<p>From freshman year to now, we know that you have interacted with a number of people in your high school who are different from you and have affected who you are now. Tell us about one such relationship, with a focus on the details of your interaction, not the person.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what approach to take with this one.</p>
<p>Which people in your high school that you have interacted with are different from you?</p>
<p>Of these people, which have affected how you are now?</p>
<p>Of those people, identify one about whom you can speak of the details of your interaction.</p>
<p>In making this selection, choose that person, and that interaction, that allows the reader to be shown as much as possible about you.</p>
<p>There are two ways to approach this… the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is to try to think of all of the relationships you’ve had with people and then choose one and try to write an essay about it. Very difficult, actually. The easy way is to forget this prompt and write a personal statement in the following way:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Take a moment and think about your strong memories in high school. Jot down a single line about each. Look those over and think about which of those changed you, tested you, or made you a stronger person or a better one in some way, even small. That is your topic. It most certainly will involve one or more other people. It may even involve a bad person.</p></li>
<li><p>Jot down - forget writing style or even complete sentences - everything you can remember about that moment. Include visual/sensory details - sights, sounds, and also feelings. Then take that jumble and polish it into a paragraph. This is your opening paragraph.</p></li>
<li><p>Now think about how it transformed you. After all was said and done, who were you? How had you changed? That will be your last paragraph.</p></li>
<li><p>Now write the “in-between” paragraphs in the following way - think of each paragraph as a scene, and in each scene, describe a step in the change. This will keep you focused since you know the start and the end.</p></li>
<li><p>Now you have a strong personal statement.</p></li>
<li><p>NOW, and only now, go back to the prompt and think about the other character or characters that were part of that memory. If there were multiple, you can take a little literary license and condense them into a single character to make the story tighter. Talk a little about this character and how they were different from you (even if a little) and how they triggered your transformation. But like the prompt says, DO NOT focus on this character. THe essay is about YOU.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>–Robert Cronk, author of Concise Advice: Jump-Starting Your College Admissions Essays</p>
<p>And one more thing about the transformation: it does not have to be momentous; it could be quite small as long as it gives an insight into who you are and shows you becoming a better or stronger person. For example, it can even be something as trivial as you being a little self-centered, but discovering, through some incident that maybe the problem is with you, not everyone else. And so maybe the last paragraph can show you being a little more empathetic with others (a “better” you). The “person” which helped lead to that might be a good guy (took you aside and told you you were being a dork) or a bad guy (someone really arrogant, but in them you caught a slight glimpse of yourself).</p>
<p>And finally, a word about “a character different from youi.” Almost everyone would jump to the conclusion the person has to be a different race or a different sex and different culture or… whatever. The point is… EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT FROM YOU in one way or another.</p>
<p>bottom line, you know who changed to a better person. That’s all you’ve got to know. the rest is BS</p>
<p>In English, bottom line, you know who changed to a better person. That’s all you’ve got to know.</p>
<p>multitasker must have been… multitasking… LOL</p>
<p>Ha Ha, yeah, I don’t know what I typed to be honest! lol!</p>
<p>A word about how this character transformed you: it doesn’t have to be major. At an interview I talked about how breaking off a friendship with a girl who lied to me a lot really influenced me to realize that I can’t help everyone and that I need to look out for my own interests too. It was a school with a strong dedication/preference for service. I got in.</p>