<p>As the title suggests, I'm confused about how exactly we can show personal characteristics in a college application. </p>
<p>For example, let's say that I'm a very honest and genuine person. How would I tell this to colleges?
Let's say I'm a leader among my friends and am the problem solver when it comes to arguments and falling outs. How would I tell this to colleges?
Let's say that I take a 1 hour train to a nearby slums area and give out food to homeless people. How would I tell this to colleges?</p>
<p>I get that listing extracurriculars such as Captainship in a sport and Presidency of a club shows leadership and that volunteer work shows good heart, but how would colleges differentiate people who volunteer out of a good heart or people who volunteer just to fill up the hours required for a good college application?, etc.</p>
<p>I don't understand how any of this can be illustrated other than in an essay, BUT, to my knowledge you can only write one essay on one topic (or that is what you would normally do because you would have to spend time on other applications as well).</p>
<p>Would I have to pick one character trait to describe and discard all the others? Or is there a way that I can explain or show them the strengths of my character?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance. </p>
<p>Those character traits are showed by your GC and teacher recs. You don’t talk about them.</p>
<p>You might like to visit the College Essay section and read some of the pinned threads at the top for tips. </p>
<p>But these are good questions. Fact is that admissions has only so much time and can’t know every little thing about you. So you paint a picture the best you can. Seeing how you spend your time outside of school, reading your recommendation letters that, hopefully, touch on your character and personal traits and the ‘voice’ you bring to your essays. I can remember back (a while back now) to the story my daughter told in her essay and distinctly remember that you could see so many things in it: resourcefulness, logic, drive and hard work, engagement with people, enthusiasm, overarching ambitions, experience, versatility in different environments. It was a good and interesting story too, a slice of life and she got a lot of compliments on it (from colleges too.) It came from rich experiences. You don’t say ‘I am these things’ or make an essay ‘On Goodheartedness’ and reel off a selection of things you do to be goodhearted. You will have to do some drafts and see if you can just tell a story that gives a bit of taste of what you are like, what motivates you, influences you, It helps to do mini drafts of essays with different prompts to get the juices flowing in preparation.</p>
<p>No one can tell if you do things from heart or volunteer because you have to. The good news is that people are helped either way so just showing up is a good thing and can lead to developing heart. But some people it really stands out, maybe from duration of devotion to something or working in an interest from many angles.</p>
<p>Thank you, BrownParent! That was a very helpful answer. </p>
<p>The best essays = anecdotes, where your personal traits are not stated but implied by the details of the story. </p>
<p>Example: You write an essay about a time you overcame an adversity. Even though you’re not stating this, colleges will see that you’re strong, resilient, driven, ambitious, creative (if you thought of interesting & effective ways to solve your problem), blah blah blah</p>
<p>To add to the things others have said, you should also deeply consider WHAT traits you really want to show. Honesty, leadership, those are common. There’s no need to go out of your way to show that. Instead, research the institution and see what kind of student they are looking for. use their mission statement and their motto to create a generalized model of a student at that institution. In your essays, use examples to illustrate you have traits in common with that general model.</p>
<p>I hope this helped. Good Luck!</p>