Your College Application Essay – Using a “Self Interview” to Find a Topic

Is there a foolproof method for finding the ideal subject for your college application essay? Unfortunately, no. But here’s a way you can start looking.

The Self-Interview is a reliable technique for uncovering areas in your life that will make excellent topics for your college application essay. All you have to do is honestly answer the following questions, jotting down the answers as fully and expansively as you can. Don’t edit yourself, allow each question to take you where it will. Then read your answers back and see if they don’t stimulate a compelling essay subject.

1. What’s the smartest thing you’ve ever done?
2. The dumbest?
3. The most innovative?
4. The bravest?
5. The most memorable?
6. The most valuable to another person or people?
7. What’s your biggest achievement?
8. Your biggest disappointment?
9. How did you learn from both?
10. The title of your autobiography would be…
11. Is there anything you would fight and die for? What? Why?
12. Any person? Who? Why?
13. What’s your dominant positive quality? How do you think it was developed within you?
14. How has that quality been revealed in your life?
15. Do you have obsessions? What are they? How did they develop?
16. You’ve got access to a private jet. Where’s the first place you’d go?
17. What scares you? Why?
18. What’s the most unique thing about you?
19. What would you describe as the shining moment in your life so far?
20. Give a one word description of your character, for example, “dependable”, “sincere”, etc. How do you think you got that way?
21. Is there a story from your life that illustrates that quality?
22. What event in your life always makes people laugh when you tell them about it?
23. What event in your life always makes people sad/cry/go awww when you tell them about it?
24. You can have any job, any profession you want. What is it?
25. What is the purpose of life? Why are you here?
26. Have you taken any actions that embody this purpose?
27. How would you like to embody this purpose in the future?
28. What would you like your best friend to say at your funeral?
29. After knowing you for five minutes, what impression would a person have?
30. How would they be right?
31. How would they be wrong?
32. If you were meeting someone for the first time, what could you tell them about yourself that summed up who you are?
33. You’ve been given the right to make one law that everyone in the United States has to follow. What would it be?
34. Congratulations, you’ve just won twenty million dollars. What are you going to do next year?