This year, the Common App has included a special 250-word section that allows students to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on their lives so that they can use the rest of the application as they would have before – to share their interests and perspectives beyond COVID-19. Therefore, they have included this question in the “Additional Information” section of the Common App:
Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces.
Do you wish to share anything on this topic? Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.
The pandemic has affected different people differently. So the kind of experience you’ve had might also determine how you write about it. You could categorize your pandemic experience based on the gravity of situations you’ve had to face, like:
It’s been okay - Things haven’t changed or didn’t change too much for you.
Very Negative - The pandemic has led to severe hardships for your family and you. It’s been incredibly stressful, and you’re still living with some uncertainty.
Very Positive - The pandemic led you to learn new things, feel inspired, or even led to you starting something new or even shift the way you think about your future
Been a rollercoaster - In some ways, it’s been really difficult, but in other ways, it’s been productive, and you’re learning a lot.
Even before you start crafting your response, do a quick self-scan and determine how you would define your experience.
If the pandemic has had severe consequences for you or has impacted you majorly, you don’t have to feel obliged to share the details of the situation; you can list the impact in merely 50 words if you want to. For example – if you have experienced the loss of a family member and do not wish to talk about it, you don’t have to. Admissions officers understand the gravity of the situation and do not expect you to talk about it in detail outright.
However, if the pandemic hasn’t severely impacted you, you can address this prompt/question very straightforwardly or creatively. One way to write about your experience straightforwardly is by structuring your essay into the following three sections:
Challenges you faced and how they impacted you
How did you tackle these challenges?
Was there anything you took away in terms of learning from these challenges?
Another way to approach this essay is to do it more creatively – with a story or backdrop that significantly catches the reader’s attention. However, this tone doesn’t necessarily have to continue throughout your essay; you can continue sharing significant details about your experience after the catchy or creative opening. For example – If you had some plans on improving your extracurricular profile and because of the lockdown, they were hampered. Did you think of alternative paths to still pursue your passion? How did that change the course of your action plan?
Here are some tips to effectively brainstorm ideas to address this question:
Identify how the pandemic obstructed your plans.
How did you overcome the obstruction?
Identify a few values that you developed or strengthened during the pandemic.
Brainstorm examples to demonstrate and provide instances for each value
Write one bullet point for each value.
How to structure your COVID impact essay?
What makes essays dull is the overuse of a topic, common connections, common language, and not addressing anything unique in them. If you want your essay to stand out, refrain from addressing something many other applicants will describe, especially in a way many others will describe it too.
To make an essay stand out, pick uncommon topics, draw unique connections, and use uncommon language!
Since the pandemic is a common topic, it will take more work to brainstorm ideas that stand out. Therefore, we recommend brainstorming all the common ideas first and then drawing uncommon connections to them. Then, find values that may be uncommon or try to speak about the common ones unconventionally. Some things you can talk about in the essay are -
Illness or loss within your family or support network
Employment or housing disruptions within your family
Food insecurity
The toll on mental and emotional health
New obligations such as part-time work or care for siblings or family members
Availability of computer or internet access required to continue your studies
Access to a safe and quiet study space
A new direction for your major or career interests
If you think the pandemic has had severe consequences for you, you don’t have to worry about structuring the essay in terms of challenges and takeaways; you can simply list out the challenge you faced and how you’re coping with it.
However, if you want to go into the details of the impact and consequences, one good way to approach the essay is to open it with a challenge you faced, making sure only the start of your essay talks about it – you don’t want to rant about your challenges throughout the essay. Instead, devote a major part of your essay describing what you did about those challenges and what you learned from that experience.
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