{"id":6614,"date":"2025-11-28T09:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T09:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/good-common-app-essay-examples-2\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T09:58:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T09:58:00","slug":"good-common-app-essay-examples-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/good-common-app-essay-examples-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Common App Essay Examples"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you about the night I nearly set my laptop on fire trying to find &quot;good Common App essay examples&quot; \u2013 and not just because my 2013 MacBook Air overheated when I opened too many College Confidential tabs. (We\u2019ve all been there with that crusty old device, right?) It was junior year, my hands smelled perpetually of whiteboard markers from SAT prep, and I thought the key to college admission was finding Some Magical Template\u2122 hidden in the depths of Reddit forums.<\/p>\n<p>Oh man, was I wrong.<\/p>\n<p>After reading 27 sample essays that all sounded like Nobel Prize acceptance speeches (Seriously \u2013 since when does everyone have a \u201clife-changing trip to Guatemala\u201d?), I made my first big mistake: I tried to write about building houses in Honduras\u2026 even though I\u2019d never left Texas. My essay draft read like a Wikipedia page crossed with a Hallmark card. My AP Lit teacher handed it back with \u201cWHERE ARE YOU IN THIS?\u201d scribbled in red Sharpie so hard it tore the paper.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what finally worked:<\/p>\n<p>The week after that disaster, I was working my Saturday shift at Scooter\u2019s Coffee (shoutout to the caramelicious Annihilator drink) when a regular named Mr. Jenkins spilled his usual black brew all over the counter. Instead of getting mad, he laughed until his dentures rattled and said, \u201cWell butter my butt and call me a biscuit \u2013 that\u2019s the third shirt this week!\u201d Turns out he was grieving his wife, and our 7 AM chats became his daily bright spot. I wrote my real essay about stained aprons and the quiet magic of being someone\u2019s \u201cthird shirt\u201d \u2013 not about some inflated version of myself I thought colleges wanted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What I wish I\u2019d known:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The best essays smell like your life. Literally. Mine mentioned the scent of burnt coffee grounds and Dollar Tree lavender hand soap from the shop<\/li>\n<li>Specific &gt; Inspirational. Admissions officers read enough \u201cand that\u2019s when I knew I could change the world\u201d lines to fill a landfill<\/li>\n<li>Your \u201cwhy\u201d matters more than your \u201cwhat\u201d. That kid who wrote about reorganizing the Target socks display? He\u2019s at Yale now<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Three years later, I\u2019ve helped my little brother and three cousins with their essays. We always start the same way: I make them describe their most random core memory from the past year. Last month, my cousin realized her \u201caha moment\u201d wasn\u2019t winning state track, but the time she spent teaching her golden retriever to high-five during lockdown. (Spoiler: That\u2019s the story she\u2019s running with.)<\/p>\n<p>Look \u2013 I get it. You\u2019re sitting there thinking \u201cBut my life isn\u2019t special enough.\u201d Let me stop you right there. The night I submitted my application, I accidentally used my mom\u2019s credit card to pay the $75 fee instead of mine. She still brings it up at Thanksgiving. Your humanity \u2013 the messy, funny, painfully real parts \u2013 is exactly what makes your essay work.<\/p>\n<p>Want to test this theory? Go to your camera roll right now. Scroll to last Tuesday. There\u2019s your essay fuel: the half-eaten Pop-Tart breakfast, the inside joke text thread, the weird leaf that looked like Obama\u2019s profile. Start there instead of trying to sound like a TED Talk.<\/p>\n<p>(And if anyone tells you to write about your sports injury comeback story? Run faster than I did in my one season of JV track.)<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve got this. Now go delete those \u201cHow I Saved the Rainforest\u201d drafts \u2013 or at least save \u2019em for when we\u2019re both accepting our Pulitzers someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you about the night I nearly set my laptop on fire trying to find &quot;good Common App essay examples&quot; \u2013 and not just because my 2013 MacBook Air overheated when I opened too many College Confidential tabs. (We\u2019ve all been there with that crusty old device, right?) It was junior year, my&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}