In geometry, you learned a simple rule: all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. The same logic applies to college essays. All college essays are great stories, but not all great stories make for great college essays.
What separates an essay that sticks in the reader’s mind from those that are quickly forgotten comes down to answering these questions. Does the reader set down the essay feeling like they’ve met the writer? Does the reader discover something about them? How they’ve grown? How they put what they learned into action?
The good news is that writing these essays doesn’t require an earth-shattering life event. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.
The best essays start small, but reflect bigly
Two essays on Johns Hopkins Essays That Worked show it’s not the size of the topic that matters.
Maria’s essay opens with her mother in the kitchen, warning her not to put too much salt in her alphabet soup. “No le pongas demasiada sal!” her mother bellows.
From there, Maria takes the reader through the history of salt as currency in ancient civilizations, her own struggles with low blood pressure, and how this simple seasoning introduces her to classmates and teachers with unfamiliar backgrounds.
By the essay’s end, salt becomes a metaphor for resilience and her emerging commitment to diplomacy and international relations.
Shotaro’s essay opens with him outlining coastlines on a 22x–30x sheet of paper, knowing he can’t hit Command-Z if his highlighter slips. His essay is about worldbuilding: the hobby of inventing fictional universes with their own cultures and technologies.
This passion compels him to consider broader topics: plate tectonics, the history of nomadic empires, interspecies communication, and whether a civilization without electricity could develop a computer.
His essay really isn’t about map building. Instead, it shows his thinking.
That’s the move. Neither essay describes a championship game or service trip. Neither tries to be dramatic. Both writers make themselves impossible to ignore anyway, because they trade writerly depth for the scope of the event: small topic, big reflection. The story is a vehicle. Where it takes the reader is the point.
Skip the heroics
Movies want superheroes — admissions readers want students figuring things out.
A finished product… a seventeen-year-old who’s already mastered the universe is less compelling than one who’s learning. The former leaves no room for the university to do its job.
Admissions officers aren’t evaluating who you’ve already become, so much as whether you’re someone who’s asking the right questions.
That’s why the strongest essays show the messy middle. Maria doesn’t position herself as someone who understands the culture of her new community. When Shotaro steps back from his map, he first notices its flaws: continents drawn too small and a map legend whose design underwhelms.
These students are growing. More importantly, they’re also acting on this growth. Maria didn’t just notice her perspective was changing: she founded a UNICEF Club and joined the Civic Education Coalition. Shotaro showed how his hobby pushed him to research “Great Ape” languages and mechanical computing.
Small actions make for compelling stories of growth.
The stakes are always internal
Students make a mistake in assuming their essays need an antagonist. They reach for the dramatic illness, the family crisis, or the once-in-a-lifetime trip, when the moment that actually shaped them happened on a normal Tuesday.
That’s why the strongest essays are about objectively small events. A quick conversation at a bus stop. A failed attempt at baking flan. A jar of salt. A 22x-30x sheet of paper and a highlighter. The scale of the insight matters more than the obstacle.
The strongest essays emerge from ordinary situations that reveal unusual self-awareness and curiosity. Students often force vulnerability into their essays because they think readers expect emotional intensity. This almost always comes across as performative.
Try this simple test:
Can you identify a specific moment in your story where something shifted internally? Whether it’s a belief or assumption, what caused your perspective to shift? If you can, you might have a college essay worth writing. If the only thing that changed was the scoreboard or the medal around your neck, you have a mere story.
Finding your (extra)ordinary moment
Here are three simple exercises that work in brainstorming college essays:
The before-and-after audit.
Think of a specific moment when your opinion about something flipped. Not slowly, but by a gargantuan leap. What caused it? What did you believe before, and what do you believe now? The flip is the essay.
The vulnerability audit.
Name something you’re still working on solving within yourself, whether it’s arrogance, the need to be liked, or the fear of being wrong. Then find a specific event that taught you something about it.
The thirty-minute test.
What’s something you can talk about for thirty minutes straight, without referencing school or your activities list? Why does it fascinate you, and what does that fascination reveal about how your mind works? Maria’s salt essay almost certainly started somewhere like this. Shotaro’s worldbuilding essay obviously did.
The “cool story, bro” test
Before you submit, read your essay through the eyes of an admissions reader on their fiftieth essay of the day. When they finish your last sentence, will they say cool story, bro, and move on? Or will they think, I understand how this person thinks, how they grow, and why they would be an asset to our campus?
The strongest essays aren’t polished scripts. They sound like you — a thoughtful, self-aware student trying to honestly make sense of their experiences and the actions they provoked. Maria’s essay sounds like her. Shotaro’s voice is his alone. Neither reads like an essay that fits someone else’s voice.
If a reader could pick your essay out of a stack of a hundred and know you without seeing your name at the top, you wrote a college essay. If not, well, “cool, story bro.”
From a story to submission
A story is about what happened. College essays are who you became because of what happened. Once you’ve found your “square” moment — that internal shift that shows your growth and the action you took because of it, the work moves from finding to refining.
That’s where Empowerly’s College Essay Review comes in. Our editors are former admissions officers and writing professionals who know what readers at top schools are actually looking for.
Spoiler: it isn’t generic AI drivel — perfectly polished and lacking all depth and soul.
We work with students through multiple drafts to sharpen their reflection and connect it to real-world actions. It’s not just tightening the structure (which frankly, any AI tool can do). It’s making sure your personality comes through, and each paragraph earns its keep.
