Common App Essay Prompts Guide 2025-26

How to approach the Common Application Essay Prompts for 2025-2026

The Common App essay is the single most important college essay you will write — and it’s the most challenging, too. 

It’s important for two reasons: 1) It will be read by almost every school you apply to. 2) It’s your one-and-only chance to distinguish yourself from other candidates.

As we’ve written elsewhere, the Common App essay is unlike every other part of the college application. If you’re a top student, you need to do something totally different from anything you’ve done before: deep personal exploration.

How do you do this? Well, if you read guides to the Common Application essay on other websites, you’ll get the sense that you just need to follow a specific formula (“Do this brainstorming exercise,” “Pick from this list of values,” etc) and then read a bunch of sample essays. The guides on these websites are endlessly long, and if you read them, you’ll be really, really confused. You’ll probably feel intimidated and stressed as well.

The college essay is challenging — but there’s no reason to read all this mediocre advice and make things worse for yourself. You’d be much better off going for a long walk and thinking about your past experiences, and then discussing your thoughts with a trusted friend or family member. That will get you much closer to uncovering something interesting about yourself.

Having said that, there are some points we’d like to make about the personal essay before you get started. So this guide isn’t an endless amount of text to confuse you — it’s a few pointers to hopefully get you closer to uncovering your story.

Before you even read the Common App prompts, ask yourself these two questions

Here’s the first question: “Have you experienced an unusual setback, obstacle, or challenge in your life?”

Note the word unusual. The COVID pandemic was an extremely difficult time, but it impacted literally everyone on the planet. So it doesn’t qualify as an unusual setback, obstacle, or challenge. What we’re trying to get at with this question is whether you’ve experienced a setback that other people didn’t experience. 

Be honest with yourself in answering this question. If you haven’t experienced an unusual setback, that’s totally fine. Just say “No” and  move on to the second question…

“Okay, so you haven’t experienced an unusual setback, obstacle, or challenge — but what about your life is unusual?”

This is a really tough question to answer, so give yourself some time. Sit by yourself and brainstorm. Talk to your family and friends. Be patient, and the answer will eventually come.

If you’re tempted to say, “I’ve led a normal life and I haven’t done anything unusual” — well, we’re sorry, but we don’t believe you. Everyone has something interesting to say about themselves. You just need to do some digging to find it.

So how do you find your Common App essay topic?

Let’s start with how you don’t find it. You don’t find it by visiting popular college essay websites and doing their brainstorming exercises. The reason these exercises don’t work is because they present you with a long list of attributes - values, qualities, experiences, extracurriculars - and ask you to pick which ones apply to you.

This doesn’t work for the simple reason that it doesn’t focus on what’s different about you; it focuses on what you have in common with other people. And that’s not going to make you stand out in the college application process.

You also can’t find the answer by using AI — for exactly the same reason. As we’ve said numerous times, AI is extremely knowledgable about familiar experiences that other people have had, but it knows nothing about your life. As a result, AI will also make you sound like other people by giving predictable, cliched explanations for your behavior.

Getting to the heart of who you are is a complex, delicate process that we do in our one-on-one sessions with students through a lot of discussion and back-and-forth. Here are a few examples:

-One student came to us and said there was nothing unusual about him. He was a very high performing student in math and computer science, and he had a deep interest in AI — like thousands of other students. We met with him over a couple of sessions, and as we got to know him, he started to feel more comfortable. Finally, late in the second session, he made an offhand remark that his desk was extremely organized with multiple subdivisions for each item. This seemed irrelevant to him at first, but after asking him more questions, it became clear this was extremely important to him. He ended up writing an essay on how the obsessive organization of his desk related to the order and structure he wanted to bring to machine learning.

-Another student came to us embarrassed to admit that he had ADHD. He told us that he’d recently gone off his medication, and that, surprisingly, he wasn’t performing anywhere near as badly as he thought. Eventually he revealed that he’d gone off the medication to get his pilot’s license: you can’t be a pilot and take ADHD medication. “Wait,” we said to him, “what’s your concentration like when you’re flying?” It turned out he was completely focused when he was flying, and he’d found ways to apply this concentration to his schoolwork after going off his meds. This led to a fascinating Common App essay.

-A third student barely said a word to us in our first meeting. She was nervous about her essay and didn’t think she had anything special to say. She then admitted that she'd gotten angry at a friend recently because this friend wouldn’t eat pickles even though she had never, ever tried them. (They were at a Popeye’s, and she had lost her temper when the friend took the pickles out of her sandwich.) This led to a long discussion about why she felt compelled to call people out on their lack of curiosity, and how her own curiosity had led her down surprising paths in life.

What’s the common factor in these essays? They’re all unusual and distinctive because they come from moments in real life. The first student wouldn’t have imagined he’d write about his desk and the third was embarrassed that she’d gotten angry about some pickles, but these episodes provided unique entryways into these candidates’ personalities.

AI would never have come up with these ideas because they’re too strange and unpredictable — it would have given a simple explanation for each student’s behavior rather than the real explanation. Similarly, if the students had read the guides on the popular college essay websites, they would never have gotten in touch with what they needed to write about; they would have found commonalities with other students instead.

All this is a long way of saying: Don’t start with AI or gimmicky college essay exercises. Start with YOU. Take the process seriously and try to uncover something distinctive about yourself that comes from your real life.

How to structure your Common Application essay

Once you’ve come up with a compelling idea for your Common App essay, you need to come up with an effective structure. In other words, you need to break your idea into paragraphs that neatly follow from each other and tell a coherent story.

The best way to do this is to ask yourself a series of questions that lead you through your idea step by step. Of course, each idea is different, so there’s no set of questions that will apply neatly to every essay, but here’s our best effort to help you with this part of the process. Above all, as you answer these questions, be as specific as possible, providing as much detail as you can.

1) Can you think of an anecdote relating to your idea that will capture the reader’s attention? This will be your opening, or your hook. Note that because this anecdote appears at the beginning of your statement, it should introduce a situation or problem.

2) Now, can you step back and give some background about yourself to provide some context for the anecdote you’ve just told? This will allow you to describe how you used to be.

3) Next, was there a major event that took place that led you to change in some way? Please describe what happened, being as specific as possible.

4) How did this major change in your life impact your values or the way you saw the world? In other words, can you take the essay in a different direction from where you began?

5) Can you think of an ending that either brings this all together or points you in a new direction for the future?

Yes, we know these questions are generic, but hopefully you can find a way to apply them to your specific situation. If you can’t, try tackling them again with a friend or trusted family member.

Of course, there’s one more factor you need to take into consideration when you come up with your structure, and that’s the Common App prompt itself. So, without further ado, let’s turn to the Common App prompts for 2025-2026, and we’ll begin with an observation that no one ever seems to make…

The Common Application prompts are not created equal

If you read other college essay websites, you’ll see equal attention devoted to each of the seven Common App essay prompts. This is unhelpful. Just because there are seven prompts doesn’t mean you should spend equal time considering each one.

Instead, go back to your answers to the two key questions above. Did you answer “Yes” to the first question: “Have you experienced an unusual setback, obstacle, or challenge in your life?” Then you should probably respond to Common App Prompt Two.

Common App Prompt Two: The Challenge Essay

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?

The nice thing about this prompt is it leads you through your structure by identifying three main things you need to discuss. First, you need to describe the bad thing that happened; second, you need to reflect on how it affected you; and third, you need to explain what you learned. Notice that this connects with the general structure we proposed above.

If you select Prompt Two, it’s also essential that you get the tone right. You shouldn’t tell a sob story — that is, you shouldn’t “sell your trauma.” You should treat the prompt as an opportunity to honestly describe how you were impacted by a challenging event in your life. 

Similarly, there’s something you should avoid saying at all costs: “I know I went through a difficult time, but I’m glad it happened, because it made me so much stronger.” This is the most overused cliche in college essays, and if you say it, you’ll be lumped in with the thousands of other applicants who say the same thing. Instead, come up with an interpretation that corresponds to your actual experience. In other words, be real.

Which Common App prompt should you pick if you answered “No” above?

If you answered “No,” to the first question  — i.e. if you haven’t encountered an unusual challenge, setback, or failure — then you can theoretically answer any of the other six prompts. But you should consider some more seriously than others.

For a start, we recommend that you forget about Prompt Seven entirely. This is the classic “pick-your-own-question” prompt, which happens to be the most popular prompt of all. It’s popular because it gives students the false impression they’re being creative by coming up with their own topic. In reality, when students respond to Prompt Seven, they almost always write something they think is interesting but admissions officers don’t. 

Of the other five prompts, we’ve found that Prompt One works very well for many students; Prompts Five and Six are good contenders; and Prompts Three and Four are long shots. Let’s go through these prompts now.

Common App Prompt One: The Identity Essay

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.

This prompt works very well for students who haven’t encountered a major setback because it basically asks you to describe a way you’re different from other people — in other words, it goes straight to the point of the Common App essay. If you’ve done the hard work of coming up with your idea, then this prompt is essentially asking you to communicate your idea to the reader. You can do this by following the structure we’ve outlined above: begin with a striking anecdote, then tell the story of how you changed over time (change is always critical to any story), and finally end by showing what you learned.

How do you succeed with this prompt? You have to tell an engaging story. Essays written by AI are always predictable because they string together familiar ways of explaining human behavior. But if do some deep personal exploration before you start writing, your essay won’t be predictable or boring.

Common App Prompt Three: The Belief Essay

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

This is a really challenging prompt to respond to, and we usually advise our students to avoid it. The problem is that it focuses more on ideas than on experience, and it leads students to sound overly theoretical in the one part of the college application that’s meant to be personal. To make matters worse, students end up “learning” a lesson that’s either so accepted by society that they end up sounding like other applicants, or they risk offending the reader by learning a lesson the reader doesn’t agree with.

Having said that, if you have a really interesting story about how you challenged a belief or idea, and the outcome isn’t predictable or cliched, you might impress the reader by attempting this one. But we’d recommend you run your idea by someone you trust before tackling it.

Common App Prompt Four: The Gratitude Essay

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?

We know that gratitude is trendy these days (think gratitude journals), but we’ve found it’s really hard for college applicants to distinguish themselves by responding to this prompt. Why? First and foremost, it begins with the actions of someone else, when the personal essay is meant to be about you.

We understand this essay can be done well if you focus not on the other person’s actions but on how their actions impacted you. Even so, the essay prompt still limits you to a single emotion (gratitude) when the other prompts allow room for a whole range of emotions.

Of course, if you have an unusual story about a truly surprising moment of gratitude, then by all means respond to this prompt. But we’ve found this applies to a very small percentage of applicants.

Common App Prompt Five: The Personal Growth Essay

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

We love this prompt because it’s a great way of addressing the big question: “What makes you unusual?” But instead of focusing on your identity (as in Prompt One), this prompt pushes you to start with an important moment in your life.

This makes sense: some of us are unusual because of an attribute we possess, and others are unusual because of something that happened to us. If you experienced something unusual in your life and you select this essay, we suggest you 1) open with a compelling description of the event that took place, 2) step back and explain what you were like before it happened, and 3) help the reader understand how you changed as a result.

The best essays are always written by candidates who spend a substantial amount of time reflecting on an important moment in their life and then coming up with a distinctive explanation for how this moment impacted them.

Common App Prompt Six: The Ideas Essay

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?

This is a good prompt because it allows you to demonstrate your passion for a particular kind of thinking or knowledge. If you’ve done advanced research in a particular field, or if you’re simply fascinated by a certain issue, it allows you to showcase your achievements and curiosity.

Selecting this prompt obviously makes a lot of sense, because you’re applying to college, where you will be pursuing your studies at a higher level. But a word of warning: it’s easy to respond to this prompt in an impersonal way. If you focus entirely on the topic, idea, or concept itself — rather than tell your story of how you came to be fascinated by it — you risk writing an overly academic essay, which is not what admissions officers are looking for. 

Also note: you’ll have plenty of opportunity to write about your academic achievements in your supplemental essays, and if you choose this prompt, you’ll need to be careful that your response doesn’t overlap with your responses in the supplementals.

Nevertheless, if you can tell an unusual personal story of how you came to be curious about a particular topic, idea, or concept, then you should definitely respond to this prompt.

Common App Prompt Seven: Topic of Your Choice

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.

As mentioned above, we urge 99% of our students to avoid responding to this prompt. Whereas most of the above prompts provide a great entryway into reflecting about your life, this prompt leads many students to submit essays that are of no real interest to admissions officers. Yes, you might think you’re being clever by coming up with your own topic, but the vast majority of the time, you’re avoiding the difficult work required to write a compelling college essay.

We’ve written a blog post on the dangers of Prompt Seven here.