hey guys so recently my comment up essay has been popping off and doing way better than all my videos on my channel so i thought i would kind of ride that wave and make another video about the common app essay and common mistakes that you should not do because some of these make me want to rip my hair out and it makes me cringe so much sorry guys and also the tips i came up with that i'm going to share with you later in this video are tips that i haven't really seen anyone else on youtube talk about in their videos so tune in for those because they might help you a lot so even though i stopped editing your guys's essays i've still read quite a few of essays like 40 or 50 essays so far and i've seen a lot of common mistakes present themselves and i found myself writing the same comment over and over again so i thought i would just make this video and tell you guys all at once like hit you with those tips and also keep in mind that all this is my personal opinion so take everything with a grain of salt but also keep in mind that if i find a cringy there's a high possibility that your app reader and other people will find it cringy as well let's not stall let's just get into it yeah [Music] so the first common mistake i see in a lot of your guys's essays is that a lot of people are trying to half-ass their metaphors so i don't like it when people set up these huge elaborate metaphors in their introduction paragraph and make it seem like it's going to be a significant part of their essay but then they basically don't talk about it or mention it again for the rest of the essay until the conclusion paragraph where they just hit you with it they slide in again with the metaphor and it's kind of like i'm dark and i'm like whoa where did that come from like you didn't elaborate on it at all to me when people decide to use metaphors in this way it comes off as really forced to me and like you're just trying to use a metaphor for the heck of it to make your essay a little more interesting to the app reader but i honestly think it does the opposite thing where it just kind of turns me off from your essay so if you end up adding a metaphor into your essay i would make sure that it's a significant part of your essay and it's integrated throughout the entire essay instead of just like the beginning and the end that way i think it's going to be able to maintain the flow of your narrative and not sound so forced since your narrative and the metaphor is kind of intertwined and they won't be able to work without each other and another thing i'll add to this whole metaphor thing i'm talking about is that if you do decide to use a metaphor make sure it's not a cliche and really generic one to me the point of a metaphor is to bring a really fresh and new perspective to how you're feeling slash felt and it should be personal to you i don't think you should just choose a random object or something to make a metaphor out of just for the heck of it because you think it would fit well with your narrative i think if you decide to use a metaphor that object should mean something to you personally if you use a really generic metaphor that everyone's heard of it kind of defeats the purpose of the metaphor where it's supposed to bring a fresh perspective people don't want to hear the same thing over and over again where they've read hundreds of times and also when i read these really generic cliche metaphors it ends up sounding like a cop-out to me where they couldn't think of a good metaphor so they just decide to use one that someone else already came up with and the second mistake i see a lot of people making is they make these really direct statements like this taught me dot dot dot or i learned dot dot dot i'm happy when i dot dot dot i don't want to hear these direct statements like avoid those direct statements i don't want you just telling me stuff and telling me how you feel i want you to show me through your words your actions within the essay and through personal experiences that you had if you find yourself having to use these direct statements to get a point across in your essay i think you should focus more on making your essay more descriptive more personal more specific and incorporating more personal experiences into it so you can really show who you are without just making blank statements at the reader because at the end of the day readers are going to find your personal experiences a lot more compelling than you just telling me who you are through these statements get rid of those direct statements right now go on common app essay right now and get rid of them i'm pointing at you you need to do it and the third common mistake i see in a lot of essays is there's a lack of a catalyst and what i mean by that is in a lot of common app essays including mine a lot of people choose to use the narrative of personal transformation and a personal change that they went through and i read a lot of essays that follow this narrative but i found that a lot of people don't really include what caused the change that they're talking about a lot of the times they just say something like it just wasn't the same anymore i changed i became better without actually telling me what caused that change what caused them to be better like as a reader it's really hard for me to believe that you just changed overnight just because just because you decided that you want to be better one night like that rarely happens usually something pushes you to make that personal change and going off the catalyst point a lot of people do end up including a catalyst in their essay but then that catalyst ends up being something that's not themselves or not coming from themselves or their experiences and it comes from another person or thing what i mean by that is i've read some essays where people say my parents made me dot dot dot my parents cost me dot dot dot losing my cat made me dot dot dot and they just say whatever change within them i think that's better than just not including a catalyst at all but also i think at the end of the day the focus of the essay should be you even if it does have to do with that person or that place at the end of the day at the core of the narrative it should come down to you and you being the source of all this personal change and so an example i'm just gonna like think of off the top of my head don't use this hypothetically if someone said my fish died so i changed and now i'm more organized and as a reader when i hear that i'm like first of all like what caused like you to go from point a of your fish drawing to point b of being more organized i care as a reader more about the in-between and the thought process and the personal process that you went through to get from point a to point b rather than the actual like destination if that makes sense so like the way i would like frame it would be oh my fish died because i lost my fish food so i had to make the personal choice to become more organized so stuff like that never happens again that's a really weird example but it kind of gets to the point of even if another thing or person had to do with that catalyst at the core it's still you who made the decision to make all these changes i feel like i really explained that badly but moving on and the third common mistake i see on so many essays i think this might be the most common mistake i see is that a lot of people focus on people that aren't them for like the majority of their essay and i don't understand why they do this i cannot count the number of essays that i read where people spend like half of their essay like two or three whole paragraphs talking about someone something somewhere that isn't them and i'm like why would you do that don't talk about how great your mom or your cousin is and how they're the best thing that's been created since life spread to be honest i don't really care about them like at all i want to know how great you are how awesome you are and why i should want you to attend my college instead of your boyfriend like that's not what i want college apps don't follow this transitive property where if other people in your life is amazing then you're also amazing like i'm not going to make that connection i want you to tell me why you're great and why i should want you at my school talk about yourself in your essay like this is the one time where you should just talk about yourself and be a little bit narcissistic you know hype yourself up don't hype other people in your life up of course like other people in your life that had a significant impact on you can be a part of your essay and i think if you have an experience like that you totally should but they should be at most like one paragraph and then you should transition into you and talking about how great you are hype yourself up yeah and the fourth mistake i see in a lot of essays is that a lot of people use an excessive amount of adverbs and weird descriptions in their essays while i was reading essays i found that some people tried to force descriptiveness into their essay by saying [ __ ] like while i sat eagerly at my oak dining table i had a earnest conversation with my understanding mother about my uncertain future while i ate dry sourdough bread hungrily like more than half of those descriptive words and descriptiveness don't tell me anything more about you they're just kind of like filler words where they're like oh this makes me sound like i know what i'm writing about like no like i say so much that i want you guys to be descriptive in your essays but i want that description to bring me into your life and this can come in various forms of being descriptive when you talk about your background being descriptive when you talk about significant moments in your life i want description there where i feel like i get a clear image of those big moments in your life i don't want to know about your dry sourdough bread also i'm not the biggest fan of when i see people use a lot of adverbs like hungrily eagerly happily sadly i feel like when people use a lot of these adverbs it just sounds really forced and really elementary to me when i see them just trying to add in these adverbs to add a little pizzazz to their essays moving on and the fifth and the last mistake i'm going to be talking about today that i see in your guys's essays is repeating the same idea over and over and over and over again so many times i think this might be the most common comment i comment on you guys's essays every single sentence that you decide to include in your essay should be essential for the narrative and should bring something new to your essay i really dislike it when people just say the same thing over and over again in different ways under the disguise of being descriptive and adding description into their essay and i've seen this a lot with transitions where people use the last sentence of the previous paragraph in a different way for their first sentence of the next paragraph like a random example would be if someone decided to end one of their paragraphs with something dot dot dot and i started my first charity and then they start their next paragraph with although starting my own charity was very fulfilling to me blah blah blah like you're basically just saying the same thing back to back when people use those repeats as transitions and just in their essay in general it comes off as really elementary to me and ultimately ends up slowing down the momentum of the whole essay and it leaves me bored like i should not be bored even for five seconds while i'm reading your essay i should be constantly learning something new about you and when you choose to just repeat these ideas it just makes me kind of be like like i already know this about you why am i hearing it again so yeah just don't do that get rid of those repeats remember every single sentence i might even say every single word in your essay should have its place and should be essential for your essay to work and essential for your narrative and after you delete all those repeats in your essay you'll have so many words left that you can spend on developing your narrative even more and developing the ideas you already brought up keep in mind it's not the number of ideas you bring up in an essay it's about how well you develop them and how well you can portray that to the reader and make it seem real and make it seem like they're in your shoes actually experiencing all these things actually making all these realizations you made in your life and all these personal changes so yeah that's gonna be the end of the video today and i hope you guys really enjoyed all these tips i shared with you and if you really like this video and you want me to make more videos on common mistakes and tips i see when i'm reading your guys's essay comment down below like this video subscribe touch whatever the ring bell thing and i'll try to make more videos like this and i hope you guys have an amazing day and i will see you guys soon bye guys so destroy the evidence leave not a trace burn it and paper trash that way they can deny possessing the illegal