How to Represent Major Themes/ Personal Narrative in an Application

Applying to College
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So I’m yet another nervous high school college applicant, and I’ve begun work on my college applications. I just had a quick question about formatting the application.

Throughout all of my extracurriculars, programs, achievements, etc, I’ve isolated three major “themes” (based on a an article from prepscholar) composing a “personal narrative” that every activity can be placed in. I’m less of a focus on being well-rounded person, and more of a excel at your passion type, so I am able to group many activities into a larger overarching theme. What I mean by this, for example if I was a science-type (which I’m not), I could possibly have themes like “interest in and dedication to exploring the field of astronomy” and include ECs like research at an observatory, founding an astronomy club, hosting a podcast on astronomy, etc. I know I’m totally rambling and most of you already understand, but hey, ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Essentially I have an idea for the kind of story I want to tell, a focus/passion I want to demonstrate. I just don’t know to represent this personal narrative in an application. The common app essay seems to be more a story or situation that informs your perspective, and less a summary of my personal narrative. If I just list the ECs, I don’t know if the admissions reader may see the pattern I want to create. The rest of the essays for most colleges also don’t really help with that.

So my question to all the more informed college peeps out there: how do you represent your personal narrative in the application? If there are specific themes, patterns, groupings, stories, etc that you want the reader to understand the application in the context of, how do you represent it?

Thanks for everything y’all.

tl;dr: How do you weave a personal narrative into an application that makes sense, is easy to understand, and highlights major themes and connects your ECs, activities, programs, classes, etc to it?

PS. Do programs count as ECs or activities? Like, if you did a week summer program, or studied abroad.

Thanks!

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After you list an activity you could highlight the “theme” in the couple sentences that you have to fill. So when the adcom reads your activities he/she will keep bumping on to the same “words”. For example lets say one of your theme is that you are a people’s person. Now every time you enter an activity you highlight how it had to do with interacting with people and that was the focus. You can be a swim instructor and your focus is sports, or having a job or whatever, or it can be just helping people learn, talk to them, make them feel comfortable etc. You don’t have a lot of room to expand so find a couple key words that tie to your theme and make sure you add them in every activity.

The application essay and the supplements are excellent ways to write about your theme. You pretty much can write about anything in any format you want as long as it talks about yourself. I don’t understand why you think it is restrictive. You can bent and twist any prompt in any way as long as you clearly communicate to them who you are, what makes you tick and how you will fit into their campus. That’s the point anyway.

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Thank you :slight_smile: