5+ College Graduation Speech Ideas to Consider This Year

It’s only a few days remaining until you stand before a crowd to deliver your final college speech. Teachers, other graduates, parents, and folks from different lifestyles will sit silently, look at you, and listen as you deliver your final speech in your learning institution.

The goal with your graduation speech is to engage your audience in those final moments. So to give the best speech, the kind that will leave your audience in awe shortly after delivery, is to prepare well in time.

Why? If you think about it, you’re not the only college student who’s going to take the podium on the graduation day. So you want your college graduation speech to not only grab the attention of your readers instantly but also keep them engaged to the speech.

Before you think about some graduation speech ideas, reflect on the years you’ve been in college, think about the personalities of your course mates, and identify what makes your college experience unique. Doing so will enable you to come up with some useful graduation speech ideas, from which you can choose an angle to focus on to deliver your speech.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to stand, write, and end a graduation speech. We’ll also give you some great ideas that you can use to write effective, comprehensive graduation speech.

How to Start a College Graduation Speech

Start working on the speech at least a week before the D-day. Having more time means proper, early, enough preparation as you anticipate the graduation ceremony.

During this time, read examples of graduation speeches online, nothing down the elements or key themes that inspire you the most. Identify the most inspirational or important theme from among the many options in your list.

Write down quotes, phrases, and messages tied to the theme to start building upon your speech. You don’t have to write complete sentence at this time. A list would do, provided you organize your thoughts in the order that allows you to develop a good for the speech.

Also Read: Good Study Habits for College

How to Write a College Graduation Speech

It’s now time to take your points and use them to write your graduation speed. Start by stellar introduction to hook your audience towards you.

Take your points and expand them, making sure the key phrases, words, and quotes appear in the speech in order to communicate your message.

Tell a story between sections, especially if you’re in doubt or if you feel stranded. Your stories should be more personalized but relating to your entire class.

If it helps to make your speech emotionally impactful and attention grabbing, don’t hesitate to include special messages and wishes for your audience in your writing.

The key thing here is to exhaust everything you want to say to make your graduation speech as inspiring as possible while sticking to the central theme picked during preparation.

Take a 24-hour break from writing and then come back and start editing. Read the whole speech and delete words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that are either unnecessary or don’t make sense.

Re-read the speech again, this time making sure your sentences are concise and your language is simple to understand and your speech interesting to listen to.

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How to End a College Graduation Speech

Don’t end your graduation with a generic phrase such as “and that marks the end of my speech”.

Be creative instead.

Conclude with words, phrases, and sentences that tie your speech together. You can have a fun send off, use an interesting quote, include graduation bible verses, or use different words to reiterate your central message.

Also, step away from writing for a few minutes and then come back a few minutes later to edit the conclusion. Trim it down to the most concise and easy to read sentences. Finally have someone read your speech. A second eye can go a long way to give a thorough edit.

Also Read: Personal Statement vs Statement of Purpose

College Graduation Speech Ideas to Consider Right Now

Now that you know how to write a good college graduation speech, let’s look at some topic ideas that you can use to write an outstanding speech for the upcoming ceremony.

Serious Speech Ideas

Base the speech on your experience in school. Uncover what being in college has taught you and your fellow students throughout every semester. Some serious speech ideas you can cover thereafter include:

• The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in College
• Take Risks, Learn from Your Mistakes, and Never Give Up
• Dream Beyond College and Be Ready to Face the Next Challenge

Inspirational Speech Ideas

Inspirational graduation speeches can teach your audience an important life’s lesson and leave them with something to think about while feeing elated. Examples of college graduation speech ideas under this subset includes:

• An expression of gratitude to your family, teacher, and friends for their love and support throughout your academic years
• Including inspirational quotes from the Bible and famous books to set a tone for your speech and give a comprehensive theme
• You can talk about accomplishments of one or more of your fellow students, putting more emphasis on how such achievements strengthened your class.
• Give an inspiring story about yourself or your class. Share some of the challenges you faced, highlight how you overcome, and then tell your audience how such experiences have influenced your attitude towards difficult moments.

Funny Speech Ideas

College would be boring if it didn’t have students with great sense of humor. So if you’re a student who likes to make other people laugh while still communicating an important message, consider giving a funny graduation speech.

• Sprinkle a few appropriate, non-provocative jokes in your speech to keep your listeners entertained
• Tell your audience a funny story that’s specific to your school or class
• Use funny yet inspirational quotes to talk to your audience

How Long Should a College Graduation Speech Be?

Your college graduation speech should be at least 5 minutes. Although it can be longer, it shouldn’t exceed 12 minutes. Regardless of how long you make your speech, the key thing should be to make your content engaging from start to finish.