Every year I work with students on their personal statements and every year I see the same mistakes show up. Not because families are not trying. They are trying incredibly hard. But the college essay is one of those things where the conventional wisdom — start early, pick an impressive topic, make it about something big — is almost always wrong.
So let me save you some time.
Here are the most common college essay mistakes I see junior families make — and what to do instead.
Mistake 1: Waiting Until Summer to Start
This is the big one.
I hear it constantly: we will deal with essays over the summer. And I understand the logic. School is busy. Junior year is a lot. Summer feels like the natural time to sit down and write.
But here is what actually happens when families wait until summer.
Your student has spent two months doing very little academic thinking. Their brain is not in reflection mode. Sitting down in July to write a deeply personal, nuanced piece of writing about who they are and what they value feels almost impossible — not because they cannot do it, but because they have not been thinking about any of it for eight weeks.
The families who start brainstorming now — in April, in the car on the way to a campus visit, at dinner when nobody is talking about college essays specifically — arrive at summer with a head start that changes everything. The essay has had time to breathe. The student has been quietly turning the idea over. And when they sit down to write, there is already something there.
Better essays come from more time. Start now.
Mistake 2: Looking for the "Right" Topic
There is no right topic.
I promise you there is no magic subject that admissions readers are waiting for. No combination of words that unlocks a yes. No topic so impressive that it compensates for an essay that does not actually reveal anything real about the student writing it.
What admissions readers want is simple and also incredibly hard to fake: they want to feel like they know the person behind the application. They want specificity. They want a voice. They want to read something and think — I would remember this student.
That does not come from choosing the right topic. It comes from writing honestly about the right thing — which is almost always something specific and personal and small enough to actually explore in 650 words.
A pair of pink cowgirl boots. The way your student approaches a problem nobody else notices. The thing they would do for free if nobody was watching.
Stop looking for impressive. Start looking for true.
Mistake 3: Writing About the Biggest Moment
Related to the topic problem — families almost always assume the essay should be about the most dramatic thing that happened.
The injury that ended the season. The mission trip. The loss. The award.
And sometimes those things do make great essays. But usually they do not. Because the big moment is the obvious choice, which means it is also the most crowded choice. And because big moments are hard to explore with nuance in 650 words — there is so much context to provide that the actual reflection gets squeezed out.
The essays that stay with me are almost never about the biggest thing. They are about the quiet, specific, true thing. The detail that seems small until someone pays close enough attention to see what it actually says about a person.
Think smaller. Go deeper.
Mistake 4: Parents Writing It (Or Coming Close)
I am going to say this gently because I know it comes from love.
When a parent gets too involved in the essay — editing the voice out of it, restructuring it to sound more polished, replacing their student’s words with better ones — the essay stops being the student’s. And admissions readers can tell.
Your job in this process is calm editor, not co-author. You can ask questions. You can say does this sound like you. You can notice when something feels off. But the story has to be theirs. The voice has to be theirs. The words, even the imperfect ones, have to be theirs.
If you are not sure where the line is — that is actually a really common place to be. And it is worth getting some outside support so the essay stays the student’s while still getting the guidance it needs.
Mistake 5: Treating It Like a Resume
The personal statement is not a summary of your student’s accomplishments. It is not a list of their activities in paragraph form. It is not an explanation of their grades or test scores.
Admissions readers already have the resume. They have the transcript. They have the activity list.
The essay is the one place in the entire application where your student gets to show who they are as a person — not what they have done, but who they are. What they notice. How they think. What they care about when nobody is grading them.
If the essay reads like a highlight reel, it is doing the wrong job.
What to Do Instead
Start the brainstorm now. Not with a blank document — just with a conversation. Ask your student what they care about that most people do not know they care about. What they would do for free. What moment from the last year they would actually tell a friend about.
Write it down. Let it sit. Come back to it.
The essay is already in there. You just have to find it.
And if you want help doing that — that is exactly what the Personal Statement Huddle is for. A small group of four students, four weeks, one hour a week on Zoom. By the end, your junior has a personal statement they are genuinely proud of before senior year even begins.
I have two spots left in the first round and a waitlist forming for the second. If you want details, hit reply and I will send everything your way.
Here with you every step,
