Look, we’re going to be quite honest here: out of all our clients, many wanted to write their college essay about trading and stocks.

It’s not like there’s anything wrong with it. And, it’s not as if there’s a plethora of “finance bros” just walking into PenningPapers HQ giving firms handshakes and all. If anything, it’s just that there’s a good number of impressive students with smart trading acumen.

But, here’s the catch.

This is what we like to call a “swing topic.” Swing meaning that it can swing in either of two directions: a very good essay, or a very bad one. While writing your college essay about trading and stocks can be very impressive and exciting, there are a lot of traps that need to be avoided.

But, don’t worry! We can show you how to write a solid trading and stocks college essay that shows your unique talents and qualities. We’ll show you everything you need to know to craft a compelling trading essay that highlights your analytical thinking and passion for finance.

Alright, let’s get right to it.

Table of Contents

1. How to Write Your College Essay About Trading and Stocks
   • Trust. Trust. Trust.
   • The Importance of Challenges and Humility.
   • Circle Back to Academic and Career Goals.
   • Highlight WHY Your Victories Helped You Develop Skills in and Out of Trading Stocks.
   • anchor-1#anchor-1e
   • Don’t Forget to Look at the Bigger Picture.
   • Get Feedback From College Consultants With Experience in Finance.
2. Sample College Application Essay on Trading and Stocks
3. Conclusion

How to Write Your College Essay About Trading and Stocks

As you can probably tell from the table of contents section above, we’ve been quite particular about writing this topic.

You can’t just casually write about trading and stocks in your college essay without coming across a few obstacles. So, we’ve created the following list of tips to cover as much as possible. Please don’t disregard any of these tips, and carefully read them from beginning to end before getting to the example essay!

Note: you don’t have to follow each and every single one of these tips to write a successful college essay about trading and stocks. These are just our most-important tips. So, we recommend reading them one by one.

Trust. Trust. Trust.

Yep, that’s right.

Trust is your best friend.

When writing a college essay about trading and stocks (or, really anything about investing and finances) your trust is the #1 priority. It’s becoming more common for students today to try to game the system by making their achievements seem more impressive than they actually are.

For instance: students often write about a few stock trades they’ve made that have earned them a lot of money. But, these trades can often be brushed off as beginner’s luck, which builds bad habits like excessive risk trading.

Another example of this is students getting involved in selling untrustworthy investing tutorial lessons. These are often scam-like; and, admissions officers are no strangers to student involvement in such activities.

So, be careful!

Because you’re in the investing, stocks, and trading industry, your trust will especially matter to admissions officers. If you so much as flicker a falsehood in the admissions essay, it’s safe to say your application may not get accepted.

So, what about earning trust?

One of the best ways of demonstrating trust to admissions officers is to write about your weaknesses, challenges, and personal obstacles in achieving your victories. This lets admissions officers see the more personal side of your story. And, it gives much-needed context that personalizes your experience.

We’ll show you exactly how to do that in the next section below!

The Importance of Challenges and Humility.

If you’re writing your college essay about trading and stocks, you’ll need to demonstrate the challenges you’ve come across.

The world of investing and trading is not short of challenges. Also, you’ll need to elaborate on said challenges. It shows the depth of work you’ve done in the stock market. Additionally, writing about your challenges will help admissions officers see the full picture behind the work that you’re doing. As a general rule, experiences that you write about that don’t include challenges are often not worth writing about.

Here’s another factor: humility.

By demonstrating humility in your stocks and trading essay, you can demonstrate openness and transparency. A trader or investor who is willing to share their mistakes is one who does not let their ego get to them. So, their experiences are more trusted.

In other words, your statements hold water. And, if your statements hold water the admissions officers can trust you.

And, we all know trust is worth its weight in gold.

Circle Back to Academic and Career Goals.

In your essay, explain how your experience trading stocks and investing connects back to your academic and career goals.

This is a rather simple step. And, you can usually dedicate 1-2 paragraphs to it. Often, your experiences trading in the stock market will introduce you to different interests and passions.

For instance, maybe quantitative approaches to trading such as using simulations with R have motivated you to pursue computer science alongside finance. Or, analyzing the management and business structures of budding businesses to create proper investments may motivate you to learn more about management in theory.

Draw from your experiences and use them as evidence for why you want to pursue certain majors and fields.

And, on a deeper level, you can transition this into what you want to do in future career goals. This goes back to why your academic pursuits would further improve your career options in your chosen field.

So, here’s a visualization.

Highlight WHY Your Victories Helped You Develop Skills in and Out of Trading Stocks.

Remember: being a great trader or investor doesn’t just make you someone who can master the market.

Students who have experience trading or investing can develop a plethora of skills that can be applied outside of the known sphere of the stock market. Maybe trading has humbled you into being more careful where you put your money, therefore making you a more cautious person. Or, maybe investing long-term has taught you the value of compounding growth over time in not just money but also in friendships, work habits, etc.

Below we’ve listed some soft skills you may have developed from trading and investing.

1. Adaptability: Markets shift dramatically, hence the importance of pivoting. Trading under such circumstances makes you an active learner unafraid of challenging new topics and unusual conditions.
2. Discipline: Traders must have a trading plan to stick to, despite the fear of missing out (FOMO) or other emotional decisions.
3. Stress Management: Trading is stressful. Duh! If you’re capable of handling the stresses of the stock market, you can certainly handle upper-division courses!
4. Patience: This is obvious: both traders and investors need patience, not just in the market but in themselves. It’s a skill that’s crucial at the college level.
5. Research/Handling Data: A successful college essay about trading and stocks isn’t complete without research. Research and data analysis is crucial to making the right investment decisions; so, you can apply this principle to your future academic experiences.

Remember, you’re not limited to just these soft skills alone. You can write about any of the soft skills you developed in your college essay about trading and stocks. Just be sure to connect some of those ideas to the real world.

Remember: Passion is Attractive!

Passion: the underrated trait!

For many, business and finance is a means to an end: a comfortable position with money.

But, there’s also the love of learning for the sake of the topic. If you’re someone who has a deep passion for the world of stocks and trading, show that in your writing! Seriously! It’s a big element that is important for your field and to your admissions officers.

For one, you can show admissions officers that you’re genuinely interested and have an intellectual curiosity for the topic. This is crucial for setting yourself apart from the rest of the admissions pool. Additionally, admissions officers will be less likely to believe that you’ll drift away from your intended major. You’ll stick with it without unnecessary shifts in major. And, of course, you can also show admissions officers that you’re truly dedicated to the school through your passion (which is good for their retention rates, *wink wink*.)

Now, here’s the thing: how can we show passion?

There are a multitude of ways you can do this. But, we’ve listed 4 good places to start.

1. Use descriptive language to convey your enthusiasm. Paint a vivid picture for the reader by using sensory details, metaphors, and compelling language.
2. Explain how your passion aligns with your core values and beliefs. Discuss why this topic is important to you and how it reflects your character and aspirations.
3. Incorporate personal anecdotes and experiences that illustrate your passion. Describe specific events, moments, or challenges that have shaped your relationship with the subject. Show, don’t just tell.
4. Understand why you are passionate about this topic. What draws you to it? How has it impacted your life, and why do you want to explore it further in college?

Don’t Forget to Look at the Bigger Picture.

It’s often hard for students to zoom out and really look at the big picture.

What’s the big picture? Well, you need to show your readers reasons why they should accept you as a suitable candidate. In other words, what are the characteristics and personality traits they can draw from your experience?

If you focus too much on the mechanics and operations of stocks and trading, you risk having no space to write about yourself as a character.

At the end of the day, you can still write your college essay about trading and stocks. However, it’s still intrinsically about you as a candidate. Think of your experience in the stock market as a medium with which you communicate your personality traits, not the primary topic at hand.

Here’s an example:

“I lost a lot of money during this trade. I was confident that my strategy was bulletproof; yet, I was mistaken. At the end of the day, I found my portfolio had lost 30% of its original value. “

Bad Example of Showing Character When Writing Your College Essay About Trading

This first example shows what happened on a surface level. It tells us that we lost a lot of money. While that’s quite an unfortunate circumstance, the admissions office is looking for reasons to accept us at the end of the day. It doesn’t demonstrate a moment of growth, reform, etc.

Now, let’s look at the second one.

“We thought it would work, my brother and I. After all, our family considered us the “math wizards” of the house; so, how could it have gone wrong? Yet, in life, anything can go wrong including the stock market.

Well, no. It wasn’t the market that was wrong. It was us two for our arrogance in believing we could predict the future.

We both lost 30% of our portfolio’s original value that day. And, it was a massive lesson to be learned. As strange as it is, I don’t regret it. Lessons like that, as severe as they are, carried with them the gravity and severity needed to truly wake me up. I was not always going to be correct. I can sometimes be wrong. And, more important than being right, my greatest skill that I’ve developed is in learning how to brush myself up after a great loss.

At the University of California, I’ll be facing both obstacles and opportunities: potential startup opportunities, chances for research, moments to make the best friendships that ‘ll last forever. And, I may make mistakes; I’m only human, after all! But, I’ll certianly make the most of my mistakes to learn from them, brush myself up, and get back on my feet…”

Good Example of Showing Character When Writing Your College Essay About Trading

The big picture here is that trading should mold your character into something stronger, better, and more capable of handling the adversities of college. In this case, the passage clearly highlights their character. This makes it easier for admissions officers to see the value the student ultimately provides.

Get Feedback From College Consultants With Experience in Finance.

We’ll be frank: writing your college essay about trading and stocks is unconventional.

One, you’re showing colleges an uncommon topic for a lot of students your age. Two, there are not a lot of people who will know what to make of your topic if you can’t explain it correctly.

Nonetheless, the uniqueness of trading as an essay topic along with the potential it wields to sway admissions officers is nothing to scoff at. If you have the knowledge and experience, writing your college essay about trading and stocks is worth it.

But, do it wisely.

That’s why we recommend you write your essays with the help of a college admissions consultant who is experienced in the topic. A good college consultant worth their salt isn’t just a good writer. They’ll also have the right investing and finance experience to make solid inferences and analyze your essay.

Sample College Application Essay About Trading and Stocks

“The ancient Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.”

Perhaps the Oracle would have also predicted Socrates the greatest trader in all of Greece. After all, it’s the arrogance of believing oneself competent at “timing the market” that leads to the downfall of many a trader.

Or, maybe Socrates would have looked at the modern stock market and thought “What in the name of Zeus is this shenanigans?!”

I for one knew that was my reaction at my first trade.

Before I made my first trade, I had just turned 18. It was a special time for my family and I; though, not all too special considering I was the middle child of two very special siblings: my elder brother, who was my mother’s favorite, and my younger sister, who was my father’s favorite.

Me being the middle-child following Chinese-American customs, I was granted a Lai Si (red envelope) of $200.00 for my sweet 18th —hey, $200 of anything is considered a cosmological range for an 18-year-old!

That evening, I considered what I should be doing with the $200. I was always thinking of investing it into a 3D printer to get into small-scale manufacturing; but, I also ruminated over getting a new table from IKEA, as my current one soldiered through many a hot-glue-gun disaster. But, my father had an interesting idea.

“Kevin, you’re quite the Math guy in our family. Why not consider using the money to learn about the stock market?”

Originally, I thought the world of the stock market had nothing in store for me. But, his phrasing, “to learn,” truly struck a chord with me. Although I was our school’s club president of the Numbers club, I didn’t fancy myself an experienced quant at a hedge fund. However, the thought of digging into a rabbit hole with only risking a Lai Si as a downside was infinitely worth it.

And… wow.

To say I learned a lot would be shorting it.

Applying my knowledge in programming, data analysis, and observing business operations, I made my first profit trading Enphase Energy… out of luck. And, I lost some and made more. Rinse and repeat.

But learning about trading and stocks wasn’t just about profits and losses in “the market” on a cosmological scale. Zeroing in on it, the past few months have been a rollercoaster ride of learning quantitative simulations in R, the history of said mathematical theorems in practice, applications in investment banking, and —I know, it gets weird— how meme culture has shaped trading into a socio-political war.

With 200 dollars, I had the chance to speak with others in the quantitative analysis industry, learn of the inane sales and marketing done in trading, the shady practices of businesses inflating valuation, the history of scams, and even the legal nightmare that often ensues in the world of investing and banking.

Ultimately, this experience has taught me that I don’t really quite know what I want for the future. I’ve learned so much about the mathematics, the finance, the business, and even the history and lore of trading. If anything, I would be happy both documenting the world of trading as an individual journalist or online content creator and working as a quantitative analyst myself.

It’s hard to say. But, I’m glad to say that my portfolio rose 2400%…

Which, really is just from 200-5,000.

So, at the end of the day, I really don’t know anything. But, I know that in knowing nothing I am on my way to looking at the world of the stock market from a completely new angle. I’m excited to see where this goes; perhaps I can even learn at university how to trade like a Greek philosopher —minus the memes.

Successful Common App Essay About Trading and Stocks —NYU Stern

Conclusion

Yes. You can write your college essay about trading and stocks. It’s a great skill that takes a lot of time, patience, and persistence to truly learn; and, even then it’s a humbling experience. So, there are a lot of great characteristics to draw from a trading or stocks college essay.

But, make no mistake. This is no easy essay to write. By choosing this topic, you’re taking on a difficult path to writing a cohesive story that compels readers. That’s why we highly recommend speaking with us for a free consultation. Our college admissions experts have experience in the finance world that would help increase your essay’s effectiveness. In other words, we can help edit and revise your essays to get accepted into some of the best schools in the nation, including but not limited to NYU, UPenn, Brown, Cornell, and more.