4 Cliches to Avoid in Your College Essays
by Michelle
You may still be finishing up a few last-minute college supplements for deadlines! Or you may have found this post while intrigued by how you can prepare for your summer activity essays or college essays in the future.
Every year, there are 4 cliches that constantly show up in students’ college essay drafts like an inevitable flock of seagulls swarming over spilled french fries. No matter the topic, prompt, or the college you plan on applying to, it is best to think of ways to exorcise some of these cliches from your writing.
If you think about your college essays as a movie or a short film (or a Tik-Tok), think about what kind of story would make you want to watch it, between these 2 options below?
Boring example of a story:
A protagonist sails out on a boat. They get shipwrecked by a storm. Eventually, they get rescued by a passing Coast Guard and make it home safe and sound.
Fun story example:
A protagonist sails out on a boat. They get shipwrecked by a storm. When they wake up, they found that they have travelled through time and get mistaken as an infamous pirate captain by the captain’s crew. Comedy ensues as they try to survive their fish-out-of-water adventure.
The same principle applies for the phrases and sentences you use in your essay. Whatever is new or fun or unexpected will always be more memorable than writing that follows old stale forms and paths.
So what exactly are 4 cliches you want to avoid in your college essays?
passion
“…my passion for chemistry…”
“….my passion for studying history…”
“…my passion for sports…”
Yes, it is a convenient word. Yes, students use it all the time in their essays. For most students, I would say if you really really have to, you could use the word ‘passion’ just once in your essay.
But it would be better to avoid using it if you can, along with similar phrases like “I love biology” or “I love sports.” Think how you may show your passion through your sentences. Perhaps instead of talking about your ‘passion for math / I love math’ you describe how you skillfully used math concepts like fractal geometry in a mural art piece you made. Instead of talking about a general passion for computer science, you could discuss how the normalization of surveillance technology in society made you consider the ethics and issues involved at the intersection of technology and government policy.
Out of my comfort zone / “pushed me out of my comfort zone”
Please do not use this, do not pass go and collect $200.
How can you rewrite this instead? Readers won’t understand at a glance what your comfort zone is (which is different for everyone!), and it would be harder to show growth if you are not able to articulate the spot where you started from.
Perhaps you may focus on describing on your specific feelings, instead of packing it into ‘doing this task was out of my comfort zone.’ You can think about focusing on how nervous you were, or mixed emotions you had while doing something challenging. You can also consider describing specifically how overwhelming or tough a task seemed to be at first, or even just describing what the big task you had to tackle was.
Out-of-the-box thinking
The issue is that this cliché kind of makes your essay sound like a LinkedIn profile, which as we all know makes for riveting reading.
(I would not advise putting this on your LinkedIn profile either, actually).
See what different wording you could use for this instead or if you could discuss what made your own idea unique from other ideas, to specifically show your creativity or inventive thinking.
the value of hard work/determination/never giving up/ time management.
The trouble with this value is that it is also self-evident for thousands of other students who also have 4.0 GPAs and honors and dedicated extracurriculars. What else is unique about you that you wish to share with the college?
You can think of it as similar to a bakery trying to advertise that a tasty cake is made of flour, which 99% of other cakes also contain, and people would not be surprised to know.
If hard work and determination is the main value that you first pick, you will want to go back to your brainstorming board to change it to see what other fun or fresh values you can bring up into your writing to highlight, like a value of making people laugh with your witty science puns, or the value of nuance and changing your mind about an issue you had never considered before.
So EssayNarwhals, think about how you can cut out these cliches in your essays, and sing a song that will help others pick you out across the ocean!