Mistake One: The Thesaurus Disaster

You think fancy words make you sound smart. They do not. They make you sound like you swallowed a thesaurus and are now having digestive issues.

The fix: Read your essay out loud. Every time you stumble over a word or would never say it in conversation, replace it. Use the five-cent word instead of the twenty-five-cent word. Clear beats impressive every single time.

Mistake Two: Writing a Resume in Paragraph Form

Your essay lists everything you did without explaining who you are. It reads like your activities section but with connecting words between items.

The fix: Pick one experience. One moment. One realization. Go deep instead of wide. Show them one thing about yourself clearly instead of listing ten things vaguely.

Mistake Three: The Boring Opening Sentence

Your first sentence is generic, predictable, or starts with a definition. The reader is already bored and you have used exactly one sentence.

The fix: Start with something specific. A moment. A person. A question. A conflict. Something that makes the reader want to know what happens next. Save the reflection and meaning for later. Hook them first.

Mistake Four: Telling Instead of Showing

You tell them you are compassionate, dedicated, and hardworking instead of showing them through specific examples. The essay reads like a list of adjectives someone should believe about you.

The fix: Replace every adjective you use to describe yourself with a specific story that demonstrates that quality. Do not tell them you are kind. Show them the moment you chose kindness when it was inconvenient.

Mistake Five: The Humble Brag Disguised as Reflection

You write an essay that pretends to be about learning and growth but is actually about how great you are. Every humble statement is followed by an impressive achievement.

The fix: Be actually honest about something you are still working on. Not a weakness that is secretly a strength. A real limitation. A genuine struggle. Admission officers respect authenticity more than perfection.

Mistake Six: The Sports Injury Essay

You write about overcoming a sports injury, learning from losing the big game, or becoming captain of your team. So did ten thousand other applicants this year.

The fix: If you must write about sports, find an angle nobody else has. The teammate everyone overlooked. The moment you realized winning did not matter as much as you thought. The day you quit because you were playing for the wrong reasons. Make it about something other than perseverance through adversity because that story has been told.

Better yet, write about something completely different. Your weird hobby. Your family tradition. The random interaction that changed how you think. The question you cannot stop wondering about. Anything but the injury essay.

Mistake Seven: Over-Explaining Everything

You spend three paragraphs setting up background information before getting to the actual point. By the time you reach the interesting part, the reader has lost interest.

The fix: Start with the interesting part. Cut your first two paragraphs entirely. You probably do not need them. Add back only the essential context as you go, woven naturally into the story.

Mistake Eight: The Conclusion That Summarizes

Your last paragraph repeats everything you already said, starts with "In conclusion," or lists the lessons you learned as if the reader forgot them in the last 500 words.

The fix: End with a final insight, a look forward, or a line that resonates. Give them something to remember, not a recap of what they just read. Your conclusion should feel like the natural end of your story, not like you suddenly remembered you needed to wrap up.

Mistake Nine: The Mission Trip Essay

You write about your volunteer trip abroad and how it opened your eyes to poverty, made you grateful for what you have, or taught you that happiness does not come from material things.

The fix: If you must write about service work, make it about a specific person you met, not about your realization that poverty exists. Focus on what you learned from them, not what you learned from the experience of being around them. Better yet, write about service work in your own community where the dynamic is less fraught.

Or skip the service essay entirely and write about literally anything else that reveals who you are without the risk of sounding like you are using other people's hardship as your character development.

Mistake Ten: Waiting Until the Last Minute

You write your essay the night before it is due. You submit your first draft. You think you can write a great essay in one sitting because you are good under pressure.

The fix: Start early. Like, months before the deadline early. Write a bad first draft. Let it sit for a week. Rewrite it. Get feedback. Revise again. Read it out loud. Revise one more time. The difference between a first draft and a sixth draft is the difference between getting in and getting waitlisted.

The Quick Mistake-Checking Process

Run your essay through these checks before you submit. If you fail any of them, you probably need another revision.

If you can pass all ten checks, your essay is probably in good shape. If you are failing several, take time to fix them. The deadline can wait. A mediocre essay cannot be un-submitted.

What Good Essays Do Instead

After reading about all these mistakes, you might be wondering what you should actually do. Here is the short version.

Good essays start specific. With a moment, a scene, a person, a question. Something concrete that pulls readers in immediately.

Good essays use your actual voice. They sound like you talking to someone you respect, not like you are trying to impress a committee.

Good essays show instead of tell. They give specific examples and let readers draw their own conclusions about your character.

Good essays pick one thing and go deep. They explore one experience, one relationship, one realization thoroughly instead of skimming across many.

Good essays are honest. Really honest, not strategically honest. They admit real flaws and show genuine growth, not manufactured learning moments.

Good essays surprise you. They take unexpected angles on common topics or write about unusual topics that somehow reveal universal truths.

Good essays have been revised. Multiple times. With breaks in between. With feedback from multiple readers. With brutal cuts of anything that does not serve the story.

That is it. Start strong, sound like yourself, show specific examples, go deep not wide, be actually honest, surprise them, and revise until it hurts. Do those things and you will avoid every mistake on this list.

The Mistake That Is Not on This List

Here is the mistake students worry about but should not: being too personal or too vulnerable.

Students constantly ask if they can write about mental health, family problems, failure, uncertainty, or anything that is not unambiguously positive. The answer is yes. You can write about these things.

What matters is not the topic. It is how you write about it. Are you showing growth? Are you being honest without being melodramatic? Are you taking responsibility for your part in difficult situations?

The essays that work best are often the ones where students took the risk of being genuinely vulnerable instead of carefully curating a perfect image. Committees want to know you are human. Humans struggle. Humans are uncertain. Humans are complicated.

So do not avoid difficult topics because you think you need to present a flawless version of yourself. Avoid bad writing. Avoid cliches. Avoid dishonesty. But do not avoid being real.