Whether you’ve been preparing for years or have just started thinking about it, the college application process can quickly get tricky and overwhelming if you go into the process without knowing what to expect. When it comes to essays, or “personal statements”, colleges require them for a few specific reasons:
- To learn about your personality: colleges and universities want to have an understanding of students beyond grades and test scores. The essays are a chance to showcase what makes you truly unique, so as you brainstorm, think about what you can write that will show the kind of person you are. Are you ambitious, caring, and respectful to others? Do you have aspirations beyond just getting your degree? If so, then share it!
- To determine your writing skills: the essays also serve as writing samples and therefore should give the reader an idea of your level of expertise in writing. Even if writing is not your strongest subject, you can still write a quality essay if you plan your writing and give yourself enough time to review and revise. Take these essays as seriously as you would one for English class.
- To allow you to explain any extenuating circumstances: We all have issues that impact our lives, and universities know this. The personal statement can serve as your opportunity to explain how these issues may have impacted your academics. Did you have an injury that led to an extended medical absence? Did a life-changing event occur such as the death of a parent or loved one? Colleges want to know if you struggled with a serious issue that affected your high school record, so remember to share about such circumstances on your application if necessary.
- To get an idea of why you’re interested in applying: Every university wants to know why you want to go to their school. Think of them as asking, “why do you want to invest your time and money here, and why should we invest in you?” You have an opportunity to share your passions and your knowledge with someone, so treat the essays as your chance to go beyond the numbers and showcase the best version of you.
Please read on because next, I will be sharing some short tips on how you can accomplish all of the above on your personal statements and increase your chances of getting into your top universities.
- Categorize all of your essay prompts and start brainstorming
There are many different types of personal statements out there, but many schools use similar prompts for their undergraduate applications. To help yourself stay organized, what I recommend is to gather up all of your prompts and put them all into one document. After doing this, you’ll find that a lot or prompts ask the same question of you in slightly different ways. The most common types of prompts you might see on your application include essays might ask you to describe
- your personal history with an academic or extracurricular activity
- your future goals or aspirations
- how you handled a problem or challenge
- how a belief you had was challenged
- why you have chosen to apply to a particular university
Since these commonly appear across applications, you can take these ideas right now and begin to brainstorm for your essays. Think about the subjects that inspire you and what you’ve been able to accomplish in those areas. What about yourself is most worthy of highlighting in an essay? A dozen ideas might pop into one person’s head, but for another, this could take a little more thinking. As you think of things, put them all in one place as well so that your ideas are organized rather than scattered.
2. Research your schools and programs
Before you start writing, do some research on each school your applying for in order to help you tackle the question, “why this university?” It’s not enough to say you like a school because it has good classes or is in a location you like. Why do you want to be there? What about the school appeals to you in the first place? Don’t you even think of answering that with “because its a beautiful campus.” do some research on the programs that your school offers, clubs that may interest you, and classes that the school offers that give you a reason to want to go there. This will help show that you are ambitious not only about your college experience but are also motivated to be a bigger part of the campus community. Show that you want to be an involved and active member of campus through your research.
3. Be honest and open, but stay positive
What sounds more interesting to read: the story about the student who never had a hard time in school, or the one about the student who overcame the odds to find success? Chances are the second story with more personal details will be more appealing and more engaging. Your personal statement should be personal. Treat it as a chance to share what you believe makes you shine, but be honest with your readers and open about the challenges or struggles you’ve faced.
At the same time, don’t spend all of your time dwelling on shortcomings and instead try to shed a positive light on your challenges. We’ve all struggled in life, but what we are able to learn from it and how we share what we’ve learned makes the difference here. You don’t want to spend all of your time talking about how your high school and all of your teachers let you down. Instead, focus on how that experience has shaped your present self.
Don’t leave out personal details that might be important to your essays. There are some things you may never think to share, but sharing them will give your reader a better chance to see the real you, but don’t go overboard and share information that is irrelevant to the topic. Stay honest and open, but stay focused on what’s most important.
4. Give credit where credit is due
You didn’t get here all on your own, so why pretend in your essays that you did? The only thing that writing “I” at the beginning of every one of your sentences does is give an inaccurate view of your academic and personal life. Your success may be due to your hard work, but I guarantee you that it is also thanks to others and how they have impacted your life. Where you can, give credit to those teachers, parents, and supporters who have helped you or inspired you along the way. As an applicant, it will make you appear humble and appreciative of the support you’ve received rather than sounding self-centered. Instead of asking what the school can provide for you, ask instead how you can impact the school and make a bigger influence on the world around you.
5. Be ambitious in how you present yourself
As stated before, you want to show each school who you and what you want beyond a college education. You need to share with these schools why you want to go to college and what college will help you accomplish in your life. It’s not enough to say that you want to go to college to get a good job. What kind of job do you want? What do you want to do with the future? What do you see yourself doing in ten years?
These are big ideas to think about, so that’s why it’s important to continue brainstorming even after your initial session. Keep your mind fresh with what inspires you and why you want to continue your education and I guarantee that you can come up with some new ideas to keep your essays fresh as well.
6. Give context on your life and background: leave no holes
When writing your college essays, context is important in order to explain certain circumstances as we talked about before. If you had a dip in grades sophomore year, you want to provide enough context that helps the readers understand why this slump happened. If your grades dropping was the result of a death in the family or a life-threatening injury, now is the time to share this information. If you leave holes in your story, people might not understand the bigger picture and you may miss out on your top schools simply because you didn’t fully explain your story. In order to have your best shot with each application, it’s best to be fully transparent in your essays.
7. Give yourself time: don’t procrastinate
You have a lot of essays to write. It may be self-explanatory to some, but procrastinating on your essays will lead to bigger problems down the road. If you wait until the last minute to write, you’re more likely to reuse older essays, which you should never do if you want to impress your schools with your application. Treat each essay as a fresh start and write as if it’s your first time writing. It’s okay to use similar elements in essays, but college essays should never match each other word-for-word. You can score low on demonstrated interest if it’s too obvious to the reader that you have reused an essay for another school to fit their prompt. Readers tend to be familiar with the prompts from peer institutions, so they could notice and see that you’ve taken an unnecessary shortcut.
Instead, take your time, give yourself time, and give each of your essays the attention that they deserve!
8. Proofread for errors and use others for help
Nothing looks worse than a finished college essay that is still full of punctuation and grammar mistakes. If universities are treating your essays as writing samples, then you had better be sure that these essays showcase your best writing possible. That means going back to proofread all of your work more than once so that you can spot any small or large missteps in your writing. If you still feel like your work needs more help, have peers or your parents read your essays so that you can have as many pieces of input as possible. Take that input and apply it as you see fit to your essay. Who knows, someone else might have an idea you never even considered. In addition, you can ask teachers for ideas on your prompts, and never forget that you have a Writing Lab at school to help with this kind of writing too!
You’ve probably never had to write about yourself in this type of way before, so the process of writing personal statements may feel new and daunting. If you follow the steps above, you will be on the path to creating quality essays that give yourself a competitive edge as well as give the schools something to go on when reviewing your application. If you give them a lot of information that wows them, chances are you will say “Wow!” if they accept your application. Take the chance to make your essays better and you may see those positive results before you know it. Good luck!