How to Write the Personal Statement
/What is the personal statement?
A 500-650 word personal essay required or recommended by most colleges. This essay should give a sense of who you are as a person by showing the reader how you’ve struggled, how you’ve evolved, how you think, what you’re passionate about, etc.
Why is the personal statement important? How is it used?
Your grades, test scores, and letters of recommendation show your academic prowess. Your activities and honors show your commitments, passions, and accomplishments. But your essay is the only place where you can open up and share your unique voice and personality. You want to give the admissions officer something to connect to and advocate for beyond just a set of numbers and activities.
In the past, on-campus interviews were standard and presented an opportunity to make a personal connection at a university. Now, they’re less common, often conducted by graduate students, and mostly for informational purposes rather than assessment. According to College Essay Coach Alan Gelb, “Your essay, in essence, is [now] your interview. It’s your chance to shine in the eyes of the admissions officer who reads it.”
What do colleges want to see in your personal statement?
✓ Something they don’t already know about you.
✓ Your unique voice and personality.
✓ Your values and what matters most to you.
✓ An uncommon topic with uncommon connections.
✓ Modesty, self-awareness, insight, honesty, and vulnerability.
✓ Creativity and vivid writing.
What should you avoid in your personal statement?
DON’T: Turn the personal statement into an extension of your activities or honors section.
Expanding upon multiple accomplishments in a short space can make your personal statement read more like a resume than an essay.
Instead, DO: Tell the admissions committee something they don’t already know about you.
From your application, they know you’re on the football team and in the yearbook club. But what else?
Have any specific experiences, ones you haven’t talked about elsewhere in your application, really shaped or challenged you? Have you changed over the years? How so? Do you have any unique hobbies or interests? What’s important to you? What excites you?
DON’T: Use the personal statement as an opportunity to brag or “sell yourself.”
The activities and honors sections, along with your transcript, will display your accomplishments and academic prowess. Despite most parents’ instincts, the personal statement is not the place for showing off.
Instead, DO: Show modesty, self-awareness, and honesty.
A “sell yourself” personal statement can sometimes make a student seem dishonest or lacking in self-awareness. If you want to write about a situation in which you did well or succeeded, some small adjustments can keep your essay from feeling braggy.
Avoid exaggeration and hyperbole. Stick to the truth. No one is expecting a superhero story.
Communicate praise through other people, if possible. Instead of “I did amazing in the game,” consider something like, “After the game, the coach pulled me aside and said he was proud of me.”
Connect the accomplishment to your personality, values, and growth. Was the journey toward the accomplishment challenging or interesting? Did the experience change you? What did it mean to you? How does the accomplishment connect to your values? How have you continued down this path? How do you want to continue? Rather than simply summarizing the accomplishment and focusing on how good you are at football/piano/etc, use the accomplishment to show who you are and what’s important to you.
DON’T: Choose a common topic and make common connections.
Common topics: sports, eye-opening travels, death of a grandparent.
Common connections:
“When I started on the football team, I wasn’t very good. But with hard work and perseverance, I improved and we ended up winning the big game.”
“It wasn’t until my service trip to Haiti that I realized the importance of helping others.”
“If my grandmother’s death taught me anything, it’s that life is short and family is precious.”
Instead, DO: Strive for a unique topic and uncommon connections. Write the essay that only you could write.
Students often think they need to write about a big accomplishment or obstacle, and since many high schoolers have had similar experiences, everyone ends up writing about the same things.
It’s important to remember that there are so many other directions to go in with your personal statement.
We’ve read beautiful essays about…
Habits and quirks
Spinning in circles without getting dizzy
Having an unusually deep voice
Unique passions
An enduring love of Moe’s Southwest Grill
Being a Cowboys fan in Philadelphia Eagles territory
And changes in how a student thinks
Learning to appreciate different kinds of art
Interrogating if you can like Barbies and still be a feminist
Going from hating your name to loving your name
But I can’t think of anything unique! That’s okay. If you’ve brainstormed and a common topic is still the best you’ve come up with, move forward and try to make uncommon connections!
Say your common topic is football. What connections would you expect an essay about football to make? Football has taught me perseverance? Football has taught me teamwork? Then avoid those cliche connections!
What if football was just the springboard to get into a feeling or experience that is more specific to you?
We’ve read excellent sports essays that…
Used football as a jumping off point to talk about what it was like for the student to be bigger than their peers
Used challenging experiences in field hockey to explore the student’s fear of failure
Used childhood basketball games to illustrate the student’s early acceptance of criticism
Even if your topic is common, that doesn’t mean your whole essay has to be!
DON’T: Write in an academic way with a thesis statement and 5 paragraph structure.
Starting with something like, “Playing soccer has taught me x, y, and z,” and then spending a paragraph each on x, y, and z may work fine for high school persuasive essays, but it’s less useful for the personal statement. Here, you’re telling a story, and stories (at least the good ones) don’t usually fit into such a rigid format.
Instead, DO: Free yourself from the constraints of high school writing!
You don’t need a thesis statement, an argumentative structure, and an “In conclusion” conclusion. You could start off with a joke, a question, an interesting anecdote. You could end with a bit of dialogue, an interesting diversion, a vivid image. In creative writing, you can do whatever you want, as long as you know what you’re doing!
If you feel like you need a structure to organize your thoughts, consider a storytelling structure instead of an argumentative one. Freytag’s Pyramid can be a helpful structure for personal narrative. Once you familiarize yourself with it, you’ll realize it’s the underlying structure to most of the popular movies we watch and books we read.
Exposition
Setting, characters, and the status quo are introduced.
Rising Action
An inciting event sets the conflict in motion. The conflict is further complicated by obstacles and the stakes are raised.
Climax
The conflict reaches its peak and characters are forced to respond. After this turning point, things will change, for better or for worse.
Falling Action
The conflict begins to resolve.
Resolution
The conflict is resolved, lessons are learned, and we settle into the new status quo.
DON’T: Speak in platitudes and generalities.
Does your essay have a lot of phrases like “I learned” and “this taught me the value of”? Does it use a lot of words like “hard work,” “perseverance,” and “overcoming”? If so, it might sound a lot like everyone else’s essay.
Instead, DO: It’s okay if your first draft has some cliche language. But once you’re in the editing phase, go back through and seek opportunities to replace wording that any typical high school student might use with wording that is authentic to you and unique to your experiences.
DON’T: Use overly formal or complicated language just to impress.
“A student’s scholastic experience encompasses a multitude of endeavors.”
A lot of big words there. But what does the above sentence actually say? It tells us that a student’s experience in school involves a lot of different activities. But does that really need to be said? Readers can always tell when a writer is using complicated prose to mask weak content.
Instead, DO: Keep it simple and be yourself.
Colleges want to hear YOUR voice—not what you think will impress them. Write how you’d speak and then elevate it just a little!
And as George Orwell said in his Six Rules for Writing:
“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
Need help?
We’re here to help with your personal statement and supplemental essays, from the earliest brainstorming stage to the finishing touches. We offer a variety of essay coaching packages that students can customize to suit their needs. Click here to learn more!