5 Common App Essay Mistakes To Stop Doing Yesterday

Hello there, my friends! I'm Kevin Zhen, Exeter grad, Yale grad, amateur breakdancer, and a professional college counselor who’s edited hundreds of college essays and helped dozens of students get into their dream schools. 

In fact, just last year, more than 40 of our students, from every background imaginable—public school students in Florida, boarding school students in the Northeast, and international students from India, Latin America, Canada—you name it; altogether, they were accepted into every single Ivy League and top 20 school. 

Today, I'll be sharing some tips to help you avoid five of the most common Common App mistakes. Let’s begin! 

Mistake 1: Packing Everything into the Personal Statement

Note that your Common App essay is just one instrument in an orchestra. You don’t need to talk about every activity or award you’ve won here, nor should you. In fact, one of the best winning strategies is to just focus on one or two key aspects of a core theme or principle you're trying to communicate. 

For instance, in my own emo Common App essay, I focused on selflessness and vulnerability by admitting how honestly I wanted to quit while working 12 hour shifts at my parents' Chinese restaurant every day. But ultimately, I stuck through and persevered. Knowing that I was focusing on a more personal dimension in my Common App essay, I made sure to reference tons of intellectual concepts and ideas in my supplements– I wrote extensively about magical realism and global diplomacy since I was applying to be a creative writing and international relations major.

Mistake 2: The Resume Dump

Too often, I see students just regurgitate or re-explain their awards and achievements in their Common App essay! Huge mistake!! 

Not only is this rather arrogant and cringeworthy, it kind of defeats the purpose of the essay itself, which is to highlight experiences that can’t be found anywhere else in your application or your activities list. Personally, I prefer reading essays that revolve around family and personal growth, or essays that take a mundane topic or idea and flip it on its head, like the famous Costco essay.

Now, I'm not saying that you can’t write about your activities or extracurriculars at all. Of course, you can. I'm just saying focus on your personal growth rather than centering an entire narrative around some crowning achievement like winning a tournament or performing at a recital. If I’m being real… those are actually some of the worst, most cliché topics imaginable, so avoid those like the plague. Instead, if you could share your failures or moments of weakness and explain how you overcame them, that would actually be far more powerful 💪

Mistake 3: The Problem-Solution Ratio

This is a mistake that I see over 90 percent of seniors make: the problem-solution ratio. 

This is when students spend the majority of their essay talking about things happening to them as opposed to them making things happen. 

Make sure that no more than a third of your essay is related to the problem. Reserve at least 40-50% for your solution, and the final 20-30% should be for your reflection. 

The one exception to this rule would be if you had to overcome some truly insane obstacles like significant medical or financial challenges. Some examples of these would be serving as the primary caretaker of a sick member of your family, or having the electricity or water turned off on you guys because you couldn’t afford to pay for utilities. But even then, I’d still advise you guys to focus on your solution, on your impact, on your contributions (rather than the problem itself). 

Why? The reason is because you can actually share these obstacles you face in another part of your application—the Additional Information section. Ultimately, the Common App essay is used to figure out what kind of community member you'll be, so your job is to articulate exactly what you can bring to the table. And the best way we do that is by referencing your previous leadership experience and demonstrated solution!

Mistake 4: The Eureka Problem

This is when a student abruptly shifts from their problem to their solution and they just claim, "All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I just figured it out." Even if this is how it actually happened, it still sounds pretty unbelievable—and I don't mean that in a good way.

Now, to fix this, all you have to do is say something like, "There was no overnight solution. It took weeks, even months of..." and then you would elaborate and insert specific examples or steps you took, usually at least two or three. 

Something good to include here would be to actually introduce a very short second problem. Just one or two sentences is enough, then elaborate on how you overcame that too. This would highlight your determination and perseverance in the face of unexpected trials and tribulations. 

For instance, let's pretend that you were writing an essay about a beach cleanup. You start by sharing your first problem, which was seeing the dirty beach and your initial solution, which was to recruit folks to help you actually pick up the trash. But afterwards, you found you couldn’t get enough volunteers because, let's be honest, who wants to be in the sun picking up plastic bottles on a Sunday morning? So, your second solution was even more creative. You told your friends that you guys would take the trash and upcycle it by turning it into artwork and then, in true capitalist fashion, sell it online for a profit. 

This double problem-solution template is one of our favorite frameworks and it works like a charm!

Mistake 5: Cliché, One-Dimensional Reflections

This is when a student writes: Through this experience, I learned the value of hard work and determination. Starting my own non-profit taught me the importance of community. 

Not good. Too vague. 

How do we fix this? Well, it’s very simple. We’re going to take two or three really interesting values and then fuse them together. Now, using the environmental art example from before, we could take a mundane reflection like, "This experience taught me creative problem-solving," and upgrade it to something like this: "Cleaning up a beach is not just an act of removal; it's an opportunity for creation, a way to promote both awareness and artistic expression." 

Notice what we did there—we actually took the cliché and then just flipped it on its head by going from removal to creation. Admittedly, this is pretty tough for students to do on their own, so if you are looking for professional help, again, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

That’s all for this article! If you liked these tips, make sure to check out more articles on our blog to polish your essays to perfection! 

Your virtual big brother,

Kevin Zhen