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College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start

Bonus Material: College Essay Brainstorming Questions  

The college essay is an extremely important component of your college application. Yes, college admissions officers do care about standardized test scores, academic transcripts, extracurricular activities, and letters of recommendation.

All of these application components can help officers assess a student’s academic and professional potential (and much more).

The college application essay, however, gives students a chance to share their unique voice with an admissions officer. It’s like a brief interview, where students can give officers a powerful glimpse of who they are outside of their application in roughly 650 words.

So what do you say in those 650 words? How do you pick the right essay topic?

It’s all about the brainstorming process. In general, the more time you can devote to gathering potential essay topics  before  you start writing, the better. Gathering this material can also be helpful for writing supplemental essays down the road.

In this post, we provide actionable tips for guiding your college essay brainstorming process. After reading this article, students will be well poised to gather topics and eventually select the “right” essay topic .

We also give students access to 30 free college essay brainstorming questions to get started. Grab these below.

Download College Essay Brainstorming Questions

Here’s what we cover:

The Importance of College Essay Brainstorming

• 8 College Essay Brainstorming Tips
• Bonus : 30 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

We define the college essay as a “demonstration of character, values, and/or voice.” It is an introspective, personal essay that (ideally) adds significant value to a student’s overall application.

Many students are not well-versed in writing this kind of essay. Indeed, most students are familiar with the concept of the academic essay, with its neat five paragraphs. Very few have had a lot of time in high school classrooms to write deeply reflective pieces, and concise ones at that. (Remember: you only have 650 words or fewer to craft your response!)

That’s why brainstorming is so essential  to the college essay writing process. It’s your key to pinpointing the right topic, which we define as one with the potential to generate an essay that aligns with these 7 winning qualities .

It can also be valuable for gathering potential topics for supplemental essay responses, which many competitive colleges require.

For these very reasons, we spend a significant amount of time brainstorming in our college essay mentoring programs and summer workshops. Students who are able to gather a lot of material in this time tend to have an easier job down the road choosing the right topic, creating an outline, and eventually writing that first draft.

What’s more, they might surprise themselves in what they are able to pull from their many life experiences! It’s not uncommon for an essay student to choose a certain topic they never would have considered prior to brainstorming.

The tips outlined in the next section reflect this great value of brainstorming, and are the same we offer our college essay students at the start of their process.

8 College Essay Brainstorming Tips

Don’t let that blank page intimidate you! Follow these tips to guide your brainstorming process and remember that this stage should and will take time.

1. Know the standards

Students should feel very comfortable with colleges’ general expectations for the essay  before  they start brainstorming. If you haven’t done so already, please check out the following PrepMaven posts:

• What is the College Essay?

7 Qualities of a Successful College Essay

• 11 College Essays That Worked
• What College Admissions Officers Look For

It can also be helpful to review the Common Application’s essay prompts . While students don’t necessarily have to respond to a  specific  prompt, these provide insight into the type of essay colleges are seeking.

2. No topic is “too small” (but some are “too big”)

Students only have 650 words (or fewer) to write their essays. That’s not a lot of space! For this reason, don’t shy away from seemingly “small” topics as you brainstorm.

One student who earned Ivy League acceptance, for example, wrote about her passion for hot sauce in her college essay!

On the same note, if you come up with “big” topics, such as cultural identity, a long-term extracurricular activity, or a religious belief, do your best to highlight specific components of these topics, or one representative experience. The best college essays don’t say everything there is to say about such large topics. Rather, they focus skillfully on one smaller component of a potentially bigger picture.

3. Write down all the details for every topic

When you land upon a topic, mine it for details. Write down everything you can think of about that experience, idea, or memory. Many of our students like to use bulleted lists in a Google Doc for doing this.

It’s important to squeeze out every possible detail so that you can fully assess a topic’s potential! In many cases, such details will become college essay topics themselves.

4. Work by category

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the possible topics out there–and don’t worry, this is common–gather ideas by category. Here are some sample category examples:

• Travel experiences
• Extracurricular activities
• Family life
• Culture and heritage
• Interests and hobbies
• Challenges (non-academic)

Categories can help you build a general portrait of who you are, at least to start. Once you have a few ideas per category, start diving deeper into those ideas and generating further details about each one.

5. Ask the right questions

It is often easier for students to generate a rich pool of potential topics by answering questions designed to encourage deep reflection and introspection. Of course, this begs the question: what should I be asking myself?

Take a look at these 30 questions  we ask our students in our college essay workshops and mentorship programs at the beginning of their process.

Once you’ve answered these questions fully and to the best of your ability, you’ll be poised for essay topic selection.

6. Keep it to yourself, mostly

Many college essay students risk writing about what their parents, friends, or teachers want them to write about. Others risk writing “what colleges want to hear.” Yet authenticity is one of the most important qualities of a successful college essay!

That’s why we encourage students to brainstorm independently. You are the only one in the world most familiar with your life experiences, after all! Consult family members, friends, or mentors only once you are further along in the essay writing process, or if you need clarification on the details of a specific experience. This will ensure you gather topics that are true to you first and foremost.

7. Maintain orderly notes

Brainstorming can be messy. Establish a system early on for maintaining orderly notes! Some tools that can come in handy:

• Bulleted or numbered lists
• Index cards
• Color-coding (digital or manual)
• Google Docs

8. Consider takeaways for each topic

As you compile topics, save time and start thinking in terms of “takeaways” for each. This will allow you to assess a topic’s potential for demonstrating your character, values, and/or voice.

Ask yourself for each topic : What values does this showcase? What does this say about me specifically? What meaningful reflections does it invite? What aspect of my voice is apparent here?

Download 30 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

You can jumpstart your college essay brainstorming process right now by downloading our college essay brainstorming questions.

With this free download, you’ll get:

• 30 of the best brainstorming questions we ask our students
• Guidance for next steps

Kate is a graduate of Princeton University. Over the last decade, Kate has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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Need help brainstorming?

You can’t write a standout college application essay without first brainstorming a standout topic..

But don’t worry—we’ve gathered some of our best brainstorming resources into one place for you.

On this page, you’ll find our:

• Brainstorming Blueprint
• Free personalized quiz to help you land your essay topic
• Free Common App brainstorming video series
• Free College Essay Cheat Sheet
• Free College Essay workshop

Of course, you can always go right for our BEST resource, our online course the College Essay Cure , which includes a module devoted entirely to brainstorming. ☺️

Get our Brainstorming Blueprint

The Brainstorming Blueprint lays out simple solutions for discovering your authentic topic; mapping your entire essay; and moving quickly into writing  without  second-guessing yourself….and the best part is you only PAY WHAT YOU CAN.

You want to learn more about what to write about? You want to know if your ideas are good or not? This Brainstorming Blueprint will give you the answers you need so you can stop questioning and start writing, ASAP.

Take our quiz to discover the RIGHT topic for your College Essay

Not sure what to write your College Essay about?

Our 10 question quiz will quickly and easily guide you towards your perfect topic.

Watch our Common App brainstorming video series

Brainstorming for your College Application Essay can be the actual worst—partly because you’re never positive you’re doing it right, or if your topic idea is strong or just plain wrong, and like…what if YOU think your idea is great but colleges don’t???

I hear you, friends. It’s so easy to be wracked with self-doubt, but not as easy to find your way to the other side.

That’s why we’ve put together this seven-part video series breaking down ALL 7 Common App prompts. You’ll learn what each question is really asking and how to come up with an authentic topic that grabs your readers. These videos are chock-full of tips and tricks… as well as some awkward dancing. (Listen…brainstorming is hard. Sometimes you gotta dance it out to make it through!)

Click play to watch now!

Get our College Essay Cheat Sheet

Some students can’t pin down their ideal topic without first understanding how they should structure their full essay.

That’s where our Cheat Sheet can help! It shares the secrets of the best College Essays and tells you EXACTLY how to structure and organize yours.

Because guess what—of all the essays I review every year, the best ones ALWAYS follow the same simple format.

Now you can learn this format too!

Get our Short Answer Shortcut

Not sure what to write your Short Answers about? Don’t fret. In our Short Answer Shortcut, we share the short answer template recreating the exact, 6-step format all successful short answers follow; a 4-point checklist to ensure your responses hit crucial markers of originality and authenticity; and sample student responses to benchmark your own against.

Stream our free College Essay workshop!

We’re  all  about empowering students with the tools they need to tackle brainstorming successfully on their own.

In this free workshop streaming now, I teach you how to uncover what I refer to as your unique “snowflake” essay topic to really set your essay up for success. I also teach you how to draft fast and fearless, and how to revise using my bold strokes method.

Get even more help with The College Essay Cure

Are you ready to go even deeper? Then you’re ready for The College Essay Cure.

The course contains The Brainstorming Cure: a full module of additional brainstorming instruction along with a downloadable brainstorming activity! It’s the ULTIMATE brainstorming helper and will set you up for essay success like nothing else.

The signature online program also covers:

• Popular topic myths and mistakes—and how to fix them
• The 2 quick tricks to creating a compelling opening every time
• The 4 essential keys to guarantee your essay ends on a memorable note
• The “rule of 3” revision process to help you revise your essay from “good” to “great”
• The Short Answer Template recreating the exact, 6-step format all successful short answers follow

Think you can get into a top-10 school? Take our chance-me calculator... if you dare. 🔥

Last updated December 6, 2023

Every piece we write is researched and vetted by a former admissions officer. Read about our mission to pull back the admissions curtain.

Blog > Common App , Essay Advice > 25 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

25 College Essay Brainstorming Questions

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University Admissions

Key Takeaway

If you’re in the process of starting your college essay, you know how hard it is to come up with a good topic.

Should you go the lighthearted, humorous route? Or should you reveal something serious about yourself? Of all your experiences, how do you know the best one to write about? 

Worse, how do you know if your idea is cliche? Or, alternatively, what if you’ve tried too hard to be unique?

And with all the conflicting advice out there about what should and shouldn’t be in a college essay, the process gets even more confusing.

But there’s a foolproof method to cut through the noise and find a college essay topic that’s right for you.

It all starts with a brainstorming exercise.

Let’s get into it.

What is brainstorming?

Have you ever tried to turn nothing into something? It’s almost like writing defies the laws of physics. But that’s what you have to do when you come up with a topic.

Brainstorming helps you get there. It is a type of pre-writing process. We call it a “brainstorm” because it’s a way to corral the thought tornado that’s spinning out of control in your brain.

Like its counterpart “free writing,” brainstorming is a place for anything and everything. It’s a chance for you to do a brain dump and get your thoughts on to paper.

Brainstorming is the main way writers go from no ideas to lots of ideas in a short amount of time. It also saves you time and effort in the long run because it helps you weed out all the bad ideas before you waste your time trying to write an essay around them.

When you brainstorming, you’ve got two goals: 1) identify the thoughts that come to you, and 2) write them down. Some people do image-based mind maps, others create linear outlines, and others have their own individual processes altogether.

Today, your brainstorming process will consist of answering some pointed questions to get you thinking about the best college essay topics for you.

How do you brainstorm a college essay?

Brainstorming your college essay is an essential step because your essay topic determines how much an admissions officer is able to learn about you.

Picture yourself as an admissions officer. You’ve already read 25 applications today, and now you’re on your 26th. You flip to the essay, and you see immediately that it’s an essay about winning a soccer tournament. You’ve already read three essays about soccer tournaments today. Hopeful, you proceed through the essay. To your dismay, the essay’s message—that hard work and determination will get you far in life—is almost exactly the same as the previous three. The soccer essays start to blend together, and you can’t quite remember whose is whose.

That’s the problem with overused, cliche, and surface-level topics. They aren’t interesting or memorable. Because they remain on the surface of who you are, they don’t tell an admissions officer the information they need to know to admit you.

Instead, we believe that all college essays should revolve around one of your core strengths.

A core strength is an inherent and positive trait, talent, or characteristic that shapes how you live in the world.

Here are a few examples:

• Social intelligence
• Intellectual curiosity
• Passion for justice
• Positive outlook

Whether your strength is your wisdom, entrepreneurial spirit, compassion, or problem-solving skills, your college essay should reflect a strength that makes you you.

Because the purpose of a college essay is to help you get admitted to college. (If you need a refresher on the ins and outs of college essays, look to our How to Write a College Essay guide.) Writing an essay that speaks to your strengths gives admissions officers more reasons to admit you.

A strengths-based essay will help them get to know the real you, and they’ll be able to envision how your strengths will contribute to their college community. It’s all about crafting a cohesive application narrative .

So when it comes to brainstorming, you need to think of topic ideas that accomplish two tasks:

Showcase one (or two) of your core strengths.

Give admissions officers meaningful and vulnerable insight into who you are.

Much easier said than done, right? That’s where brainstorming comes in.

Brainstorming relieves the pressure of getting it right the first time. It helps you compile and sort through all your memories, experiences, strengths, and values until you find one that works.

Let’s talk about the college essay brainstorming exercise.

Brainstorming Exercise Breakdown

To help you brainstorm college essay topic ideas that are strengths-based and meaningful, we’ve put together a list of questions.

These questions come from some of the most common college essay topics. They aren’t essay prompts, and they’re not intended to be the question from which you write your final college essay.

Instead, they are leading questions that will get you thinking about what strengths you have and how they show up in your life. You’ll be able to use your answers as a starting point to find your topic and write your first draft.

Feel free to copy and paste these questions into a word processor and answer each of them in turn. Or answer only the ones that call to you the most. Write down as much or as little as you want for each, but try to focus on concrete experiences and genuine reflections.

We’ll go over a couple of examples, but let’s first look at the questions.

25 Brainstorming Questions

• What are your biggest strengths? Why?
• If you could only choose one topic to talk about for the rest of your life, what would it be?
• Have you traveled? If so, what did you do or learn?
• If you could choose any meal to represent you, what would it be and why?
• What is the most interesting part of your daily life?
• Describe a time when you felt inexperienced at something.
• Is there a question about the universe that keeps you up at night?
• Where do you feel most at home?
• What’s the most sensory experience you’ve ever had?
• Have you had a job? What was your most memorable experience? What did you learn?
• What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you?
• Write about a time when you felt out of place.
• Are there any social issues you’re passionate about? If so, what have you done to contribute to the cause?
• Finish this sentence: “I feel most creative when I…”
• Write about your most memorable classroom experience.
• Describe a time when you felt like you genuinely helped someone.
• What would your friends say is your greatest strength? What would your family say is your greatest strength?
• What role do you play when working in a group or team?
• What’s the most profound thing that’s happened to you?
• Are you a leader? If so, how, when, and in what parts of your life?
• What about yourself makes you proud?
• Explain the hardest problem you’ve ever solved.
• Picture yourself at 90 years old, nice and wrinkly. What would your 90-year-old self say about who you are today?
• What are three things you know to be true?
• What motivates you?

Is your brain storming yet?

To take your answers a step further, you can also ask yourself a bonus follow-up question. For each question you answer, consider this: How does what you’ve written here connect to one of your core strengths? Which core strength is it?

Brainstorm Example

Now on to the examples. Notice how each response has an associated core strength. The question responses are free-form. Not every idea they include will be usable, and grammar and organization don’t matter at all. Each response includes good sensory details and lots of ideas about what comes to mind for each question.

#14) Finish this sentence: “I feel most creative when I…”

Core strength: Creativity

I feel most creative when I play my cello. I love practicing and listening to my metronome and trying to figure out the difficult passages. It’s like a mixture of science and art. Playing in an orchestra really moves me because of the way the music comes alive and you can feel everyone’s art coming together to make new art. But my solo recitals are my favorite. I love being on stage in front of a crowd and getting to share my art with them, especially when I come up with a creative take on a classic piece. I used to hate recitals but ever since I changed my perspective from fear of failure to making art, I’ve learned to enjoy them more.

#8) Where do you feel most at home?

Core strength: Compassion

I feel most at home in my grandma’s kitchen. It always smells of freshly-baked bread, and everything has a slight but permanent dusting of flour. I feel at home there because that’s where I learned to do my favorite hobby: baking. My grandma taught me everything I know about how to bake. Nothing says “home” like a warm chocolate chip cookie with a little bit of sea salt. My grandma is my favorite person and she’s always inspired me. Now that she’s unable to bake for herself, I bake for her. Her kitchen is my office. I know every inch of the kitchen like the back of my hand. I’m learning new baking tricks on YouTube, and I tell her all about them when I visit after school. She’s taught and given me so much, so I just want to return the favor.

See how easy that was? They’re quick answers that are rich with description and ideas. When you write your own, it’ll be the kindling for your college essay.

When you’re ready, go through each question that calls to you and write down exactly what comes to mind. From there, you’ll have a list of topics to choose from.

Key Takeways

Now it’s your turn. Copy and paste the questions to get started. We use a similar brainstorming process with all the students we work with, and it’s a surefire way to find the right college essay topic for you. Once your brainstorm is done, check out the college essay writing guide or the Essay Academy to transform your brainstorm from a rough topic to a full-blown essay.

Liked that? Try this next.

The Incredible Power of a Cohesive College Application

How to Write a College Essay (Exercises + Examples)

12 Common App Essay Examples (Graded by Former Admissions Officers)

How to Write Supplemental Essays that Will Impress Admissions Officers

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Are you seeking one-on-one college counseling and/or essay support? Limited spots are now available. Click here to learn more.

25 Inspiring College Essay Topic Ideas

June 24, 2024

If you’ve ever wondered what other people write about in their college application essays, you’re not alone. Just as reading a range of novels can expose you to unique takes on similar themes, seeing others’ college essay topic ideas can open you up to new possibilities, spark creativity, and enhance your brainstorming process. Since we read hundreds of essays per year, we wanted to round up a collection of past topics from actual students to inspire your essay-writing endeavors. Moreover, we’ve paired those topics with targeted brainstorming questions that will set you off on your own path to success. Ready? Let’s dive in.

How do I find the right college essay topic ideas?

Like a well-hidden geocache , the right college essay topic ideas can only be uncovered with some effort. In general, the right college essay topic:

• is interesting and/or exciting to you
• demonstrates a quality, value, or perspective that can’t be found elsewhere on your application

While deciding, focus on asking yourself the right types of questions. For example, let’s say you’re down to two topics: a moral/ethical dilemma you recently faced, or the nonprofit you started last year. In this scenario, most students may assume they *should* write about the nonprofit–after all, it’s the more “impressive” of the two, right?

However, let’s divorce ourselves from “should.” Instead, ask yourself: if I write this essay, what will admissions officers learn about me that they can’t learn about elsewhere? Through starting this nonprofit, what have I learned about myself? Can I show my reader what I value, or how I handle problems? Or will I basically be re-hashing what is already in my activities list or honors section ?

Alternatively, the ethical/moral dilemma you recently faced completely threw you for a loop. It made you rethink a closely held belief and forced you to confront how you handle challenging situations.

Ask yourself: what will admissions officers learn about me that they can’t learn about elsewhere? What have I learned about myself? Can I handle this subject tactfully—without complaining, blaming others, or coming to a conclusion that feels forced/too neat? Can I be vulnerable?

Be honest with yourself, and a clear winner will emerge.

How do I find “unique” college essay topic ideas?

Every year, our students wonder how to ensure that their essay stands out, often asking us questions along these lines:

How do I make sure that my essay topic is different from everyone else’s?

If I write about my sports injury, will it sound like every other sports essay?

If I write about my parent’s illness, will that be just another sob story?

We get it—it’s natural and normal to be curious about what admissions officers want to hear, or wonder whether particular college essay topic ideas will strengthen your application more than others. While there is some strategy involved with topic selection, the way you write about and reflect on any given topic is usually much more important than the topic itself.

To that end, college essay topics/themes we see on a regular basis include:

• Coming-of-age, most often a realization that changed their perspective or inspired personal growth
• A challenging situation or moral dilemma
• A passion or intellectual curiosity
• A meaningful aspect of their family/identity/cultural background
• An important community

We see these topics frequently because they are universal to the teenage experience. This does not make them bad or mean you should avoid them. On the contrary, it makes them classic, timeless, and relatable (remember, you’re trying to create a personal connection with your reader!).

Accordingly, use the above college essay topics/themes as a way to start collecting ideas for your own personal statement, and know you are in very good company if you write an essay on one of them.

Bottom line: you make a college essay topic “unique” by writing about yourself, in your own style and voice, with plenty of detail and specifics. You share what you learned and how you grew. That’s it!

Where can I find examples of college essay topic ideas?

Sometimes, you just need a list of examples. Let’s go back to our geocaching reference above. What the heck is a geocache, anyway? What will you find inside one? Do people use certain types of containers? Perusing a few examples will help you build an idea of what to expect when you go exploring. Okay, I could be looking for anything from Tupperware containers to film canisters…or fake rocks…what?!

Accordingly, in providing you with this list of college essay topic ideas, we want to validate and inspire you. These are real college essay topics developed by real college applicants, so it’s very likely you can connect or identify with at least a few of them. If a topic resonates with or sounds interesting to you, try writing down some thoughts on the associated brainstorming question and see where it takes you.

Inspiring College Essay Topic Ideas

• Central Story : A parent’s struggle with addiction, and the author’s struggle to cope with the changes happening at home
• Reflection/Resolution : How the author found themselves again—and learned to cope—by leaning into activities that they loved
• Brainstorming Question : Has your parent or guardian ever faced a significant health problem, such as a chronic illness, terminal diagnosis, or addiction? How did it impact you?
• Central Story : After volunteering at a homeless shelter for years, the author realized he had been avoiding personal connection with the men he served meals to
• Reflection/Resolution : Prioritizing connection, even if uncomfortable, and finding new, tangible ways to understand and assist this population
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever had a perspective-changing volunteer opportunity? If so, what was your perspective before you started, and what is it now?

College Essay Topic Ideas — Continued

• Central Story : Navigating interactions with customers at a part-time job
• Reflection/Resolution : Finding ways to connect with and appreciate patrons, and understand how important her job was
• Brainstorming Question : Do you work in a customer service role? What have been your most memorable interactions, positive or negative? How have they impacted you?
• Central Story : After years of being a competitive ballet dancer and having aspirations to dance in college, the author is struck with the realization that she does not actually want to be a professional ballerina
• Reflection/Resolution : Coming to terms with her decision, and embracing who she is without ballet
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever had a college-related or professional goal that changed? Why did it change, and how did you deal with it?
• Central Story : How a difficult incident during a baseball game changed the author’s relationship with the sport, and pushed him toward new realizations about his future
• Reflection/Resolution : Embracing his own power to make a difference by immersing himself in research, and discovering new fields that he is interested in pursuing in college
• Brainstorming Question : Has a particular situation ever shocked or deeply upset you? What realizations did you have about yourself? About others?
• Central Story : The author’s fiction writing journey and realization that women of color are underrepresented or presented as one-note in most literature
• Reflection/Resolution : The author’s commitment to crafting characters that not only represented her but reflected her values and beliefs, and creating a writing community in the process
• Brainstorming Question : Do you have a hobby or passion that you could spend hours a day/week engaging in? How did you get started, and what experiences have been most special/important to you?
• Central Story : How a strategy-based board game gave the author the skills needed to take a volunteer opportunity to the next level
• Reflection/Resolution : What the author learned about himself in the process, and the importance of being open to what all types of experiences can teach you
• Brainstorming Question : What’s your go-to “fun” activity? What (perhaps surprising) skills have you learned from it? Have you been able to apply them in other areas of your life?
• Central Story : The author’s intensive preparation for synchronized swim team tryouts
• Reflection/Resolution : How the author dealt with the disappointment of not making the team, and learned important lessons about failure and resilience
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever tried—and failed—at something that took weeks, months, or even years to prepare for? What was that like? How did you cope, and what did you learn about yourself in the process?
• Central Story : The author’s longing for a stable community after experiencing a housing crisis
• Reflection/Resolution : How volunteering at a local nonprofit committed to building homes helped him find the community he was searching for, and inspired his future career path
• Brainstorming Question : What activity is most meaningful to you? How is it enabled you to make an impact on others? How has it impacted you personally?
• Central Story : The author’s first encounter with coral bleaching, and ensuing environmental activism
• Reflection/Resolution : How he found balance between activism and his personal life so that he could bring his best self to every project
• Brainstorming Question : Do you participate in any activities that feel consuming on multiple levels? How do you find balance? Has that been a difficult journey?
• Central Story : The author’s love of connecting with friends and family through baking, even when the time commitment involved became difficult to navigate
• Reflection/Resolution : How the author learned to juggle multiple types of commitments, leading to increased joy and intention
• Brainstorming Question : What personal hobbies are most meaningful to you, and why? Have you ever struggled to find time for your favorite hobby amidst other obligations? How did you navigate that?
• Central Story : How the author struggled with coming out
• Reflection/Resolution : How joining a supportive LGBTQ community helped the author make peace with her identity, and also begin helping others who may be struggling with their identity
• Brainstorming Question : Is there an aspect of your sexual or cultural identity that you’ve struggled to accept? What has that journey been like for you? What actions have you taken along the way, and what have you learned about yourself in the process?
• Central Story : The author’s determination to help other students feel less isolated and more involved at school, which stemmed from his own early experiences as an immigrant
• Reflection/Resolution : How the author implemented actual changes that resulted in more connection, school spirit, and personal fulfillment
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever tried to solve a particular issue in your community? What issue did you try to solve, and why? What steps did you take to solve it, and what was the outcome?
• Central Story : How the author’s early love of Spanish led to learning additional languages
• Reflection/Resolution : How learning languages has allowed for deeper cultural exploration and appreciation, along with an exploration of the author’s own personal history and goal to pursue linguistics in college
• Brainstorming Question : Do you already know what you want to pursue in college? How did you come to that conclusion, and what experiences have informed or influenced it along the way?
• Central Story : How the author’s perfectionism often caused her to avoid trying new things, which she realized after a massive project went sideways
• Reflection/Resolution : The author began trying new activities outside her comfort zone that introduced her to new interests and inspired further exploration
• Brainstorming Question : Do you ever feel like you hold yourself back? In what ways? How have you tried to overcome those hurdles?
• Central Story : The author’s lifelong interest in his favorite animal
• Reflection/Resolution : What attributes of this animal the author is most fascinated by, how those attributes connect to his own life/experiences, and what he’s learned about himself in the process
• Brainstorming Question : What are your “favorites”—favorite color, favorite animal, favorite song, favorite movie, favorite place, etc? Why are they your favorite? What can your “favorites” tell us about you?
• Central Story : How the author’s boredom with piano stemmed from always following sheet music strictly as written
• Reflection/Resolution : How learning a new musical term—and experimenting with it—enabled the author to find the joy in music again
• Brainstorming Question : Have you participated in any activities that lost their appeal at some point? How did you react, and what was the outcome?
• Central Story : The author’s love for a certain childhood craft
• Reflection/Resolution : How rekindling her love for this craft led to a fascination with repetition and patterns that ultimately inspired her college major
• Brainstorming Question : As a child, what activities did you love most? Do you still engage in any of them? If so, why are they so important to you?
• Central Story : The toxic environment within the author’s first school play, which made her start to lose her passion for music
• Reflection/Resolution : How quitting theater and investing her energy in different, more supportive activities allowed her to reclaim her love of singing
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever quit an important sport, club, or other activity? What led to that decision, and how did you move forward?
• Central Story : How the author’s love of fashion—and its history—led to a particularly optimistic sewing project
• Reflection/Resolution : How the process of trial and error during her project—as well as her continued work on it—represents her resilience, passion, and love of learning
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever undertaken a project that didn’t go according to plan? What ups and downs did you encounter, and how did you navigate them?
• Central Story : How the author confronted her perception of entrepreneurship as well as her own role within her company
• Reflection/Resolution : How asking difficult questions, conducting research, and being willing to pivot led the author to adjust her mindset and personal philosophy
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever realized that you might need to adjust a previously held belief or perspective? How did you come to that conclusion, and what did you do about it?
• Central Story : The author’s reluctance and nervousness to return to India, where she spent her childhood
• Reflection/Resolution : How reconnecting with her culture, especially its literature, led her to embrace herself more fully and even helped inform her future career path
• Brainstorming Question : Do you ever feel torn between two different worlds or cultural identities? How have you navigated and/or tried to come to terms with that?
• Central Story : How the author’s self-doubt and fear began to negatively impact her sports performance
• Reflection/Resolution : How a teammate’s influence enabled the author to start trusting herself, leading to increased self-confidence and new levels of risk-taking
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever dealt with an ongoing struggle that started to take over your life? What enabled you to start adopting a healthier outlook?
• Central Story : The author’s realization that her method of communication in leadership roles may be hindering, rather than helping, progress
• Reflection/Resolution : How adjusting her communication methods, focusing on collaboration, and readjusting her perspective led to a new definition of personal and professional success
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever realized that your way of doing things may be negatively impacting a particular group or team? If so, what did you do about it?
• Central Story : An ethical dilemma that the author experienced while serving on her school paper
• Reflection/Resolution : How the author arrived at her decision, and what she learned about her own decision-making process
• Brainstorming Question : Have you ever been confronted with a moral or ethical dilemma? If so, how did you arrive at a decision? Do you regret or stand behind that decision—why or why not?

Final Thoughts — College Essay Topics

After identifying an interesting and personally significant essay topic, you’ll want to focus on further brainstorming as well as execution. Not sure what to do next? College Transitions’ highly skilled essay coaches can help— click here to see available packages or schedule a free consultation.

Additional resources you may find useful:

• Common App Essay Prompts
• How to Brainstorm a College Essay
• 10 Instructive Common App Essay Examples
• College Application Essay Topics to Avoid
• How to Start a College Essay
• How to End a College Essay
• Best College Essay Help
• College Essay

Kelsea Conlin

Kelsea holds a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Tufts University, a graduate certificate in College Counseling from UCLA, and an MA in Teaching Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her short fiction is forthcoming in Chautauqua .

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20 Brainstorming Ideas For College Essays

Why? Because I’m working on essays with several seniors right now and, for the most part, it’s a painful process for them. Between homework and assignments for school, activities, and sports, it’s hard to find time to write your essay .

And while it’s hard to sit down and turn that blank piece of paper into something poetic, it’s ten times harder if you don’t even know what you want to write about. Sure, you have the Common App essay prompts to work off of, but which one is going to help you write the essay which will propel your application from good to great?

If this is you and you’re having a tough time just getting some ideas on paper, here are a few prompts to get your creative juices flowing:

• What is your favorite subject and why?
• How do you spend your time outside of school?
• What are your most unique talents?
• What is important to you?
• How has a moment in your life inspired you to be a different person?
• What is a life lesson that you’ve learned (especially if you learned it the hard way)?
• What are your greatest strengths?
• What are your weaknesses?
• What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever done?
• What is the most interesting place you’ve ever visited or travelled to?
• What is an accomplishment or achievement you are most proud of?
• What is an obstacle or challenge you have had to overcome?
• Who is someone in your life you are inspired by and why?
• What jobs have you held and what have you liked and disliked about them?
• How are you different from your friends or classmates?
• What is your relationship like with your family (think immediate and non-immediate family)?
• How would your best friend describe you?
• How would your parents describe you?
• How would your brother or sister (if you have either) describe you?
• If you had a “do-over” in your life, what is something you would do differently and why?

Some of these prompts require you to dig a little deeper than others, but at the end of the day they are all designed to do one thing: get you thinking about yourself. Because that’s what your essay is for; an opportunity to tell admissions counselors about awesome and wonderful you.

If you have questions about writing your college essay or would like some help getting unstuck from writer’s block, use the comment box below or email me directly at [email protected] . I would love to hear from you!

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Where to Begin? 6 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises

←8 Do’s and Don’ts for Crafting Your College Essay

Creating the First Draft of Your College Application Essay →

The Common App publishes a list of 7 prompts each year. They ultimately ask for similar types of responses, regardless of slight alterations year-to-year. The Common App prompts provide you with a forum to write about yourself, using whatever anecdote or vehicle you wish in order to communicate something profound and genuine about yourself to adcoms.

If this feat seems daunting or spellbindingly vague to you, you are not alone. For virtually every student applying to college, the moment when you sit down to draft your personal statement is likely the first—and may end up being the only—time in your life when you are pushed to describe your entire identity succinctly and eloquently. So, where to begin?

As with any writing assignment, the best way to approach the personal essay is to brainstorm what it is you want the entire essay to communicate about you to the adcom that will be considering you for admission. Read on for 4 surprising brainstorming exercises that will lead you to an effective personal statement strategy.

1. Consider the four core questions.

When writing your personal statement, there are four questions that your essay should answer:

• “Who am I?”
• “Why am I here?”
• “What is unique about me?”
• “What matters to me?”

These questions are important because they help bring awareness to the kind of person you are and touch on things such as your personality traits, your journey throughout high school, the interests and skills that make you unique, and what’s important to you. Colleges want to understand how you became who you are, and where you’re going (successful alumni reflect well on their school, after all!).

2. Try freeform writing.

To help answer these questions and start brainstorming, freeform writing is a good place to start. Begin by writing down 3-5 aspects of your personality or experiences and spend some time constructing narratives out of these different combinations.

This process of getting some ideas on paper and seeing how they can relate to each other can help you better identify a prompt that works for you. For example, you might note that you enjoy tutoring students in STEM, and are now working with a local school to create a Women in STEM initiative in your school district. You may also have tried previous initiatives that failed. These experiences could be constructed and applied to a number of Common App prompts. You could address a specific identity or interest you have associated with STEM, discuss what you learned from your failed initiatives, explore how you challenged the lack of women in STEM programs in your school district, envision solving for the lack of women involved in the science and mathematics fields, etc.

3. Make a list of opinions you firmly hold and explain them.

This exercise requires you to think about aspects of your identity that you have actively chosen. While exercise #4 asks you to consider what parts of your identity you have struggled to overcome, this exercise asks you to consider what aspects of your identity you are most proud of—those opinions that you hold because you chose to believe in something specific of your own accord.

This is an important brainstorming exercise because it should get you thinking about things you are passionate about. Ultimately, you will want to write your personal statement about something that defines you, gets you excited, and can exhibit your ability to think and speak for yourself. So now, before you start writing, make a list of the things that you care about most, and explain why you feel that way about them.

This list can include everything from your political affiliation to your stance on McDonald’s decision in the past year to serve breakfast for longer. The point of this exercise is that there is no right or wrong way of going about it, no topic that is more worthwhile than any other so long as you are passionate about it.

4. Make a list of your character flaws.

While the ultimate goal of the personal essay is to present yourself in as positive a light as possible to adcoms, the challenge is to do so in a way that is realistic and genuine. To do this, you’ll need to do some serious thinking about what types of character flaws accompany your best traits.

There are two main reasons why we suggest that students not shy away from talking about their own shortcomings as well as their achievements. The first reason is quite simple: a personal statement that paints a picture of its writer as perfect and without flaws will come across as dishonest and unrealistic. Obviously, you want to avoid this at all costs. Second, and even more important, if you are able to write a personal statement that acknowledges your flaws and recognizes that you are imperfect, it will reflect positively on you and vouch for your maturity.

If it feels counterintuitive or scary to dwell on anything other than successes, do not fret: that is the expected reaction to this advice. But if done correctly, acknowledging that you are not perfect can add genuineness to any personal essay. So, how to discuss character flaws? There are several ways to go about this.

One way is to discuss a character flaw that you have always struggled with and worked to improve upon throughout your life. In this scenario, discussing flaws can help introduce a discussion about growth or maturation and give your personal statement a nice narrative arc. Yet another way to discuss your character flaws is to acknowledge how certain struggles or personal shortcomings have shaped your identity, allowing you to go into more detail about the ways in which you were able to better yourself by identifying a flaw in yourself and being willing to fix it.

The thinking here is that students have no difficulty remembering all of the accomplishments, productive experiences, and glowing achievements that they want to include in their personal statements. After all, it is easy to write about these things. It is much harder to force yourself to think about aspects of your identity that rankle, and to think about how these things have shaped you.

5. Reflect on your choices and why you made them.

Another brainstorming exercise that can help you think of a topic is to reflect on what choices you’ve made and why. Once you come up with a list, it will be easier to see what you value and the direction in which you can take your essay.

Think about some of these questions to get the juices flowing:

• Why are they my best friend?
• Under what circumstances did we become friends?
• When did we last fight?
• If I had to spend 10 days doing the same exercise or physical activity, what would I choose? Why?
• Say I had to pick one food, and my three closest friends or family members could only eat that food for one week. What would that food be and why?
• Say I had to start a business selling something, and I would achieve the average level of success (financially, socially, etc) within that business, what would I choose to do?
• What movie would I want to take the place of a character in and which character would I want to play? Why?
• What class or teacher did I like most, and why? What class or teacher did I dislike most, and why?
• If I had to choose between singing, doing standup comedy, or dancing in front of 18,000 people, what would I choose? Why?

6. Make a list of anecdotes, childhood memories, or stories about yourself. Then choose one and make it your “vehicle.”

Finally, you should conclude your brainstorming session by searching for a vehicle: an anecdote that you can use to frame your personal statement.

You can use anecdotes in your personal statement in a number of ways. Some students choose to open with one, others close with one, and still others will use two or three anecdotes in order to add color and rhetorical flair to the points they are trying to make about themselves. The best types of anecdotes are the ones that tell the most about you or give insight into your character.

When we help students write their personal statements, we usually begin by brainstorming a few potential anecdotes to use in your essay. But if you are wondering what the point is of using an anecdote— Why use one at all when I could save words and just talk about myself ?—it’s useful to first understand why telling a story or two makes your personal statement stronger.

Ultimately, you will want your personal statement to communicate something about your character and personality that is unique and appealing to schools. When an adcom reads your personal statement, they are looking to hear about you in general, they are looking to learn something unique or special about you (so they can differentiate you from other applicants), and they are also looking for evidence that you would be a valuable addition to their community. But the fact of the matter is that these are fairly broad and vague directives to write about if you don’t have something specific to focus on.

This is where the anecdotes come in to save the day! They help instigate a conversation about yourself, your personality, your identity, and your character while also giving you something concrete to talk about. This is why we call it a “vehicle”—it can exist in its own right, but it carries with it important information about you as well.

Now that you know what the purpose of this vehicle is, it should be a little easier to brainstorm the anecdote(s) that you choose to frame your personal statement with. If you are not yet sure what to write about in your personal statement, you can start brainstorming anecdotes from your childhood, from favorite family stories to fond memories, from hilarious vacation mishaps to particularly tender moments. Do your parents have favorite stories to tell about you? Write those into your list as well.

Once you have a collection of stories to work with, you may begin to see certain patterns forming. Perhaps all of your favorite stories take place in the same setting—a vacation home that meant a lot to you or in the classroom of your favorite teacher. Maybe, you will realize that all of your fondest memories involve a certain activity or hobby of yours. Or, alternatively, you may notice that one story from your childhood mirrors or foreshadows a like, dislike, or accomplishment that would come to fruition later in your life.

If you already know what you want to say about yourself, you can come at the same exercise from another angle: try to think of several anecdotes that could be potential vehicles for the message about yourself that you want to transmit. If you want to illustrate that you love to learn, try to think pointedly about where that love comes from or what you have done that proves this. In this case, remember that any given anecdote can reveal more than one thing about you.

It is hard to imagine all of the possible personal statements that could come out of this brainstorming session, but it is almost certain that this exercise will help you come up with several concrete points to make about yourself and provide you with a tangible way to say those things.

Final Thoughts

If after doing these six brainstorming exercises, you still don’t feel ready to write your personal statement, fear not! Writing a personal essay is daunting and won’t be done in three steps, or even three days! 

For more guidance, check out these blog posts:

How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges

How to Come Up With an Idea for a Personal Statement

How to Write the Common App Essays

Mastering the Personal Statement

5 Tips for Editing Your College Essays

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Brainstorming for College Essays

Introduction

As the number of college applications submitted each year continues to grow exponentially and competition stiffens among the thousands of high- achieving students seeking admission, it has become increasingly important for applications to illustrate a complete, holistic picture of themselves. That has put a great deal of emphasis on the essays, which indeed, are vital pieces of the puzzle. While your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities begin to show who you are on paper, the personal statement essay and other supplemental essays bring you into three-dimensional form for college admissions officers. The essays are your chance to make your voice heard and if executed properly, will help colleges determine whether you are a good fit for their university.

Please Note: This guide is intended to help you brainstorm and begin writing your college essays. This is a part part detailed guide. This is the first part, the other three parts are below:

• Part 2: The Perfect College Essay Structure
• Part 3: Sample College Essays
• Part 4:  Supplemental College Essays

Through exercises, worksheets, and discussions of sample essays, my hope is that by the end of this course, you will have in-depth knowledge of what colleges want to see in your essays, at least one or two (and hopefully more) essay ideas, and a solid start to your first draft.

To get the most out of this course, take your time with the exercises and the overall process. A large part of writing a successful essay is self-exploration and self-reflection. Another large part is understanding that an outstanding application essay requires thought, patience, lots of rewriting, and more rewriting. But most of all, you can and should have fun with this. You get to write about you and the things that interest and move you.

Enjoy the process!

2020 Common App Essay Prompts

The Common Application, known as the Common App ( commonapp.org ), is accepted by close to 900 schools, and will likely be the main tool you use for applying to schools. It allows you to compile all your information in one  place and easily disseminate it to the colleges of your choice. Other alternatives include the Coalition Application and applying directly using the school’s own application, but for this course, we will focus on the more popular Common App. Once you’ve written the essay for the Common App, it can be easily adapted to fit other applications.

On the essay portion of the Common App, you will be required by most colleges to answer one of the prompts in 650 words or less.

The 2020-2021 Common Application Essay Prompts are: ‍

• 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.
• 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?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea.What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Describe a problem you solved or a problem you like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• 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?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Which prompt should you choose?

Unless bells and whistles went off when you read a particular prompt because you’re certain you have the perfect story that fits it, then don’t worry about choosing just yet. It’s best to start with your brainstorming and then decide if you have an idea that matches a prompt. Meanwhile, the Common App gave students a gift when they added prompt number seven a few years ago, allowing you to submit any kind of essay on any topic. So, if your idea does not accurately and completely answer a certain prompt (which it must do), then play it safe and choose the last “freebie” option.

What are colleges looking for in your essay?

Before beginning your brainstorming and drafting, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of what kinds of things you should be communicating through your essay. The college admissions officers reading your essay can learn a lot about you through your words, overall theme, and depth of thought. The story you choose to tell is merely the backdrop and framework for a bigger picture. Your ultimate objective is to create a portrait of yourself in 650 words or less that shows your persona, unique aspects of your character, and why and how you will contribute to a university community.

For example, your essay can show colleges that you are:

• Intellectually curious about the world you live in Introspective
• Someone who takes initiative Motivated
• Hard working Creative Compassionate
• Someone who will contribute ideas, service, collaborative efforts, leadership
• Someone who brings a unique perspective or cultural experience An innovator
• Someone who loves to learn (even beyond school subjects) Committed (to a cause, to family, to friends, a belief, etc.) Able to adapt to new environments, overcome challenges

While these are the types of qualities colleges often want to see in students, this is not an exhaustive list and it doesn’t mean that you should fabricate or embellish information to fit into one of these categories.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR YOU TO DO IN YOUR ESSAY IS TO BE AUTHENTIC! ! Colleges want to know who you are and that you’ve taken the time to personally reflect on who you are and who you desire to be.

So let’s start with an exercise that will help you with that reflection process and uncover some of your personal qualities that could shine through in your essay.

Worksheet 1:  Self-Exploration

Part 2: Ask 2 other people (a parent, relative, or friend) for 3 adjectives they would use to describe some of your character/personality traits. Record them below

Worksheet 2: Self-Exploration

For this next section, set aside at least 30 minutes when you will be undisturbed and can give your full attention to contemplating each question. Remember to answer genuinely and not from the perspective of what you “think” colleges want to hear. Take your time and write as much as you can to fully answer the questions. Sometimes the best nuggets/ideas/revelations come toward the end after you’ve gotten some of your initial thoughts down on paper. Use a separate paper or document to record your answers if needed.

• What do you love to do so much that when you’re doing it, you lose track of time?
• How are you unique or different in some way? Maybe you have a unique perspective, belong to a certain culture or group, or have a unique hobby.
• What moves you? What makes you angry? Or joyful? Why?
• What do you want colleges to know about you that they won’t find on the rest of the application?
• What is your superpower? What superpower do you wish you had?
• What is your ultimate goal in getting a college education? (be honest)
• What/how would you contribute to a college community? (think broadly here – could be a diverse perspective, cultural tradition, friendship, collaboration, leadership, new ideas, school spirit, etc.)
• What positive impact do you hope to have on others/society?

Worksheet 3: Creating Your Personal Purpose Statement

Now, using your adjectives from Worksheet 1 and the answers in Worksheet 2, let’s create a Personal Purpose Statement. You can actually create more than one statement if you feel you can’t narrow yourself down to one. The idea is to loosely define the kind of person you are and what you hope to achieve. It can serve as a guiding vision of what you want to communicate through your essay.

Complete the following statement:

I am a _____________, ______________, and _______________ person who loves _________________ and hopes to make a difference/impact by _______________.

Example: I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma

In this example, the student might decide that their essay should display their sense of humor because that’s one of their unique personality traits. Maybe they can talk about how humor has healed them in some way. Keep in mind that your essay should “show” rather then “tell.” So you wouldn’t just say, “I’m funny and make people laugh.” You’d write an essay that perhaps make the reader chuckle or talks about a humorous situation or a time you made someone laugh or did something silly.

This Personal Purpose Statement can serve as an anchor for you as you move through the essay process. Return to it often to make sure you are communicating these core ideas in your essays. You may even want to check your overall application to review if it is reflecting these important qualities. 

Ideas For Your Essay

Again, make sure you have some quiet time and space without distractions. For this exercise, refer back to your Personal Purpose Statement from Worksheet 3. You may want to have Worksheets 1 and 2 on hand as well for added inspiration.

The next step is to come up with some stories/personal experiences that relate to your Personal Purpose Statement since these are the main things you want the colleges to know about you. Below you’ll find some questions to help guide you in brainstorming and mining your memory for ideas. It can also be helpful to ask family members for stories they might remember about you. Keep in mind you want to be honest and vulnerable and while you may reference things from your childhood, colleges are interested mainly in events that have impacted you during or just before your high school years.

Using our previous sample statement, “I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma,” the student should think of personal experiences that demonstrate that they are kind, outgoing, or funny, as well as events and people that inspired them. For instance, maybe they’ve volunteered cheering up young children who are ill. In this case, they could tell a story about a certain child they interacted with who had a particular impact on them.

Okay, your turn.

Answer the following questions based on your Personal Purpose Statement:

Note: If you don’t have an answer directly related to your statement, answer the question anyway as best as you can. Every bit of information is helpful!

• What stories or experiences have I had that demonstrate the adjectives that describe me in my statement?
• Do I have any interests, hobbies, passions that relate to the statement? Is there a moment when I was doing those things that changed me, made me think differently, learn something, or choose to be or do things a certain way?
• What led me to know that this was how I wanted to make an impact? Try to zero in on the smaller moments or feelings that might have influenced you – hearing a friend’s personal story, a dog licking you in the face, some hurtful words you never forgot.
• Is there a person who inspired me to be this way or helped me know I wanted to pursue a certain path?
• What has been my greatest challenge/obstacle and how did I overcome it? Did it help create who I am or was I able to get through it because of who I am?
• What have I learned about myself over the last five years? What have I proven to myself? How did my personal characteristics contribute to this or were they created or changed somehow? Is there a story that demonstrates this?
• What have been my biggest accomplishments (not necessarily academic or school related)? What did they teach me? Is there a story you can use without bragging about the accomplishment that shows how you were transformed in some way? For instance, maybe you started a club to help homeless people. Tell us about how you befriended “Joe” and how he gave you a whole new perspective on homelessness.
• Have my family, culture, traditions, or identity contributed some way to my understanding of myself and the world, and/or who I want to be in the world? How?

Additional Brainstorming

Not every student has a story about a challenge, obstacle, or moment that changed them. If this is you, do not worry, because everyone does indeed have some kind of story to tell about themselves. Sometimes it’s challenging to think and talk about yourself, or you may think you don’t have something “interesting” to share (you do!). Often you just need to keep exploring. Some of the best ideas come when you least expect it – like when you’re taking a shower, or playing a sport, or doing chores.

So use the previous and following questions to get you started thinking, then put them away for a couple days and see if any inspirations come. Come back and review the questions again with a fresh mind. You can do this as many times as you need. Take your time and write down EVERY idea, even if you think it’s not a great one. You’ll end up with a good list that will be helpful for your supplemental essays as well.

• What’s your favorite movie? Book? Podcast? Show? Why?
• What’s hanging on the walls in your bedroom? What’s on your shelves?
• What’s your favorite app? Video game? Why?
• Where is your favorite place to hang out?
• Is there a special place you visit on a regular basis?
• What is something you learned/taught yourself just for the fun of it?
• What is something about you that few people know? (Maybe you love watching horror movies or have a collection of sports memorabilia or spend every afternoon baking with your grandmother….)
• What’s your favorite kind of music?
• What’s your favorite thing to do with your friends?
• What fictional character would you love to spend the day with?
• What real-life person, dead or alive, would you love to spend the day with?
• If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?
• What is your least favorite activity?
• What’s one of your fondest memories?
• List a couple of times where you failed at something and a couple of times you succeeded.

Some Ideas You Could Work With

Review your answers on both sections and list at least 3 ideas you could use for your essay:, the power of storytelling.

The best essays rely on one of the most natural, but powerful, techniques storytelling. Everyone has stories. You tell stories all the time when you talk about something that happened to you today. You listen to your family’s stories. You have stories that stick with you because they are especially memorable.

Often stories, especially in books and movies, follow the classic Hero’s Journey, which basically takes the character from an ordinary life, through a challenge or obstacle, and then through some transformation. This is a great reference point when thinking about how you might tell one of your own stories in an essay. In addition, you can find some great inspiration on storytelling on “The Moth” podcast or at themoth.org, which hosts storytelling competitions around the world. Watch some of the storytellers and see how they use description and detail, build interest and suspense, and then tie it all together so the story has a clear purpose and message.

Ultimately, what makes stories such an effective device in your essay is that they “show” rather than “tell.” You don’t want to say in your essay, “I’m funny. I like to make people laugh.” By telling a story that shows your sense of humor and how you felt making another person laugh, you make that point in a much more meaningful way.

Keep this in mind as you begin to explore further for the story or stories you can showcase in your essay.

Developing Your Ideas

Time to dive in! Let’s pick an idea and start coming up with some details that you could use in the essay. This process should help you get a feeling about whether you have enough material to work with on a certain topic/theme. Remember this is a trial-and-error process, so you may switch directions several times before finding the essay you want to write. In addition, as you spend some initial time fleshing out your topic here, pay attention to how you feel about the subject. This essay should be something you will enjoy writing.

See ”Example Answers” following this questionnaire if you need a little more help.

Answer the following questions to help you elaborate on the idea:

• How does this story illustrate what you want colleges to know about you?
• List at least 3 points you can make with this story:
• Write at least a paragraph summarizing your main story/theme.
• Describe some of the background leading up to the story.
• Zoom in on some details. Pretend you are taking a photograph of a moment from this story. Describe it in detail. Who was there? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What are the images, colors, environment in the scene?
• What was the major turning point/highlight in the story?
• Discuss in more detail the outcome and how it impacted you. What did you learn? How were you changed?
• What is the life lesson? How will use this going forward? Is there something in this story that helps guide you in the way you will approach your life in college?

Example Answers

Here are some sample answers that our sample student might come up with. Remember the student’s personal purpose statement is, “I am a kind, outgoing, and funny person who loves to make people laugh and hopes to make a difference/impact by creating uplifting comedic productions and/or therapies that will help people heal from trauma.” Main Idea/Story/Theme: Volunteering at All Children’s Hospital – How Jill’s laughter healed me and made me realize what I wanted to do for others

1. How does this story illustrate what you want colleges to know about you?

• I believe laughter and comedy are healing
• I’m a kind person, volunteering/spending my free time with Jill, other kids
• I’ve done research on laughter as a healing medicine
• I have a goal to expand comedy programs/therapies in hospitals

2. List at least 3 points you can make with this story:

• Comedy is a valuable artform
• Healing modalities don’t always need to medicinal or serious
• I would contribute to a college by living this philosophy/perhaps creating similar programs

3. Write at least a paragraph summarizing your main story/theme (doesn’t have to be perfectly written at this point; these are just notes). The summer after my freshman year, I joined a couple of friends in the Healing Hearts program. We visited sick children twice a week. They wanted us to read to them, keep them company, play games. I met Jill on my second visit. She was 7 years old and had a rare lung disease. We didn’t even talk about that much. Mainly, she told me about what a pain it was to be poked and prodded and tested all the time. She just wanted to be a normal kid playing with her friends at home. That part of me that just wants to see people smile kicked in. I started coming up with jokes, books, and other things that I thought would entertain Jill. That one day, Jill finally broke out into an all-out giggling attack I saw her so differently. She was, if even for a moment, not feeling or thinking about pain or being sick. She looked completely different too. Then I got caught up in the laughing too and I felt it too. Relief. It clicked right then. Maybe I had always wanted to make people laugh because it made me feel better when they were happy. Was that selfish? As we kept laughing, I realized we were giving each other a mutual gift. Laughter is contagious. I also started wondering about its real healing effects.

4. Describe some of the background leading up to the story. ‍ I’ve always loved watching a good comedy, stand-up comedians and making people laugh. When someone isn’t happy, it becomes my mission to turn their frown upside down. I never really understood the power of humor, however, until ironically, I started what some would consider a very sad volunteer job spending time with young children who have major and sometimes life-threatening diseases. Even my mom tried to talk me out of doing it, thinking I’d end up depressed.

5. Zoom in on some details. Pretend you are taking a photograph of a moment from this story. Describe it in detail. Who was there? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What are the images, colors, environment in the scene? Moment with Jill laughing. Sitting in her room which was drab white and gray. Only color was from a few pretty pictures she had drawn that were hanging on the wall. Her mom was sitting in the corner reading a book on her kindle. I had brought my own joke book that day, determined to get her to laugh. The jokes kept bombing though. She’d chuckle politely. Then the nurse came in to check on her. She took her temperature and blood pressure, said a few words to the mom, and left. Jill rolled her eyes. Then I rolled my eyes dramatically. Jill rolled her eyes and this went back and forth a few times until I just crossed my eyes and pretended to pass out on the floor. Jill started to laugh so much I saw tears forming in her eyes. I started laughing too and then I snorted. That was it. We both lost it. Even her mother couldn’t help but laugh too.

6. What was the major turning point/highlight in the story? Jill transformed before my eyes when she was laughing. This little girl who always looked sad and in pain was suddenly light and free. I witnessed the power of a good laugh and felt it for myself as well.

7. Discuss in more detail the outcome and how it impacted you. What did you learn? How were you changed? I wanted to investigate and learn if there was any real data to support laughter being healing. I did a research paper and found some interesting studies (can give some stats). It also made me realize this was something I would always participate in, whether as a volunteer or hopefully as more of a career.

8. What is the life lesson? ‍ How will use this going forward? Is there something in this story that helps guide you in the way you will approach your life in college? I will definitely pack my sense of humor and my desire to make others smile when I go to college. There’s plenty of seriousness in the world. I prefer to see the brighter side.

What Makes A Good Essay?

As mentioned previously, a good college admissions essay is authentic, reveals something about the student that can’t be found in the rest of the application, and shows that the student is introspective and self-aware.Remember that the admissions officers are reading hundreds of essays, so at the minimum, you want to submit a well written, well-thought-out essay that is error-free. At best, you are hoping to give them an interesting essay that holds their attention and is memorable for them. Don’t let that intimidate you. As an essay advisor who has read countless essays, I never tire of reading the fascinating stories students share. Everyone has a story to tell and there are infinite ways to weave your own personal tale and introduce yourself to the reader.

Some of the basic elements that comprise a “good” essay are:

• An attention-getting opening line or paragraph (the “hook”), which we will discuss in more detail later
• A strong conclusion
• Conversational tone – this essay is not a research paper or literature essay with a strict structure. Think of it as a blog entry.
• Clean writing, meaning there are no spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors (make sure your essay is proofread several times by different people before you submit it)
• Overall, it flows well and makes sense
• Accurate word count (you don’t have to be exact, but don’t go over or way under)
• If answering a prompt, make sure your essay stays focused on the subject of the prompt
• It’s written in your voice, meaning it sounds like you (readers can tell when parents, advisors, or teachers have helped a little too much)

What Makes A Bad Essay?

I’d love to say there are no bad essays, but there are occasions where students veer off track. here are some common pitfalls you should avoid:.

Don’t brag about yourself or your accomplishments. Example: Here’s a line from one student’s first draft: “Even though I was one of the smarter kids in the highest class…” Now, even though the student was trying to make a point about how shy they were, this line comes across as boastful. Stay away from these kinds of statements or find a way to say it that doesn’t sound like you are bragging. Exceptions would be if it is part of a bigger story in which the actions or outcomes are revealing something about your character or a lesson learned. Along the same lines, don’t list your accomplishments in your essay. That’s what the other parts of the application are for. Don’t use words or ideas that don’t sound like you. It’s nice to stretch yourself a bit in your writing, using synonyms to avoid repetitive words and showing that you have a wide vocabulary. But some students get caught up in impressing the readers and sprinkle their essays with complicated words they don’t even understand. Again, admissions officers read right through that. Be yourself! Don’t rush through the essay writing. It will show. Don’t get too cutesy. There’s a fine line between originality/creativity and trying so hard to be different that it misses the mark. Don’t use too many clichés. For instance, “life is hard,” “you don’t appreciate things until you lose them,” “every cloud has a silver lining.” Communicate these things in your own original thoughts and words. I would add that using quotes at the opening of essays is also cliché if not executed properly. Don’t use profanity, discuss bodily functions in too much detail, or overshare about personal situations, such as your sex life. (Yep, people do these things.)

There are also some topics that are best to avoid if possible, mainly because they are overused or not well-executed. The caveat here is that I have seen some exceptional essays on these subjects so don’t get discouraged if you want to tackle one of these. Just make sure your essay has a personal twist and demonstrates an insightful, mature view of how you were affected and changed.

Some of these “tricky” topics include:

• Sports stories . A lot of students tell the common story about a great victory or defeat. Not only is it overused, but students also fall into the trap of giving more of a play by-play account, rather than speaking about themselves and their emotions and perspectives. If you’re going to use an athletic experience, make sure it tells something about you as an individual – how you were transformed, what you learned, how it affected who you are today.
• Personal tragedy stories . Again, you may have a poignant story to share about loss, illness, grief and those do make for some compelling, heartfelt essays. If you choose to write about it, make sure to focus mainly on the personal growth and transformation you experienced as a result of the tragedy. The mistake students sometimes make is getting bogged down in the minute details of the event. You’ll want to give no more than 25 percent of the essay to relaying the tragic details and spend the rest of your word count letting the reader know what role this tragedy played in your life on a broad scale and perhaps, how it influenced you to a certain path.
• Volunteer/mission/community service experience. This has just been done too many times. But if you have a unique twist that covers more than “it opened my eyes to things I never knew,” then go for it. Maybe you made a lifelong connection or chose a career because of it.
• Writing about a person who has influenced you . The biggest pitfall here is spending too much time talking about the other person so the reader learns more about the person you’re writing about than they do about you. This type of essay is successful when you show how that person influenced your values or character and how that’s being expressed in your life.
• I’m going to add Covid-19 to the list this year as no doubt, thousands will write about this issue. Keep in mind that the Common App has added space for a brief optional response on this topic (see Part VI for more on this). My fear is that on the personal statement, admissions officers’ eyes may begin to glaze over when they see another Covid-19 essay. On the other hand, I do think there will be some powerful stories that emerge from this shared global experience. If you have a compelling personal story related to the pandemic that truly changed/impacted your life, thinking, or life path in some way – and requires more than the 250 words you’re being allotted on the Covid-19 essay – then just make sure to tell it in a way that focuses mostly on your unique experience/ transformation. Similarly to the personal tragedy subject, you shouldn’t spend time talking about details that everyone is already familiar with; focus on the impact it had on you.

What makes an essay stand out from the rest?

The French phrase, je ne sais quoi , comes to mind when trying to answer this question. It means, “an indefinable, elusive quality, especially a pleasing one.” Often, it’s difficult to pinpoint what makes an essay special or memorable; it just has that je ne sais quoi and you know it when you read it.

That said, there are some common elements that are typically found in outstanding essays:

• Creativity/originality – something new that the reader hasn’t seen a hundred times
• Compelling storytelling
• They evoke emotions, perhaps inspire
• Show depth of thought
• Include vivid descriptions and details

The good news is that you don’t have to be a master writer, have experienced an earth-shattering experience, or have all life’s answers to create an excellent essay that the reader will appreciate. Simply being willing to be vulnerable and share honestly goes a long way. And some of the best essays I’ve read are based on simple, everyday stories and experiences. The following section has a few exemplar essays with comments following each to point out what makes them successful.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, generating ideas for college essays: any brainstorming tips.

The deadline is creeping up and I’m still staring at a blank document. ☹ I’ve gotta come up with a solid topic for my college essay but my mind is just blanking. Anyone have good strategies for brainstorming essay ideas or ways to get inspired?

It's completely normal to feel stuck before such an important task as writing your college essay. One strategy I often recommend to students is to start with a 'brag sheet.' Take some time to jot down all of your accomplishments, no matter how big or small they might seem. This can include awards, personal milestones, challenges you've overcome, or special experiences that have shaped you. By doing this, you might discover a common thread or a unique event that stands out as a possible topic for your essay. Another approach that works well is free writing. Set a timer for 20 minutes and just write whatever comes to mind without worrying about the structure or grammar. This can help unlock your creativity and may lead to an unexpected yet poignant essay angle. Also, consider discussing with friends or family members about moments they think define who you are. Sometimes, others can see aspects of our character and experiences that we take for granted. Remember, the goal of your essay is to provide a glimpse into who you are beyond grades and test scores. A compelling story or reflection can come from everyday moments, so don't discount the seemingly mundane experiences; they often hold the most genuine and relatable insights. Keep pushing through the block; your story is there waiting to be unearthed.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Brainstorming

What this handout is about.

This handout discusses techniques that will help you start writing a paper and continue writing through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help you choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic’s potential.

Introduction

If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain’s energies into a “storm,” you can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm.

Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help you to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project that hasn’t reached completion. Let’s take a look at each case:

When you’ve got nothing: You might need a storm to approach when you feel “blank” about the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of anxiety about the topic, or just too tired to craft an orderly outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs up the dust, whips some air into our stilled pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.

When you’ve got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain and need to bring in some conscious order. In this case, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you some concrete words or schemas that you can then arrange according to their logical relations.

Brainstorming techniques

What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time brainstorming about…well, how to brainstorm.

Try out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on; some techniques might suit a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment better than others. If the technique you try first doesn’t seem to help you, move right along and try some others.

Freewriting

When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing down whatever comes into your mind. You don’t judge the quality of what you write and you don’t worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you can’t think of what to say, you write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write if you were being too self-conscious.

When you freewrite you can set a time limit (“I’ll write for 15 minutes!”) and even use a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit (“I’ll write until I fill four full notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!”) and just write until you reach that goal. You might do this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.

The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:

“This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to all the lectures and read the book I can’t think of what to say and I’ve felt this way for four minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I’ll keep thinking nothing during every minute but I’m not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don’t know what else to say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather’s study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn’t farm tobacco…”

When you’re done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read back over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste them into your draft or onto an “ideas” sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if you don’t find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic.

Break down the topic into levels

Once you have a course assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:

• the general topic, like “The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers”
• a specific subtopic or required question, like “How did the availability of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?”
• a single term or phrase that you sense you’re overusing in the paper. For example: If you see that you’ve written “increased the competition” about a dozen times in your “tropical fruits” paper, you could brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main terms: “increased” and “competition.”

Listing/bulleting

In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. You can base your list on:

• the general topic
• one or more words from your particular thesis claim
• a word or idea that is the complete opposite of your original word or idea.

For example, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time, and your specific thesis claims that “the 20th century presented a large number of inventions to advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century society,” you could brainstorm two different lists to ensure you are covering the topic thoroughly and that your thesis will be easy to prove.

The first list might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on society. The second list might be based on the opposite claim, and you would instead jot down inventions that you associate with a decline in that society’s quality. You could do the same two lists for 19th-century inventions and then compare the evidence from all four lists.

Using multiple lists will help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, sure enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you’d better alter your claim to one you can prove.

3 perspectives

Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completely—or at least in a completely different way, sort of like laying on the floor makes your desk look very different to you. To use this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives, then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore:

• Describe it: Describe your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your subject from those that are similar to it. How is your subject unlike others?
• Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has it changed over time? Why? What are the significant events that have influenced your subject?
• Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How? What does it influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields do you draw on for the study of your subject? Why? How has your subject been approached by others? How is their work related to yours?

Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is six-sided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six “sides” or approaches to the topic. Take a sheet of paper, consider your topic, and respond to these six commands:

• Describe it.
• Compare it.
• Associate it.
• Analyze it.
• Argue for and against it.

Look over what you’ve written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your topic? What interactions do you notice among the “sides”? That is, do you see patterns repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis? Does one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side help you draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a way that serves your topic. It should, at least, give you a broader awareness of the topic’s complexities, if not a sharper focus on what you will do with it.

In this technique, complete the following sentence:

____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.

In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then try to brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second blank, writing them down as you come up with them.

After you have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come forward? What patterns or associations do you find?

Clustering/mapping/webbing:

The general idea:

This technique has three (or more) different names, according to how you describe the activity itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together into a sort of “map” or “web” that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start with chaos. After the chaos subsides, you will be able to create some order out of it.

To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or tape two pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you are working with a group of people. This big vertical space allows all members room to “storm” at the same time, but you might have to copy down the results onto paper later. If you don’t have big paper at the moment, don’t worry. You can do this on an 8 ½ by 11 as well. Watch our short videos on webbing , drawing relationships , and color coding for demonstrations.

How to do it:

• Take your sheet(s) of paper and write your main topic in the center, using a word or two or three.
• Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way you are driven to fill it, start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or terms as you can associate with the central topic. Jot them quickly, move into another space, jot some more down, move to another blank, and just keep moving around and jotting. If you run out of similar concepts, jot down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down your grandpa’s name, but try to keep moving and associating. Don’t worry about the (lack of) sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
• Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, you can start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and then draw a line connecting the circles. Find some more and circle them and draw more lines to connect them with what you think is closely related. When you run out of terms that associate, start with another term. Look for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and then link them with a connecting line. Continue this process until you have found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might end up uncircled, but these “loners” can also be useful to you. (Note: You can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If that’s not possible, try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to see what goes with what.)
• There! When you stand back and survey your work, you should see a set of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this point you can start to form conclusions about how to approach your topic. There are about as many possible results to this activity as there are stars in the night sky, so what you do from here will depend on your particular results. Let’s take an example or two in order to illustrate how you might form some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you’ve decided to keep. At the end of the day, what you do with the particular “map” or “cluster set” or “web” that you produce depends on what you need. What does this map or web tell you to do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!

Relationship between the parts

In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of one sheet of paper:

Looking over these four groups of pairs, start to fill in your ideas below each heading. Keep going down through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that comprise the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions can you draw according to the patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see? For a related strategy, watch our short video on drawing relationships .

Journalistic questions

In this technique you would use the “big six” questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also record yourself or use speech-to-text if you’d rather talk out your ideas.

Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth and content? Was there one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness help you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might it reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or further note-taking?

For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more about “where” and “why” something happened than you know about “what” and “when,” how could you use this lack of balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might you organize your paper so that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the field of study? What else might you do with your results?

Thinking outside the box

Even when you are writing within a particular academic discipline, you can take advantage of your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Let’s say you are writing a paper for an English course. You could ask yourself, “Hmmm, if I were writing about this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history course, how might I see or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer point of view?”

For example, when discussing “culture” in your English, communications, or cultural studies course, you could incorporate the definition of “culture” that is frequently used in the biological sciences. Remember those little Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those dishes are used to “culture” substances for bacterial growth and analysis, right? How might it help you write your paper if you thought of “culture” as a medium upon which certain things will grow, will develop in new ways or will even flourish beyond expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly altered, or stopped altogether?

Using charts or shapes

If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists or phrases as you try to shape or explore an idea. You could use the same phrases or words that are central to your topic and try different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a graph, on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty old flow chart. The important thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and see how different spatial representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If you can’t imagine the shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the page and then draw lines between or around them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square? umbrella? Can you put some ideas in parallel formation? In a line?

Consider purpose and audience

Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking act: purpose and audience.

What is your purpose?

What are you trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose will lead you to a different set of information and help you shape material to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you are writing this draft in this form. For more tips on figuring out the purpose of your assignment, see our handout on understanding assignments .

Who is your audience?

Who are you communicating with beyond the grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience need first, second, third? Write about who you are writing to and what they need. For more on audience, see our  handout on audience .

Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias

When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all stripe. Visit the library reference areas or stop by the Writing Center to browse various dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online counterparts. Sometimes these basic steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that you’ll learn several things you did not know.

If you’re looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your most important terms and see what sort of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help you to appreciate the term’s breadth or realize how much its meaning has changed as the language changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?

If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see what suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug “good” into a thesaurus search, you will be given 14 different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the film Good Will Hunting, imagine how you could enrich your paper by addressed the six or seven ways that “good” could be interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various aspects of “good.”

An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, get quick background, or get a broader context for an event or item. If you are stuck because you have a vague sense of a seemingly important issue, do a quick check with this reference and you may be able to move forward with your ideas.

Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what do you do now?

Take the next step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps you’ve been brainstorming about to complete your “almost ready” paper. If you’re a fan of outlining, prepare one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you’re not a fan, don’t make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups of sentences or full paragraphs) to expand upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep building from there into larger sections of your paper. You don’t have to start at the beginning of the draft. Start writing the section that comes together most easily. You can always go back to write the introduction later.

We also have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as reorganizing drafts and argument .

Remember, once you’ve begun the paper, you can stop and try another brainstorming technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to find what suits you or the particular project you are working on.

How can technology help?

Need some help brainstorming? Different digital tools can help with a variety of brainstorming strategies:

Look for a text editor that has a focus mode or that is designed to promote free writing (for examples, check out FocusWriter, OmmWriter, WriteRoom, Writer the Internet Typewriter, or Cold Turkey). Eliminating visual distractions on your screen can help you free write for designated periods of time. By eliminating visual distractions on your screen, these tools help you focus on free writing for designated periods of time. If you use Microsoft Word, you might even try “Focus Mode” under the “View” tab.

Clustering/mapping. Websites and applications like Mindomo , TheBrain , and Miro allow you to create concept maps and graphic organizers. These applications often include the following features:

• Connect links, embed documents and media, and integrate notes in your concept maps
• Access your maps across devices
• Search across maps for keywords
• Convert maps into checklists and outlines
• Export maps to other file formats

Testimonials

Check out what other students and writers have tried!

Papers as Puzzles : A UNC student demonstrates a brainstorming strategy for getting started on a paper.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Allen, Roberta, and Marcia Mascolini. 1997. The Process of Writing: Composing Through Critical Thinking . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cameron, Julia. 2002. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity . New York: Putnam.

Goldberg, Natalie. 2005. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within , rev. ed. Boston: Shambhala.

Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

University of Richmond. n.d. “Main Page.” Writer’s Web. Accessed June 14, 2019. http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb.html .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Home / News / Academic Writing Tip: 8 Brainstorming Techniques

Academic Writing Tip: 8 Brainstorming Techniques

So, you’ve read and re-read the academic writing assignment that you received from your professor, and now you’re staring at a blank page.

Does your mind feel as blank as the page? Are you Frozen by fear? Rubbing your eyes with exhaustion?

Whether you’re writing an essay for a community college in Boston, Massachusetts or a university in New England, USA, you need to start somewhere. Brainstorming means you use your imagination and prior knowledge to collect thoughts. After gathering a great quantity of ideas, you select the highest quality ideas.

Filling that empty white document can feel like leaping into unknown icy water. Brainstorming is the way to warm up for a deep dive into the EAP topic.

Brainstorming begins with simple questions. What do you know about the topic? What do you want to learn about the topic?

As you brainstorm, you journey farther down the academic writing quest. How do you narrow down a topic into a thesis? How do you gather the examples and evidence necessary for an academic essay?

Here are EAP brainstorming strategies to jumpstart the engine of your creativity.

Brainstorming tip #1: Freewriting

Do you have no ideas? Or the opposite problem—too many ideas?

Freewriting means what it sounds like—you’re free to write whatever comes to mind. The point is not to make it perfect—not even necessarily to make it good—but just to put thoughts on paper—no rules, no revising. You can even write about how you don’t know what to write about.

The only limit you should set for yourself is that you write for a specific period of time—let’s say 30 minutes—or for a specific number of pages—let’s say 2 pages. Non-stop activity gets the juices flowing, and a concrete goal gives you satisfaction. Here’s an example of freewriting:

This essay is supposed to be about the Boston Tea Party but I don’t know anything about US history except that the American Revolution happened a long time ago (when???) somewhere in Massachusetts or maybe I’m wrong. I can’t think of anything else to say and now the clock says two minutes, I’ll keep babbling anyway. Boston, MA, politics, tea. My grandmother used to make tea when I stopped by after my English courses. But that’s not useful for this essay. Or maybe there’s a connection. Hmmm… I remember the professor talked about the taxes in the New English states (colonies?) and my grandmother used to complain about paying high taxes at the market and…

Freewriting stimulates your brain the same way physical exercise wakes up your mind.

Brainstorming tip #2: Making a Cube

Draw a cube in your notebook. Each of the six sides has a task:

Side 1: Describe the topic.

Side 2: Compare the topic.

Side 3: Connect the topic.

Side 4: Classify the topic.

Side 5: Argue for or against the topic.

Side 6: Personalize the topic.

Instead of those 6 tasks, you could replace those verbs with other academic tasks: apply, analyze, question, connect, define, classify, associate, or explain cause and effect—whichever inspire ideas.

Imagine your topic is attending university in the U.S. Next to each point on the cube, you would write words and phrases inspired by the verb at hand:

Side 1: Describe: Exciting, difficult, expensive, growing opportunities, expensive, valuable.

Side 2: Compare: Different from my country. USA = more essay writing, dorms with roommates, critical thinking, fewer standardized exams and lectures, smaller classes.

Side 3: Connect: student visa policies, US immigration law, IELTS, TOEFL iBT, travel restrictions from covid-19, globalization means more English at work.

Side 4: Classify: community colleges (Holyoke, Greenfield), state universities (UMASS Boston), private ivy league (Harvard) graduate schools, MBA, BA, MFA programs.  

Side 5: Argue for : opens doors, better jobs, international workplace, investment in future, social networking, broadens horizons.

Side 6: Personalize: my cousin > engineering degree, MIT internship, campus resources help with culture shock (which worries me.) IELTS stresses me out!!!!  Way to avoid?

This brainy approach works if you like approaching topics from different angles.

Brainstorming tip #3: Clustering

When you cluster, you draw bubbles and connect words and concepts associated with the topic—anything that comes to mind.

This visual method works when you have a lot of random thoughts and you are trying to “see” connections.

Brainstorming tip #4: Bulleting

With this technique, you make bulleted lists with concepts, terms, and ideas. This can help you narrow down from the first list to a second list. The list on the left contains general bullet points, while the list on the right expands on a single bullet to delve deeper.

This method works great if you’re an orderly person who likes making lists.

Brainstorming tip #5: Venn Diagram

  The famous Venn diagram technique works well for brainstorming differences and similarities between two topics. You draw two intersecting circles and write the qualities they share in the middle where the circles intersect and the qualities that are unique in the left and right spaces. For example, let’s say you’re brainstorming differences and similarities between two cities in Massachusetts, Boston and Northampton.

This famous brainstorming method is used in the academic and business worlds because it so clearly shows differences and similarities.

To analyze relationships among three topics, you can make a Venn diagram with three circles. The 3-circle helps visualize and understand complex connections. You brainstorm three basic questions. Which qualities are unique to each? Which traits do any two topics have in common? Which similarities are shared by all three topics?

Brainstorming tip #6: Tree diagram

The tree diagram begins with a central idea that branches off into categories or supporting ideas.

Imagine you’re brainstorming different types of schools in US higher education.

Tree diagrams are perfect for brainstorming classification essays. You could also draw tree diagrams to brainstorm effects, starting with a cause at the top and branching off into increasingly specific downstream effects. Pretty cool, huh?

Brainstorming tip #7: Journalist Dice

Dice aren’t just toys for games and gambling–they can be a tool for writing. Rolling journalist dice is a stimulating way to flesh out narrative essays. Each side of the die corresponds to one of the 6 question words. To make the game fun, roll a die, and write down one answer the question every time you roll. Roll at least a dozen times to write down a variety of details and ideas.

In addition to building a narrative essay, this brainstorming technique can help you develop a compelling story for your college application essay. For the tired and uninspired writer, the game element of rolling dice makes the writing process more engaging and enjoyable. 

Brainstorming tip #8: T diagram

This method works well if you like thinking in terms of opposites.  Can you say “On the one hand” and “On the other hand”? 

What’s next in the writing process?

After your fast and furious brainstorm, the next step is to create an outline. When you outline, you pick your best and brightest ideas. Then you begin organizing them into a coherent, linear argument. You select and sort supporting points, evidence, examples, and elaboration. To learn more about outlining, click here for the next article in our academic writing series. 

The best way to improve your writing is to join an academic or business English course . With guidance from an expert instructor and feedback from a community of peers, you can master the art of academic writing.

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College admissions

Course: college admissions   >   unit 4.

• Writing a strong college admissions essay
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