As you’re deciding what to write about, you might worry that your topic needs to be catchy, or that you’ll choose something that you should have avoided. Are there topics everyone should skip?

Spoiler—I don’t actually think any essay topic is totally off-limits, but there are topics that admissions officers see frequently. If you are considering writing about one of these topics, you have two choices. You could decide to write about something else, or you could find a unique angle and absolutely crush it.

Institutional priorities is a buzzword in college admission, but may be something students and families haven’t heard before. Institutional priorities refers to the qualities each college seeks in their applicants as they build the next incoming class. They often change from one year to the next—and sometimes even during the course of the same admissions cycle—triggered by the applications the school has actually received. They can be incredibly nuanced goals prioritizing several demographic factors at once, and they can be both broad (like aiming to enroll more in-state students) or very specific (such as when the football team needs to recruit a new quarterback).