how to start a college essay about a passion

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Passion Essays

Choosing passion essay topics.

When choosing passion essay topics, consider what genuinely excites and motivates you. Reflect on your interests, hobbies, and experiences to identify areas that spark your enthusiasm. Topics can range from personal passions like art, sports, or music to broader themes such as the role of passion in career success or its impact on mental health. Look for subjects that allow you to share your unique perspective and experiences. Exploring these topics can lead to engaging, insightful essays that not only showcase your enthusiasm but also inspire and connect with your readers. Selecting passion essay topics that resonate with you ensures a more compelling and authentic narrative.

How to Write a Passion Essay

Your passion is your superpower, and this essay is your chance to share it with the world. We won't bore you with a step-by-step guide; instead, we'll sprinkle some tips, prompts, and a bunch of exciting topic ideas to fuel your passion-fueled writing frenzy!

Passion Essay Prompts

Let's kick things off with some prompts that can spark your creativity and help you understand the essence of a passion essay:

• Describe a moment when your passion ignited like a wildfire.
• Explain how your passion has influenced your life choices and decisions.
• Share a personal story that illustrates the depth of your passion.
• Discuss the impact your passion has on your community or the world.

These prompts are like the kindling for your passion essay. They'll help you uncover the unique stories and experiences that make your passion come alive on paper.

Igniting the Flames of Creativity

Choosing the perfect topic for your passion essay is a crucial first step. Here are some points to consider while brainstorming:

• Authenticity: Select a passion that genuinely moves you and reflects your true self.
• Uniqueness: Avoid clichés and opt for a less common or unconventional passion to stand out.
• Impact: Think about how your passion has made a difference in your life or the lives of others.
• Emotion: Consider the emotions tied to your passion and how they can resonate with your readers.
• Storytelling: Reflect on personal anecdotes and experiences that highlight your passion's significance.

Your passion is the heart of your essay, so choose a topic that sets your soul on fire!

20 Passionate Essay Topics to Fuel Your Writing

Now, let's explore a treasure trove of essay topics that can help you channel your passion into words:

• From Hobby to Lifestyle: Describe how your hobby turned into a way of life, shaping your daily routines and mindset.
• The Power of Music: Discuss how music has been a constant source of inspiration and comfort throughout your life.
• A Journey Through Culinary Delights: Share your passion for cooking and how it's become a form of artistic expression for you.
• Art as Therapy: Explore how creating art has been a therapeutic outlet for your emotions and experiences.
• The World of Sustainable Fashion: Discuss your passion for sustainable fashion and its impact on environmental conservation.
• Environmental Activism: Explain how your love for nature has led you to become an environmental advocate.
• Empowering Through Education: Share your passion for education and how it has transformed the lives of those around you.
• Digital Storytelling: Discuss your fascination with digital media and how it's changing the way we connect and communicate.
• Dance as Expression: Describe how dance has allowed you to express emotions and narratives without words.
• The Healing Power of Gardening: Explore your passion for gardening and its therapeutic effects on mental well-being.
• Exploring the Cosmos: Discuss your love for astronomy and the mysteries of the universe that captivate you.
• The Joy of Volunteering: Share how your passion for volunteering has positively impacted your community.
• Architectural Marvels: Examine your fascination with architecture and the unique structures that inspire you.
• The Art of Travel Writing: Discuss how traveling has become a form of art, allowing you to share your adventures and insights.
• Advocating for Animal Rights: Explore your passion for animal rights and the efforts you've made to protect our furry friends.
• Fighting for Social Justice: Share your dedication to social justice causes and the impact of your activism.
• The Thrill of Extreme Sports: Describe your passion for extreme sports and the rush of adrenaline that keeps you going.
• The World of Comics and Graphic Novels: Discuss your love for comics and how they've influenced your artistic pursuits.
• From Pixels to Masterpieces: Explore your passion for video game design and the creativity it unlocks.
• Preserving Indigenous Cultures: Share your dedication to preserving and celebrating indigenous cultures around the world.

These topics are like a buffet of possibilities. Pick one that resonates with your heart and soul, and let the passion flow into your essay.

Setting Your Passion Essay Ablaze with Inspiring Paragraphs

Now, let's ignite your passion essay with some sample paragraphs and phrases that can set the tone for your writing:

• Paragraph 1: Introduction

Passion is the fuel that powers our lives, igniting our spirits and driving us to explore the depths of our interests. In this essay, we embark on a journey into the heart of passion, where we'll dive deep into the unique and fervent flames that light up our lives. Prepare to be inspired, as we unravel the stories, experiences, and emotions that define the essence of our passions.

• Paragraph 2: The Melody of Music

Music isn't just a collection of notes and rhythms; it's the language of our souls. From the haunting melodies of classical compositions to the electrifying beats of rock 'n' roll, music has the power to transport us to different realms of emotion. For me, music is not merely a hobby but a lifelong companion, a constant source of solace and inspiration that has shaped my identity in profound ways.

• Paragraph 3: Sustainable Fashion Revolution

As the world grapples with environmental challenges, my passion for sustainable fashion has become my driving force for change. It's not just about clothing; it's a conscious choice to protect our planet. Every eco-friendly fabric and upcycled creation is a step toward a greener future, a future where style and sustainability coexist harmoniously.

• Paragraph 4: Education as Empowerment

The power of education is immeasurable. It has the potential to uplift individuals and entire communities. My passion for education has led me to embrace the role of an educator, guiding eager minds toward knowledge and self-discovery. Witnessing the transformative impact of learning is a testament to the magic that education can bring into our lives.

• Paragraph 5: Advocating for Animal Rights

My heart beats in rhythm with the paws and claws of our animal companions. Advocating for animal rights isn't just a passion; it's a moral obligation. Through tireless activism and unwavering dedication, I strive to be the voice for those who cannot speak, working to create a world where animals are treated with the compassion and respect they deserve.

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Passion is a strong and intense emotion or enthusiasm for something, driving individuals to pursue their interests, goals, or activities with great energy and dedication. It often involves a deep commitment and an intrinsic motivation that fuels persistence and creativity, making it a crucial element in achieving personal fulfillment and success.

• Passion significantly enhances motivation, encouraging individuals to invest time and effort into their pursuits and overcome challenges.
• Studies show that passionate individuals often perform better in their chosen fields due to their deep engagement and enthusiasm.
• Engaging in activities one is passionate about can lead to increased happiness and life satisfaction, contributing to overall well-being.
• Passionate individuals are more likely to think creatively and innovate within their areas of interest, leading to breakthroughs and advancements.
• Passion often plays a key role in career decisions, guiding individuals towards professions and roles that align with their interests and values.

Passion is a vital topic because it drives personal fulfillment and success. Understanding and exploring passion through various passion essay topics can help individuals identify their true interests and strengths. This knowledge can lead to more meaningful and satisfying career choices, improved well-being, and enhanced creativity. Passion essay topics encourage self-discovery and personal growth, ultimately contributing to a richer, more purposeful life.

Relevant topics

• Responsibility
• Forgiveness
• Volunteering

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, what's the best way to showcase my passion in my college essay.

I want to write an essay that really shows my passion for my chosen field. Any tips on how to convey this effectively without sounding too generic?

It's essential to start with introspection when writing an essay about your passion. Think about specific moments, experiences, or projects that demonstrate your enthusiasm for your chosen field. The more specific you can be, the less generic your essay will appear.

Using a narrative format to share a story about these experiences or how you discovered your passion can also be a compelling approach. Be sure to include personal thoughts, emotions, and insights to make it relatable and genuine.

Show how you've grown and developed your passion over time by including details about your journey, citing any obstacles or challenges you faced and how they shaped your perspective. This insight can help demonstrate your determination and growth in your field.

Last but not least, try to convey your future aspirations and how they align with your passion. Colleges like to see students with a clear vision and understanding of how their interests connect to their long-term goals.

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How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips

August 1, 2023

Your college tours are scheduled, you’re knee-deep in SAT/ACT prep , application deadlines are quickly approaching, and then it happens: writer’s block hits you hard. You’re stumped, wondering how to start a college essay. It’s all too easy to overthink it when acceptances are on the line. But don’t fret! We’ve got you covered with 12 tips and techniques, plus answers to common questions like: Can I start my essay with a quote? Should I try to sound as smart as possible? Is it okay to use humor?

Keep reading for all you need to know about how to start a college essay:

• Common Mistakes to Avoid

How to Start a College Essay: The Content

How to start a college essay: the style.

• More Resources

How to Start a College Essay: Common Mistakes to Avoid

Since admissions readers are looking to be surprised and engaged right away, it’s safest to avoid these overused techniques.

1) Pulling out the dictionary

Chances are, your reader already knows the definition of the word you’re tempted to copy and paste from Merriam-Webster . Unless you’re starting with a word in a non-English language or a word that 98% of the population truly does not know, there’s no need to turn to the dictionary. Assume your reader is a smart person who is already in the know.

2) Choosing clichés

Clichés are boring in writing because they’re, well…cliché. Before you tell an admissions reader that all that glitters isn’t gold or there’s a silver lining to every cloud, remember that their job involves reading hundreds if not thousands of college essays. The way to impress them is to stand out as someone with unique insights, opinions, or creativity. Not sure if the phrase you’re using is trite or overused? Look it up online and see if there is an overabundance of results.

How to Start a College Essay (Continued) 

3) beginning broadly.

Since the dawn of time, students have been starting essays too broadly. Your college admissions essays are about you, your experiences, your values, and your goals. So, starting with general statements like “Different cultures have different traditions and values” or “We have to be the change we want to see in the world” don’t center you as the topic of your essay. If you’re writing your essay about, say, your Polynesian identity and your love of Hula dance or the summer you spent making vats of soup for a food kitchen, jump right into sharing a vivid memory from those experiences instead.

4) Leading with a quote

“Can I start my college essay with a quote?” is one of the most common questions we get. The problem with starting with a quote is the same as starting too broadly: you don’t center yourself as the topic of your essay. Since college essays are short, the quote itself and the many sentences it will take to transition to the rest of your content will eat up precious word count. Unless it’s a deep-cut quote that’s highly particular to you and your niche interests, quotes anywhere in your essay can come across as cliché.

A stand-out college admissions essay will grab your reader’s attention and immediately give them a sense of who you are, what you value, and what’s unique about you. Trying to decide how to start a college essay? First, take a look at our guide to the Common App Prompts . Then, use one of these five techniques to brainstorm content:

1) Share a challenge you’ve overcome

Since college is all about growth and learning, one tried and true strategy is describing a challenge you’ve overcome that you’ve learned a lot from. Example:

For my first three months of middle school choir, I was nothing more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, mouthing words with no sound coming out. I was terrified to use my voice. Then, one fateful morning, Mrs. Garcia asked me to solo in front of the whole class.

A strong essay about a challenge you’ve overcome will explain who you were before, how you overcame the challenge, and who you are now. Taking this approach allows you to demonstrate that you’re able to rise to meet challenges, learn through difficulty, and apply yourself even when you’re uncomfortable. A word of warning though: avoid writing about very common challenges like pushing yourself to beat your cross-country time, studying for the SAT/ACT or other big tests, or transitioning from middle to high school. Since so many students share these experiences as common ground, these topics will make it hard to stand out from the crowd.

Want even more tips on writing about a challenge you’ve overcome? Check out our full guide to the Overcoming Challenges prompt.

2) Show your funny side

Yes, humor works well in college essays! Poking fun at one of your quirks or (inconsequential) shortcomings can be a great way to reveal your personality. Example:

Every day, I begged. At bedtime, at breakfast, for my birthday, for Christmas—I begged for a skateboard. Mom said it was too dangerous, Dad thought they were too noisy, but still I dreamed of cruising the neighborhood and learning to ollie in our driveway. My 14th birthday was the day my begging finally ended. It was also the day I learned I have absolutely no sense of balance.

Opening with a humorous story paints a vivid picture of you right away, but where you take it from there matters. You probably wouldn’t want to write a whole essay about breaking your tailbone and this isn’t the right forum for a stand-up routine. But you could take an opening like this in a variety of directions that reveal more meaningful truths about you. For example, after this opener, this writer could go on to:

• Talk about other new skills they tried that they were able to land better than an ollie.
• Describe how they learned about balance in other avenues of their life.

3) Clear up a misconception about you

Although college essays are brief, you’ll want to squeeze in as much depth and breadth as you can. Starting by addressing an assumption or stereotype you’ve faced can be an efficient and engaging way to move past the superficial. Example:

Blonde. Four foot eight. Size five feet. Strangers and well-meaning friends sometimes offer me a booster seat or ask if I need help carrying heavy things. Little do they know I can deadlift 135 pounds. My first teen powerlifting competition is coming up this spring.

Clearing up a misconception allows you to surprise your admissions reader and share something meaningful about yourself in one stroke. When using this strategy, think about all the different layers of your identity. What assumptions do others make of you and what might casual acquaintances or strangers be surprised to learn? A word of warning: steer clear of being too critical of others. Although stereotypes and assumptions are difficult to bear, for this essay, you’ll want to focus on you —your accomplishments, skills, and passions—instead of others.

4) Invite us in

Are Shabbat dinners with your whole extended family the highlight of your week? Do you feel most alive when you’re at your keyboard composing a new song or when you’re at a Robotics Club meeting, throwing out wild design ideas with your team? When you invite us in, you’re letting your reader in on the places you’re most at home, most excited, or most yourself. Example:

When I was seven years old, my grandma sat me down at her sewing table and taught me how to sew back on the button that had popped off my sweater. I can still feel her hands on mine, showing me where to place the needle. It was the first of what became weekly lessons on backstitching, basting, hemming pants, and embroidery. I didn’t know it then, but it was the first day of my journey into fashion design.

To brainstorm for this technique, list experiences that have helped shape your values, goals, and interests. Think of things you do every week but also once-in-a-lifetime events. You’ll want to begin this essay by choosing one meaningful experience to share in the beginning of your essay. Use vivid details that help a reader imagine the experience for themselves and then explain why this experience matters to you.

5) Nerd out about a problem you’ve solved

If you’ve hit the library stacks to find the answer to a burning question, stayed after class to ask your teacher for more homework, worked with a student club to improve a campus issue, or concocted your own science experiment, this might be the essay tactic for you. Example:

As a volunteer at my local pet rescue, I surprised myself by becoming a crusader for birds. Dogs and cats were adopted all the time, but the parrots, cockatiels, and parakeets sat in their cages for ages, chattering away and waiting for their forever homes. I realized it was an issue of awareness: no one knew our shelter rescued birds. Thirty YouTube tutorials and one online digital marketing class later, I had developed a ten-step social media strategy.

A great way to share your unique interests, this technique lets you showcase the curiosity and eagerness to learn you’ll be bringing with you to college. To brainstorm for this essay, think of times when you’ve worked solo or with a team to discover something new or solve a tricky problem. As you write about this experience, describe the initial problem, any difficulties you encountered, and the strategies you used to find a solution.

We’ve covered essay content, but you may still be wondering how to start a college essay that grabs your reader’s attention. Here are three key style tips that will help breathe life into your writing:

1) Share a story

As you can probably tell from the examples above, we recommend starting your essay off with an engaging story. Before you tell a reader that you’re an introvert who also loves performing in musical theater, you’ll want to tell the tale of the first time you braved the spotlight. Before you explain that you plan to major in political science, describe the town hall meeting you attended in the 7 th grade that started it all.

2) Use vivid descriptions

When we read, we’re most engaged when we feel like we can clearly imagine the scene. To draw a reader in, use the same storytelling strategies that fiction writers use: sensory descriptions, concrete details, and passing time.

• Sensory descriptions: Describe the smell of your mother’s biryani cooking on the stove, the temperature of the air at the start of your first half marathon. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. Engage as many of the five senses as you can.
• Concrete details: Concrete details are particular descriptions of places, people, and objects. If you’re describing a service trip to Honduras, describe the buildings, streets, and food you ate so your reader can imagine it.
• Passing time: Making time pass means ensuring you have a clear sense of the beginning, middle, and end of your story. To keep things clear, put your details in linear order and make sure to include temporal transitional phrases like “When I was six years old,” “Later, in high school,” and “Now, as I reflect back.”

3) Use your own voice

When you’re wondering how to start your college essay, it can be tempting to write in the same style you use for academic essays. But the college essay is a personal essay, not an essay for school. For this style of writing, you’ll want to be clear, thoughtful, and grammatically correct, but you’ll also want to be personable, engaging, and, most importantly, yourself. With that in mind, skip the SAT vocabulary words and opt for a more conversational tone instead.

How to Start a College Essay: More Resources

Looking to learn even more about how to start a college essay? If you’re ready to get started on your supplemental essays, check out our walk-through of the Why This College essay and explore our blog posts discussing the supplemental essay prompts for 50+ schools . You may also wish to read our piece on How to End a College Essay .

• College Essay

Christina Wood

Christina Wood holds a BA in Literature & Writing from UC San Diego, an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in English at the University of Georgia, where she teaches creative writing and first-year composition courses. Christina has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous publications, including The Paris Review , McSweeney’s , Granta , Virginia Quarterly Review , The Sewanee Review , Mississippi Review , and Puerto del Sol , among others. Her story “The Astronaut” won the 2018 Shirley Jackson Award for short fiction and received a “Distinguished Stories” mention in the 2019 Best American Short Stories anthology.

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