The essay gives you the chance to break out of the rigid recitation of your high school endeavors, demonstrating your creative flair and personal traits. As such, it is a vital component of any application and should be carefully considered.

A significant part of writing a good essay is having strong foundations in English; that is being able to create syntactically correct and complex sentences, using clever figurative literary devices, and painting a vivid picture for the reader. Such fundamental skills must be nurtured long-term in the classroom, through practice, and in reading/emulating the seminal works of literary giants.

With those skills in place, the next step you need to take is to think of a topic. If you are assigned a topic, then at the least you are given a starting point. Topics from the Common App, and representative of other topics, include:

1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, an historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

Another essay (usually short essay) that comes up very frequently is the one about which extracurricular is most important to you. Whatever extracurricular it is that you want to write about, make sure that your involvement in it supports its status as your most important extracurricular - i.e. it should be obvious for admissions officers to realize that you are heavily involved in this extracurricular even without having to read your extracurricular essay. The extracurricular essay gives you the chance to explain why and to tell a meaningful story.

To read more about writing the essay continue here.