How to avoid cliches in a college essay

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office meet the same expired phrases in every admissions cycle: a course that opened up a Pandora's box, someone running roughshod over something, a school described as a melting pot. Orwell called these dying metaphors decades ago, images that once meant something and now only spare the writer from thinking. A reader who meets one learns that the writer did not stop to look.

The cost is larger than a lost point for style. When a reader argues for a borderline file, the argument can come down to a single sentence of the applicant's writing, and a phrase the reader has seen a thousand times cannot carry that weight. Breaking the habit starts with knowing which habits do the damage.