Updated August 14, 2026

15 College Essay Tips for a Strong Application

Bonus Material: PrepMaven’s 35 College Essays That Worked

Expert guidance provided by Mike Kleynman (10+ years’ experience in test prep, PhD in English) and reviewed by Kevin Wong (co-founder PrepMaven, 20+ years’ experience in test prep).

If you’re planning to apply to universities, you’ve likely already heard that college admissions are more selective than ever. That can be stressful, especially when top schools have admission rates as low as 4%!

In this admissions landscape, you need incredible grades and test scores just to be considered for admission! The good news is that a strong college essay can set you apart from other applicants, making a huge difference in the application process.

At PrepMaven, we have over two decades of experience guiding students through the process of crafting unique effective essays. And it’s no coincidence that so many of the students who work with our essay experts earn admission to their top-choice schools!

In this post, we’ll use our college essay expertise to outline the 11 most important tips for writing a college essay that actually stands out to admissions officers at top schools.

Plus, we’ll include links to our collection of 35 College Essays That Worked. These essays are written by supremely talented writers who earned admission into schools like Princeton, Harvard, and Brown. They also happen to be a few of our best college essay tutors!

Jump to section:
Tip 1: Tell a Story
Tip 2: Details, Details, Details
Tip 3: Use Contractions
Tip 4: Leave the Thesaurus Alone
Tip 5: Don’t Be Formal
Tip 6: Don’t Criticize Others
Tip 7: Don’t Lecture
Tip 8: Stick to High School
Tip 9: Be Vulnerable
Tip 10: State Your Goals
Tip 11: Show Personal Growth
Tip 12: Take Risks with Form
Tip 13: Start Early
Tip 14: Don’t Be Generic
Tip 15: Get a Second Opinion
Next steps

Tip 1: Tell a Story

The best college essays aren’t “essays” like what you’d write for school. Instead, they’re carefully crafted 650-word stories!

It’s the old adage of “show don’t tell,” basically. A good story shows admissions officers what they need to know about you, instead of just telling it.

Think about which of the two essays below would be more effective:

An essay where someone tells you how hardworking and resilient they are.
A story about someone who achieves success despite obstacles and hardship.

It’s no contest: in college application essays, the story always wins!

Want to see examples of real, story-centered essays that got their writers into Princeton? Check out our free collection of 35 Essays That Worked below!

Tip 2: Details, Details, Details

Do you know the most frequent pieces of advice we’ve had to give students writing college application essays over the last 20 years?

Be more specific!

Almost every essay-writer starts out far too general or vague. Nearly every single college essay–even a strong one–can be improved by simply adding more detail and making the writing more specific.

If you’re writing about your first public speaking experience, for example, don’t stop at just the basics of who, what, when, and where.

Really show us everything you were experiencing: what was the audience like? What about the lighting? Was it dead silent? Or was there whispering? Every little detail you add ensures that the essay resonates with college admissions committees.

Tip 3: Use Contractions

It sounds simple, but it actually makes a pretty big difference to the tone and style of your essays.

If you’re like most students, you’ve been taught to never (or rarely) use contractions in your essays.

But, like we said, this isn’t your regular high school English essay: the admissions committees want to hear your voice. And when you talk to your parents, your friends, or even teachers, don’t you use contractions nearly always?

If you’re like most people, you sure do. So, when it comes to writing your college essay, that shouldn’t be any different: use contractions whenever it feels natural to you.

If you want to really stress the importance of something, then you might want to consider not using a contraction in that one place. But your default should be using contractions.

Tip 4: Leave the Thesaurus Alone

Plethora, myriad, abstruse, nevertheless, furthermore…

With extremely rare exception, none of these words should be in the essay you send to college admissions committees!

As with our advice about contractions, ask yourself: do you, a high schooler, naturally use these formal “thesaurus” words? Or, are they something you only use in your essays to make them sound more formal, or smarter?

When it comes to college essays, you need to sound like yourself. For admissions offiers reading countless essays, nothing is more refreshing than an essay that has a distinct personal tone.

And nothing is more boring than another essay that sounds like it was co-written by thesaurus.com.

Feel free to elevate your diction, but keep it reasonable: use the words you’d naturally use.

Tip 5: Don’t Be Formal

Which brings us to our fifth tip: don’t be formal.

This is really the idea behind Tips 3 and 4, but it’s important enough to get its own spot. We’re not saying you should use slang and profanity in your essay–in fact, we’re telling you right now you probably shouldn’t.

But colleges understand that you’re a high schooler. And so they expect you to write like a high schooler.

True, like an intelligent, self-aware, interesting high schooler. But still a high schooler.

So, when it comes to the tone of your writing, avoiding formality is crucial for college essays. At the end of the day, you want admissions officers to like the person behind the essay. And that won’t happen if you sound like someone else.

This is a tricky thing: formality is subjective, to some extent. The best way to get a feel for the right tone is to read successful college essay examples.

Click the link below and you’ll get our pdf of 35 College Essays that Worked–real essays that got students into Ivy League schools!

Tip 6: Don’t Criticize Others

There are some (rare) exceptions to this rule, but you should generally never speak negatively of other people in your personal statement or supplemental essays.

It’s totally possible that a teacher has been unfair to you, or a principal spoke to you harshly, or a friend betrayed your trust. These things happen all the time.

But they don’t belong in your college essay. Why? Think about it from the reader’s perspective: they weren’t there, so they have no reason to believe your perspective over someone else’s.

So, instead of thinking that you’re totally right, college admissions officers are far more likely to think that you’re petty or small-minded.

What are some exceptions?

If the situation is totally unambiguous and is crucial to your overall narrative, then it may be worth taking the risk.

For example, students who’ve faced racism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination often write about these moments in their supplemental or personal essays.

In those cases, it can be tremendously powerful and effective.

Still, it’s a risky essay topic to write about. If you’re thinking of going down a similar path, we strongly recommend working with a college essay tutor.

Tip 7: Don’t Lecture

There’s another way of phrasing this one: don’t be a know-it-all!

While your experiences, perceptions, and ideas are all important to admissions officers at your dream school, that doesn’t mean you should be presenting your grand theories on the world.

Never take the tone of someone who is teaching the reader something they don’t know. Again, these essays aren’t about proving anything. They’re about showing readers who you are.

And you don’t want to ever give readers the impression that you think you’re smarter than them. That’s a definite red flag for readers, and could very easily get your college application tossed in the rejection pile.

Check out the 35 Essays that Worked below–read a sample essay or two carefully, and note how the writers are careful not to come off as if they’re more intelligent than the reader!

Tip 8: Stick to High School

Sometimes, an event from childhood might form a crucial part of the context for who you are now. In that case, there’s nothing wrong with including that in your essay!

But… the majority of the essay should focus on the personal growth that has made you who you are today.

So, feel free to use events from childhood as context or backstory, but don’t make them the focus. Whatever key event of formative moment you want to describe in your personal essays, ensure that it’s from your high school years and not earlier.

Tip 9: Be Vulnerable

Easy to say, a lot harder to do. But this is one of the biggest differentiators between strong essays and unforgettable ones.

What do we mean by “vulnerable?” It means being willing to reveal something about yourself that could be embarrassing or even damaging. That could be something like cheating on a test, saying something hurtful, or even previously holding a prejudiced belief.

The crucial thing, of course, is that you have to show growth and self-awareness. If you’re able to admit something damaging and then show how you’ve grown and moved beyond it, you can show admissions readers a rare level of courage and honesty.

Yes, it can be risky; yes, it might be the kind of thing that your high school counselor warns you against. But, if you’re targeting top schools, risk-taking is crucial. A good essay simply isn’t good enough anymore.

Of course, if you are looking to stand out by taking a calculated risk in your college application, you’d benefit from an expert to help steer you in the right direction.

Our college essay tutors know how to do that because they’ve done it themselves: they’ve gotten into the most selective schools in the country by writing the kind of essays that we provide as samples in our 35 College Essays that Worked.

Tip 10: State Your Goals

In addition to showing readers who you are, a great college essay shows them what you want to achieve.

It’s incredibly difficult to integrate this smoothly, but it’s a crucial part of a strong essay. You need to connect your story to your goals, your ambitions–to why you’re applying to college, basically.

Don’t over do it! You don’t want to make this sound like a resume or a cover letter. But you should give admissions officers a sense of what you hope to accomplish in your life.

Tip 11: Show Personal Growth

Whatever story you tell, you need to make sure you show personal growth through it.

If you haven’t meaningfully changed or grown in high school, that’s a pretty bad sign! So, whether you’ve become more mature, more thoughtful, more caring, more dedicated, or whatever else, you should make sure that comes across in the story you tell.

Remember: your anecdotes and details aren’t there just to be interesting. They’re to show admissions committees the most important aspects of who you are!

Check out our collection of 35 College Essays that Worked Download PrepMaven’s 35 College Essays That Worked for great examples of this philosophy in action!

Tip 12: Take Risks with Form

Is a risky, experimental college essay for everyone? Nope. But can it help you stand out to admissions committees at top schools? It sure can.

But here’s something many people forget: risk shouldn’t just be for the sake of risk. If you do go for a “creative” or “experimental” college essay, it should be for a reason.

Does the story you’re telling benefit from a non-chronological structure? Are you writing about a process of artistic growth that can best be shown through a creative format? Then you should go for it!

Of course, you want to make sure the finished product works. That’s why, for anyone attempting a risky essay, we suggest working with a college essay expert, like one of our Ivy League essay tutors!

Tip 13: Start Early

We can’t stress this one enough. While technically not about what you put in your essay, this will absolutely affect the quality of what you write.

Ideally, you have your common app essay finished by the end of the summer! That means starting almost as soon as your school year ends.

After school, take a week or so off, but then dive right into the essay brainstorming, writing, and editing process. You want to go into your senior year without the stress of college essays looming over your head.

Tip 14: Don’t Be Generic

It’s tough to be original, it really is. But it’s absolutely necessary to have a shot in the current, hyper-competitive college admissions landscape.

Whatever you write about, you need to make it so deeply personal and specific that only you could have written it.

The moment you find yourself writing a sentence that someone else could’ve written, you need to take a few steps back and try again. Even a single generic sentence can be a problem, making you blend in with the scores of other applicants.

Skim through some of our 35 College Essays That Worked, all of which got their writers into Ivy League schools. Do you see how each one, regardless of its topic, approaches it from a totally fresh lens?

Tip 15: Get a Second Opinion

No matter how good a writer you are, no matter how carefully you’ve read and reread your essay, you need a second opinion.

Part of it is about proofreading. When you spend countless hours working on the same piece of writing, it becomes impossible to really see it fresh.

We’ve seen this countless times, even in our own writing: hand your final draft to a new reader, and they’ll spot a typo or misplaced comma in seconds!

More than that, though, you may not be able to judge how your voice comes off to others, especially to adults.

Is that joke you start with funny, or a bit cringeworthy? Is your impassioned take on art and politics compelling, or does it sound like something from a diary entry?

These are the tiny moments that doom or save an essay–and these are the exact moments that the best college essay tutors can help with!

Next Steps

Now that you’ve read through these top college essay tips, take a look at them in action. Download our free collection of 35 College Essays that Worked and use them as inspiration for your own college essay.

Then, as you start writing, consider whether you want to get professional assistance. A college essay expert can help increase your chances of admission to top schools! Choosing the right one is crucial, so check out our list of the 14 Best College Essay Services.

And of course, feel free to contact our college essay experts if you want to work with Ivy-League tutors who have a proven track record of success!

15 College Essay Tips for A Strong Application