CAN YOU PLEASE HELP¨ ME STRUCTURE MY COMMON APP ESSAY?

Hi @Marialmalih, I'm answering this question because you used karma to request an expert response but in the future please remember to be respectful of the people who use this forum. People here are only trying to help and it is much easier to provide advice on an essay when it is fully complete than provide feedback on something that isn't written.

Onto my answer. This is a difficult question to answer because I don't know anything about you and the information you gave didn't provide too much additional information. In my opinion the reason you are having difficulty finding a link between these events is because, at least based on the information you gave us, there isn't a clear link between these events. Did the divorce and the fact that your mom left make you want to help other people? Or did it somehow make you interested in becoming an engineer? Or do you want to become an engineer because it's a way you can help people? I think you can create a link there but it might be difficult to link those with the divorce aspect.

However, I think you should consider approaching this in a separate way. It sounds like you've already decided these 3 things about you are something you want to discuss in your essay and are looking for links after the fact. I don't believe that's the best way to approach the question. You need to dig deeper and get more than surface level for your answer. Why do you like making others happy? What about it do you like? Are there certain things you enjoy doing to make people happy? Also, consider what drives you to be an engineer. What specifically motivates you to want to do major in that? There are plenty of other jobs where you can make people happy, so why engineering? @Emilyperez7113 gave you a good answer too, you're trying to do much with your essay. If you end up writing about all of these things you'll spend too much space writing about surface level details and won't be able to devote the space needed to really elaborate on who you are. It's better to focus on 1 thing and write in detail than spend time on 3 things but not write a lot about them. I think your easiest link will be to write about your desire to make people happy and explain how that desire ties into you wanting to become an engineer. Happy to expand further if necessary and good luck on your essay!

I agree with Emily in that you should focus on one experience so that you can elaborate more, and I think that you'll find that you have plenty to say even with less points. I would go with your factors 2 and 3 because not to put down your experiences or dumb them down, but many college admissions officers and people giving college advice have said that divorces are a really common essay topic, so I would try to stick to the second two. I think that if you have one volunteering experience that really stuck out to you that you could somehow tie back to your interest in the sciences and why you want to become an engineer, that would work really well.

I think you need to cut it shorter because you can't slam everything together. Colleges want ONE wow moment and these are too many in my opinion. You should stick to the one experience that had the most impact. If you talk about everything above, the reader will get lost and either ways the word count is not so extensive as for you to go well in detail about x y and z.

I would say it's a little easier to link your first and second topic because the third topic would be more for a supplemental essay. You could connect how your mom let you and your brother down and because of this you didn't want other kids to feel the same so you've volunteered at many associations for kids. Pick the best essay topic on the common app to answer this question and remember to briefly state about your mom and how she let you down and more about how this affected you and how you came out of it a better person/what you did with your experience (aka the volunteering). Good luck!