<p>I have been writing my essays, but I've always wondered if I should write about the truth or simply give them a PG version. I settled on writing about my parents' divorce, but I heard that it was cliche and overdone. Should I include mentions of my father's affairs? Should I include the emotional (and physical) abuse?</p>
<p>How personal is TOO personal?</p>
<p>Whatever helps to make you look like a stronger individual. Getting too "touchy feely" might make you look weak and emotionally unstable, but, then again, just mentioning divorce and omitting your father's affairs might make you look like you're overreacting to "just another divorce".</p>
<p>In the end, just focus on using your essay to project your own personal strengths. If you were emotionally and physically abused, mention it only if you also explain how you've been able to overcome it or even use it to your advantage (like becoming more resilient).</p>
<p>If you turn in into something that you overcame/ ended with a new outlook or made you a better person it'll be solid. What they don't want is people trying to simply go for the pity-party aspect, they want to see the adversity you've overcome and the person it made you. I'd go with anything that doesn't make the AO too uncomfortable reading, if that makes any sense... I know of someone who wrote about their mother's 5th wedding to a man she didn't love and didn't treat the applicant right and it was one of the best I've ever read... It was emotional, but tasteful.</p>
<p>Try to incorporate both PG aspects and touch on the darker side? But make sure it focuses on you and how it changed you. Hope I helped.</p>
<p>Oh, alright. Thanks for the advice!</p>
<p>This may be too personal of a topic for a number of reasons. First of all, if it happened recently, you may still have a lot of work to do in sorting out your feelings on the topic. While writing in this situation can be very cathartic, it won't produce a great essay.</p>
<p>Secondly, you are applying to a school using an essay that will be read by several administrators, and accessible to even more. Your goal is to be accepted at this school. Do you want the family's dirty laundry to be widely known before you set foot on campus? What if the parents are known in certain circles - should their personal problems be equally known? </p>
<p>If the information is something you would discuss with, say, a teacher or neighbor, then it may be all right to include it. However, there are many things that are better left unsaid until you know how to put them in context.</p>
<p>I thought Divorce is one of the 4 Ds(Death, Depression,Drug, Divorce) that you are not supposed to write about. Anyway, your essay should be about you not about your parents.</p>
<p>If you are going to mention these things, I'd be VERY vague on the details (i.e., "My parents' marriage was less than ideal.") Details would be TMI (too much information), not to mention violating your family member's privacy. Is your family ok with you revealing this info to strangers at multiple colleges? Also you don't want it to look like you're asking for pity. Keep the focus on what you've learned from this trying experience. (i.e. "I've learned not to treat people like objects....")</p>
<p>Unless you feel really strongly about this topic, I'd see if you can come up with something else. But if you're really wedded to it, be vague about the details and keep the focus on your reaction and what you've learned.</p>
<p>Hey, OP, I've heard from more than one adcom that divorce is usually not the best choice for an essay topic...I'd be careful. If you were my student, I'd tell you to choose something else. If you're bound and determined to use the topic, make sure that you find a way to use the essay to maximize your own personal strengths. As other posters have suggested, you probably want to be careful about including too many painful details.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think an essay about divorce is really hard to do the right way. I know someone who did a speech about her parents' divorce at my school, and she not only ended up crying, but also sounded really bitter. Instead of focusing on the details, focus on how it changed you and how you now apply this to life. Good luck! =)</p>
<p>The goal of the personal essay is to show them who you are, your good characteristics, and the things you can contribute to their college. Someone with lots of emotional baggage (or more specifically, someone who portrays that in his/her essay) who doesn't seem like they'd be stable in a college environment is unlikely to garner strong support for an acceptance decision...</p>
<p>well it depends on how you use it in your essay, because i know a friend who talked about the death of his grandma and it was a bomb essay which got him into harvard, so yeah...</p>
<p>there are some topics about the 4Ds that are cliche, but every story is unique and you should exemplify that to make yours great. I agree with LaFalum. It may be too personal and violate the trust of your parents. You could say your family was "less than ideal" or come up with a clever way to write about divorce than "it was hard but made me stronger" story. Of course it may have made you stronger but say it with a unique twist.</p>
<p>It seems like one of those no go topics. I think a lot of people try to write depressing stories about their lives to get in, instead of highlighting what they can contribute to the campus community.</p>
<p>I would just say to write about how it made you feel and how you came out of it...how this event in your life changed you. You do not need to include gory details to make this a personal essay--it should be about YOU personally.</p>
<p>I am sorry this happened to you and that your father was a poor example for a father and husband. But I concur with Columbia Student. I would not be writing about this in the context of your father's behavior. I would write instead about yourself and how you overcame personal adversity with an oblique reference to your parent's divorce, but focus on YOURSELF. Turn sadness into success. They want to know about you, not your dad. And they want to know how you handle stress and adversity. And they want to know you can write.</p>
<p>It's probably too personal of a topic, honestly. It's something that instantly makes people uncomfortable, and you have to be clear-headed enough to write about it without making it uncomfortable while still making it personal while still getting a bit of your character across while still maintaining distance..... It's too much.</p>
<p>If you must, just pull in details like abuse when they're applicable to your journey. Write the essay as a journey and just use details to add impact.</p>
<p>But really, think twice about that topic.</p>
<p>I've heard divorce topics are usually frown upon...</p>
<p>But how about telling it to a school counselor, so that perhaps in the rec it would state how it did affect you? </p>
<p>Would telling it to your school counselor also be considered too personal though?</p>
<p>I would tell your guidance counselor that this significantly influenced you. You can discuss with her about how specific the letter should be. With topics like divorce, it might be hard to tell the admissions committee who you are because you will be centering the essay on your parents.</p>
<p>Fish,</p>
<p>I would bag the topic and here's why -- the selection of your topic, for this particular situation -- a group of unknown adults on the admissions committee -- is as important as the essay itself. The appropriate subject shows that you have some common sense about what is appropriate; just as you would not litter your essay with the F word, you wouldn't want to pick a topic that could make you look indiscreet, such as whining about your dad who had an affair. </p>
<p>Even my d, who could have written about her father's death, chose not to -- and instead wrote about an experience she had at an anime convention in NYC. </p>
<p>Because -- some subjects are too personal to launch into with a group of strangers -- even friendly strangers. </p>
<pre><code>And why make your parents the stars of the essay?
</code></pre>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Another parent (and person whose parents divorced when she was in college) saying Do NOT write on this topic. Try to recapture a sense of your own separate path. You have your own relationships to forge ahead of you, and your own triumphs and heartbreaks to experience.
Oblique references to something you may have learned/adjusted to/coped with or may be assimilating due to the failure of your parents' marriage is fine, but truthfully...you are too close to this event in your life to write about it with proper perspective. I assume they will sort out the issue re tuition via the usual FAFSA methods and you are not alone at all in having parents in different households who are in pain/not recovered, just as you cannot expect to be recovered fully yet.<br>
I got counseling right after I got out of college for a while (and refused to ask a college counselor to speak with me even though my parents post divorce problems bled into my college life quite a bit and worried me quite a bit while I was in school), and I would counsel you to consider a few weeks of seeing a college counselor once you are settled in college next year to help you set boundaries, grieve some, ventilate without worrying about hurting either parent, and to help you recognize that you must forge your own life now. Show your wit, insight and your personality in an essay in another vein. And good luck moving forward to all members of your family...
your college years can be a wonderful place to start a new sort of family in your life that will add to your sense of stability
I am a strong believer that no one can get all they need from their parents, so look outward and see who is ahead in your life for you to learn from...</p>