Welcome to Part 3 of our blog series on how to write the Common App essay for 2022-2023!
In Part 1 of this series, we introduced the Common App essay prompts for the 2022-2023 school year and compared them to the prompts from last year, and went over the first essay option. In part 2, we unpacked the second essay option for this year’s Common App. If you thought that part 3 would cover the third prompt…well, you’re completely correct.
The third essay prompt option for the Common App is identical to the third option last year:
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
This essay prompt is, in our opinion, a little heavy-handed, but if you take the time to think it through, you can use this essay prompt to shine.
Common App Essay Prompt #3: What are they really asking?
As with most of the other prompts, there are some implicit questions behind the prompt. The questions in application essays are designed for the school to assess not just your intellectual capacity, but also your emotional maturity. In other words, this prompt is basically asking, “Prove that you have the kind of emotional maturity and attitude we want.”
To understand this specific prompt better, we need to take a quick step back and explore some important topics from psychology (they’re good to know about anyway, we promise).
Positive Psychology and the Common App Essay
The prompt is really asking you if you have a growth mindset. If you’re not familiar with this idea, a growth mindset is a concept from psychology. It refers to an attitude and approach to life that acknowledges and embraces change, particularly change of the self. This mindset is exemplified by, for example, admitting when one is wrong, and embracing the idea that learning is an active process rather than a symptom of a fixed characteristic like IQ. A growth mindset is often indicative of, or even used synonymously with resilience; resilience indicates that someone can take setbacks in stride and grow from them.
Growth mindset, and the field of positive psychology that has sprung out if it, has become very popular in recent years, particularly in education. While you can go to college and learn all about psychology and argue about various theories and the evidence supporting them, these are nonetheless extremely influential psychological theories that have become part of pop culture and that most people understand as totally true. The point is, these concepts are considered critical by most schools and decision-makers in them, and naturally, admissions committees want to admit students who have change or growth mindsets. It makes sense: After all, if you already know everything, you won’t get very much out of an education; the same goes for if you believe you can’t really learn anyway. And college is stressful, so schools and admissions committees alike want to make sure they’re admitting students who can handle the setbacks that are part of learning.
Prompt #3: What to Avoid
Now that you know what they’re really asking, you might be a little nervous about how to approach this essay. Don’t stress too much, but try to avoid the following:
- Being boring and literal. Can you even imagine how boring it must be to sit in a room all day and read a thousand essays that all say the same thing (“I am definitely a mature person, here’s a very boring anecdote to prove it”) in a styleless, stilted way? Try to make your essay interesting without making it unnecessarily opaque. Don’t “tell.” Instead, show. Start with an image or moment of action or dialogue. Make it a story (albeit a true one) more than an essay.
- Portraying your pre-change self too negatively. Even if you really were, heaven forfend, a Nickelback fan and then you had an incredible interaction with someone resulting in your realizing that Nickelback sucks and opening your ears / eyes to actual music, don’t portray yourself as extremely unlikeable. And being a Nickelback fan will do that. No college wants to admit a Nickelback fan, even a reformed one. OK, maybe we’re being a little hyperbolic here, but you get the idea.
- Portraying too superficial and minor of a change. Maybe a great writer can tell a fantastic and engaging story about how their beliefs about the best route to the grocery store was changed. But let’s be brutally honest. Are you a great writer? Can you tell a story about a completely mundane change with low stakes in a way that conveys something more sophisticated? Frankly, probably not.
- Being too intellectual or abstract. The way the prompt is written, you might think they’re asking you about that time your study hall friend managed to convince you that semiotics was the most valid analytical approach to text. Remember: This prompt is tricky because it can sound like it’s asking you about school or academics, but it’s really asking about how you handle challenges.
So now that you know what to avoid, you’re probably ready to dive into this essay.
Prompt #3: Some Ideas to Get Started
Here are some tips for brainstorming and getting started:
- Think of 3-5 times in your life, ideally from the past few years, when you’ve changed your mind about something. What happened to change your mind? What evidence or persuasive tactics worked? How did this change impact your life?
- Think of some strong beliefs you have (even if you can’t immediately think of a time when you radically reconsidered them). Why do you have these ideas? How’d they form?
- Have you ever changed somebody else’s mind about something? What tactics did you use, or try to use? Which ones worked and which ones didn’t?
Once you have these in mind, try outlining the whole thing into a brief story. And lastly: Make sure you add lots of detail. Use a varied vocabulary, but don’t show off (Vocabulary showing off is a slippery slope… do it too much and you’ll end up an Unemployed Professor yourself). Since you only have about 650 words, make every word count (we’ll talk more about this in our wrap-up post with general tips).
Tune in next time for a fascinating discussion of Common App Essay Prompt #4! Strive to stay resilient!
We exist to put words in your mouth. If you want some help with your college admissions essay, check out what we can do for you here at UnemployedProfessors.com. We’re here for you every step of the way.