How to Write College Essay about Regret: Reflect on Mistakes

We all experience regret, from the smallest decision to the biggest error of our life. Regret has a way of creeping up on us, making us question our actions.

It is important we avoid letting these feelings fester and grow into something worse, such as bitterness or resentment. 

This post has tips that will make it easier to write a college essay on regret and make it a reflective and insightful read.

Why is Your Regret a Good Topic for College Essays?

1. Interesting 

Students are often required to write essays containing personal experiences. Such an essay can be extremely interesting and exciting. Even so, describing something that has changed your life or taught you a lesson is quite a good idea.

Many students choose to write about regrets in their lives. Regret can be an excellent topic for an essay because it teaches you so much about yourself and the world around you.

2. Unchangeable facts 

A regretful experience shows you that the past is unchangeable.

Regretful experiences teach people many lessons, such as dealing with failure and adapting to adverse situations.

Going through something regretful is often extremely difficult, but it usually pays off in the end because you will have learned something from it.

3. Inspiring 

Sharing your regretful experience with others can also be inspiring and helpful to them. Reading about another person’s unfortunate situation can help us realize that we are not alone in our struggles.

It shows that someone is always willing to listen if we need help or advice.

4. Educative 

Learning from other people’s mistakes can also help us avoid making our own mistakes. If we can learn from the mistakes of others instead of having to learn from our own mistakes, we will save ourselves a lot of trouble.

You might even want to share your regrets with friends and family.

Does your college essay matter

How to Write a College Essay about a Decision you Regret

1. Explain your Regret

Write down the regretful experiences that impacted you and shaped your values, beliefs, or character.

It is important to consider your essay’s tone, style, and voice. The essay’s first sentence should be interesting, engaging, or even exciting. The last sentence should leave a strong impression on the reader.

As you draft, consider your mood. What are you feeling as you write? Are you feeling regretful? Sad? Angry? Or are you feeling happy? If so, how can you express that with language? Use sensory details and imagery to create this mood.

At the same time, think about how your audience might read or react to your story. What emotions will they feel as they read it? What images will they see in their mind as they read your essay’s opening line?

2. Write Intro and Thesis about it

When you are writing an essay and are trying to prove a point, show, or prove something. It is important to use an introduction that states what you are trying to prove.

Writing essays and papers can be very difficult to make the reader believe what you are writing about.

You can use your introduction to tell the reader how you would like them to feel about what you are saying.

The thesis statement is the brief articulation of your paper’s central argument and purpose. You might hear it referred to as simply a “thesis.” Every scholarly paper should have a thesis statement, and strong thesis statements are concise, specific, and arguable.

3. Write Why You Regret it

If you regret something you did, the best way to get over it is to write about it. In this case, you can use your college essay as an opportunity to explain the story behind your mistake and why you have learned from it.

A great regret might have changed your life. It might have influenced who you are as a person today or your future goals. It might even have affected where you end up going to college!

4. Explain the Lessons you picked

Talk about the learning experience rather than just recounting the event itself. Admissions officers read thousands of essays every year, so steer clear of anything that might come across as cliché. For instance, think about how an immigrant story can be enlightening to someone else who recently moved to the States as an immigrant.

Avoid writing about common experiences like scoring the winning goal, losing a championship game, or winning a student election. Instead, focus on specific moments that led to unique growth opportunities in your life.

Here, choose arguments from each side that you can easily oppose or prove false. You must clearly understand what points your opponent will cite and how you can refuse them.

Once again, consider that if there are many such arguments on both sides, you should choose another topic; otherwise, you risk getting stuck in the middle of the work.

What Do you Think about the Regret?

No matter what you decide to do with your life, there will always be something that you could have done differently. There will always be things that you wish you could change. You will always regret something. 

Yet, there is nothing wrong with that! Regret is human nature! It is part of what makes us interesting! We are not perfect! And we all make mistakes! We are imperfect people who live in an imperfect world! 

9 Examples of Regret Decisions to Write About

People make wrong choices every day. Most of the time, these decisions are small and have little consequence on their lives. But sometimes, these choices lead to serious problems such as losing a job, getting divorced, or going to jail.

If you are looking for regret decision examples to write about in your memoir, here are nine ideas:

1. Getting married too young

2. Not getting married young enough

3. Having children too soon

4. Not having children soon enough

5. Staying in an abusive relationship

6. Going out with someone you shouldn’t have dated

7. Putting off a medical procedure that ultimately led to complications or death

8. Smoking cigarettes or doing drugs over an extended period of time

9. Not putting yourself through college.