The personal statement: that elusive, often-intimidating component of college applications. It's your chance to tell admissions officers who you truly are, beyond grades and test scores. But how do you convey your values, passions, and experiences in a way that both feels authentic to you and resonates with admissions committees?
Writing a personal statement can feel daunting, especially when facing the pressure of making a lasting impression. But a well-crafted personal statement can elevate your application, demonstrate your readiness for higher education as a whole, and showcase your (quirky) personality.
From avoiding clichés to embracing vulnerability, this guide will walk you through the essential elements of crafting a compelling narrative that highlights both your strengths and your potential.
Table of Contents:
The Purpose of the Personal Statement in Admissions
Firstly, the personal statement (typically, the 650-word personal statement required by the Common App) exists in context. When admissions counselors get to your application, they may choose to read it in any order, but the pieces they’ll receive are:
The application itself (demographic info, basic context of who you are, etc.)
Your official high school transcript
Your recommendation letters
Your personal statement
Your academic resume
Any supplemental essays (including the “Additional Info” and “Community Disruption” sections of the Common App)
Any optional portfolios or notes from interviews
Your readers will have your resume and transcript on hand, so there’s no need to use the essay to brag about all your coolest accomplishments – the essay should showcase a side of yourself that’s not shown in your resume or transcript.
Readers also likely don’t know anything about you other than what’s included in the application – so you’ll want to make sure you give a full picture of your interests, activities, skills, and future goals in the application. If you’re submitting multiple essays to a given school, make sure each essay covers a different topic or a different part of your identity, to avoid coming across as one-sided. Interviewing with an admissions officer can be a great way to provide more context to your application, but not every school offers interviews, so crafting a super-strong essay will be especially helpful in those cases.
What readers look for in the personal statement will vary from school to school. But in general, these are the types of questions they’ll ask:
Is this student capable of writing at a college level? (Or, are they willing & able to work on improving as a writer?)
Does this student think deeply?
Is this student introspective? Do they have a strong sense of self?
What matters to this student? (For this one, they really just want to see that something matters to you – they’re not looking for specific interests, just a more general sense of passion.)
Steps in the Writing Process
Now that you’ve built your college list and are getting ready to start writing your essays, here are the steps you’ll need to take.
Brainstorming
Before you start writing, you’ll need to choose a topic. For the personal statement, I generally recommend writing about the thing that you care about the most: the thing you spend the majority of your time thinking about.
For many students, school is such a massive part of life that it seems impossible to come up with any non-academic topics. If you truly can’t think of anything else to write about, you can write about your experiences in school – but you run the risk of coming across as one-sided if you don’t include anything more personal in your application. The goal should be to show your reader who you are, not just as a student but as a person.
Some questions to think about:
What life experiences have made you who you are? It could be small - you don’t have to go into the darkest details of your worst traumas. Great essays sometimes turn a seemingly-small moment (or even a repeated daily occurrence) into a meaningful statement on who you’ve become or what you’ve learned.
Who/what is the single most important person/object/concept in your life?
What beliefs do you hold? This could be anything - religious beliefs, overall worldview, opinions on anything from friendship to politics to art to the most effective methods of making yogurt.
You can also use brainstorming activities to help you come up with more interesting topics:
Virtual College Counselors so has several blog posts with college essay brainstorming exercises:
College Essay Guy also has great resources for brainstorming:
Drafting
Once you’ve chosen a topic that you feel good about, the next step is to write a first draft. But when you start by staring at a blank document and trying to write a really great introduction, that process can seem almost impossible! Try instead to plan out the overall structure of your essay first, and then go through that structure and add to it, piece by piece.
The typical outline I recommend for a narrative essay is as follows:
Introduction paragraph (basic context to introduce anecdote)
Anecdote (what happened)
Analysis (“So what?”)
Conclusion (look to the future)
I recommend creating a bulleted list of each idea you want to include in the essay and then using sub-bullets to expand on each point in complete sentences. Eventually, if you do this right, you’ll be able to just delete the bullet points and you’ll be left with a first draft!
One important tip before you begin: don’t edit yourself while you write. That’s the revision step, not the drafting step. A first draft is going to be rough, and that’s totally fine – expected, even. This is difficult, especially for all my perfectionists out there, but it’s also a vital learning process when it comes to writing at a college level.
The anecdote and analysis sections should be your longest sections by far, and in the initial drafting process, it may be easiest to start with the anecdote. You can always come back to the intro later (and it’ll be so much easier to come up with a great hook once you have your anecdote and overall message solidified). Start by writing out as much as possible about the event you’ve chosen, and use sensory details to bring your reader into the moment with you. You can always cut out unnecessary or redundant sentences later – for now, forget about word count and just write as much as you possibly can.
Then, try digging into the analysis. Here, the big question is “So what?”. Why are you telling us this story? Who have you become, as a direct result of this experience? What changed about your life? What changed about your values, perspectives, relationships, hobbies, day-to-day experiences, or approach to challenges? If you find that nothing much changed about your life as a result of the experience you’ve written about, then you may need to pick a different experience.
Lastly, you’ll need to include a conclusion and an introduction. One great way to conclude is to look to the future: where might this experience take you next? Given the skills/lessons you gained from this, what kind of person will you be as you enter college? Another option is to make an assertion about who you are now, compared to who you were before this experience, to showcase your introspective abilities and your sense of self.
For intros, there are nearly infinite options - but a great hook is typically a short, punchy sentence that will surprise your reader and urge them to keep reading. (One example from a former student was an essay that started with: “It was junior year of high school and all my friends were dead.” The story that followed was compelling in and of itself, but that hook does a great job of making you want to keep reading.) Once you have your hook, you can use the rest of the intro paragraph to start getting into the context of your anecdote.
Revising
Once you’ve created your first draft, you can enter the revision process. You’ll likely need 3-5 drafts of this essay to get it as polished as you want it to be, but don’t ask too many different people for feedback – you’ll get differing perspectives from each person, and you may end up with an essay that’s not really yours. Ask one or two trusted adults for feedback.
If you start the process early enough, you can also take some time away from the essay. When you stare at the same essay and re-read it over and over, it’s easy to start finding issues where there really aren’t any. If you start feeling unsure about your essay during the revision process, take a few days to ignore it and then come back with fresh eyes.
Show Versus Tell
High school English teachers love to tell students “show, don’t tell.” In college admissions essays, you actually need both: “show and tell!”
Here’s the difference:
When telling your reader something, you’re expecting your reader to take your word for it.
“I am interested in ___ College because I do well with self-directed learning.”
In the above sentence, I’m just saying that I do well with self-directed learning, and I’m requiring my reader to believe me.
In contrast, if I wanted to get across the same idea but show it to my reader by bringing them into the moment with me, I might write something like:
“When I took my first creative writing class, I was hooked. I had never before had the chance to write what I wanted to write - for the first time, I could choose not only the topic, but the form I liked the most. I realized then that I had been frustrated with my education; I don’t learn as well, or retain knowledge as easily, when I don’t have any agency in the classroom. But when I was given the chance to take the wheel and follow my own interests, I had more fun, retained the material better, and was more engaged with my work than I had ever been before. At ___ College, the self-led courses of study and the agency to make my own educational choices will allow me to dive deeply into my passions and discover the path that makes the most sense for me.”
In the above section, I’m not only telling my reader that I learn best in self-directed environments, but I’m also showing them how and why I learn best in that format, getting specific about the benefits of that format for me personally.
When it comes to writing strong personal statements, the goal should be to include as much anecdotal “showing” as possible, but given the limits on word count, you’ll likely need to include some moments of “telling.”
Dos and Don’ts
Lastly, there are a few general rules of thumb for personal statements. Keep these in mind as you draft and revise.
Do:
Use specific anecdotes (with sensory detail).
Get introspective - tell them who you are. This can include identities, relationships, goals, values, perspectives, hobbies, daily activities, and so much more.
Analyze - connect your anecdote(s) to your values and your sense of identity.
Answer the prompt. This one feels like a given, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget about the prompt once you start drafting! Make sure to keep the prompt at the top of your document so that you can keep referring back to it. And if there are multiple questions within the prompt, try to make sure you’re answering all of them.
Keep your focus narrow but deep - include one (or at most, two) anecdote(s), with lots of deep analysis about what you’ve learned and how your life has changed.
Share your voice. Your reader wants to get to know YOU, and voice is a big part of that. Try drafting in the format of a letter, a text, an email to a friend, or a journal entry, to keep your voice personal. You can always adjust later if it comes out too informal on the first try.
Don’t:
Use cliches. Some frequently-used cliches that readers don’t love seeing: values of perseverance/drive, learning to be a hard worker, starting the essay with a quote/dictionary definition, and summarizing your point in the conclusion using the same words you’ve already used.
Reuse language the prompt uses. For example: for a prompt that asks, “If you were to start a new club at your school, what would it be and why?”, really try to avoid starting your essay with, “If I were to start a new club at my school, it would be…” – this can come across as a lack of creativity.
Use a broad focus (AKA bringing up lots of points, but only shallowly analyzing each). Your reader wants to know you can think deeply about a topic, so even if you choose a montage-style format where each paragraph brings up a new part of your identity, there has to be a common thread that connects each point and allows you to deeply analyze your sense of self in the conclusion.
Say what you think the reader wants to hear. One mistake I often see students make in their drafting process is spending too much energy trying to “sound smart” instead of focusing on authenticity. Remember that your reader is human! It’s human nature to enjoy stories, especially personal, real, compelling stories. Readers want to hear your voice, your purpose, and your personality! Essays that work the best often include compelling anecdotes, poetic turns of phrase, and/or elements of humor – simply because those essays are the ones that feel the most authentic.
Conclusion
As you finish this journey, remember that your true power as an applicant lies not in following every rule or tip, but in staying true to yourself. Your unique voice, experiences, and perspectives are what set you apart from other applicants. Don't be afraid to take risks and share moments that might seem unconventional or vulnerable – that’s where the authenticity is.
Whether you're accepted into your top choice college or not, this process itself is an invaluable exercise in self-reflection and the art of storytelling. As you submit your final draft, take pride in knowing that you've crafted a piece of writing that not only represents you to the fullest, but also (hopefully) helped you learn a little more about yourself in the process.
Sam Bergeron
Essay Specialist
Comments