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UGA  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

UGA: The Book That Changed You

200-300 words suggested (350 max on the Common App)

The transition from middle to high school is a key time for students as they reach new levels of both academic and personal discovery. Please share a book (novel, non-fiction, etc.) that had a serious impact on you during this time. Please focus more on why this book made an impact on you and less on the plot/theme of the book itself (we are not looking for a book report).
What it’s really asking

UGA wants one book that genuinely changed how you think or act somewhere in the broad window around starting high school, and they want the essay to be mostly about that change in you, not about the book's plot. They explicitly say they are not looking for a book report. The book can be any kind: a novel, nonfiction, a graphic novel, even something unexpected. The timeframe has leeway, so you are not locked into exactly eighth or ninth grade.

Why they ask it

It is the only UGA-specific essay, so it is where a reader hears your actual voice and watches you think. In a file built heavily on grades and scores, this short answer is the human part. It also quietly tests whether you can follow a direct instruction (focus on the why), which is its own signal.

Three ways in
Start from the book you actually wore out

Find the book you reread, quoted to a friend, or argued with in the margins, then ask what it actually changed about your behavior or beliefs.

Start from a problem you were stuck on

Recall a real problem you were facing around that age (a friendship, a fear, a question about who you were) and identify the book that gave you a way through it.

Work backward from who you are now

Think of a class you took, a hobby you started, or an opinion you now hold that traces back to one book, and trace it back to the moment it took hold.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was a little kid, I have always loved to read, and one book that really changed my life was a true masterpiece.”

✓  Strong opening

“I started 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' to win an argument with my mom about dinner, and finished it unable to look at a chicken nugget the same way.”

✦ Annotated example · The Phone Book of My Grandfather's Town. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
The book that changed me in eighth grade was not assigned, and it was not even really a book. It was the 1974 telephone directory for Cuthbert, Georgia, which I found in my grandfather's hall closet the summer before high school, swollen with damp and smelling like pennies.1I had picked it up to laugh at it. Who keeps a phone book for fifty years? But then I started reading the names, and I recognized our last name printed four times down one column, all on the same road. 2Before that closet, I had treated my family as a flat fact, like my height or my address. We were just the people at dinner. I had never once wondered who they had been before they were tired adults who reminded me to do my homework.3I started asking my grandfather about those names. He talked for two hours about a cousin who ran a feed store, a great-aunt who taught piano to half the county, a brother who left for Detroit and never wrote. The phone book was an index, and he was the actual text.4What changed was not what I knew but how heavy ordinary things suddenly felt. A list of names became a map of decisions that eventually produced me. I realized I had been walking around inside a long story and had never bothered to read backward.5Now I keep that phone book on my own shelf, between a chemistry textbook and a paperback I actually chose. When I get impatient with my parents, I open it. It reminds me that everyone listed there was once somebody's impatient kid, and that I will be a name in a column too, someday, worth being curious about.6
  1. 1Opening with an unexpected, almost anti-impressive 'book' signals genuine reading over impressive reading, exactly what UGA rewards. It is specific and a little strange, which earns attention.
  2. 2Showing the honest first reaction (mockery) before the turn makes the change believable instead of staged.
  3. 3This is the 'before' state, stated plainly. A clear before-and-after is one of the three things UGA explicitly rewards, so naming it directly is strategic.
  4. 4The essay keeps the focus on what the book did to the writer's behavior and relationships, not on plot or theme, which is what the prompt specifically asks for.
  5. 5The 'why it mattered' is articulated as an internal shift in perception rather than a tidy moral, which reads as authentic reflection.
  6. 6Closing returns to the object and projects forward, giving the before-and-after a quiet landing without overclaiming or moralizing. Lands the essay near the recommended word count.
Stuck? Start here
  • What is the one book I actually reread, quoted, or could not stop thinking about around the start of high school, regardless of whether it sounds impressive?
  • What did I think, do, or believe before this book that I think, do, or believe differently now, and can I point to a specific example?
  • If I cut all the plot summary, is there still a full essay left about me? If not, which real moment from my own life should open it?
Before you submit
  • At least two-thirds of my sentences are about me and my change, not about the book's plot.
  • I name a concrete, checkable thing that is different now (an action, habit, question, or decision), not just 'it opened my eyes.'
  • My opening drops the reader into a real moment by the first sentence, and I am within the 350-word ceiling (ideally 200-300).

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