Is Uploading Multiple Personal Statements Bad for Application Process
In addition to standardized test scores and transcripts, a personal statement or essay is a required part of many college applications. The personal argument can be one of the most stressful parts of the application process because it'due south the most open ended. In this guide, I'll answer the question, "What is a personal argument?" I'll talk through mutual college essay topics and what makes for an effective personal statement. Even the terminology can be confusing if y'all aren't familiar with it, so let'south outset past defining some terms: Many colleges ask for just 1 essay. However, some schools do inquire you to respond to multiple prompts or to provide supplemental essays in addition to a main personal statement. Either way, don't permit information technology stress you out! This guide will cover everything you demand to know about the different types of college essays and go you started thinking near how to write a great one: There are a couple of reasons that colleges ask applicants to submit an essay, merely the bones idea is that it gives them more information about you, especially who you are beyond grades and exam scores. The most important role of the essay is to give admissions committees a sense of your personality and what kind of addition you'd exist to their school's community. Are you inquisitive? Ambitious? Caring? These kinds of qualities will have a profound impact on your higher feel, but they're hard to decide based on a high school transcript. Basically, the essay contextualizes your awarding and shows what kind of person you are outside of your grades and test scores. Imagine two students, Jane and Tim: they both have 3.5 GPAs and 1200s on the SAT. Jane lives in Colorado and is the captain of her track squad, while Tim lives in Vermont and regularly contributes to the schoolhouse paper, just they both want to be doctors and they both volunteer at the local hospital. Equally similar as Jane and Tim seem on paper, in reality they're actually quite different, and their unique perspectives come up through in their essays. Jane writes about how looking into her family history for a school project made her realize how the discovery of modernistic medical treatments like antibiotics and vaccines had changed the earth and drove her to pursue a career as a medical researcher. Tim, on the other hand, recounts a story about how a kind doctor helped him overcome his fearfulness of needles, an interaction that reminded him of the value of empathy and inspired him to go a family practitioner. These two students may seem outwardly similar merely their motivations and personalities are very dissimilar. Without an essay, your application is essentially a serial of numbers: a GPA, SAT scores, the number of hours spent preparing for quiz bowl competitions. The personal statement is your adventure to stand out as an individual. A secondary purpose of the essay is to serve every bit a writing sample and assistance colleges see that you accept the skills needed to succeed in higher classes. The personal statement is your all-time gamble to show off your writing, so take the time to craft a piece yous're really proud of. That said, don't panic if you aren't a stiff writer. Admissions officers aren't expecting y'all to write like Joan Didion; they just want to run into that you tin express your ideas clearly. No matter what, your essay should absolutely non include whatever errors or typos. For some students, the essay is also a chance to explain factors affecting their loftier school record. Did your grades drop sophomore year because you were dealing with a family emergency? Did yous miss out on extracurriculars junior year because of an extended medical absenteeism? Colleges want to know if you struggled with a serious issue that affected your loftier school record, so brand sure to bespeak whatever relevant circumstances on your application. Keep in mind that in some cases there will be a separate department for you to accost these types of issues, likewise equally any black marks on your record like expulsions or criminal charges. Many colleges ask you to write an essay or paragraph about why you're applying to their school specifically. In asking these questions, admissions officers are trying to determine if you lot're genuinely excited almost the schoolhouse and whether you're likely to attend if accepted. I'll talk more than about this type of essay beneath. Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional help from PrepScholar. Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground upward. We'll larn your background and interests, begin essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, footstep-past-pace. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your meridian choice colleges. Don't exit your college awarding to chance. Find out more near PrepScholar Admissions now: Thankfully, applications don't simply say "Please include an essay about yourself"—they include a question or prompt that you lot're asked to respond to. These prompts are generally pretty open ended and can exist approached in a lot of different ways. Nonetheless, about questions fall into a few main categories. Let'due south become through each mutual type of prompt, with examples from the Common Application, the University of California application, and a few individual schools. This sort of question asks y'all to write about a determinative experience, important effect, or key relationship from your life. Admissions officers want to empathise what is important to you and how your background has shaped you as a person. These questions are both common and catchy. The most common pitfall students autumn into is trying to tell their entire life stories—it'south better to focus in on a very specific point in time and explain why information technology was meaningful to you. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds similar you lot, and so please share your story. Talk over an achievement, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. Every person has a artistic side, and information technology can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Depict how y'all express your creative side. Remember about an bookish subject that inspires you lot. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or exterior of the classroom. A lot of prompts bargain with how you solve problems, how you cope with failure, and how you respond to disharmonize. College tin be hard, both personally and academically, and admissions committees want to come across that you lot're equipped to face those challenges. The key to these types of questions is to identify a existent problem, failure, or conflict (non a success in disguise) and show how you adjusted and grew from addressing the issue. The lessons we have from obstacles we encounter can exist fundamental to afterward success. Recount a time when y'all faced a claiming, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did y'all learn from the experience? Harvard University vii The Harvard College Honor Code declares that we "hold honesty every bit the foundation of our customs." Every bit you consider entering this community that is committed to honesty, please reverberate on a time when y'all or someone you observed had to make a choice about whether to human activity with integrity and honesty. Most colleges are pretty diverse, with students from a wide range of backgrounds. Essay questions about diversity are designed to help admissions committees understand how you interact with people who are different from you. In addressing these prompts, you want to show that you're capable of engaging with new ideas and relating to people who may have dissimilar behavior than y'all. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? Founded in the spirit of exploration and discovery, Johns Hopkins Academy encourages students to share their perspectives, develop their interests, and pursue new experiences. Use this infinite to share something you lot'd similar the admissions commission to know about you lot (your interests, your background, your identity, or your community), and how it has shaped what you lot desire to get out of your college feel at Hopkins. The majority of college applicants are loftier school seniors, and well-nigh of the college awarding advice out at that place is aimed at them. Simply what do you do if y'all don't fall into this narrow category? Our eBook on how to ready for and apply to college as a nontraditional student will walk you through everything y'all need to know, from the coursework you should have under your chugalug to how to get messages of recommendation when you're not a high school senior. Brown University 2 Dark-brown's civilisation fosters a community in which students challenge the ideas of others and have their ideas challenged in return, promoting a deeper and clearer understanding of the complex issues confronting society. This active appointment in dialogue is every bit nowadays outside the classroom as it is in bookish spaces. Tell us about a fourth dimension you were challenged by a perspective that differed from your own. How did you lot respond? (200-250 words) This type of prompt asks near what y'all want to do in the future: sometimes simply what you'd like to study, sometimes longer term career goals. Colleges want to understand what you're interested in and how you plan to work towards your goals. You'll generally see these prompts if you're applying for a specialized program (like pre-med or engineering) or applying as a transfer educatee. Some schools likewise ask for supplementary essays along these lines. Describe one instance of how you might utilize design every bit a future builder. The admission commission volition review this statement as a measure of your awareness, determination and vision. Princeton Supplement ane What is a new skill you would similar to learn in higher? The nigh common style of supplemental essay is the "Why us?" essay (although a few schools with their own application use this type of question as their master prompt). In these essays, y'all're meant to accost the specific reasons you want to go to the schoolhouse you're applying to. Whatever y'all exercise, don't always recycle these essays for more than ane schoolhouse. There are thousands of universities and colleges. Why are you interested in attending Chapman? Why are y'all interested in attending Columbia University? Based upon your exploration of Rice Academy, what elements of the Rice experience appeal to you? Princeton University Princeton has a longstanding delivery to service and borough engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals. More than selective schools often have supplemental essays with stranger or more than unique questions. University of Chicago is notorious for its weird prompts, but information technology's not the merely schoolhouse that will ask you to think outside the box in addressing its questions. What can really be divided by null? Spiders are essential to the ecosystem. How are you essential to your community or volition you exist essential in your university community? Okay, so y'all're clear on what a college essay is, simply y'all're still not certain how to write a proficient 1. To help you get started, I'yard going to explicate the main things admissions officers look for in students' essays: an engaging perspective, genuine moments, and lively writing. I've touched on these ideas already, simply here I'll get into more depth about how the best essays stand up out from the pack. A lot of students panic virtually finding a unique topic, and certainly writing well-nigh something unusual like a successful dating app you developed with your friends or your time working every bit a mall Santa can't hurt you. Merely what's actually important isn't so much what you write about as how you write about information technology. You lot demand to use your discipline to bear witness something deeper about yourself. Expect at the prompts above: you'll detect that they nigh all ask you what you learned or how the experience affected you. Whatever topic you pick, yous must exist able to specifically address how or why information technology matters to you. Say a pupil, Will, was writing about the mall Santa in response to Mutual App prompt number 2 (the i almost failure): Will was a terrible mall Santa. He was way besides skinny to exist convincing and the kids would ever step on his anxiety. He could easily write 600 very entertaining words describing this experience, but they wouldn't necessarily add together up to an effective college essay. To do that, he'll need to talk about his motivations and his feelings: why he took such a job in the first identify and what he did (and didn't) get out of it. Maybe Will took the job because he needed to make some money to go on a schoolhouse trip and it was the only one he could find. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for screaming children, he kept doing it because he knew if he persevered through the whole holiday flavour he would have enough money for his trip. Would you rather read "I failed at existence a mall Santa" or "Failing equally a mall Santa taught me how to persevere no matter what"? Admissions officers definitely prefer the latter. Ultimately, the best topics are ones that permit you to explain something surprising about yourself. Since the main betoken of the essay is to requite schools a sense of who you are, you take to open up up enough to let them run across your personality. Writing a good higher essay means beingness honest about your feelings and experiences even when they aren't entirely positive. In this context, honesty doesn't mean going on at length near the time you broke into the local pool at dark and nearly got arrested, but it does mean acknowledging when something was difficult or upsetting for you. Remember well-nigh the mall Santa instance to a higher place. The essay won't work unless the author genuinely acknowledges that he was a bad Santa and explains why. Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. Nosotros combine world-form admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to go yous admitted to your dream schools. Learn more than about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. As I mentioned above, colleges want to know that you lot are a strong enough writer to survive in higher classes. Tin can you limited your ideas clearly and concisely? Can you apply specific details appropriately and avoid clichés and generalizations? These kinds of skills will serve you lot well in higher (and in life!). Nonetheless, admissions officers recognize that different students have different strengths. They aren't looking for a poetic magnum opus from someone who wants to be a math major. (Honestly, they aren't expecting a masterwork from anyone, but the bones point stands.) Focus on making sure that your thoughts and personality come through, and don't worry nearly using fancy vocabulary or complex rhetorical devices. In a higher place all, make certain that y'all accept zero grammer or spelling errors. Typos bespeak carelessness, which will injure your cause with admissions officers. Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional person help from PrepScholar. Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor volition craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll acquire your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk y'all through the essay drafting process, footstep-by-step. At the finish, you'll accept a unique essay that you lot'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges. Don't leave your college application to chance. Notice out more about PrepScholar Admissions now: At present that you have a sense of what colleges are looking for, allow's talk almost how yous can put this new knowledge into practice every bit you arroyo your own essay. Below, I've nerveless my five all-time tips from years as a college essay counselor. No matter how much you want to avoid writing your essay, don't leave it until the terminal infinitesimal. One of the near important parts of the essay writing procedure is editing, and editing takes a lot of time. You want to be able to put your typhoon in a drawer for a week and come back to it with fresh eyes. Yous don't want to be stuck with an essay you don't really like considering you have to submit your awarding tomorrow. You need enough of time to experiment and rewrite, so I would recommend starting your essays at least two months before the awarding deadline. For well-nigh students, that means starting effectually Halloween, but if you're applying early you'll need to get going closer to Labor Twenty-four hour period. Of grade, it's even meliorate to get a head start and begin your planning earlier. Many students like to work on their essays over the summer when they have more costless fourth dimension, just you should go on in mind that each year's application isn't usually released until Baronial or September. Essay questions often stay the same from year to yr, withal. If yous are looking to get a leap on writing, you tin can try to confirm with the school (or the Common App) if the essay questions will be the same as the previous year's. One of the biggest mistakes students make is trying to write what they think the commission wants to hear. The truth is that there's no "right answer" when information technology comes to college essays—the best topics aren't express to specific categories like volunteer experiences or winning a tournament. Instead, they're topics that actually affair to the writer. "OK," y'all're thinking, "but what does she mean past 'a topic that matters to you'? Because to be perfectly honest, correct now what really matters to me is that fall Television starts up this calendar week, and I have a feeling I shouldn't write about that." You're non wrong (although some great essays have been written about tv set). A swell topic isn't just something that you're excited most or that yous talk to your friends about; it's something that has had a real, describable effect on your perspective. This doesn't mean that yous should overemphasize how something admittedly changed your life, peculiarly if it really didn't. Instead, endeavor to exist as specific and honest as you lot tin about how the experience affected yous, what it taught you, or what you lot got out of it. Let's go back to the TV idea. Sure, writing an essay virtually how excited you are for the new season of Gossip Girl probably isn't the quickest way to go yourself into college, but you lot could write a solid essay (in response to the beginning type of prompt) about how SpongeBob SquarePants was an integral role of your babyhood. Even so, it's not enough to just explain how much y'all loved SpongeBob—you must also explain why and how watching the show every day after schoolhouse affected your life. For case, maybe it was a ritual you shared with your brother, which showed you how fifty-fifty seemingly silly pieces of popular civilization can bring people together. Dig below the surface to show who you lot are and how you see the world. When you write about something you don't really intendance about, your writing will come up out cliched and uninteresting, and you'll probable struggle to motivate yourself. When you write nigh something that is genuinely important to y'all, on the other hand, you tin can make even the nearly ordinary experiences—learning to swim, eating a meal, or watching TV—engaging. But how do yous write an interesting essay? Focus. Don't try to tell your entire life story, or even the story of an entire weekend; 500-650 words may seem like a lot, only yous'll attain that limit quickly if you endeavor to pack every single thing that has happened to you lot into your essay. If, on the other hand, you just touch a wide range of topics, you lot'll end up with an essay that reads more similar a resume. Instead, narrow in on one specific issue or idea and talk about it in more depth. The narrower your topic, the better. For example, writing nearly your role every bit Mercutio in your school's product of Romeo and Juliet is too general, simply writing about opening dark, when everything went wrong, could be a neat topic. Whatsoever your topic, utilise details to help depict the reader in and express your unique perspective, but keep in mind that yous don't have to include every detail of what you did or thought—stick to the important and illustrative ones. Higher essays aren't academic assignments: you don't need to be super formal. Instead, effort to be yourself. The best writing sounds like a more eloquent version of the way you talk. Focus on using clear, simple language that effectively explains a point or evokes a feeling. To do so, avoid the urge to employ fancy-sounding synonyms when y'all don't really know what they hateful. Contractions are fine; slang, by and large, is not. Don't hesitate to write in the outset person. A final note: you don't need to be relentlessly positive. Information technology's okay to admit that sometimes things don't go how yous want—only prove how you grew from that. Many students want to call it a mean solar day afterwards writing a kickoff typhoon, but editing is a key part of writing a truly great essay. To exist clear, editing doesn't mean simply making a few small wording tweaks and cleaning upwardly typos; information technology means reading your essay carefully and objectively and thinking about how you could improve it. Ask yourself questions as you read: is the progression of the essay clear? Practise you make a lot of vague, sweeping statements that could be replaced with more interesting specifics? Do your sentences flow together nicely? Do yous show something about yourself beyond the surface level? You will have to delete and rewrite (potentially large) parts of your essay, and no thing how attached you experience to something you wrote, you might take to allow it get. If you've ever heard the phrase "kill your darlings," know that it is 100% applicative to college essay writing. At some point, you might even demand to rewrite the whole essay. Even though information technology'due south abrasive, starting over is sometimes the best way to become an essay that you're actually proud of. Make sure to cheque out our other posts on higher essays, including our step-past-footstep guide to how to write your higher essay, our analysis of the Common App Prompts, and our drove of case essays. If you're in need of guidance on other parts of the awarding process, take a look at our guides to choosing the right college for you, writing about extracurriculars, deciding to double major, and requesting teacher recommendations. Last but not least, if you're planning on taking the Saturday one last time, cheque out our ultimate guide to studying for the Saturday and brand certain you're as prepared as possible. Want to improve your Sat score by 160 points or your Human action score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top v strategies you must exist using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: 
Why Do Colleges Ask For an Essay?
#one: Insight Into Your Personality
#2: Evidence of Writing Skills
#3: Explanation of Extenuating Circumstances
#4: Your Reasons for Applying to the Schoolhouse
What Kind of Questions Practice Colleges Ask?
Prompt Blazon i: Your Personal History
Mutual App 1
Mutual App 5
University of California 2
Academy of California 6
Prompt Type two: Facing a Problem
Common App 2
Prompt Type 3: Variety
Mutual App iii
Johns Hopkins University
Prompt Type four: Your Future Goals
University of Southern California (Architecture)
Prompt Type 5: Why This Schoolhouse
Chapman Academy
Columbia University
Rice University
Prompt Type 6: Creative Prompts
University of Chicago
University of Richmond
Academy of Chicago (Phil Roeder/Flickr) What Makes a Strong Personal Statement?
Showing Who You Are
Honesty
Even this little kid is a better Santa than Will was. Eloquent Writing
Top 5 Essay-Writing Tips
#ane: Offset Early!
#two: Pick a Topic You're Genuinely Excited Most
As strange as information technology sounds, SpongeBob could make a great essay topic. #iii: Focus on Specifics
#4: Use Your Own Vocalism
#5: Exist Ruthless
Ludwig/Flickr What'south Adjacent?
Alex is an experienced tutor and writer. Over the past five years, she has worked with almost a hundred students and written about pop civilisation for a wide range of publications. She graduated with honors from University of Chicago, receiving a BA in English and Anthropology, and then went on to earn an MA at NYU in Cultural Reporting and Criticism. In loftier school, she was a National Merit Scholar, took 12 AP tests and scored 99 percentile scores on the Sat and ACT.
Source: https://blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-personal-statement-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-college-essay