Guide to the Personal Statement Essay by Sarah O’Neill Chester County
Tell us about yourself.
The personal statement is the first essay you’ll write, and is required for most American colleges.
2023–2024 Common App Prompts
2023–2024 Coalition App Prompts
Example Essay
Flipping through the crinkly plastic sleeves of the album, I saw a rainbow of carefully aligned postcards in a variety of shapes and sizes: souvenir postcards, die-cut postcards, Chinese calligraphy mailed from Australia, and even a 3D card that could stand on the table and unfold to resemble a cherry tree. I slipped my most recent postcard into an empty sleeve, labeled it with the date, and then returned the album to its place in my room: a stack of seven, equally fat albums of postcards.
How did I have so many postcards? Thanks to the development of technology, I’ve had the fortune of meeting many new friends over online postcard exchange platforms. I used to think that sending postcards was an obsolete practice. Why would I take the time to handwrite something, purchase a stamp, and wait weeks for someone to receive my message when I could send a text and get an almost-immediate response? Then, I tried to remember the last time I received a carefully handwritten note.
I scoured my bedroom and found an old card that my grandmother had sent me for my seventh birthday. I had forgotten what my grandma’s penmanship looked like, but I recognized it immediately. I could almost instantaneously picture my grandmother sitting at her kitchen table, carefully choosing words of love and pride. Writing postcards has taught me to deliver my sincerest messages in a no-haste fashion. At a time when everyone is in a rush, it feels excellent to slow down and feel the beauty of life, picking up the details you once ignored, like flowers on the street.
Postcard messages are like reflective journals that help you find meaning and beauty within your daily life. Nowadays, I have lost count of the number of countries that I have received postcards from. Sometimes the handwriting is difficult to decipher, sometimes the English is difficult to understand, but each one is written intentionally. I have learned that
even when the sender is thousands of miles away, we have much in common.
While the hundreds of emails that I’ve written may have simply been scanned and discarded, my cards have been read with the same amount of sincerity that went into writing them. That said, digital communication and postal communication are not conflicting: instead, they can work together in harmony. As a computer scientist, I have integrated modern technology with the traditional postcard exchange. Across the multiple postcard
exchange sites that I use, I’ve developed programs to boost the online postcard exchange experience: I’ve created an app to search for zip codes, help people find and auto-register lost cards, and look for duplicate cards they’ve sent. I’ve also made a program for non-programmers to decorate their homepages without having to write a single line of code.
After I published my app, it spread quickly in my Chinese postcard community. Because I didn’t credit myself very visibly, many users took a long time to find out that I was the person behind the scenes. Months after the app was published, I was surprised to receive some letters, both physical and digital, of thanks. “I just noticed that many of our website users are using your app. Thank you so much for developing it: you’re a tech pro!”
My three years of writing postcards have taught me to connect to a community wholeheartedly. As I move into the world of higher education, I want to be a computer scientist who doesn’t forget traditional communication, and I want to continue making programs that connect people together.
What Should I Write About?
A good personal statement does 3 things:
● It tells a small story from your life, in detail. An essay about one math
project you struggled with is better than an essay about everything you’ve
ever done in high school.
● It is primarily about who you are now. Your essay should mostly cover
events that happened 3 or fewer years ago, not events that happened
when you were 8.
● It demonstrates your positive qualities. Some examples of positive
qualities: perseverance, determination, creativity, optimism…
That’s it. You don’t need to worry about the Common App or Coalition App prompts if you’re not inspired by them. Any essay that fulfills the above requirements will work for the Common App or Coalition App.
How Much Do I Write?
500–650 words is a safe bet. Remember, you’re trying to get the admissions reader to slow down and spend as much time reading your application as possible. That said, you shouldn’t pad your essay with a ton of extra text “just because” — your essay should still be clear and concise.
Does My Essay Need a Title?
A title is optional — I see them occasionally on personal statements (never on supplemental essays, though). A good rule is: only add a title if it really adds something to your essay. A compelling or funny title (e.g. “Stealing Paintings”) can be a great hook that grabs a reader’s attention, but a flatly descriptive title (e.g. “What I Learned at my Art Museum Internship”) adds nothing.
Please note that if you add a title, it’ll count towards your maximum word count.
Picking a Topic
If you’re struggling to pick between two essay topics that are equally important to you and demonstrate equally positive qualities, my advice is to pick the weirder topic. If I was reading 100 essays a day, I would rather read about a student’s lifelong obsession with Scottish castles than about their two-year experience in their school band. Unless, of course, there was some really interesting drama happening in the flute section…
Another way to add interest to your essay is to pair two seemingly unrelated topics together. How does your baking hobby relate to your relationship with your mom? Your mom taught you how to cook. How do you connect your love of fashion with your love of the environment? You’re an avid thrift shopper.
How Personal is Too Personal?
If you have picked a serious topic, like your struggles with mental health or the death of your grandmother, at least half of your essay should be about the positive lessons you learned from your experience. Additionally, if you’d like to write about a very dark topic, don’t go into too much detail
about the rougher parts of the story. Topics like suicide and sexual assault should not be discussed graphically, but they can make for excellent essays about activism or feminism if you focus instead on how you engaged with the problem in a constructive way.
Help, My Life Hasn’t Been Hard Enough!
Though colleges do ask about adversity, and many a successful essay has been written about a student’s life challenges, applications readers are not just selecting for the students who have led the hardest lives. Remember, essays are about demonstrating your positive qualities. Though “good
at facing adversity” can be a positive quality, there are thousands of other positive qualities you can talk about: your thoughtfulness, your dedication, your great sense of humor…
Help, My Life Hasn’t Been Cool Enough!
You don’t need to be a professional snowboarder in order to lead an interesting life, and you certainly don’t need to travel the world in order to write an interesting personal statement.
Some of the most interesting essays I’ve read have been about….
● thrift shopping
● graphic design
● learning a new language
● rock collecting
● writing postcards
Should My Personal Essay Be About My Major?
No. It can relate to your chosen college major, but it doesn’t need to. If your school really needs to know more about your chosen major, they will ask you about it in a supplemental essay prompt.
I Hate Bragging, and This Feels Like Bragging
Many students feel compelled to downplay certain accomplishments because talking positively about themselves “feels braggy.” “Well, I did work as a camp counselor, but it seems self-absorbed to say I’m great at working with kids…” Unfortunately nobody else is going to tell your admissions reader, “This student is just being modest. Actually, they’re an awesome leader, and they’re great at working with kids, and they have an incredible sense of humor.” If you don’t show off your positive
qualities, readers will assume that those qualities do not exist. And remember…you’re up against a lot of students who will be writing confidently about their positive traits.
If you’d like, imagine you’re writing a recommendation letter for your best friend, instead of for yourself. Would you downplay your best friend’s positive qualities?
My Life is Boring. Can I Make Something Up?
Every so often a student is compelled to invent parts of their life story — either because they think that part of the real story is boring, or too complicated, or too hard to explain. There are a lot of obvious reasons not to do this (in fact, colleges can kick you out of a school if they find out you lied in your application) but I have two more reasons
for you:
1. It’s really easy to tell when students are making something up.
2. The made-up parts of the story are never as interesting as the truth.
Seriously!
Just write down what you remember. If it’s really that boring, your editor can help you condense or skip over the boring parts. No need to start inventing new life events.
Brainstorming
List ten of your memories. What events or activities instantly come to mind? These can be big events or small ones, one-time events or recurring ones, good memories or bad ones.
● painting outdoors with my friend Brooke
● my last orchestra concert before COVID hit
● struggling to talk to my grandma on the phone in Portuguese
● taking pictures of my dorm neighbors for photography class
● playing at Carnegie Hall
● hiking every Eno River trail last year
● my first mandolin lesson
● my tradition of rereading every Tamora Pierce book every few years
● running a five-mile race
● hearing about my grandpa passing away
2. Pick one of those memories and write down as many details as you can
remember. As you continue digging for memories, you may find that more
memories about the wider story show up: how you got to this point, why this event is meaningful to you, or other context. Write those down too.
Please note that this example is a short one. Take half an hour to get this right.
my last orchestra concert before COVID hit
● it was a mandolin orchestra concert in a tiny darkened church?
performance space? — look up name of space later
● there were only 3 or 4 people in the audience
● before the concert started I spontaneously played a Beatles? song with
guitarist Chris
● we played a mix of classical and modern pieces — also Star Wars Cantina
Band song, we couldn’t really play it at full speed
● concert almost didn’t happen because there were already a few COVID
cases in Providence
● the vibe was really weird because we all sort of knew this would be our
last concert for a while
● I was the youngest person in the orchestra by at least 20 years — mostly
retirees but really friendly — one of the guitarists (played this crazy guitar
with 2 necks… what’s that called?) drove me to practice every Saturday
because I didn’t have a car
● I joined this orchestra because the day I met my mandolin teacher, he
gave me a mandocello and said “Show up to practice on Saturday” and I
can’t say no to people when they do that
● maybe that’s a good thing because the orchestra WAS a good
experience — theme: always saying yes to new experiences?
● everyone in the orchestra was playing for fun and even if they weren’t
very good they always showed up and enjoyed themselves. contrasts a
lot with my experience playing cello which was very competitive and
critical. — anecdote contrasting mandolin and cello learning experiences?
theme: enjoying music for its own sake?
● maybe focus less on pre-COVID concert and more on practice
Don’t get derailed by research — if there’s something you need to know, like a specific name or year, just make a note for later instead of pausing your brainstorming session. You can repeat this brainstorming for multiple memories if you’re having
trouble deciding what topic to go with!
3. List the positive qualities your essay might demonstrate. Highlight the three qualities that you want to emphasize the most in your essay.
● my love of music
● always saying yes to new experiences, keeping an open mind
● good at paying attention to others (good listening skills in orchestra)
● dedicated: showing up to practice every day and practicing at home
● willing to make friends with people very different than me
4. Decide on the “small story” and “big story” behind this memory. Your small story should be a scene that lasts seconds or minutes, but your big story can be a scene that covers weeks, months or years.
Small story: having fun with my bandmates right before our orchestra concert, even if we were only playing for an audience of 5 people
Big story: the story behind how I started playing the mandolin, joined a
mandolin orchestra, and made friends with people very different than me
Example Outline
Part 1: Open with your small story. This is where you hook your reader with all of the sensory details of your scene: what you heard, smelled, saw, tasted, felt… etc. I loved playing badminton with Grandpa. Every winter holiday, I would get up early and play against him in the mornings. But in 2019, at our spring festival dinner table, I watched my grandfather fail again and again to pick up a piece of beef with chopsticks. His right hand, which he’d used to win a badminton competition only two years ago, was shaking uncontrollably with Parkinson’s disease.
Part 2: Transition from the small story to the big story behind it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my grandpa’s hand, and what he suffered pushed me to learn more. I read online that many patients only got diagnosed when the disease reached its later stages. When I learned about electrical near-field sensing in class, and found the technology could detect a finger’s movement in millimeters — and that the frequency of the tremor for Parkinson’s disease fell within a specific, detectable range — I decided to use this technology to help people like my grandpa.
Part 3: Tell your big story from beginning to end.
I teamed up with other students to design a diagnostic device, and we spent six months hand-building our first prototype of the TremorChecker. However, our confidence crashed when we sought feedback from a neurologist. What he told us was discouraging: hospital clinics were already equipped with machinery that could provide precise, effective data — and since our machine was designed for portability and ease of use, it wouldn’t be as accurate as larger, more sophisticated machines in hospitals. My team and I were frustrated about this defeat. Even though we were still working hard on product development, we were unable to convince ourselves of TremorChecker’s practicality. I didn’t want to admit failure, believing our efforts were valuable. Looking for new opportunities, I led the team to participate in the Diamond Challenge. At night, I read through research papers, trying to find some breakthroughs; during the day, I reached out to more experts. One doctor mentioned that many patients didn’t feel their tremors during early stages of the disease, which led them to lose opportunities for early treatment. It was then I realized TremorChecker’s advantage, calling my teammates at midnight to share
my excitement: it was the first and only device available for early screening of potential Parkinson’s outside of a hospital. By placing TremorChecker in
community centers and encouraging self-testing, we could detect potential
patients and direct them to visit hospitals for examination. As my team’s publicity lead, I decided to solicit feedback from the community.
We set up TremorChecker in a public square and invited locals to test it. I
patiently guided everyone — mostly elders — to put their hands on the machine, gathering feedback. One elderly man had never heard of Parkinson’s and thought shaky hands were simply a natural consequence of aging, an attitude that was unfortunately too common. When I described the symptoms of Parkinson’s, he listened carefully, typing down notes letter by letter. “I never thought I’d learn a lesson here!” I felt like I was talking to my grandpa before he’d gotten the disease. I realized that not only did we need accessible early screening, but it was also necessary to have better public knowledge about
Parkinson’s, so people understood the importance of getting tested.
TremorChecker reached the final round of the Diamond Challenge, and our work continues. Further collaboration with physicians showed us how TremorChecker was a great fit for placement in rural areas which lacked medical care and resources. Our team is working hard to trial our prototype in more communities, and I’ve written several educational articles about Parkinson’s.
Part 4: Finally, tell us about the lessons you learned from your experience.
I’ve found my own ways to keep Grandpa in my heart by putting effort into small changes that ultimately achieve amazing results. My machine doesn’t eliminate Parkinson’s, but it makes a real difference in helping people to get early treatment. Now, instead of playing badminton with Grandpa, I’m teaching him how to write with his left hand like I do. He has missed the best time for treatment, but I want to use my knowledge to help other grandparents live healthily.
Thank you for reading!
Sarah O’Neill Chester County Teacher Editor Supreme Editing Coatesville
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