A List of 120+ Good College Essay Topics

by Simon White Essay Topics To Write About

Last modified on May 6th, 2022

Good college essay topics can be very subjective. What is good and meaningful to you will not be to another person. You may not understand why a college has set a particular topic for their essay. That’s fine. You still need to write it. This article contains a number of different essays you will come across in your college career. Each section will have a number of different essay topics listed in it. These college essay ideas will hopefully give you some topic of expectations surrounding the essays you will need to write.

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College Application Essays Topics

Here are some good college admission essays topics:

  • Share your story. This is possibly the most essential topic for a college essay. Sharing about yourself serves several purposes, including whether or not you can write well!
  • Learning from obstacles. It will show people who are you are as a person.
  • Challenging a belief. Can you think outside the box correctly?
  • Solving a Problem. It shows that you can apply critical thinking skills
  • Personal growth. What happened to make you who you are today?
  • What captivates you? It gives people some background into who you are
  • The topic of your choice. It shows your creativity in writing essays and thinking
  • Why do you want to attend this school? It is one that often crops up. You will need to impress people with what you write!
  • What is a book you love? It is a good essay since you are bound to be able to give a good answer!
  • What is an extra-curricular activity that is meaningful to you? This essay will show that you are more than just college work.

Problem-Solution Essay Topics for College Students

Here are some excellent essay topics for college students wanting to show off their problem solving:

  • Sexual abuse of students in school
    • Stricter measures should be enforced for offenders
    • Students should get a constant orientation on how to say ‘No.’
    • Intensified screening for newly-employed teachers in the sector
  • The problem of violence in schools
    • Better enforcement of security
    • Teaching self-defense
    • Ban on gun possession in American schools
  • Poor grades problem
    • A more individualized approach to working with every student
    • Creating time and space for additional explanations
    • Reviewing results per session and finding new ways to get students into understanding the subject
  • Bullying issue
    • Topic on educating learners about dangers of bullying
    • Working with parents to keep children on the best behavior
    • Discouraging any form of bullying, no matter how insignificant
  • Poor teaching quality problem
    • Additional training for teachers before they commence teaching
    • Regular assessment to be completed by all teachers
    • Educating teachers on knowing their teaching strengths
  • Poor class attendance problem
    • Encouraging teachers to initiate home visits to affected students
    • Stimulating parents to take an active part in their children’s studies. They should also be accommodating to teachers who need to make home visits
    • Creating attractive incentives that will motivate students to attend classes regularly
  • Lack of time for children in family problem
    • Choosing fewer problematic jobs that allow one more availability at home
    • Going to the games with your kids; cheering and supporting their efforts
    • Putting away all one is doing at a particular time to answer any doubts the kids might have

Unique College Essay Topics

  • Who do you want to be like?
    • Someone within your community whom you aspire to emulate
  • What advice would you give others about traditions?
    • A family tradition you used to be embarrassed about but are now proud of
  • How did you learn to speak another language?
    • Your experience with learning English upon moving to the United States
  • Who has been the biggest support in an uncertain time of life?
    • A close friend in the LGBTQ+ community who supported you when you came out
  • Discrimination is a terrible thing. How has it affected you?
    • A time you were discriminated against, how you reacted, and what you would do differently if faced with the same situation again
  • How is the world becoming more diverse?
    • How you navigate your identity as a multiracial, multiethnic, and/or multilingual person
  • How can you as an individual help the world?
    • A project or volunteer effort you led to help or improve your community
  • Who are your role models?
    • A particular celebrity or role model who inspired you to come out as LGBTQ+
  • How are you helping in the world?
    • A program you implemented at your school in response to a known problem, such as a lack of recycling cans in the cafeteria
  • How do you plan to handle male-dominated fields?
    • Your biggest challenge (and how you plan to tackle it) as a female in a male-dominated field

Choose the Best College Essay Topic in 2021

If you want to be topics, here are some of the top college application essay ideas of the moment:

  • Students worldwide have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
  • The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
  • Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
  • Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma – anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
  • Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
  • Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
  • 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 designs.

Creative College Essay Topics

If you want to be creative, here are some creative college essay topics:

  • Describe an experience where you were unsuccessful in achieving your goal. What lessons did you learn from this experience?
  • Cleaning marathons as a way to engage citizens in keeping the neighborhoods clean.
  • Safe driving educational materials as a preventive measure.
  • Is there a way to make students more socially responsible?
  • How can an average person help orphans without spending money?
  • The ways of promoting subcultures but managing their activities.
  • Banning social media: can it be a solution to reduce suicides?
  • Knowing what you are buying or how not to let advertisements catch you?
  • Choosing the right idols for teenagers to encourage positive lifestyle changes.
  • How to support single-parent families in times of need?
  • Changing your social connections list to reduce body shaming.
  • Brainstorm a situation in your life where you had to decide between taking a risk and playing it safe. Which choice did you make? What was the outcome of your choice?
  • What movie, poem, musical composition, or novel has most influenced your life and the way that you view the world? Why?
  • Describe an experience that forever changed your life and your outlook on life.
  • Why have you chosen to spend the next four years of your life in college?
  • What do you plan on doing after you graduate from college?
  • As of right now, what do you see as your long-term goals in life?
  • If you were given the ability to change one moment in your life, would you do so? Why or why not?
  • Presuming there was only one open admission spot remaining, why should this college choose to accept your application and not that of another student?
  • What would you describe to be the most unique or special skill that differentiates you from everyone else?
  • Describe some tasks that you have accomplished over the past two years that have no connection to academic studies.
  • If you had the chance to have a 30-minute conversation with any person in human history (either living or deceased), who would be the person you choose? Why? What topics would you discuss with this person?
  • If you could be any animal in recorded history, what animal would you choose? Why?
  • If you were given the capability to travel back in time to any period in history, where would you head to and why?

Interesting College Essay Topics

Here are some of the most common college essay topics:

  • What historical event do you think was the most important?
  • How can a Palestinian hunger strike bring change?
  • Outsourcing as a solution for backup business activities.
  • Corporate culture transformations needed for effective mergers.
  • Training programs for effective assimilation of new employees.
  • Feedback about performance for retention of valuable employees.
  • E-commerce strategies for the attraction of new customers.
  • Lessons from the Hajj I went on
  • How do you define home?
  • My Little Pony is not just for little girls
  • What is Instagram doing to modern photography?
  • Does traveling help you love languages?
  • What taught you respect for family?

Process Essay Topics for College

Here are some college-level essay topics:

  • How to lose weight on a keto diet
  • How your immune system fights COVID-19
Be aware that this one might not have many college essay topic examples since it is a new topic.
  • How to start selling on Amazon
  • How to improve your credit score
  • How to decrease your social media usage
  • How to apply for unemployment insurance
  • How to improve your college performance
  • How to open your first bank account

Descriptive Essay Topics for College Students

Here are some excellent essay topics for college for descriptive essays:

  • Give a tour of one room in your house by describing the most important objects in that room
  • Describe one of your favorite outfits
  • Describe a place that is special, either in memories or in the present
  • Describe your favorite toy as a child
  • Describe your favorite place as a child
  • Describe your favorite cafe
  • Describe a lucky object
  • Describe your favorite piece of art
  • Describe the first time you rode a bicycle
  • Describe a happy memory
  • Describe the strangest person you’ve ever met
  • Describe a person you envy
  • Describe an inspiring friend or family member
  • Describe a haunted place you know
  • Describe how you get around
  • Describe your favorite piece of furniture where you like to spend time and relax
It would be an exciting topic for a college essay

Proposal Essay Topics for College Students

If you need to write a proposal, here are the best topics for college essays:

  • How can small businesses recover quickly after economic crises?
  • Preferring local farmers to the international grocery chains to support the development of small businesses.
  • How to eliminate the erosion of trust in business for good?
  • Paid internships as a solution for youth unemployment.
  • Financial education should come to children from parents.
  • How to reduce the rates of underemployment?
  • What should a consumer do when they notice the producer lying?
  • What can the average person do to combat global climate change? What can the government do?
  • To change the world you have to change yourself. What can you do to help the environment?
  • Should animal exploitation by the dairy and meat industries be banned? Is veganism the only way to protect animal rights?

Remember that this particular subject may not go down well during the college application process!

College Level Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

Here are good essay topics for college for compare and contrast essays:

  • Modern living as compared to the 19th century
  • The Roman Empire as compared to the Egyptian empire
  • Comparison of Lincoln’s and Washington’ Ideas
  • Renaissance vs. Baroque Epoch
  • Anthropology vs. Religious Studies
  • American Government vs. Soviet Government
  • US President vs. UK Prime Minister
  • North and South Before the Civil War in the US
  • Henry VIII vs. King Louis XIV
  • Medicine in Ancient China vs. ancient Greece
  • Feng Shui vs. Vaastu Shastra
  • Coffee and Tea: The Effects of Both
  • Living in a Big City or Staying in a Village
  • Driving a Car or Riding a Bus
  • Feeling Sad versus Feeling Lonely
  • Differences and Similarities between American and British Traditional Dishes
  • Camping in the Woods or Resting by the Sea?
  • The welfare programs run by Canada vs. the US
  • Singaporean government as compared to the Chinese government
  • The Korean Border vs. the Mexican-US border
  • The liberalism of the classic kind vs. the modern kind

This final topic would be a perfect topic for a college essay

College Essay Topics to Avoid

There are always bad college essay topics that you shouldn’t choose. Read on for a list:

A Summary of Your Accomplishments

The plain fact of the matter is, you don’t need to make your essay into a summary of your accomplishments. If you are writing this as a college application essay, the information is already freely available. A college application essay is there to show your writing skills. If you simply go through the news again, it gives the impression that you have nothing else to say. It will reflect poorly on your application as a result. Try and avoid anything which might make you seem overly focused on that one thing you have done.

Highly Polarized or Sensitive Topics

These topics should be avoided whenever possible! These topics just have so much emotion in them that it is impossible to give them a fair hearing. If you are in college, try and find something else to write about. If you are applying for college, definitely find something else to talk about! Your goal here is to get into college, not inflame opinions or offend people. You never know who might be reading your work! You may think that using a sensitive topic will make you stand out and get you noticed, but it rarely works out.

Sports

Essays work best when they have a small number of viewpoints to choose from. Unless you study a subject surrounding the sport, it is best to avoid talking about sports in essays. It could almost be considered a separate category of highly polarized or sensitive topics. Sports, in general, are highly divisive by their very nature. How do you know what other people like or don’t like? At worst, you will offend them, and at best, you will bore them with your essay. An essay that bores people is unlikely to get you high marks or an acceptance letter.

Humour

Humour is a lot like sport. It is very subject, and that makes it a complex subject to write about. Humour is difficult to write about because what is funny changes so rapidly. It also changes across cultures and requires a basic level of knowledge about what you are joking about. So much goes into humor that any essay you attempted to write would be a very complicated one. Pieces typically have a maximum word count. You would most likely end up at that word count when you were only halfway through what you wanted to say!

Why You’re So Lucky

It is a subject to stay away from, mainly because it would annoy most people who read it. It is much like summarizing your accomplishments. Nobody wants to see it in an essay, and if they do see it, they will wonder if you have anything else to offer. Think about what this essay is saying. You are writing about the opportunities you have that other people maybe didn’t. You are talking about how you had a better chance than many others. Is that an essay you would want to read? Maybe not.

Volunteer Experiences and Trips

Volunteer experience and trips are topics to avoid in college essays, simply because it is so overdone. Everyone tries to pad their applications and resumes with these experiences because they can make you seem like a better and more well-rounded person. If you write an essay on this subject, you will just blend into the crowd of people who do this. Ironically, while many people try and use volunteer experience and trip to stand out, they all do similar trips and experiences. So they end up sounding the same as each other anyway.

Self-Expression

Make sure you remember this because it is vitally important. Sometimes you might be explicitly told that you can work on any kind of assignment you want. If you aren’t told this, don’t hand in anything other than an essay! It is hugely important. People don’t usually look kindly on students who think they can defy the rules like this. Colleges typically have stringent rules about what an essay is and what can go into it. Don’t go for any self-expression here. You will get a lot more marks and goodwill by doing what you are told.

Illegal or Illicit Behaviour

This one shouldn’t need any explanations. Illegal or illicit behavior is criminal and unlawful. At best, your chosen college will take action against you somehow (either by refusing your application or by taking disciplinary action against you). At worst, you will be arrested. Nobody will be impressed by your illegal activity. It might seem brave and exciting to you, but you are automatically a liability to everybody around you. No college will look kindly on that or you. Keep the illegal and illicit behavior to yourself when it comes to writing essays.

The Most Important [Person, Place, Thing] in My Life

You might think that writing about the most important person, thing, or place in your life would make you stand out. Especially when it comes to people, you will always be unique, won’t you? You might think this would be the case, but think of how many other people will have the same thought. Everyone wants to write about a particular person in their life because they are unique. And while the person involved may be excellent, the essays are not. Think before you go down this essay writing path!

Tragedies

Writing about a tragedy has the same problems as writing about the most crucial person in your life. A disaster may be unique to everyone who writes about it, but the essays are not uncommon. People can get bored very quickly when they read endless cookie-cutter reports about these things. While it may seem blunt, remember this. A tragedy and its aftermath will be meaningful to you. That does not necessarily translate to it being meaningful to other people. Remember that people have different standards of what constitutes pain. Something might be deeply painful to you, but not have the same emotional weight as another person.

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