College Essay Workshop: Crafting a Personal Statement That Stands Out

Webinar Transcription

2024-09-19 – College Essay Workshop: Crafting a Personal Statement That Stands Out

Lydia: Hello, everyone. My name is Lydia Hollon. I’m going to be your moderator tonight. Welcome to, “College Essay Workshop: Crafting a Personal Statement that Stands Out.” I am a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor, and I’ve been with the company for about three years now. And in addition to advising students, I’m also one of the co-captains of our essay review team, as is Anna.

And I’m a proud graduate of New York State. University, and in addition to my work with CollegeAdvisor, I’m an education consultant and a former high school teacher. To orient everyone with the webinar timing for tonight, we are going to start off with a presentation, then answer your questions in a live Q& A.

On the sidebar, you can download our slides and start submitting questions in the Q& A tab. We’ll also be recording this session so that you can review the webinar again later. Now let’s meet our presenter.

Anna: Hello, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. My name is Anna Vande Velde. I’m a senior advisor here at CollegeAdvisor, and as Lydia mentioned, I’m also a captain on our essay review team.

I studied psychology at Carnegie Mellon. Thought I was going to end up a clinical psychologist, but after working for a few years, I realized that’s not what I wanted. So I ended up at Harvard law school where I graduated a few years back. So in addition to my work with CollegeAdvisor, I’m a nonprofit defense attorney.

Lydia heard me say this last night when we were talking to another group, but it’s true. So I’m going to say it again. Uh, I love my work helping students with essays and I, See, it is very similar to my work as an attorney. As a lawyer, I am crafting stories to tell to a judge, to a jury, and as an essay editor, I’m helping students craft their story to admissions officers.

So, we’re going to talk a lot about storytelling tonight. Um, but before we do that, He’s going to

Lydia: hand it back to

Anna: Lydia to open a

Lydia: poll. Yes, so I’m going to go ahead and open up the poll now. I’m curious what grade our audience is in tonight. If you’re a parent, feel free to just choose that other tab, or if you would prefer to put your student’s grade in there, that’s fine.

Well, I give the audience a chance to answer that question. Anna, I’m curious. I want to ask you a different question than the one that I always ask you. What’s your favorite thing about being on the essay review team?

Anna: Oh, it really is. Like, the stories are so interesting. And I love, I love hearing, from all of our students and where they’ve come from and where they want to go and helping them really hone their story to present it in the light that makes them look best.

I’m a storyteller. I just really enjoy it.

Lydia: How about you? I think similar. Like it’s, it’s fun to read people’s stories and hear how they became the person that they are. I really love when I’m reading an essay that is like almost there and it’s, the story is already really well written, and I get to just say great job at the end, just do a few things.

Um, but also sometimes I’ll read the same, see the same essay come through a couple times, and seeing it develop is nice. Um, and I also feel like being on the essay review team, it’s made me not only better, I think, working with students, like advising sessions and things like that because I have such a wider perspective on the different kinds of stories that can be told and how they can be told.

But I also feel like it helps me when I’m just talking to people and stuff like that, thinking about how I want to tell my story and What’s important, what makes me who I am because I’m not applying to grad school programs or anything like that right now. So it’s been a while since I’ve had to sit down and think about all of my experiences as well.

Anna: I agree.

Lydia: Um, so yeah, looking at the responses, it seems like 40 percent are in 11th grade, 60 percent are in 12th grade. This is a great time to be. Sitting in on this session, um, you’re either getting ready to start probably doing your first draft or at least an outline possibly of a personal statement.

And for the 12th graders, you’re probably already in the middle of drafting your personal statement, and maybe trying to finalize it. So definitely very topical. All right, I’m going to pass it back.

Anna: Thanks, Lydia. Well, let’s dive right in then. What is a personal statement? You may know, you may not. If you already know, please bear with me.

Your personal statement is THE essay on your college applications. This is the one that, for the most part, every college will see. It’s one of the longest you’re going to write in this process. And arguably the most important in terms of discussing your personal narrative. We’re going to get into what I mean by personal, personal narrative in a bit, but just keep in mind, this is a really important, uh, part of your personal narrative.

Your personal statement allows you to go beyond your grades, your SAT scores, and showcase your personality, your values, your motivation. It’s really the main part of your application that you can infuse with your voice and create a persona for yourself. This is where admissions readers really get to know you and who you are.

It’s a way to help you stand out in a pool of similarly qualified candidates. So you might be in a pile, uh, or your application might be in a pile with students who have similar grades, similar SAT scores as you, but what they don’t have is your voice. So this is where you can really stand out. Typically, personal statements are around 500 to 650 words.

on the common app, which is if you’re not familiar, the website where probably most of your college applications will be submitted on the common app. Your personal statement is limited to 650 words. You can submit shorter essays. I tend to not advise going shorter than 500. Um, maybe if you’re a super concise writer, but I think it’s really hard to get a full story if you go any shorter than that.

The personal statement can be contrasted with supplemental essays. So, not everywhere, but I think more and more colleges these days are requiring, in addition to the personal statement, that you write Additional essays might be one, might be a couple. They tend to be shorter than the personal statement.

They can be as short as a sentence and up to, you know, 350, 400 words. And those kind of are on the gamut in terms of topics, but very common ones are why are you applying to this specific college? So they’re college specific. They go only to the college that is requiring them. Um, And like I said, the topics can vary.

So it’s important when you’re making your college list and you’re putting in deadlines for those applications that you’re also looking to see which of the colleges on your list require supplemental essays just so you can help yourself plan out your timeline for all the writing that you’re going to need to do.

So on the personal statement, the topics, um, these are the prompts for this this current cycle of students. Um, they can change year to year. I don’t think they changed at all from the previous year. I can tell you when they do change, the changes are minor. So if you, I know we have some juniors with us.

You can expect that when it’s your turn to apply. that the prompts, if they’re not exactly as they are now, they will be similar. Um, I didn’t copy and paste the full prompts because they’re a bit long. I tried to capture the main thrust of each. So this year, uh, students can choose, and you just choose one of these, so they can talk about a pivotal aspect of their background or identity.

We can discuss a challenge they’ve faced and what they’ve learned from it. Describe questioning a belief or an idea they’ve held. They can reflect on unexpected gratitude and its impact. They can talk about a time of personal growth, explain an engaging topic that captivates them, write an essay on a topic of their choosing.

Um, we’re going to talk about that one more, I think right here. Okay. Should I share an essay on any topic of my choice? Through the years I have encountered some students who when they see that’s an option get really excited and say, Oh, I’ve written so many essays for high school. Great. Checking this off my list.

One less thing to do. I understand that Impulse, it is efficient, it makes sense. I tend to advise against choosing prompt number seven. I would only choose it if you have a really compelling reason to do so. And I don’t think efficiency, I’ve already written this for high school, is a compelling reason to do so.

Typically high school essays are different than your personal statements. I also think this shared essay on any topic of your choice, while it might seem easier, I actually think it tends to be more challenging because what the prompts do is they give you a lens. They give you a framing to, to structure your story with.

So when students do choose number seven, what I see a lot of is a stream of consciousness and not, not really knowing how to end. Um, the prompts sort of help you there. They tell you what they want you to be answering. So it helps you with structure. I also think if we’re going to choose number seven, you need to consider very carefully what your personal narrative is.

This is the second time I’m mentioning personal narrative without defining it, but I promise we’re going to get to it, um, so just keep that in mind. I mentioned that your personal statement differs from regular high school essays. I think one big way is that storytelling becomes much more important in your personal statement than I think it is for a lot of your high school essays.

It’s also much more important. to throughout the entire essay, infuse it with your personal voice. I think in high school, we’re often trained, trained to write more than academic voice. So like the things, the, the verbiage we read in scientific papers, um, is not what we’re looking for with your personal statement.

The formatting is very similar though, uh, in terms of, you know, how many paragraphs to use, when to switch to a new paragraph, all the grammatical rules still apply. So you can for sure apply a lot of what you’ve learned in your high school writing to your personal statement. Um, but the storytelling and the voice are going to be probably a bit more personal than in your high school lessons.

This, um, I did not title this slide. What do most personal statements look like? And I thought it was a good and difficult question because there’s no. Right answer. There’s no one template. Personal statements look all sorts of different ways. So I tried to look for the patterns in general. Think strong personal statements tend to start with a story, the story of some moment that was meaningful, impactful in whatever way to a student.

And then they go on to show how that student. We acted to that moment, how, how they’ve reflected them on a sense, what they learned in it, how they’ve grown, and then often they conclude with a forward looking lens. So here’s something that happened. Here’s what I did, what I learned, how I grew. Here’s how I want to take what I’ve learned and who I am now and apply it to what I want to do going forward.

This is not a hard rule. This is just. I’ve noticed after reading hundreds and hundreds of personal statements, uh, in general, I think this. This is a decent outline of a personal statement, um, but you do not have to stick to this.

How do you get started? I really think this is the hardest part. Um, so I encourage you to brainstorm as you’re going through your life, doing your normal things, be mindful. If someone says something or experience something and it gets you thinking, or it’s really meaningful to you. Write it down, write down the moment, jot down quickly why it was important, store it in a folder on your phone, wherever, have it ready.

So when it’s time for you to start writing your essays, you have some options to look through already. Then do the work of developing a candidate profile. I’m finally getting to the thing I’ve promised you from, I think like slide three, the candidate profile. What do I mean by that? We know that on average, admissions readers, on their first pass through your application, spend about 12 to 14 minutes.

That’s not a lot of time, considering all the things they have to read through your transcript, your grades, your background, your school profile, and your essays. Not a lot of time. And, knowing that, and knowing what we know about humans and how our memory works, when that admissions reader Who spent 12 to 14 minutes with your application and read 1, 500 more that day when they’re walking to their car, putting their kids to sleep, whatever they’re doing.

We can’t expect them to remember every single detail of your application. Not going to happen. What we can hope is that maybe they’ll remember a story from your essay and a few high level themes about you. So maybe you are justice oriented, and you, um, are creative, and you are a volunteer. High level themes about you.

That’s what we can expect them to remember. That’s what we want them to walk away with. Having some sort of a picture of who you are. Which means, if you want them to get that from your application, you have to be able to answer what that is for yourself. That takes a lot of thoughtfulness and introspection.

It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s really important that you do this, that you take the time to sit down and think or map out however it works for you. Who am I, how am I trying to portray myself in these very limited words, this limited space? Who am I? Once you have a sense of what your profile is, what you want to highlight, look back at that list of essay topics that you’ve been brainstorming and pick one that you think will allow you to really highlight the key aspects of your profile.

And then look at the prompts and pick one that will really allow you to frame it, to, to share what you want to share in your essay. So once you’ve done all that work, you figured out how you want to present yourself, what themes you want to highlight, you’ve picked a topic, jot down an op, an outline, organize your ideas.

Say, here’s where I’m going to start, here’s, here’s where I’m going to take the reader and here’s where I’m going to conclude. Give yourself an outline. Make sure that where you’re going and what you’re writing fully responds to the prompt. I can’t tell you how frequently Lydia and I read early drafts of essays and have to give the feedback, you didn’t answer the prompt.

Um, that’s really important. So make sure that your ideas, your essays, is responsive to the prompt. and then just start writing. I think, I notice in my students this apprehension to start and this pressure they feel to start writing with amazing hook. A lot of them use this word. I need a good hook. I think you should just start writing.

Start in the middle of your story. Start wherever you think you can start. Just go from there. Get the words out. Often, as you do that, you’ll find the hook, or you’ll show it to your advisor, and they’ll say, Oh, there’s your hook. It’s two paragraphs down. Just start writing. Get the ideas flowing. Then, go back to your outline, see where you can slot in what you’ve written, and, and come up with a first draft.

As you’re writing, please do not be worrying about perfection. The most famous, the most successful authors, they have teams of editors. They are constantly writing and rewriting and slashing things out. It’s a process. So don’t feel all this pressure with the first draft in terms of perfection and also don’t feel feel restrained by the word limit.

Um, 650 might seem like a lot, but more often than not, uh, I see students going over versus under, which I think is always a better problem to have. Get the story out on paper. Don’t worry about the word limit. Then go back through and ask yourself, what can I take out? Get feedback from others on what you can take out.

Uh, I think that’s a much easier way to, to end up with your full story in that thing. In terms of choosing a good topic, Um, I talked about it, about this a bit before, in addition to what I’ve said, it needs to be something that’s meaningful to you. You’re going to spend probably a decent amount of time on this personal statement, and if you’re writing about something you just don’t care about, that’s going to show, uh, it’s, it’s going to be kind of miserable for you.

If you’re writing about something you care about. It’ll be more enjoyable. It’s also really important given how limited you are in word count, right? No one person can be fully explained or described in whatever the 15 pages that it is when you print it out. I don’t know how many pages. It’s not a lot. Uh, when you print out your whole application.

So it’s really important that everything you input on your application is conveying something new about you. It cannot be found elsewhere in your application. So your application will have a whole section where you can input the activities you’ve participated in. That means in your personal statement, it’s not a good use of space to list.

Well, I was in glee club and chess club and I did athletics. That’s, that’s captured elsewhere. Use a personal statement to bring in new information that can’t be found elsewhere. Make sure it’s fitting your candidate profile, as I talked about. Make sure it answers the prompt, which I think I’ve also addressed.

And what makes a good personal statement is doing more showing than telling. So what I mean by that is using specific examples to illustrate your points. The more you can put the reader in your shoes The more they can understand what you saw, how you experience the world, how you react to things in your environment, that’s what’s going to help them get to know you.

So would it be fair for me to tell you to show and not tell without showing you what I mean? So here’s an example. You could start an essay by saying, Sharing my writing with others has always scared me. Okay. That is new information. That’s probably not going to be captured in your activities list. I’m not sure how it would be.

So it’s new information. It passes that rule. It’s doing more telling though than showing. So instead of saying sharing my writing with others has always scared me, You could show me that’s true by saying my second grade hands shook as I approached Mrs. Sanchez’s desk with a handwritten essay. Now I’m really in your shoes, in your little second grade shoes, I’m seeing your hands shake and I can tell you’re worried about turning in your writing.

So it’s conveying the same thing, but it’s much more personal. It’s much more engaging. I sometimes talk about, I have deemed this my copy and paste rule. So if there is a sentence in your essay that you can copy and paste, drop it into someone else’s essay and it could make sense, then it’s probably not specific enough to you.

So sharing my writing with others has always scared me. That could go in my personal statement, it could go in Lydia’s personal statement, it could go in my husband’s personal statement, it could go in lots of people’s and be accurate and true. And so it’s not very personal. But I didn’t have a Mrs.

Sanchez in second grade and my hands weren’t shaking as I walked up to her desk with a handwritten essay. That’s specific to the one student who wrote this essay. That makes it really personal and passes. both the show don’t tell rule and my copy and paste rule.

So here is the timeline that CollegeAdvisor recommends for writing your essays. I know we have seniors here who may not have done this. That’s okay. I do not share this to stress anyone out. I share this just so you know what our template is and to encourage you to get started if you haven’t already.

Our advice would be, and then we have juniors here. So our advice would be this spring juniors really start brainstorming topics for your personal statement. Start that list wherever works best for you to store it. Just start jotting down ideas. Then when your junior year winds down, hopefully you’re a little less busy and you have some summertime to draft and workshop your personal statement.

And by the end of your junior summer, you can be getting feedback on that, finalizing your personal statement. Starting to look at those supplementals that we talked about. That leaves your senior fall to polish everything off, make sure you’re good to go, and enjoy your senior fall, which is meant to be a really fun and exciting time with lots of activities.

Um, you don’t want to be like me, pranking out your essay towards the end. It’s stressful. And, It’s selling yourself short, as it means your essay is not going to be as good as it could be if you do the advanced work.

Some common mistakes, uh, we see in personal statements. I recommend avoiding cliches, overused phrases, and I say this in a lot of presentations and I often get the question, I don’t have a story that’s not cliche. That’s not what I mean. What I mean by avoiding cliches. I don’t want to read in your conclusion that you want to make the world a better place.

That’s lovely, but what does it mean? It’s, it’s such a cliche that it’s kind of meaningless. I want you to be more specific. How do you want to make the world a better place? What exactly do you want to do? Um, predictable narrative. Sports are more of those, um, those essays that, that colleges see a lot of, so sports does come up a decent amount, um, but what I like to say about that is if you’re following my copy and paste rule, then you’ll be avoiding this.

So if you don’t know sports, I’m sorry, um, but let’s say you’re a baseball player. If you start your essay with. Bottom of the ninth, base is loaded, I’m up to bat. It’s a little bit predictable, right? And it doesn’t pass my copy and paste rule because I could copy and paste that into, maybe not thousands, but probably hundreds of other essays, uh, of baseball players.

What would make it less predictable and more personal is if you take us right into your shoes. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Is your heart beating fast? That sort of thing. Um, I think I’ve covered this one as well. Skip the general generalities, the big statements or topics that could apply to anyone.

That’s my copy and paste rule. You also don’t want to be regurgitating information from your activities section, right? They’ll see what activities you’re in. They’ll also see what awards you’ve won in them, the competitions you’ve been in, because you’ll put that in your little activities list description.

So don’t be regurgitating information that they can get elsewhere. Also, don’t focus on other people. This comes up the most, I think, when students write the essay. Um, it’s about gratitude. So someone, just a moment you’re thankful for. Um, yeah, that’s asking you to talk about someone else. But what you want to do is talk about them from your perspective.

So I saw my single mom do this and I thought, I felt, I helped. The focus is on you and your reaction to whoever you’re talking about. You don’t want to read an essay about. Someone else, because someone else isn’t the person applying to go to their school. This is a new one we’ve had to add recently.

Please, please, please don’t use AI to write your essays. It’s not a good idea. Not only are colleges scanning essays, uh, checking for AI generated content, I’m guessing they’re screening those applications out. That aside, that is selling yourself short. AI is not going to be able to capture you, your unique voice, your unique experience.

Please don’t do it. You also don’t want to assume that the admissions officer has a deep understanding of a niche topic. So I read an essay once about a student working on a race car. They’re using some terms that I didn’t know, I didn’t understand. You can’t assume that the person reading it shares the same interests as you.

So make sure you’re explaining anything that’s a bit technical or that they might not have encountered. You also don’t want to assume that the admissions reader has the same values as you. So you don’t want to assume that they share your politics, your religion, your worldview, anything like that. Um, it is fine to cover those topics.

Do it from the lens of what’s important to you and why it’s important to you and how you interact with it. Uh, never from the perspective of pushing it on others or judging others who, um, don’t agree with you.

Some tips for refining your essays, uh, take your time. Like I said earlier, a good essay is not written in a day, but best writing is rewriting. So start early and give yourself time to ask for help. I know it’s a really vulnerable thing to share your writing with others. It’s really helpful. So don’t overdo it.

Don’t be like me on my law school personal statement. I asked 19 people for feedback. That was too many people. I was getting conflicting feedback and it was just unnecessary. I would say one to three people who you trust a CollegeAdvisor, school counselor, educator, adult family. Uh, ask for their feedback, and when you ask, don’t be afraid to ask them some specific questions, like, can you tell what traits of mine I’m trying to highlight, and do you think that this essay sounds like me?

Ask them those things that you’re worried about. That means if you’re asking for feedback, it’s important to be open to receiving that feedback and to incorporating it. At the end of the day, it’s your essay, so if you get feedback you disagree with, like I certainly did when I asked 19 people, then you’re going to have to choose, right?

Like what is my voice? What’s important to me? But be open to really hearing what people say, like, you know, I didn’t understand what you meant in this section. If you’re hearing feedback like that, that means you need to clarify. If they didn’t understand it, probably someone in admissions at some point is also not going to understand it.

So be open to change, don’t get too attached to the things you write so that you feel okay with changing them. This is also, this next thing I think is a hard thing to do, read it out loud. I know a lot of us really feel awkward hearing ourselves read our own words and it’s really powerful. So no one else has to hear you.

You can go in a room, close the door, blast some music, whatever it takes, and then read it out loud. If there are parts that just feel so awkward coming out of your mouth, or just doesn’t feel like you, it feels unnatural, then it’s probably not capturing your voice in that section. And that’s a great opportunity to ask yourself, How would I say this?

And of course you don’t want to go as casual as how you would say it in a text to a friend. Um, but how would I say this in a serious way? Um, and then edit and infuse your voice into it. Proofreading is really important. I don’t think anyone’s going to knock into a college because they missed a comma somewhere.

But you don’t want your essay to be riddled with punctuation and grammatical errors. That’s not putting your best foot forward. So make sure you proofread. Um, and again, getting feedback, having others read it can also help you to catch things like that.

That’s all I have.

Lydia: Okay. Thank you so much, Anna. Um, so that ends the presentation part of the webinar. I hope that everyone watching found this information helpful. And remember, you can download the slides from the link in the handouts tab. Now we’re going to move into the live Q& A where I’m going to read questions that you submitted in the Q& A tab and read them aloud so that Anna gets a chance to answer, and I might jump in from time to time too since I’m also a co captain of the essay review team.

As a heads up, if your Q& A tab isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email. and not from the webinar landing page. You can also try logging out and logging back in through the link in your email. If that doesn’t work, try logging in through the website launching page, though you will not be able to ask questions.

And always keep in mind the webinar is being recorded so you can always view this at a later time. All right, so let’s go ahead and jump into Our first question, which is, is it more preferable to use experiences and events from high school or from earlier in your life when you’re starting the personal statement?

Anna: I think it really depends on what the events are and what traits of yours you’re trying to highlight. So on the activities list, It does say very specifically to list your activities from high school. So there, you’re pretty limited to high school ones. On your essay, you kind of have free reign. If you’re talking about something from grade school or middle school, um, that’s fine.

I think you just want to be really clear with yourself about why and help your reader see how that’s relevant to who you are now, which means at some point in the essay, you’re probably going to come. To more recent days and reflect on how, how that experience you had earlier on has impacted you and shaped what you want to do, what you want to study in college, what you want your career to be.

That sort of thing, and yes, Lydia, you said you might jump in. Please do at any time. I hope, you know, I love love your insight on these.

Lydia: Uh, yeah, I agree. I don’t think it’s a hard yes or a hard no. Um, I think the general rule of thumb is if you’re going to start with something from a long time ago when you were a little kid or something like that, just keep in mind that the admissions officers want to know who you are now, not who you were when you were five or when you were 10 and things like that.

So you always want to to make sure that you’re getting to the present at some point in the essay, preferably within the first two paragraphs. You should be in the present, talking about who you are now and give you an idea of who you have become. But for some people, you know, you may have an experience from when you were five years old or something like that, that either really shaped you and made you who you are.

Or, you know, some people are very consistent when it comes to their personality. And the person that you were when you were six is incredibly similar to the person that you are at 16. scene. Um, I know one of my friends recently got married and her dad told a story about how when she was like five years old, she saw a lady smoking on the side of the street and convinced her to stop smoking.

And now she’s a lawyer. So like some people are just very consistent in the kind of person that they are. So if you have a story like that, that just really reflects your personality or who you want to be, then great, go for it. But if it’s something that kind only feels loosely tied to who you are now, maybe it’s not the best fit.

Okay, so the next question is, is it better to choose a theme and talk about several examples that relate to it or expand on one singular event in your life?

Anna: So, my answer to all of these, is it better, is always going to be, it’s always going to start with, it depends on your goal and what you’re trying to highlight about yourself.

In general though, I think the strong essays I see tend to go deep on one to two events as opposed to, like, jumping, you Through a lot, um, I think it’s harder actually to cover a lot of different events in in a concise way that conveys new information about you. That’s not on your activities list. So, talk it out with a mentor or the CollegeAdvisor.

In general, though, the way I say, different, different from the activities list is that they tend to go on 1 or 2 events. and walk the reader through why they were so meaningful and what you learned about yourself. Um, would you agree with that, Lydia, that most tend to do that?

Lydia: Yeah, I, I think definitely the advice of you need to make sure that you’re giving yourself space to go deep is important.

And I think that it’s usually easier to accomplish that when you choose, like you said, one to two stories that you really get time to, you know. incorporate more detail, more reflection, more imagery. It just kind of brings the reader into your world a little bit easier that way. Um, but I’ve also read essays that had, you know, just like a general theme and were also effective at painting a clear picture of who the person was and they still had that strong narrative structure that made you interested in what they had to say.

I would just really think about if you’re going to go the route of a theme and provide multiple examples, really think deeply about how are all these examples related to each other, Do they almost kind of connect as if they tell a singular story or are you just talking about different points in your life?

I think that sometimes students will pick a theme But it’s kind of a loosely tied together theme and then it feels like you’re just listing different experiences and like Anna has said At other points in this presentation, you don’t want your personal statement to sound like a resume or just a laundry list of things that you’ve done or achieved or that you’ve experienced.

It really should tell a story.

Anna: Yeah, and actually, I feel like it’s only fair for me to acknowledge that my personal statement to law school actually kind of did that. Um, and I had a reason for it. I felt like my extracurriculars weren’t on their face super related to legal work. So in my personal statement, I, the story I told was how I went from a psychology major to a professional working in psychology to wanting to be a lawyer.

So I walked through all the activities I had done, or a lot of them. But all of them with the frame of, here’s what I learned in this one. It started me thinking, Oh, maybe I should be a lawyer. Here’s what I learned here that made me realize, Oh, you know what, what I liked about being a therapist was that I was advocating for people who didn’t have the strongest voice and tying it all back to what I wanted to do.

So, Yeah, if you do it, make sure that there’s a storyline through the whole essay.

Lydia: So another question that we have is, is it more important to pick the story that’s most authentic to you or the story that’s most memorable? I have a story that is really important to me, but I feel like it’s something that a lot of people have gone through.

Anna: I like this question. Um, of course, I’d want to know more in general. I think You should go with what’s most meaningful to you. You think students feel a lot of pressure to have this like big impactful story, like TV worthy events, and not all of our lives would make great TV. That’s okay. I kind of don’t want my life to make great TV, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t meaningful moments, uh, for me throughout my life.

So, for one of my students, they, uh, were sitting around with their family one day. Lydia’s heard this story a bunch. They were sitting around with their family. Their dad was talking about someone they all knew and said, Ugh, they just don’t have any common sense. It was a super boring moment to most of us that we would have forgotten about probably by the next day.

But for this student, she thought, huh, what is common sense? And actually what is sense? And what does all of this mean? And she went down this rabbit hole of research and realized she wanted to be a philosopher. So that’s like a really boring moment. No one’s going to put that on TV. It’s not that interesting, but for the student, it was so, and she had done like other, uh, impressive things that she could have told her story about, but this moment was really meaningful to her.

So she went with it and I thought it made a really cool, interesting essay. Um, so I’m always, I think, on the side of pick what’s meaningful to you, and just make it personal and show us why it was so meaningful.

Lydia: Yeah, and I think a lot of students think that the more jarring or unique the story is, the better the essay is, and I imagine you probably had a similar experience, Anna, but I’ve read essays that were very unique, but did not really hold my attention.

Like, I think one example that comes to mind is I read an essay about a student that had run, like, an ultramarathon across Sub Saharan Africa. Like, that’s an incredibly unique experience. I don’t think I’d ever read an essay. about someone who had done something like that. It’s very impressive, but it kind of was just telling me like, oh, here’s this cool thing that I did.

And all I could really walk away from the essay knowing is, oh, they did this cool thing. I know I couldn’t run that much in my life. Um, but good for them. But I didn’t feel like I had a clear picture of who they were outside of just that one experience. And so, Sometimes picking something that’s meaningful, but maybe not that quote unquote unique or cool or exciting forces you to have to go a little bit deeper to explain, okay, well, why does this actually matter?

Like the example you gave with common sense, Anna, like, just saying, oh, I heard my dad say, oh, that person has no common sense, that in itself is not a story. It’s the reflection that makes it an actual story. So there are pros and cons to both. So I think it’s nice if you happen to have an essay that stands out in some way because you do want to hold the admissions officer’s attention, but that’s usually more to do with the writing and the reflection than the actual experience itself.

Okay, so another question that we have, um, is, Is there a structure for writing a personal statement that you shouldn’t do? So for example, should it just be the by body paragraph type of structure, or can you be really creative? Can you write it like a poem? Can you write it, you know, as a script or something like that?

Anna: Yeah, you can get creative and I think that makes starting early and getting feedback even more important. Um, because it’s, it’s a risk and risks can pay off and it can be a great essay, but you want to make sure that it’s accomplishing the goal, which is not, Ooh, I have a creative essay. The goal is I have an essay that shows who I am.

And shows admissions officers. You know what? I’m someone that they should want on campus. I’m someone that’s going to fit in in this community. So get feedback, start early. Um, I think if you are taking a more creative route, maybe getting feedback from a few more people. Um, I said one to three earlier, maybe a couple more.

If you’re doing something like a poem or using humor, which varies by region and culture and all sorts of things. Um, a little more feedback on that can be helpful. Um, I would say don’t put a link in your essay. I, I hear that question sometimes in the like creative things, like, can I link to a video I’ve made or whatever?

I mean, you can, there’s no rule against it, but I also wouldn’t count on them clicking on it or like they might even print it out depending on what the school does. And I certainly don’t think they’re going to type it in. Um, So don’t do that. Yeah, you can be creative. Just make sure you’re thoughtful about it.

Lydia: I, I definitely say yeah, don’t, don’t do a link. Um, also cause even if they were curious, there probably are rules about them not going to just because it’s a unfair advantage if you’re able to provide, you know, additional materials that no one else provided. But, um, yeah, I, I always say, um, If you’re going to go with a different structure, um, like there’s, there’s a reason that most people write their personal statements the way that they do, right?

That’s the traditional way. It’s not just a random reason for most people. That is the most intuitive and fitting way for them to tell their story. So if you find yourself wanting to write it a different way, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely think about why you’re doing it. Um, because you don’t want the only reason to just be, Oh, well, I want to be different.

Right? You don’t want your first impression to just be, Oh, this person’s doing a gimmick to try and stand out. You want the story to be the thing that distinguishes you. But if you’re someone that really enjoys poetry, for example, and it feels natural to tell your story that way, Then yeah, go for it. Like, do poetry, or like, I’ve seen students do diary entries, but the topic that they were talking about, it kind of, felt like it, it made sense to go that way.

So just make sure it feels natural to whatever your story you’re telling and whoever you are trying to, you know, portray yourself as in the application. Um, okay. This is a good question. How do I identify and choose the right experience to include in my college essay?

Anna: Yeah. Um, well, first of all, I think you want to do that work of creating your profile.

Uh, and I, I think that’s where a lot of the work lies. It’s not easy, like it wouldn’t be easy for me, uh, to sit down and say like, these are the three things that make me who I am. That’s a really hard question because we’re all complex, unique, interesting people. So it takes time and it takes introspection.

This is not a process, but if you want to do it well, it cannot be rushed. Um, so be really thoughtful in figuring out who you are, what has made you who you are, and how you want to frame yourself on the application. Then I would let that guide what story you tell. Um, and I, it’s hard to explain if you haven’t done it, but I’ve seen this happen to my students where if you do that work.

You can think of them as like disjointed things. You do that work, uh, figuring out what your profile is, what makes you, you, and then you have this list of things that have happened to you. It actually, once you’ve done that work and you say like, all right, these are the three things I want to highlight.

Now here’s a list of things I can write about. I think usually there’s a natural top one or two choices. So do the hard work, introspect, figure out who you are. Um, who you are in this moment, right? It’s always good, but, um, yeah, do that, do that internal work and it will pay off.

Lydia: All right, so we’re going to take a brief pause from the Q& A just to remind you that CollegeAdvisors team of over 300 former admissions officers and admissions experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process and one on one advising sessions. We’ve already helped over 6,000 clients in their college journeys.

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Alright, so now let’s get started. jump back into the Q& A. So the next question I’ve got is how much emphasis should you place on your future goals, your intended major, and your aspirations in your personal statement?

Anna: Um, I think it depends a bit on the prompt you’re answering and how much you know about your future aspirations.

Some students They just somehow at the age of 17 or 18 know, I want to study this specific type of cancer and I want to do it this way and here’s why, if that’s you, I would absolutely share that in your essay. Well, maybe it’s not you, maybe, you know, you know, I think I’m interested in business. I think I’m interested in psychology and here’s why this is the sort of thing I want to do Then share that, but it’s probably going to be less of an emphasis because it’s less clear.

Admissions readers know very well that I believe these days a majority of students change their major at least once in college. So they’re not expecting you to know exactly what you want to do. I think for both Lydia and me, it changed. Like what we went into college thinking, like, I think Lydia wanted to be a lawyer.

I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Here we are, right? That’s how life works. Everyone knows that who’s reading your essay, so they’re not going to hold you to it. They’re not going to expect you to have a super well formed idea of what you want to do, but I think it is important to show that you are someone who takes initiative and who has a direction in mind and who’s going to go explore.

Um, so I would convey that as as clearly as you can and as specifically as you can. For some folks it’ll be really specific and for some folks it won’t. And that’s okay.

Lydia: Yeah, I think, uh, I think that was a great answer and the only thing I would add to it is, um, the only time where I would definitively encourage a student to bring up their future ambitions and things like that, even if it doesn’t super clearly align with everything else that they’re talking about, their essay is in situations where maybe.

You kind of made a 180 when it came to the activities that you were involved in and things like that. So for example, um, I had a student a couple years ago that she originally was Doing everything that seemed like she was going to study biology major go go the pre med track And then I think around her junior year, maybe halfway into her junior year She made a complete left turn and wanted to do our architecture.

It’s a very big big change. And so it kind of was critical for her to address that in some part of her application because when an admissions officer was looking, is looking at her activity list and things like that, it wasn’t completely in alignment with, um, you know, the things that she had done. And I think you were in a similar boat, Anna, like you were talking about how You know, applying to law school, some of the things that you had done leading up to that point didn’t have a clear connection to wanting to pursue law.

So I think in those situations where you are already cognizant of the fact that maybe the things that you have done, um, in terms of your classes or your extracurriculars, maybe don’t have an obvious connection. To your intended major. It definitely is something that you want to make sure gets addressed directly somewhere in your application.

Anna: I totally agree. And that made me think, um, I just want to specify that I was answering it in the context of a personal statement. So if there’s a supplemental essay and it asks, why are you applying to this major or this program? Then I think you do need to get into the process. specifics of why you want to study that program, what you want to do, and again, if it changes, that’s okay, but you need to be able to answer like, to the University of Michigan while you are applying to their robotics program or whatever.

Lydia: Right. Um, and the last question I have is kind of connects to what you were saying with the difference between personal statement and supplemental. Should you ever mention a specific school or program at a school in your personal statement? Great

Anna: question. No, please don’t do that. That’s it. Your personal statement, uh, especially on the Common App, which is where most of your applications will be submitted, it’s going to go to all of the schools you apply to.

So it would be really awkward if you talk in your personal statement about how you’ve always wanted to go to Harvard and an admissions reader at Columbia is reading it. They’re going to toss that application out, right? Like you’re not, that’s not where you want to go. So don’t do that, but absolutely do it in the supplemental essays.

That’s a perfect spot to do it. You should. You making college specific references. They’re not in a personal statement.

Lydia: Definitely. And I promise you no college is going to be disappointed if you don’t mention them in your personal statement. They have full awareness that hardly anyone applies to just one college, especially in this day and age, so they will not be offended.

I have worked with, I work with one student that had the bright idea to make each personal statement a little bit different with each school where they would have like a sentence about why they went to go to that specific school for the common app. There’s just, even if you want to do something like that, uh, there’s just so much room for a mistake and submitting a personal statement that.

talked about a different school or something like that. So just keep it general. Keep it focused on who you are and if you’re intending on applying for the same major just in general to every school, then you can talk about that. Um, but yeah, don’t mention specific programs or colleges in your personal statement because they will all see it.

All right. So that concludes our webinar for tonight. Thank you so much to our presenter, Anna. I always say this, but I always love doing these sessions with you. I feel like I learned so much and we’re able to just uncover more and more about, um, strategies for writing strong personal statements. So thank you so much for sharing your knowledge tonight, you know.

Anna: Well, I always say this too, but I love presenting with you, Leah. So thank you so much for your input tonight.

Lydia: All right. Thank you everyone for joining and I hope you enjoy the rest of your night. Bye.