of these students, I discovered how unfit I am for such a crowd.
Solution:
Silence has never been an awkward pause in a hallway conversation, a sign of defeat, or an end result. It is a transition, an invitation to explore the way I perceive the world and express myself. The first time I discovered the power of silence, I sat waiting for the curtains to rise on the Broadway rendition of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. In the world of drama, the swathes of silence on which words rest are just as, if not more, stunning than the lines themselves. Shortly after that night, I embarked on a journey myself. Instead of remaining in Debate, I delved into dramatic writing, spending my mornings in meetings with my English teacher and the theater director.
Reflection:
Five months later, I sit in the theater again, but this time, my original play is the one debuting onstage in the Student Productions. I may not be the actor, with her voice rising through the dusty air, each ear hanging onto her clearly chiseled words. However, I am the girl with her pen, overbrimming imagination, and whispered thought processes running through the actors’ heads as they pace the pockmarked stage and capture the crowd. Although the stage lights don’t illuminate my face, I settle into the darkness of the audience, experiencing a strange sense of satisfaction, as if I’d just stepped down from a podium after presenting a speech to thousands of people.
Step 9: Just start writing!
Anything goes at this stage. Just focus on getting words down on the paper. We can work on editing and trimming later. Go for it!
Some tips for writing:
Start with an engaging hook to draw the reader in. Some students may find writing the hook as the last thing helpful. Hooks can be:
An intriguing rhetorical question
How do you respond when you’re faced with a very real physical threat to your safety, yet you literally can’t afford to back down? This is the question I faced on my very first day as a dog trainer.
A surprising fact or statistic
I’ve been alone for three years now.
A relevant quotation
As the great Maya Angelou once said, ‘We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal.”
An interesting anecdote (you might choose to start your anecdote in the middle of the action)
I jumped back as the dog lunged for my leg, teeth bared and snarling. “It’s okay, Smokey, it’s okay,” I soothed as I tried to maneuver closer to the post where I had tied his leash.
An evocative image or description
In the quiet alleys of my childhood hometown, I stumbled upon an old, dusty journal that held the secrets of generations past.
A common misconception
Most people think leadership requires being the loudest voice in the room. I believed this too—until I was unexpectedly elected president of my school’s environmental club.
Dialogue
I hate deadheads. Wait, don’t go. If you’re a fan of the Grateful Dead, I don’t mean you, I just mean I’m a gardener and deadheads is the name for one of our worst adversaries, the browning desiccated flowers that give way to seed and have to be sliced off to keep an annual in bloom.
Show, don’t tell. I know, it’s a cliche at this point. But let the facts and scenes do the storytelling – no need to continuously tell the reader what they should be inferring from your essay.
Some strategies for how to show, don’t tell:
Use sensory details and describe touch, smell, taste, sight, or sound. Instead of “The monster was terrifying”, illustrate how the monster was terrifying: “The towering figure was constantly morphing, tumbling over itself as it drew toward her.”
Pepper in a few specific names and numbers to further immerse the reader into your story. Instead of “I spent my Saturday gardening,” try this: “I spent my Saturday kneeling in my garden bed picking purple cabbage, zucchini, and onion.”
Use action and dialogue to illustrate characters and their relationships. Instead of “Emma and Jake were competitive, and they didn’t get along very well.”, you might write ““Bet you can’t finish that in under a minute,” Jake said, pointing at the stack of pancakes. “Watch me,” Emma replied, grabbing a fork like it was a sword. She dove in, shoving pancakes into her mouth at a frantic pace.”
Although this might sound counterintuitive, scatter in a few “tell” moments amid all your “show moments” to further emphasize a point. The key is to not always be “showing” – you need a healthy balance of both. For example:
[SHOW] My knee trembled as I extended my leg, the tightness of my calves giving away into a smooth arabesque, the applause roaring like torrential rainfall around my ears. [TELL] I had never felt so electric.
Write the essay like it’s a story. That makes it doubly enjoyable to read, and much more impactful. We want to feel like we’ve gone through a journey with you.
Include a few sparse details that can immerse the reader in your storytelling.
But don’t be overly flowery with your writing – forego those excess adverbs and adjectives. Make sure your writing is concise and clear and honest.
Avoid cliches. Focus on anecdotes and specific examples that are unique to your experience.
Read it over when you’re done, and make sure that you resonate with every word. The truer it feels, the truer it’ll sound.