Look, we’re just going to say it: Common App Prompt 7 is one of the best prompts students can answer.
Seriously…
While there are a few caveats, prompt 7 has proven (especially when we work with our clients) time after time that it’s the choice for truly standing out.
Again, there are a few caveats. We’re not only going to share the positives. After all, this wouldn’t be a comprehensive guide on how to answer the Common App prompt 7 unless we were nuanced, no?
That’s why we created this guide: to deconstruct it at the molecular level and show you just how strong it can be —despite what many online counselors and college consultants say.
Controversial opinions ahead? Perhaps.
Honest and realistic? Certainly!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
- Is Common App Prompt 7 Bad?
- Why Common App Prompt 7 is an S-Tier Prompt.
- How to Answer Common App Prompt 7.
- 3 Successful Common App Prompt 7 Example Essays That Worked.
Is Common App Prompt 7 Bad?
No.
Common App prompt 7 isn’t a bad prompt. In fact, based on a majority of our students who were accepted into the top 25 schools in the nation, most of them chose prompt 7 compared to the other Common App questions.
Some of these included but are not limited to our clients accepted into MIT, Columbia, Cornell, BU, Duke, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Vanderbilt, and more.
However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The Common App prompt 7 is hard to answer. It gives you unlimited freedom. And, in doing so, it can lead to debilitating choice paralysis.
Additionally, Common App prompt 7 typically creates “cringey” college essays. College essay cringe typically comes from students trying too hard to “force” or “make” their admissions officers think positively of them. The openness of prompt 7 lures students into trying to sound as smart as possible. But, what makes it cringe is “forcing” readers to think they’re smart.
Think of cringe as a breach of boundaries, wherein writers suffocate their readers of all autonomy to think and come to their own conclusions. When you force yourself to be a certain way to make admissions officers see you as impressive, that’s when it’s truly cringe.
If you want to know how to avoid making your Common App prompt 7 essay cringe, check out my Reddit post in the link below.
Why Your College Essays Are “Cringe”: Advice From an Editor
byu/PenningPapers inApplyingToCollege
Keep these weaknesses in mind when answering prompt 7. It’s not the end of the world if you choose this prompt. However, we do find students struggle with these weaknesses when answering it.
With that said, let’s get to reasons why the Common App prompt 7 is a great choice.
Why Common App Prompt 7 is an S-Tier Prompt.
Look. We don’t think it’s accurate to say one Common App Prompt is “better” than another. In fact, we subscribe to the idea that there’s no one “right” prompt to choose. You just have to choose the one that works best for you.
After all, admissions officers don’t discriminate based on the prompt you choose.
Nonetheless, there are some prompts that are easier to respond to than others. And, some prompts are phrased in a manner that we’ve found generate better, more creative essays. And, prompt 7 is one of them.
If we had to rank prompt 7 in a tier-list, we would put them at the very top at S-tier.
Here’s why we think this is a top-choice prompt.
- Compared to all the other Common App prompts, prompt 7 affords you the most utility and creative liberty.
- Prompt 7 is loose with its rules. This makes it easy to write essays with multiple layers of meaning.
- Prompt 7 has often generated the most creative and interesting essay topics.
- Many students don’t know how to write prompt 7 well, giving you a competitive edge.
- This prompt has the most potential for finding great aspects and elements about yourself.
How to Answer Common App Prompt 7.
Below we’ve pasted the prompt.
“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, Common App Official Website
Here we’ll be covering 5 key points to successfully answering prompt 7. If you follow these 5 steps, you’ll be ahead of the game compared to most applicants.
Deconstruct Your Topic.
Common App prompt 7 is not other prompts. Unlike other prompts, you’re working from the ground up to generate a topic.
One way to ground your essay is to deconstruct your topic. This means taking apart every important theme and motif and looking at it with a microscopic lens.
Think about your topic from a feminist perspective. Think of it from a socio-economic point of view. What are the important themes and motifs behind your topic that may be subtly connected to other ideas?
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you want to write about your weight loss journey in your Common App essay prompt 7. Weight loss doesn’t just come with the idea of wanting to be healthier. There are other important elements that occur in this journey.
- You may be treated better for looking thinner and more attractive
- Society’s better treatment of you may reveal to you things about the world that make you feel disgusted, such as the halo effect.
- Is it okay for people to treat others differently for how they look? What if it’s a natural impulse?
- You may notice that weight loss demands a control over what you eat, and therefore it opens your eyes to self control.
- Is self control something that limits you? Or, do you notice you feel more free when you control yourself and your impulses for unhealthy foods?
- When you lose weight, what happened to your friendships? Did you notice that some people didn’t support your better health? What does that reveal to you?
Deconstructing your topic demands you strip apart all the parts of your topic and analyze its underlying themes and motifs in depth. By doing so, a simple weight loss essay can become a sophisticated exploration of your philosophy and character.
Suspend the Illusion of Control.
This is an important topic we’ve covered in a lot of guides. But, here’s a short summary.
Students always get caught up trying to force admissions officers to like them. In the Common App prompt 7, it’s often in trying to make readers think they’re smart, cool, likeable, quirky, funny, etc. This is a major problem because the sense of control is what makes college essays disingenuous. If you want to make an organic, natural-sounding college essay, you MUST suspend the illusion of control.
You can’t force admissions officers to think you’re clever or witty. In fact, you can’t compel them to think anything. Doing so only suffocates them of their right to have their own opinions of you. And, trust us: that’s not leaving a good impression.
All you can do is share the best version of yourself and give them the autonomy to judge you as they see fit.
Avoid Cliché by Going Deep.
Everyone is afraid of sounding cliché. And, many people end up writing cliché Common App prompt 7 essays.
But, this isn’t because of a boring or overused topic.
In fact, there are plenty of unique sports essays, Speech & Debate essays, and volunteering essays that sound incredible whilst being overdone.
The real pitfall students fall for is depth. For, cliché college essays come from students not digging deep enough into the underlying themes, takeaways, and motifs of their essay topic. They presume that they can simply choose a solid topic that sounds interesting and let it stand on it’s own. This is not true.
A good college essay topic will not save you from being cliché. And, a unique Common App prompt like prompt 7 won’t save you from being cliché either. Essays end up sounding overdone because they are generic and not special from others; but, this quality comes from students not digging deep enough into their topic. They don’t explain how THEY felt when they won the game. They don’t dig into the complex feelings of excitement yet fear of having to live up to expectations. There’s no digging into the psychological underpinnings.
You can also check out our Reddit post on college essay cliches here.
Why Your College Essays Are “Cliché”: Advice From an Editor
byu/PenningPapers inApplyingToCollege
Don’t be Afraid of Being Unconventional. Think Laterally.
Common App Prompt 7 is naturally an unconventional prompt. Unlike the other Common App essay prompts, prompt 7 demands students to think laterally by being unconventional.
This means you can’t rely on little tricks that force “quirkiness.”
No, repeating the Costco essay format doesn’t count as being unconventional.
No, forcing yourself to make an inconspicuous object in your home sound deep and profound isn’t unconventional.
You need to think about what feels profound for you, not what does for others. That’s how you make an essay stay unique to you and your experience. And, it’s also how you make an essay unconventional.
By being natural and true to yourself, you’ll more easily look at your essay from multiple angles. You’ll have an easier time approaching it form unusual perspectives to create interesting and compelling ways of looking at your essay.
Remember to Tie Your Essay Back to You.
Lastly, remember not to get too carried away. At the end of the day, the Common App prompt 7 is about you. Admissions officers want to learn more about you.
So, don’t forget to tie your essay back into yourself. Make it clear to admissions officers that you’re a solid candidate and you’ll be a great addition to the school.
Now, you don’t need to be too literal when tying your essay back to yourself. You can imply that you’re a strong candidate. You don’t need to directly say, “this is why I’m a great potential student at university.” Subtlety works perfectly fine!
After all, admissions officers aren’t stupid! They can generally extrapolate form your essay and make inferences on why you’re a great candidate! Just make sure it’s clear enough for your readers to draw said inferences!
3 Successful Common App Prompt 7 Example Essays That Worked.
Note: not all of our Common App prompt 7 examples implement the 5 elements above. The 5 points are merely guidelines. You don’t need to perfectly have all 5 factors in your essay to make it strong.
Confessions of a Gamer Girl
“”So, what’ about me? What do I do?”
“You heal.”
“Oh.”
That’s the life of a “gamer girl.” I can’t lie. It’s not all bad. Perhaps I gave it a bad impression from the start. But, I’d be lying if I said being a girl who loved to play games didn’t make me feel isolated.
I’ll be frank. I love my group of friends. I’m not even saying that to uphold some societal standard for social etiquette and proper mannerisms. I literally mean it. My friends with whom I play games with have stuck with me since I was in Elementary school. The only thing separating us is blood relation.
Yet, there’s an interesting dynamic between us. It’s not intentional, rest assured. However, it’s there nonetheless. It’s the inexorably inalienable truth that I am indeed not like the others in my group. While we all share the same nerdy interests in games, books, lore, and D&D sessions, I’m nonetheless a girl. And, as inclusive as they wish they could be, and as much credit as I can give them, that invisible wall between us remains invisible —until it isn’t, in which case it’s very much visible but just too awkward to point out or address.
Take our competitive games for instance. I’ve never failed to be elected as healer. There’s always been something unconsciously feminine about being elected healer. Not that it’s outright sexist. Or, perhaps it is depending on how reductionist you’d prefer to be. It’s just nuanced enough to unconsciously stick with you without being a total red flag: like when your uncle says something a little too socially unacceptable during Thanksgiving dinner; but, it’s kinda sorta okay-ish because he had 2 glasses of wine already and earned enough social credit from fleeing war-torn Communist China.
I don’t know.
Isn’t that odd?
This is something I feel so strongly about; yet, I can’t quite actualize what I truly feel into some concrete thesis. Perhaps it’s because what I feel as a gamer girl can’t be quite simplified into an easily digestible pill-form of a thesis.
Maybe there should be some kind of fancy takeaway from this. Perhaps a cheesy line about the importance of friendship over all adversity. Or, the profound power behind the feminine spirit to persevere through oppression. Maybe at the end of the day I should be saying some kind of fancy line like they do at the end of the JRPGs that I love playing so much.
“For my friends… I must use this heavenly sword to defeat the Demon King.”
*insert fwoosh noise.*
No, that’s not quite right.
If anything, I don’t think I as a gamer girl really need to be anything. I can just be as I am: a girl who likes games. There doesn’t need to be some kind of profound conclusion to draw from my experience or deep philosophical take about metaphysics. I never quite belonged with the gamers because I was a girl; and, I never quite belonged with the ladies because I liked games. But, I don’t need to really be anything.
That’s my confession. That’s my senior thesis. That’s my grand proposition, my pitch deck: that I’m a gamer girl. And, it’s not that deep. There’s no deeper meaning to me, and there doesn’t have to be —nor ought there be. Don’t bother looking for it. Trust me!”
Common App Prompt #7 Essay Example, Confessions of a Gamer Girl
A Strange Baker
Overlooking Hong Kong’s streets, fast-moving cars, and simmering lights is my father’s workplace. He never told me what his work entailed, nor have I bothered to ask. In fact, my father and I were never really quite close. We didn’t dislike each other or anything. After all, my mother always talked about how he used to lovingly throw me into the air when I was a child. Apparently, I loved the thrill of danger: a stark contrast from my strangely introverted and careful self today.
We’re just one of many families in Hong Kong. I’m sure others share their own weird dynamics. Maybe that would be how I’d rewrite the introduction to Anna Karenina.
“Weird families are all alike; every weird family is weird in it’s own way.”
I suppose I’m quite weird.
One weird thing my father had me do was run errands for him late at night when the city was winding down. I’d take a late night tram and feel the rickety metal frame vibrate as the metal box creaked along the tracks. It was usually to pick up some assortment of Asian pastries —both savory and sweet— from a local bakery.
A young girl, not much older than a college student, ran the bakery’s night shift. She wore brown checkered patterns from head to toe, a frilled white shirt beneath, and a sand-colored beret that, when tilted in the right angle, seemingly framed her perpetually moody countenance.
“Back so soon?” She started in her same monotone voice.
“Unfortunately, yes.” I replied.
“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”
She placed the breads in a box and taped the ends together.
“I don’t know why you do.” I retorted.
I don’t quite know where this dynamic between us came from. Yet, funnily enough, it’s clear we both have fun with it. I’m willing to bet it started when I first walked into the bakery. It was clear she was not happy to be working there that day; and, I asked one too many stupid questions which elicited short, curt replies from her. Yet, despite this rocky start, we developed this strange semi-friendship: one of pretend-disdain that borders on contempt; but, is tempered with subtle appreciation and respect for one another. And, it’s all communicated through witty banter.
This pattern repeated itself every other day.
“Let me guess,” she started one day. “…something with carbs?”
“You’re quite the quick thinker. How did you know?” I asked.
And, every other day after the bakery visits, I’d return back to our room and hand my dad the box of breads. But, before that, I’d sit on the late night tram with no one in it, thinking about our absurd conversations and smiling to myself as I felt the air blow through the window and the tracks make the vibrating noises and the bells ringing.
Then, one day, it stopped. It was another person working there.
“That’ll be $195.00 HKD!”
“Maybe she’ll return next time?” I thought to myself.
She never did.
Eventually, my father and I moved back to the States, where I’d continue my education here.
Sometimes, I still think back to that baker. I never even asked for her name. We just seemingly built this rapport never knowing it was destined to break away. I do wonder at times whether she still remembers me: the introverted girl with the ponytail, horrible Cantonese, and movie one-liners she memorized just to sound cool. I wonder if I’ll be meeting new encounters in life just like that. I wonder if that’s really what life really is like: not some picture-perfect idea of a friendship but an absurd relationship that’s seemingly beautiful in its absurdity.
Maybe that’s what college is like.
No.
Maybe that’s what life is like: the small, inconspicuous moments that catch us unaware, unprepared, that we don’t appreciate until we think back to them curiously.
Common App Prompt #7 Essay Example, A Strange Train Ride
Rich Dad Poor Dad
“Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad” sits half-read with a bookmark untouched since 2 weeks ago —was it 2? I can’t even remember at this point…— and by the slow wrinkling of its pages to the passage of time, I started to feel sorry for it.
Sike.
I’ve never felt less sympathy for an unread book in my life.
Okay, okay. I know that’s a rather severe stance to take. Don’t get me wrong. I love reading. I was the Harry Potter lover, the Game of Thrones nerd, and the Percy Jackson fanatic. I’m also no stranger to books on Finance —hence my interest in it as a major of study.
But, never in my life have I come across a more predatory, disgusting, parasitic string of phonemes and clauses as Rich Dad Poor Dad. Why? It was this very book that became my mother’s gateway drug into the “get rich quick” mindset. It was Kiyosaki’s clever sleight of hand that allowed him to masquerade his subtle marketing funnel toward his seminars and products behind basic financial advice that took us down this depraved path. It was this book’s unconscious appeal toward great wealth and subtle funnel toward the author’s own personal products that brought my own family into the lifestyle. The book is a relic of the past, now. But, its effects remain ingrained in our daily life. Our house has been taken over by MLM products, oils, and other products meant to make money off of us rather than the other way around. What was once a welcoming family living room became a living space for Amway and whatsoever MLM products.
Such is life living in Utah, eh?
Nonetheless, I stare at Kiyosaki’s book with contempt.
“How many innocent lives has your book ruined, selling those courses and seminars to families who don’t know better? How many people have you enslaved to tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt just to afford your courses?” (hint: I’ve been to your seminar against my better judgement. I’ve seen how many people. I know.)
I watch the ray of sunlight emerging from my window as it slowly damages the old pages, wrinkling it.
It’s weird. I don’t really hate the Capitalist system that bred this. Actually, I do. Maybe it’s a love-hate-relationship like in the movies where the romantic character slaps the main lead and says something cheesy like, “this is for almost getting us killed!” before also kissing them and saying, “and this, this is for saving us…”
Yeah. I know. Puke.
Nonetheless, I’ve an appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s this mindset —the will to venture into the unknown— that’s ushered humanity to new levels of greatness, like the innovation of modern programming spiraling our productivity upwards. However, from what I’ve seen, modern entrepreneurship has taken a dark turn. In my generation, entrepreneurship is rife with get-rich-quick schemes and the will to profit instead of innovative vision.
Regardless, that doesn’t sway me against entrepreneurship. Just because the business world is mired in moral depravity doesn’t mean one shouldn’t have faith they can leverage it for good in the world. Naively optimistic? Maybe. But, I choose to have hope for the future of entrepreneurship —starting with myself. Not in comparison between rich or poor dads; not in get-rich-quick schemes; not in monetizing the suffering of those less fortunate. I’ve faith my unbecoming path toward entrepreneurship can use business and finance to bring goodness to the word —no matter how difficult my path ahead me is.”
Common App Prompt #7 Essay Example, Rich Dad Poor Dad
If you want to see more Common App prompt 7 examples, need help answering the prompt, or just want college admissions consulting in general, fret not! Schedule a free consultation with us today! We’ll get back to you within 24 hours! We’ve helped countless students get accepted into some of the best institutions in the nation with our college essay editing services. These include but are not limited to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, UCB, Duke, Cornell, Vassar, U Miami, and more!
