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College & Scholarship Essays:
Brainstorming Ideas
Family
• What is your most valued childhood memory?
• Have you been responsible for caring for family members? How has this affected your
academics, goals and values?
• If different from your current place of residence, does your home country or place of birth
have special meaning for you? Do you visit it often?
• What do your parents/other family members do for a living? How have they inuenced or
inspired you? How has your family’s economic status affected your education and childhood?
• Have you suffered any serious hardships that affected your academic or professional
performance?
• If you live in the U.S. but are not a native-born American: How did you deal with the
challenges of moving to the U.S. from your home?
Activities
• How did you spend the majority of your time over the past year?
• To what non-work (or non-academic) activity did you give the most time over the past year?
Or past several years?
• What has been your most signicant service activity? Your most memorable one-time
volunteer opportunity? Your longest regular volunteerism commitment?
• What has been your most signicant cross-cultural experience? Why?
• What has been your most signicant international experience?
• Can you identify trends in your commitments? What do they say about your values/abilities?
• Did you work during high school? If so, where did you work? How many hours per week?
What were your responsibilities and duties? What did you learn?
Accomplishments
• What achievement are you most proud of? Why?
• What signicant challenges have you overcome?
• Describe accomplishments for which you have not been formally recognized but are
particularly proud. Take even more time to reect on why these have special meaning for you.
• What was an important risk that you took? Why did you take this risk? What was the
outcome? Would you do it again?
• Think of a time when you truly helped someone. What did you do? How did this impact the
other person? How did your actions impact you?
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