Hi my stress muffins!

In the previous post, we went over Jane’s tips for making your college list.

Finally, we are starting on the dreaded personal statement.

Here’s a video of me walking y’all through this post, with some extra tips:

Personal Statement Introduction, FAQ, and tips from the pros! The common app personal statement has a word cap of 650 words, but the shorter the better.

Now, here are from FAQ’s:

Q: How long should my essay be?

A: The common app personal statement has a word cap of 650 words, but the shorter the better (as long as you’re not leaving out important details). You never want to write super long or wordy sentences, remember, your reader is an over-worked college application reviewer who reads hundreds of personal statements a day… so you want to make it as easy and pleasurable to read as possible!

Q: What are college admissions officers looking for?

A: They’re looking for answers to these three questions: 1.) Who is this person? 2.) Will this person contribute something of value to our campus? 3.) Can this person write?

These are rhetorical questions, meaning you don’t answer them directly in your personal statement, but rather you demonstrate the answers through how and what you say in your personal statement (don’t worry, we’ll get there).

Q: How do college admissions officers evaluate my essay?

A: Each school has its own criteria and different readers prefer different elements. Some admissions officers say they look to the essay to assess the student’s writing ability, while other admissions officers say they are less interested in writing ability and more interested in the student’s story?

Q: What’s the take away of what admissions officers are looking for?

A: Basically, it’s about writing. How well you tell a story and the mechanics of language. Which is why your personal statement, while short, will take multiple drafts— but that’s ok! Remember what I always say: writing is rewriting! Plus I’m here if you have questions!

Q: How do I structure my essay?

A: Anyway you want, but I’m going to focus on two different strategies: the Montage structure and the narrative structure (you can google either of these)

Q: Can a bad college essay negatively affect my application:

A: Yes.

I found a treasure trove of personal statements that were successful, so click here to read through them— you can see what they wrote about before clicking to read the essay. I recommend taking some time and browsing the essays before you get started on Step 2: Brainstorming!

Here are the Common App Essay prompts for 2020-2021. As you will discover, they are a bit dry. AND, importantly, there is the option to write an essay of any topic, so really, the other questions are just meant to give you an idea of what to write about, but if you already have that idea, you can absolutely pursue it!

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma — anything of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Tips from the Experts:

If you want to know more tips from College Application Experts, click here for the College Essay Guy’s post about it!

Sometimes, the best ideas for your essay, such as the perfect opener, a great twist, or a brilliant insight come from where you least expect them.
For example:
-Christian decided to write his essay about his love of Legos— it turned into a great essay where he got to show off all his extracurricular activities.
-Zakiyyah wrote about going to Disney World, even though it was decidedly “not cool” and not something she could brag about to her friends!
Don’t feel pressure to write about a challenging experience, but if you do, don’t feel the pressure to have a happy ending or solution.
-Remember, this essay is where you show off your writing/life experiences, and is about you.
Find a way to show off your Personal Growth
-Don’t spend a lot of time summarizing plot or describing your work/accomplishments. The most important part of an essay is YOU and how you’ve grown/changed/etc The rest is just a sentence here or there.
Be Specific: I know all y’all heard this from me at least a zillion times.
For example:
Consider these two hypothetical introductory paragraphs for a master's program in library science.
“I am honored to apply for the Master of Library Science program at the University of Okoboji because as long as I can remember I have had a love affair with books. Since I was eleven I have known I wanted to be a librarian.”
vs.
“When I was eleven, my great-aunt Gretchen passed away and left me something that changed my life: a library of about five thousand books. Some of my best days were spent arranging and reading her books. Since then, I have wanted to be a librarian.”
Each graf was 45 words long and contained substantively the same information (applicant has wanted to be a librarian since she was a young girl). But they are extraordinarily different essays, most strikingly because the former is generic where the latter is specific. It was a real thing, which happened to a real person, told simply. There is nothing better than that.
This college essay tip is by Chris Peterson, Assistant Director at MIT Admissions. The tip below is paraphrased from the post “How To Write A College Essay” on the MIT blog.

If you want to read more tips, I really like this guy’s blog, College Essay Guy, here’s his page with more tips for Personal Statements.

Click here for the next post + videos about how to Brainstorm your Personal Essay topic!