3 Mistakes to Avoid in the Overcoming Challenges College Essay

It’s one of the most popular college essay prompts students respond to, and it may even be the classic college essay topic. If you do it well, you can really distinguish yourself from other applicants, but if you do it poorly, you will probably be placed at the bottom of the pile. In today’s post, we will reveal three big mistakes students make in writing the “Overcoming Challenges” college essay, and in each case, we’ll explain what you should do instead.

Let’s begin with the prompt itself, which you should read multiple times: “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?”

Don’t pick something that has happened to lots of other people

If you’re planning to write about how COVID impacted you, think again. COVID literally impacted every student in the country, and you’re not going to distinguish yourself by writing about how you suffered by being separated from your friends and staying at home all day. The point of the “Overcoming Challenges” essay is to describe a unique setback you’ve experienced, not a common problem everyone had.

So think about it for a moment. Have you experienced an unusual challenge, setback, or failure? Is there something that’s happened to you that was difficult and that you dealt with in a surprising way? If the answer is yes, you should probably respond to this prompt. If the answer is no, you should definitely rule it out! Before you start googling “unusual challenge, setback, or failure example,” realize that you’ll be competing with people who’ve really struggled, and even if you’re the best writer in the world, you won’t be able to write an essay that’s as effective as theirs.

Don’t say it affected you in a predictable way

If you’ve encountered an unusual challenge, setback, or failure, you first need to describe it, and then you need to explain how it affected you. This is more difficult than it sounds. Students often have fascinating backstories, but when it comes to explaining how they coped with a challenging situation, they just say what they think people expect them to say (e.g. “It was hard”).

A much better approach is to treat the essay as an opportunity to think through what happened to you. Looking back, how did it affect you? Spend some time talking to someone you trust - a friend, a teacher, or a college essay tutor - and see if you can understand your experience in a new way. If you stick with it long enough, you’ll eventually come up with a surprising interpretation of what happened to you.

It’s not enough just to have encountered something difficult. You need to make the most of your backstory and treat it with the respect it deserves.

Don’t draw a cliched lesson from your story

This is the most common mistake students make (including students with perfect SATs and GPAs). They say they encountered a challenge that was hard at the time, but they’re glad it happened to them because they grew stronger as a result. Often, they’ve just described a fascinating challenge, but when they draw a lesson from it, they say exactly what everyone else says. This is not a good way to stand out from other applicants.

Instead, be honest about what you learned. Did you necessarily take a positive lesson from your experience? Did you learn something unexpected? Has the experience led you to approach things differently as a result? The truth is always the most interesting answer, but you can only get to it after stripping away the cliched responses and being honest with yourself.

So if you’ve encountered an obstacle, setback, or failure, we urge you to respond to Common App prompt #2 - but you absolutely need to do the hard work of thinking through your experience if you’re going to succeed.