Top 5 Mistakes You Need to Avoid in Your Essay

Every year, thousands of students with strong grades, impressive extracurriculars, and genuine potential submit college essays that miss the mark — not because they have nothing to say, but because they fall into one of a handful of predictable traps. Here are the five I see most often, and exactly how to fix each one.

Too many essays describe a challenge or realization but stop there. You write about how volunteering at a homeless shelter “changed your perspective” or how losing a debate competition “taught you humility.” But then what? If your essay ends with “I learned so much from this experience,” you've left the most important part out. Admissions officers aren't looking for students who simply recognize problems, they want students who take action. They don’t know you personally, so the best way to show growth is showing what you’ve done with this awareness you’ve just gained. (And if you can’t think of anything, any instance of you applying these lessons to your life, coursework, or extracurriculars, then this probably wasn’t the right common app topic to begin with.)

Show concrete action steps. Your reader should see exactly what you did after that moment of realization:

• Did you start a new initiative at your school?
• Did you change your approach to a subject you were struggling with?
• Did you have difficult conversations with people in your life?
• Did you commit to a new practice or discipline?

You get 650 words. At first, that sounds generous… until you actually start writing. Suddenly, it feels impossibly small. There’s your childhood, your culture, your family, your biggest challenges, your proudest accomplishments, your favorite activities. How could all of that possibly fit? Some students try to fit their entire high school experience — or worse, their whole life — into that space. This ends up being a surface-level summary where you touch on multiple activities, give a nod to family, a quick mention of hardship, and a neatly packaged life lesson at the end.

Sometimes it’s better to go small. Pick one story: one moment or experience. Then zoom in so far that we can see what you were thinking, feeling, and doing in that specific situation. To use a slightly abstract analogy: if you try to show someone your entire city from an airplane, they'll just see buildings. But if you take them down one street, into one café, and tell them about the conversation you had there last Tuesday — now they understand something real about your life.

You write a draft that feels authentic and true to your story. Then your counselor, parents, English teacher, and older sibling all give feedback. You incorporate all their suggestions. By version seven, the essay is technically "better" — cleaner structure, fewer grammar issues — but it doesn't sound like you anymore. (Heavy on this point because I remember how polarizing the feedback on my own essays was. I rewrote my entire personal statement at one point and seriously questioned whether my topic was a mistake. In the end, though, I chose the version that genuinely reflected my journey — even if it felt unconventional and “risky” to some of my counselors.)

College essays are one of the few places in your application where admissions officers get to hear your actual voice. Your transcript shows your grades, your activities list shows your commitments, your recommendations show others' perspectives — but your essay is supposed to show you. If you edit out everything that makes you distinctive, you've lost the whole point.

Get feedback, but be selective. Consider the source:

• Do they know you well enough to tell if it sounds like you?
• Do they understand what makes a good college essay — not just a good English class essay?
• Are they pushing you toward their vision, or helping you refine yours?

If you keep returning to an earlier draft because it "feels more like me," listen to that instinct. Read successful essays from students who got into top schools — many share theirs on YouTube and TikTok. You'll see how diverse and creative they can be, and that will help you gauge whether your story is genuine, not whether it fits someone else's template.

A lot of students — especially in Taiwan, where family plays such a central role in our lives — choose to write about a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, or a coach who shaped them. Maybe it’s your 阿公 who built a business from nothing. Maybe it’s a teacher who believed in you when no one else did. Of course, these are meaningful and life-changing events, but make sure that the essay doesn’t become their story instead of yours. As harsh as it sounds, they’re not admitting your family member. They’re admitting you.

Try the pronoun test. Scroll through your essay and look at what shows up more: “I,” “me,” and “my,” or “she,” “he,” and “they.” If someone else’s pronouns dominate, that’s a sign you may need to shift the focus back. Then ask yourself: What do I want the admissions officer to understand about me through this story?

"Numerous essays find themselves to be loquacious in their endeavors to relay a consequential moment of appreciable change a writer underwent."

If you had to read that sentence twice, you already see the issue. A lot of students — especially non-native English speakers — feel pressure to prove their English ability in the college essay. So they reach for bigger words, longer sentences, and phrases they would never actually say out loud (sometimes even lines that sound suspiciously AI-generated). The result is stiff and unnatural, like it was pieced together from a vocabulary list instead of real experience. Admissions officers can tell. They read thousands of essays every year — they know what authentic writing sounds like, and they definitely know what thesaurus.com sounds like. Ornate language often hides your actual meaning and personality. Even worse, misusing “big” words can distract from your message and unintentionally weaken your narrative.

Read your essay out loud. If you stumble over your own sentences or find yourself thinking "I would never actually say this," simplify it. Your essay should sound like the most articulate, thoughtful version of yourself — not like you're trying to impress an English professor. Clear writing is good writing. Simple doesn't mean simplistic.

Final Thoughts

The best college essays aren't the ones that sound the smartest or cover the most ground. They're the ones that:

• Zoom in on a specific moment
• Show genuine growth through action
• Stay focused on the writer
• Use clear and authentic language
• Maintain the writer's unique voice

Your essay doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be honest, specific, and unmistakably you.

Alyssa Yang GradKeys Co-Founder · Duke University

Alyssa works with students on college essays and application strategy. She has helped students gain admission to top U.S. universities and writes on the admissions process from an international student's perspective.