Possible College Essay Topics

1. Evaluate a significant experience or achievement that has special meaning to you.

2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, or national concern and its importance to you.

3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you and describe that influence.

4. Racial, ethnic, and religious divisions continue to trouble society. Based on your own experience,

what hopes and fears do you hold for the future?

5. Describe your hometown.

6. Choose a person from history whom you would like to have met. What might have been the subject

of your conversation with this person?

7. What is the best piece of advice you have received and why is it helpful?

8. Describe a challenge you have faced. What did you gain from the experience?

9. A generous donor has given you a yearlong stipend allowing you to take a year off before entering

college. How will you spend your time and the money?

10. Examine any book or work of art that has affected your understanding of the world.

11. What do you perceive as society’s greatest challenge today and why?

12. How have you taken something you have learned in the classroom and integrated it into your

nonacademic life.

13. Describe an important tradition your family has. What does it express? It could be a holiday, meal,

activity, or anything else which feels unique and which embodies your family’s identity. You may

want to assume your reader is about to be a guest in your home. What would he or she need to know

to feel comfortable?

14. Write an essay on a topic of your choice.