College Application Essay

Why are they making me do this?

Writing the personal essay for college applications can be an agonizing experience. Many people aren't comfortable with writing about themselves. It feels awkward, like bragging, and most of us aren't used to looking at ourselves as the topic of our own writing.

So what's the point of these personal essays?Why can't the admissions officers just get the information they need from the forms you've already filled out? Mainly because they want the kind of information that the form doesn't convey. They want a sense of your personality-the way you respond to challenges, how you'll interact with other members of the campus community.

Just as important, they want a sample of your writing skills: writing, as you know, both stimulates and reveals your thinking process. Colleges want to know how well you can think, especially about your own experiences.

What are they looking for???

The last thing you should do is try to portray yourself as someone you're not. You might think, for example, that colleges are only interested in people who engage in hundreds of different extracurricular activities: it won't work to try to make yourself sound like this type of person, if you happen to be more of an introvert.

You can still make a strong impression and be true to yourself: you just need to show a thoughtful, mature understanding of how even one activity has shaped your character.

In any case, colleges aren't looking for a list of your traits, interests, or experiences. They are looking for self-understanding, your ability to make sense of your life and your place in the world. Some applications will help you by giving you a more specific question to answer, like asking you to describe one event in your life and what you learned from it. However, even if you've been stuck with the vague "tell-us-about-yourself" question, you should still not try to cover your whole life.

Please look at the Basics, Challenge, Real Life, Journal, Multimedia, and Exercise sections of this lesson for more examples and practice with writing a college application essay.