 This essay can be up to 30% of the admissions decision. So with mic in hand, how will you tell your story? Strategy is a must. Stick around and give me some key tips. Thank you for joining me on my channel for the best college essay advice. Subscribe and hit the bell. I'll wait. The coalition application has set forth some excellent essay topics, but be weary of the pitfalls. By the end of this video, you'll have three key mistakes to avoid, which can be the difference between accepted and, well, I won't say the other word. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie with Write Your Acceptance with hundreds of students already in college or graduates by now. I know how to make them remember you and for you. Now it's your turn. Mistake one, think about what exactly does meaningful contribution mean? So this is with the prompt and I'm gonna read it to you. It's gonna be right here. Describe a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus. Discuss the challenges and rewards of making your contribution. So this can be an investigation of a really kind of foundational or fundamental moment of service that you did something for the greater good. Great. The pitfall to avoid, however, is please, please don't make it about a community service or service projects abroad. So many times I see essays about how student X went down to a country in South America and they sweat, toiled, worked for nine days, let's say, on building XYZ. And then they took a day off and they hung out with the town or village people and children and they realized that without their cell phone for a week and a half, without Instagram and snapping, that people lived happier lives with less. No, it could be a profound revelation for you but let me tell you that one, it's overplayed and two, it really doesn't play well. It can come off as pretentious and superficial. Now, with all the caveat, with all examples, there are people that break this example and really have a committed effort where community service is something that they are kind of a huge part of their life and they do this multiple times. It's not just the random one time. If you do have this random one time experience, I would avoid it as the meaningful contributions essay. Mistake two, challenging a controversial belief. So this is a prompt. Has there been a time when you've had a long cherished or accepted belief challenged? How did you respond? How did the challenge affect your beliefs? So this prompt can lead students down a political rabbit hole. Make sure that you remember your audience. You don't wanna alienate your readership. You don't know what the admission officer, admission committee reading, what their politics are, what their personal beliefs are. You wanna make sure that this is politically neutral, whatever the topic is, but that you are reflecting on the depth and nuance of your commitment to certain beliefs. So that you are flexible and open to other people's beliefs without attacking their humanity, right? We can get a little polarizing depending on our politics. And so you wanna make sure it's politically neutral, but that you're focusing on how you learned and gained perspective, a new perspective on something that you've challenged or a belief that you kind of held true. Are you stuck on a topic and you don't know if you should pursue it or not? Comment below, I'd love to help and give you my feedback. Mistake three, so hard being young and free, enter ironic eye roll, okay? So here's the prompt. What is the hardest part of being a teenager now? What's the best part? What advice would you give a younger sibling or friend assuming they would listen to you? I love this essay. And honestly, I don't think students write about this topic enough. I think you can do it really smart and really well and engaging. However, a lot of times what I see is kind of a little alienating. So I see a reflection on how social media is so prominent in their life or how whenever they want to kind of separate themselves from XYZ, they're present. They just put in their earbuds and they're done. They plug in, plug out, and they're in their zone. So remember that you are writing, one, not to fellow teenagers, right? So know your audience, but two, that they are generationally different, maybe have a different relationship with technology and social media. So the key thing to make this kind of essay pop and really kind of engage with your readership is if you show that the lessons kind of are true to teenage life, but that they also carry forth to other demographics. So maybe you learn something from an older person or a younger person, and maybe the one lesson can be adaptable to different demographics, to someone that's older, someone that's younger, and to you as well. So you find something that is kind of cross-generational and just not stick to this kind of my immediate everyday experience as a teenager. So now that you know what to stay away from, like the plague, do you know how to organize your essay? I have a free college essay guide download in the description below. Make sure you grab that. And if you found this helpful, please comment. Thank you, thank you. Into the comments below, like us, give us a subscribe, and make sure you kind of circulate us. Give us some love to your fellow college-bound friends so you can share the knowledge. Thank you for watching. Happy writing.