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Hello again, lets continue with those college applications shall we!
To confirm all that I have been talking about, we will be hosting a College Fair and Open House Webinar on Tuesday October 14th from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST hosted by yours truly!
Last time we were talking about how to write an outstanding personal statement for your college applications. We decided to break it down into three steps, the first being asking one of your teachers to help you edit the paper. So now we shall move on with the next one.
Topic 2 Highlighting Experiences to Show How Unique You Are
When looking on college admissions websites, you will find included under the personal statement section the prompts and other information that will tell you what colleges want you to write about. Mainly they ask you to write two essays with a certain word limit for each. The two prompts that colleges will most likely ask you to write about are:
1. Describe one of your passions or an experience dear to you.
2. Talk about something you have not addressed in the application, such as a challenge in your life that you know you have overcome.
You will notice that universities want to hear about you and the effort you put into analyzing why these experiences have helped you grow as an individual. These prompts are essentially the area in which you can shine in your college application as you get to talk about your favorite person in the whole wide world…YOURSELF!… Well, at least you should consider yourself to be your own favorite person, not to sound too egotistic!
Here you can write about anything in under one page. Yes it’s quite short but in the end college admissions representatives want to see that you can at least think about your own life and how you have changed. You can include anything from a favorite hobby, sport or activity you have or are still involved in. College representatives will take note of this section to see how well you can express your thoughts in print as you re-examine some aspect of your life that is important to you.
For my essay I wrote about my love for dancing. No, it did not in any way remotely relate to Biological Sciences at the time (before I switched majors and graduated with my BA in Comparative Literature!) but Yes it’s one of my hobbies and I can write a ton about it as its one of my passions! I wrote about how I enjoyed dancing from the time I was little when I took ballet, tap and jazz lessons to improve my balance and coordination to when I danced all four years in my high school’s dance program. If it’s something you truly love, admissions staff will see that. Just think that this essay could in fact be the deciding factor for an admissions officer to select you over someone else. And don’t we all want that lovely envelope telling us we have been accepted at the college we wanted to get into? Everyone wins.
Some of the best ideas to draw from are your home life as well as the ways in which you have reached out to other people in your community such as volunteer work (so yes all of those hours spent cleaning up at the beach, going to convalescent homes and helping students choose books at your local library were not all in vain!). In fact they made you a better person because you helped others. College Admissions want the kind of people that will turn into the leaders of tomorrow who are more caring, sympathetic and conscientious of the world around them.
To find out more information, look on your college admissions website as they provide much needed guidance in how to write your personal statement.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of writing an A for Awesome Personal Statement, don’t miss out!
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