Should You Start Your College Essay With a Quote?

Start with a strong quote.

True — only if the person you’re quoting is you.

That’s the whole answer. But it’s worth understanding why, because the logic behind it changes how you think about the opening of any essay.

Start with a strong quote — only if the person you're quoting is you.

Why Quoting Someone Else Backfires

When you open a college essay with a quote from Einstein, Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, or any other figure impressive enough to be worth quoting — you’ve immediately done two things that work against you.

First, you’ve taken the spotlight off yourself. Your essay has one job: to make the admissions officer feel like they’re meeting you. The moment you begin with someone else’s words, you’ve placed someone else at the center of the opening. You’ve made the first impression someone else’s impression.

Second, you’ve implied a comparison. By choosing to open with Einstein’s words, you’re drawing a connection between yourself and Einstein. Whether that’s your intent or not, it’s how it reads. And that comparison — in the first line of an essay about a 17-year-old — rarely lands the way the student hopes.

The Specific Problems

The famous quote opening has been so overused that trained readers — admissions officers who read thousands of essays a year — recognize it instantly as a signal of a predictable essay to come. It’s in the same category as "For as long as I can remember" and "Webster’s dictionary defines." The moment the reader sees it, a small alarm goes off: this essay is probably going to follow a familiar pattern.

That alarm is not insurmountable. A quote can be followed by a genuinely strong essay. But you’ve started from behind, having spent your opening move on a borrowed first impression.

The One Exception

Quoting yourself works.

Not ironically — literally. If you’re opening with something you said, something you wrote, something that captures the way you think in a particular moment, that’s a completely different device.

"I told my mother: ‘I don’t care if it doesn’t work. I need to know why it doesn’t work.’"

That’s a quote. It’s also you — your voice, your way of thinking, the specific kind of curiosity that’s going to drive the essay. It drops the reader directly into your mind. It does what all strong openings do: it creates a question the reader wants answered.

That’s the quote that works.

What to Do Instead of Someone Else’s Words

The instinct to open with a quote usually comes from one of two places.

Either the student is trying to establish a theme or framework for the essay — in which case, the framework should emerge from the story itself, not be announced up front through borrowed authority.

Or the student doesn’t have a strong opening yet and is using the quote to buy time before getting to the real start of the essay. In that case, the essay’s actual opening is in the second or third paragraph. Find it and move it to the top.

Both of these are better alternatives than starting with someone else’s words.

The Real Opening

The best opening for any college essay drops the reader directly into a specific moment, with enough specificity to create curiosity, and enough motion to make them want the next sentence.

It doesn’t announce. It begins.

If you have a quote that you think captures the theme of your essay beautifully — save it. Put it somewhere in the middle, as an observation you made or a line you encountered that crystallized something you were already thinking. That placement lets the quote do what quotes do best — punctuate a thought — without handing over your opening move.

Your opening is the most valuable real estate in the essay. Use your own words.

If you want a system for building an opening that earns its place — one that grabs attention because it’s specific and particular and genuinely yours, not because it borrowed someone else’s credibility — that’s exactly what EssaySecrets™ teaches.