Let’s clear the air about one of the touchiest subjects regarding the college essay. There are many misconceptions about discussing trauma or injuries in college essays. Many applicants who have experienced significant hardship are afraid to share their experiences because they don’t want to seem like “a sob story.” Other applicants who have lived privileged and relatively trauma-free lives worry that their lack of hardship or inability to write “a sob story” will somehow decrease their admissions chances.

The first thing I will say is that students who have experienced abuse, neglect, crippling illness, physical disabilities, losing their homes or a loved one, or any other adverse childhood experiences would almost certainly trade in their grief and pain for a life with less suffering. One “Life pro tip” post on Reddit read, “Don’t tell someone they’re lucky they had cancer because now they have a good essay topic.”

If you don’t have an obvious answer to prompts like Common App question number 2, “Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.” Then consider yourself fortunate. I assume you wouldn’t trade places with a student who has a stage 4 cancer diagnosis or grows up as an orphan in rural poverty. Another Redditor reflects in a thread titled “a few notes on trauma essays from someone who wrote one” that trauma can potentially be a hook, but is it a hook that you really want?

I first started reflecting on this topic when asking a related question: are there some off-limits or that you should not discuss? Some admissions professionals take a very broad range of topics you should avoid. Those lists often include traumatic episodes or injuries, particularly in sports. Many blog posts tell you to not discuss trauma or injuries. I take a much more narrow view and feel that almost any topic can be a potentially insightful essay depending on the context, why you’ve chosen that topic, and how you’ve gone about your writing.

I’ve had many clients write about trauma or a sports injury and find admissions success at elite universities. If I’m being charitable, I think one reason people have long lists of “topics to avoid” is because it’s intellectually convenient not to consider nuance, but also that most college essays aren’t very good, then it follows trauma and sports injury essays tend to be especially poorly written.

Not because the student doesn’t try to write well, it’s just really difficult to put into words complex feelings regarding grief, loss, and anger, among others. In addition, deeply rooted trauma may not manifest or be accessible until much later in someone’s life, complicating the advice to “simply write about it” for applicants who experience adverse childhood experiences or continue to struggle with their identities.

I think the advice to write about trauma is more constructive than the other side of the coin, to avoid it. When trauma or injuries are an essential part of your identity or background, then I encourage students to err on the side of sharing. When applicants get rejected, they try and include their trauma in an appeal or a letter of continued interest. But that information is rarely new or recent and should have been included in the initial application. It is better to share than regret not doing so.

My advice then is if you have a significant trauma or setbacks that have disrupted your life or education plans, then I encourage you to make an effort to share about it. That would include sports injuries, especially if you were a high-level athlete who may have been recruited for an athletic scholarship. You want to avoid hyperbole or exaggerate a minor setback and making it into a huge deal because it is guaranteed your reviewer will have already seen at least a few truly heartbreaking stories. Especially during COVID, literally everyone has experienced at least some minor inconveniences or inability to pursue extracurriculars or an internship. Avoid making mountains of molehills.

Many blog posts and admissions professionals say only to write about trauma or injuries if you can put a positive spin on it or show how it is helped you improve as a person. It’s regrettable that holistic review and the social desirability bias incentivize students to commoditize and sell their pain for a possible admissions space.

However, I also don’t think trauma or injury essays need to have a silver lining or showing how you overcame an obstacle or some rosy picture. For many students, especially if they live in abusive households or are transitioning genders, the trauma remains ongoing. I worked with a client who wrote his essays between chemotherapy treatments and hospitalizations after their physicians misdiagnosed them multiple times. Some good may well come from that child’s experience, but it isn’t at all evident at the moment when they’ve lost weight, their hair, and typical teenage experiences.

There may not be any silver linings other than having the courage to wake up each day and get out of bed. Given that teenage suicide is the second leading cause of preventable deaths, it is a miracle for at least some students that they haven’t taken their own lives. I don’t think students are obliged to share how being assaulted or experiencing cancer helped them grow as a person.

Sometimes, life is unfair, and it sucks. Maybe you will take away some lessons years from now, but perhaps you won’t, and that’s also okay.

You don’t need to tell anonymous admissions readers why having an alcoholic father makes you more resilient or how losing your mom to cancer makes you more empathetic. It’s okay and probably more honest to be bitter, angry, or resentful than to have an insincere optimistic take.

My advice is if you want to discuss something deeply private and you don’t want your parents reading it, make an effort to secure your documents. One of my clients who decided to write about a suicide attempt was discouraged by their parents, who insisted on reading their essays and told them not to submit them. They did anyway and gained admission to their dream school.

Parents, sometimes your kids write about things they’d rather you not know about, like being gay or experiencing a sexual assault. They might also write about your failing marriage, so if your child says no to you reading their essays, then respect their decision and discretion.

 In rare instances, students who have written about trauma have had their essays reported to high school staff. In most states, it is a legal gray area what responsibility universities have for reporting potentially life-threatening content in a college essay.

What about admissions reviewers who read traumatic essays? Or universities who allow or sometimes require students to discuss an obstacle or setback or a moment of realization? An admissions counselor on Reddit once criticized students for writing vividly about trauma or abuse because it is psychologically difficult for them to read and review. Well, what do you expect when you ask essay questions about obstacles that invite these kinds of traumatic stories and imagery?

If undergraduate admissions essay topics had questions like law or graduate school admissions that primarily focus on your interests and fit for the program, then this would avoid the problem of potentially triggering your admissions reviewer. Students respond to the questions they are asked. It isn’t their fault that life has dealt some of them a rough hand.

Admissions counselors who are disturbed by essay responses need to lobby their administration to reform their essay questions. Especially if you work at a university that admits more than 75% of their applicants, your institution probably shouldn’t have any essay requirements at all. It isn’t a student’s responsibility to put a trigger warning at the top of their essays for topics that you’re requiring them to write.

And finally, if you’re an admissions counselor who can’t handle reading dozens of unpleasant and distressing essays, then maybe the profession isn’t for you. If you can’t handle students at their worst, why would you deserve them at their best?