What are some unique college essay topics that stand out?

You’re definitely not alone in feeling like all the obvious essay topics have already been done. The truth is, admissions officers have read a lot of essays about the big, common themes—winning the championship game, overcoming a tough class, or a transformative service trip—but you don’t need an extraordinary event to create an extraordinary essay. The magic is often in the details and your personal voice.

One way to stand out is to take a seemingly "normal" part of your life and zoom in on a specific, memorable moment. For example, if you love baking, instead of a general story about how baking taught you patience, you could focus on the night you tried (and failed) to perfect a macaron recipe, and what those repeated attempts revealed about your approach to problem-solving, perseverance, and even stress management. Maybe you tie it back to your engineering mindset: how adjusting oven temperature taught you about control systems, or how ingredients react like variables in an equation.

Another successful example comes from someone who wrote about their childhood habit of fixing household items. They described cataloging broken toasters, radios, and clocks, and how taking them apart sparked their curiosity and appetite for engineering, even if most ended up with "spare" pieces left over. It was honest, funny, and demonstrated growth and passion.

Random or unconventional topics have also worked really well—some students have written winning essays about making their own shoes, translating idioms between languages for their family, doodling in the margins in class, or their fascination with manhole covers. The key is that the topic revealed something distinctive about the applicant’s thinking, values, or personality.

If you aim for depth over breadth, even an everyday experience can become captivating, especially when approached from a new angle. Ask yourself: Is there a story you always tell friends when you want to make them laugh or surprise them? Did you once use engineering skills to jury-rig a solution in a completely non-academic context?

Ultimately, risk is relative; the riskiest essays are the ones that sound generic. Focus on a story or perspective that's authentically yours, even if the base topic is "simple." A topic you care about will always resonate more than something you picked just to sound impressive. Sometimes the tiny slices of life tell the biggest stories.