The Biggest Topic to Avoid on Your College Application

Maybe you've seen some stories in the news recently where students who are so amazing with perfect test scores and activities get rejected from top schools. You may be wondering how something like that can happen. In this video, we'll talk about one way this story can happen. In other words, a kiss of death for your college application.

Our SAT® course is out! Start prepping with Brooke today!

Taking the ACT® instead? Check out our ACT® prep course. 75+ hours of ACT® prep with Brooke!

SUBSCRIBE NOW! And give us a thumbs up if you liked this video.

Subscribe to our mailing list!!

Get more tips and tricks by following us!

Learning Made Awesome!

Music:

[ichesley]

To be completely honest, I kind of understand why. While I do think it is pretty disgusting how selective the college admissions process has become and how difficult it can be to understand what a university wants, I can see why discussing these topics can turn off an admissions officer, especially for an Ivy League school. Many Ivy League and Ivy League-level schools have horrible mental health statistics and don't necessarily have the best history of providing proper treatment for their students. At the end of the day the job of an admissions counselor is to admit students who they believe will be able to succeed at the university and if they know, in-depth, that an applicant is predisposed to struggles with mental health then the admissions counselor might believe the student is not the best fit for the university. Especially, at a university where they will be under intense academic pressure with little help from the university. There should be no shame around the discussions of mental health and I think a lot of universities need to do so much more in terms of how they take care of their students but given the current reality, this does make quite a bit of sense.

[eneums]

This is really tough. I have 75 students finishing up college essays and 30% of them are addressing mental health in their essays. It’s very difficult to talk them out of writing about it.

[DonSyndrome]

I know someone who wrote about overcoming anxiety and was admitted to the engineering school at Cornell.

[bwalyaphiri]

I almost cried watching this video and seeing a little of emotions from our amazing coach and knowing if I did essay writing myself, I would have made that mistake as I just recently got out of battling with depression and anxieties. Thanks a lot for this 🙌💯

[leyenda]

Off topic, but please consider doing a "reality check" video that helps students put into perspective dream schools they may need to just not apply to considering limitations in their GPA, SAT/ACT, & extracurricular activities

[Loveitmore]

You are so authentic and are always willing to tackle difficult subject matter. I appreciate your content so much.

[zero]

Thank you for your video. The fact that the admission doesn't want to admit someone, who wrote about their mental struggles really angers me.

My daughter has autism and Tourette's. She overcame Tourette's tics herself. But she is always a person with autism. It is part of who she is. She wants to pursue degree in neuroscience because of what has been going on her brain. She is inspired by her own experiences on neurological struggles.

It is sad that the admission discriminates people based on their neurological differences. It should even be illegal. She was proud to be herself and was going to write an essay on how she overcame them and on the fact that these mental struggles were actually more like gifts to her now.

But now, I will have to tell her to stop writing about her neurological differences, because the admission simply doesn't want to admit someone like my daughter? How would that make her feel?

[aditicrosby]

Thank you so much for confirming this. My daughter has this struggle and was wondering whether to write about it as her "challenge" essay topic. Now I'll tell her to avoid it like the plague. It's just not worth it to risk. Your videos are very helpful!

[abbyjolet]

In complete and true transparency, my top school at this moment is a state school, especially when it comes to affordability and the mere fact that….. well I’m an art major. However I’ve really appreciated this channel, and this is really helpful! My overcoming is most likely my strongest topic, so this is all really good to know.

[abrhamtesfaye]

You know, I have watched your videos since I was in like grade 9 and you have been my companion for at least 5 years. I'm about to apply for college. By the way, I'm an international student and your videos have had a great impact on my life. When I struggled with the process of application, the only thing that kept me from falling was your video, so I want to thank you even though I don't have the Oxford dictionary word that fits you, so just God bless you. Finally, I'm going to take 2 tests on October 1, which are the SAT and Duolingo English tests, so wish me luck. Last but not least, you have so many similarities with Emma Stone. Have you ever noticed this, or have you ever received a compliment like this: "Hey, are you Emma Stone's sister?"

[toyagirl]

Would you say ADHD is “mental health”? I was initially dismissed from college because I had horrid grades and only just went back and I now have a 4.0 and will be applying this fall. I only just found out I had ADHD this last semester. It’s been eye opening and I feel it’s pertinent because those grades are still present on my transcript despite them no longer impacting my GPA.

[_WhatsOnUrMind]

I also kind of see why they don't like these types of topics, one thing I really agreed with my counselor is that when you write about these stuff, no matter it's your depression anxiety problems or your parent's divorce, if you are just plainly writing about it, it doesn't show why you are a better applicant and has nothing to do with you being admitted or not to this college. Not that you can't write about it at all, but only if you can show how you are a better applicant and show that you are a good fit for the college then you can write about it.

[mikhailareid]

So for my personal statement draft I’ve written about the trauma associated with being a child of immigrants and how that encouraged me to pursue a career in the research of collective trauma. Although I don’t explicitly say I’m depressed I do talk about higher rates of mental illness within my demographic. I’m kind of scared now that even that is toeing it a little close to the line

[litete]

So my essay focuses on my acceptance of the fact that i dont have close friends 😅 but i also realised that i had many people supporting me in academics and life in general. However part of my essay does talk about where i'd had to deal with being bullied for acting "weirdly" (ie. Showing reclusive behaviours) and how i overcame that struggle during the christmas break by studying, praying to God, going to church and relaxing, which affirmed my self worth and boosted my confidence. This in turn allowed me to be more active in student life as i volunteer frequently and i am also able to go and handle myself in public (btw i live in Jamaica the country so this is more of a major bonus than it seems for US citizens). So is my essay ok, or should i like tweak it or scrap it entirely? I dont see much of an issue with it, my grades and activites are ok and aside from 1 school i dont intend to go to a top level university, and i dont have any other good essay ideas.

[ASMRforEllie]

I am wondering if I should write about my high school suspension?

I got suspended my sophomore year of high school for writing and distributing a Google form about a teacher. This teacher broke school code on multiple occasions and many reports had been written about her to the office. I felt as though the school wasn't handling the situation well, they allowed the teacher to know who wrote incident reports on her and those students experienced backlash, so I took it into my own hands. I made the form to be a safe area where students could respectfully voice what was happening in the classroom. I had the support of my mom and grandparents and they even helped me try to organize a meeting with the principal to go over the results. That is when they suspended me for harrasment of a teacher and never took the time to go over the survey information. My mom would have appealed the suspension with an attorney, but we could not afford one. Should I potentially add this to my college essay, or will they think I was a disrespectful little bully like my school did? My grades in her class were awful (D's and F's), but after my suspension she never came back, we got a new teacher and I earned A's on every assignment he gave me. My final grade was a B- which is the lowest grade I've gotten in high school.

[sillyslayer_]

ok so i definitely should not be writing about that time i was hospitalized for hearing voices!!

[FantasticFoxVlogs]

I was going to write my personal statement on losing my friend, who was part of the lgbtq+, to suicide and how it led me to get involved in mental health, lgbtq+ issues, and neuroscience—my intended major. Would this hurt my application? I have other essays I could use, but I was planning on doing this.

[arkoroy]

Thank you so much Brooke! We forget that the readers of our essay are real people, with their own likes, preferences, and views. And we have to remember that the the picture our essays are painting doesn't cause a red flag to any of their minds.
I'm actually struggling after the application process too. I gave 8 months of my life to the US College Application and went nowhere. Worst of all, I've been waitlisted by Franklin & Marshall College and Trinity College, CT since March. It's very frustrating to stay in this limbo for so long. Do you think I should be optimistic about these waitlists?

[bpxlyewz]

Speaking of Cornell and going a bit off topic, it would be misleading to think that everyone's application/essays get read by admissions officers and/or faculty. Cornell puts out job listing each year for temporary essay readers. They are just folks in the area or just friends of admissions people, etc. and often very young. I found out my reader for a UC school had just graduated only a few months before deciding the fates of 1000s of applicants.

[gheller]

On the one hand, rejecting an applicant because the student has mental illness is reprehensible and probably should be against the law. On the other, this supposed 30% of students suffering from mental illness is nonsense. These days, every parent seems to claim that their kid has anxiety and depression as an excuse for their simply not being at the top at the top. It is beyond irritating to those of us who have a child who has been clinically diagnosed, whose brain wiring actually requires medication as opposed to "my kid is depressed because she didn't get an A on a test" or "my kid has anxiety" because they are taking more AP courses than they can handle.