Why You Should Read the Common App Prompts

The topic of this week’s blog may seem absurd at first glance. But students often come to us with drafts of their college essays already completed, and when we ask them which prompt they’re responding to, they shrug and say they didn’t know they had to respond to a prompt.

This happens so frequently that we started to suspect something was going on - and then we discovered that some most popular college essay websites explicitly suggest: “don’t read Common App prompts.” They even go as far as to say that if you’ve already read them, you should erase them from memory! Responding to a prompt is stifling, they say, and it interferes with your authentic voice. Meanwhile, these same websites incorrectly advise students to read sample essays, which only adds to their confusion.

This is terrible advice for any kind of writing, and in almost all cases, it will guarantee that you’ll write a mediocre college essay. Here’s why.

High school students have no experience writing personal essays

The college essay will almost certainly be the first personal essay you’ll ever write. You’ll have written analytical essays in your English and History classes in high school, and you may even have written essays for local or national competitions. But it’s unlikely you’ve ever been asked to write an essay reflecting on your personal development or your values.

As a result, you can’t just pick up a pen and expect your “authentic voice” to start flowing. Apart from a few rare exceptions, it just doesn’t happen that way. You need guidance to get ideas flowing. And the best place to start is with the Common App prompts.

The Common App prompts give a sense of what colleges are interested in

If the first thing you do is read the prompts on the Common App website, you’ll be off to a good start. You’ll see that the seven prompts are designed to get you to open up and talk about yourself. The framers of these prompts are doing you a favor by showing you what it is they’re interested in knowing. 

Taken together, these prompts encourage you to explore challenges you’ve encountered, realizations you’ve had, and events that were important to you. Or if a specific experience doesn’t come to mind, there are prompts that allow you to talk about ideas you’re interested in and people who have influenced you.

Just as important, the prompts are worded in a careful way to guide you through your thought process. For example, one of the prompts tells you to reflect on a challenge you’ve had, and then asks, “How did it affect you and what did you learn from the experience?” If you just say that you became more resilient after a setback, you won’t be revealing much of your personality. But if you respond honestly and explain your complex response to a difficult situation, the admissions officer will keep reading. By providing prompts, they’re not just asking a question: they’re handing you the basis of an outline.

Designing your own prompt is almost always a bad idea

The final Common App prompt allows you to share an essay on a topic of your choice, and presumably this is why some college essay websites tell you not to read the prompts.

Unfortunately, we’ve found that the vast majority of students who come up with their own topics don’t end up writing compelling essays. It can be done, of course, and every now and then a clever essay goes viral that focuses on some obscure detail in an entertaining way. But most students would be better served by doing the difficult work of responding to one of the other prompts. The main reason is that the prompts offer a way to structure your thinking at a scale appropriate to the task at hand. 

And if you do come up with your own topic, at least read the other prompts first! Otherwise you won’t have any idea what admissions committees are after in asking you to write a personal essay.

The Common App prompts are barely 200 words long, but they help you understand what colleges are looking for. So if you find yourself wondering, “Should I read the Common App prompts?” we would answer with a resounding yes. Reading the prompts won’t stifle your authentic voice; it will help you find it.