When you’re thinking about writing your college essay about video games, you’ll be at a crossroads…

How you write your essay –and how it sounds– can make or break your chances at college. It can be the difference between UCLA and UC Berkeley, or Cornell and trade school. That’s why writing your college essay about video games can seem especially scary.

The world of college essay writing is brutal. The probability you’ll make at least one mistake is near guaranteed. It may have you asking a few questions.

• Is it okay to write about my college essay about video games?
• How do I write my college essay about video games without sounding inappropriate?
• Will the admissions officers judge me if I write my college essay about League of Legends? Will they even understand the lingo?
• What if I don’t have anything else to write about in my college essay? What if all I have is video games?
• Will being Asian American and writing about video games negatively impact my admissions chances due to stereotyping?

This can be scary, especially when it jeopardizes your chances of attending college.

However, I have some wisdom that, as an admissions consultant, I believe will help you overcome all the “what-if”s that come with choosing video games as your college essay topic.

Long story short: It’s okay to write your college admissions essay about video games. Period.

I’ll say that again.

It’s okay to write your college admissions essay about video games.

Period.

Trust me on this. When I worked as an admissions expert in the general Southern California area before founding PenningPapers, I was bombarded with questions like “is it okay to write my college essay about video games/sports/movies” all the time. I’ve helped many students get into their reach schools despite lower test scores and GPAs. The same pattern repeats itself.

Students who write to impress the admissions officers have okay-ish essays.

Students who open up in their college essays have stellar essays that make a significant difference in the admissions process.

I’ve come across apprehensive people, both students and controlling parents, who were absolutely terrified of having video games in their college essays. Nonetheless, it is absolutely critical that you drill this principle into your mind: most college essay topics are just fine. It is less about the topic itself, and more about how you demonstrate yourself as a valuable asset to the universities.

Remember: universities are screening for the best students. It’s capitalist, roughly speaking.

So, when a university asks “what are your hobbies and interests”, they are really trying to dig into your brain. They need to deconstruct you. That’s how they see value in you as a student. It’s how they determine whether to invest time, money, and professors in you.

Thus, the question is not “can I write my college essay about video games”. Rather, the right question is this: “how do I write a college essay about video games that show my value as a potential candidate”?

In this article, we’ll be covering exactly that. We’ll be discussing how to write your college essay about video games, and more importantly how to do so in a manner that gets you accepted anywhere. Well, okay. Not everywhere, but at least more places than you normally would.

Table of Contents

1. Writing Your College Essay About Video Games
2. College Essay Red Flags
3. Demonstrating Value as a Candidate Through Video Games
4. Stereotypes, Asian American Identity, and Other Considerations In College Essays

Writing Your College Essay About Video Games

When writing your college essay on any topic, regardless of whether it involves sports, mental health, video games, etc, you want the essay to be about you. Sure, you’re talking about video games in your college essay. However, the overarching objective of the college essay writing process is to show the admissions officers’ qualities about you. The games are secondary, and they should only serve to qualify traits and characteristics about you.

Something else you should consider is that there is more to video games than the actual game itself. There is also the culture, development process, and personal meaningful attachment that goes along with it. These should be leveraged in your application.

Think about people who enjoy basketball. The value-free proposition is that basketball fans love seeing people toss an orange circle around a court and place them in nets. This doesn’t tell us anything about people who enjoy basketball. However, if you account for the long history of rivalries, the friends made along the way, and the sense of camaraderie developed through rigorous team efforts, there is much more to a basketball fan that we can see.

Okay. Now let’s take a look back at video games.

There’s the video game in itself; that includes the controls, rules, and functions. Outside of that is the culture surrounding the game, and the community built around it. So, if you are in love with the Super Smash Bros community, you may say that the community plays an important role. How would this manifest itself in an essay? Let’s take an example college essay structure about Super Smash Bros.

College essay outline structure

“Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”

Common App Prompt 7

• I’ve always had a love for the Super Smash Bros series.
• More than just the game, I’ve shared many memories playing with friends who had the same interest.
• The game has helped me wake up a competitive drive that I never knew I had before.
• Strangely enough, it molded me into a more disciplined person –unlike with other games.
• The inside jokes and silly moments pulled me through tough times I never knew I could have pulled through.
• The last few years have been peppered with academic adversity, grit, and determination. It has made pursuing a major in business a rigorous journey.
• However, Super Smash Bros played such an important role in both my personal growth –both through the game and the community it threw me in– that it is the topic I felt would make my college admissions story incomplete without it.

Notice how in the example above we’ve demonstrated more about the person than the game itself?

This is the key to writing your college essay about video games. You need to make sure the essay reveals more about you as a person. In the example above, we talk about how the culture around Super Smash Bros, the inside jokes, the friends we’ve made along the way, and the community has molded you into someone more capable and determined. However, we also conclude with how this topic has a soft spot in your heart and makes up a great part of your experience. This helps the admissions office use your essays as a tool to understand you better and, more importantly, better understand why you deserve to attend their school.

Now, let’s talk about red flags when writing your college essay about video games.

College Essay Red Flags

For obvious reasons, there are certain video games that may not be appropriate to talk about in the college essay.

For instance, video games that clearly cover sexual abuse, child abuse, controversial topics, and questionable violence can make the college essay tread dangerous territory. There are exceptions. However, you want to make sure you are careful about which games you are covering specifically and what the underlying connotations are.

Another red flag that can come up with video games is the bad rep they get, especially in academic settings. It is often the case that students are told not to play video games if they don’t want to develop video game addiction. They may also want to avoid appearing like video games make them perform worse academically or pose a threat to their future performance at university.

People tend to be more accepting and understanding of video games in the modern era. However, the social stigma that comes with video game culture still lives on –especially in older audiences. Those who have a stigma against video games tend to believe “gamers” are…

1. unable to focus
2. inappropriate
3. antisocial
4. prone to bouts of anger “gamer rage”
5. addicted
6. performing poorly in academics, or will be

It is important to dispel the bad impression of game culture as a whole when writing your college essay. You can do this subtly through subtext, or just dedicating one short paragraph specifying how you segregate yourself from the “toxic” side of gaming.

Some genres of video games also tend to attract a certain type of audience and, thus, cultivate an archetype of people in the community. For instance, Animal Crossing is often associated with people who take gaming casually. However, games such as the Doom series have received a bad reputation from social activist groups for their subtle jokes about social justice culture. This can also be lumped into the “gamer culture” in general.

Not every admissions officer is going to go into a deep dive into the types of video games that you play. However, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Make sure to do a background check on the video game that you will cover in your college essay, and ask yourself whether it would leave a good or bad impression on you if you were the reader.

Demonstrating Value as a Candidate Through Video Games

This is the most important thing to consider when writing your college essay about video games.

We know we covered this briefly in the beginning, but we want to clarify this further. The goal of the college essay is not just to write about yourself, but also to provide the admissions officers with a tool to better understand you. They use this to measure how valuable of a candidate you will be for their school.

Think of the college admissions process as a capitalist format. Let’s say you own a university. Your goal is to create a space of higher learning that will fit the setting, create a haven of well-cultured and sociable students who feel welcome, and generate enough profit from said students to create a positive feedback loop. This requires you to accept students who would be the best fit for this sort of structure. Who would you like to spend your time, money, and professors on?

1. Someone who has an interest in video games.
2. Someone who has an interest in video games and shows how the video games influenced both their career path and their social group.

The second option gives us much more content. It helps us understand as admissions officers why they may be a great fit for the university. Although the topic is about video games, it still reveals to us that games played a big role in structuring their career path and how they make friends. We get to know more about the person, and not the game itself.

Thus, you may want to ask yourself this: how exactly do I want to look like in front of the admissions officers? Use those traits, and demonstrate how video games have nurtured that part of your personality.

Stereotypes, Asian American Identity, and Other Considerations In College Essays

This part is something that needs to be addressed very clearly.

Most universities will not directly discriminate against you based on your identity, race, or sex. However, there does exist very clear discrimination against certain groups. This includes specifically Asian and White students. This is because White and Asian students tend to perform higher in academic performance historically; so, to level the playing field, they will need to perform much better than average.

In terms of writing your college essay about video games, you may run the risk of being compared to the many other Asian Americans who will also write their essays on video games. When you have a topic similar or in the same vein as the rest, you effectively have to compete against everyone else who may have a better essay than you.

Remember: many people love video games. You’ll have to find a way to stand out amongst the rest of the applications. However, this will be especially true for students applying as Asian.

One last consideration you may want to, well, consider, is that it would be wise to talk to a college admissions essay editor. Writing your college essay about video games can be a fantastic idea, as long as you don’t fall into pitfalls that so commonly happen. We’ve seen both very strong and very weak college essays about video games. So, consider scheduling a free consultation with us. We can get back to you within 24 hours and provide you with feedback and advice on how to best improve your college essay. We’ve seen many college essays about video games, so we’ll know exactly how to make yours stand out amongst the rest to get you accepted.