Descriptive text has been taught at English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta in the beginning of semester, especially in Academic Reading and Writing subject. This study aims to investigate the difficulties faced by students in writing descriptive and the strategies used by students to overcome their difficulties in writing descriptive text. This study used descriptive qualitative research design to answer the research questions. In collecting the data, interviews were conducted by the researcher. The participants of this study were six students taken from EED of UMY batch 2015. The participants had learned descriptive text at EED of UMY, especially in Academic Reading and Writing subject. The result of this study shows that there researcher found nine difficulties in writing descriptive text that were supporting sentences, developing ideas, main idea, lack of vocabulary, grammar, lack of sources, arrangement, coherent and cohesion and diction. The researcher also found from the participants that there were four strategies in writing descriptive text that were mind mapping, analyzing examples of descriptive texts by looking the structures of the texts, observing objects or pictures and using songs’ lyrics.