You Shouldn’t Write about Trauma in Your College Essay

When students set out to write their college essays, they’re frequently advised to “sell their trauma” — that is, capitalize on the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Articles in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Harvard Crimson claim that the college admissions system itself encourages this trend, pushing students to write increasingly dramatic essays in order to capture the attention of admissions officers. And collections of college essay examples are certainly packed with essays like this.

This emphasis on trauma reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the college admissions process. When advisors push students to write about trauma, they’re assuming that dramatic experiences produce stronger essays. The more intense the story, the better — leaving many students thinking they’re too boring to write a college essay.

But that’s not how it works. Trauma doesn’t make a college essay powerful; reflection does. Here are three reasons why writing about trauma often leads students in the wrong direction.

Admissions Officers Are Not Looking for the Most Traumatic Story

Let’s follow the logic of “selling your trauma” for a moment. Students rack their brains for the most intense experiences, turning the process into a national competition for the best sob story. Some students survived a hurricane, others escaped a war zone, others cared for a terminally ill family member for years… the list goes on.

Of course these experiences are meaningful, and they could all form the basis for excellent essays. But the mere fact of having suffered doesn’t qualify anyone to attend a top college. It doesn’t make you seem mature or thoughtful or original; it doesn’t indicate that you possess the qualities that would make you successful at a particular school.

If you really think about it, people who advise you to “sell your trauma” are assuming that admissions officers are simply picking out the most over-the-top experiences they can find. Student A took care of their mother who had dementia; Student B’s mother died in a horrific accident. Well, Student B should get into Stanford because they suffered more.

Obviously that’s an absurd proposition. Admissions officers aren’t reading essays to determine who has suffered the most — and in fact, an emphasis on suffering carries its own danger.

Extreme Experiences Often Lead to Predictable Essays

Let’s say you decide to write about an extremely difficult experience from your life. Perhaps you describe how your early childhood was marked by instability at home, or how a serious illness affected your family for years 

How will your essay end? You’ll probably say something like this: “I had a really hard time, but I got through it, and it made me more resilient than I would have been otherwise. I learned that bad things happen in life, but if you push through them, you’ll become a stronger person.”

In other words, you’ll say what almost everyone else writing about trauma says, and you’ll reduce your entire life experience to a cliché. The admissions officer reading your file will immediately recognize what you’re doing, and they’ll put your application in a pile with all the other trauma essays.

The problem is that it’s actually very difficult to come up with a nuanced interpretation of a traumatic experience in 650 words. How do you do it? Maybe you admit that you constantly wish that the traumatic event had never happened, and it taught you absolutely nothing. Or maybe you reflect on how it shaped you in a particular way that’s neither good nor bad — it’s just you.

Writing about trauma is challenging because the resilience cliché is so pervasive. Trauma doesn’t open you up to a multitude of interesting interpretations; it usually shuts down interpretation. That’s why most essays that focus on trauma sound remarkably similar.

The Best College Essays Often Come from Ordinary Experiences

For this reason, the strongest college essays often come from a different angle. Instead of describing trauma, they begin with a minor setback, an everyday observation, an ordinary experience.

For example, we worked with a student athlete who spent three years working on a single gymnastics move. Most of his competitors perfected the move in a day or two, but this student was having so much trouble that he became extremely disciplined until he got it. Then he reflected on how his newfound discipline not only helped him with his studies, but also hindered him in other areas: it led him to end all phone conversations with his girlfriend at 9pm, just before he went to bed.

This student’s topic began with a seemingly minor detail — not being able to do a gymnastics move — and then went in a completely unexpected direction. If he’d focused on a major trauma, he probably would have fallen for the resilience trap; instead, he wrote an essay nobody would have predicted, beginning with a gymnastics move, and ending with his inflexible social relations.

In other words, the essay worked not because of the experience itself, but because of the way the student interpreted it. The admissions officer reading the essay would immediately recognize a thoughtful candidate who had reflected seriously on his own behavior.

Admissions officers are not simply asking what happened in your life. They’re trying to understand how you think about your experiences. Do you notice interesting patterns in your own behavior? Can you reflect honestly on the strengths and weaknesses you’ve developed along the way? Are you able to interpret ordinary events in a thoughtful way?

Students often assume they need something dramatic to write about in their college essay because this is “what colleges want.” In reality, the opposite is often true. The most memorable essays are often the ones that focus on ordinary experiences.

The best college essays succeed not because of the scale of the events they describe, but because they reveal the thinking and perspective of the student behind the story.

This article is part of the College Essay Misconceptions Series, which examines the most common myths about college essay advice.

If you’re working on your own college essay and want one-on-one guidance, learn more about our college essay coaching.