I PM’d this to another CC user a while ago, and having stumbled across it again recently, I think it might be helpful to the CC community more broadly. Feel free to comment/criticize/question! *For context, I’ve been teaching SAT prep for 16 years, also spent 4 years at a super-academic high school and 10 years doing college app consulting (I don’t do it anymore, so I assure you I’m not promoting a service).
**Here are my most fundamental tips for the Personal Statement/b:
1) First and foremost, the PS is a personal narrative, so don’t treat it like an expository or persuasive essay. It should be engaging and (relatively) conversational. No “therefore” or “thus”!
2) Since it’s a narrative, that means its quality hinges almost entirely on the quality of the story (or stories) that it conveys.
3) Since that’s the case, starting with a “message” or “theme” and filling in the story is almost certainly doomed to mediocrity. Most high school students have just a handful of truly interesting stories to tell, so if, say, you start off intending to demonstrate leadership, then you have to come up with stories/anecdotes to support that theme. But what are the odds that you’re going to stumble upon your best stories if you start that way? Very low. Stories are king.
4) So I tell students to start by writing stories from your life. Don’t worry about what they show about you at all. Don’t contextualize or comment on them. No “telling”–just “showing.” Take the time to think about your life and amass a handful of interesting stories. Don’t even worry too much about the writing quality at this stage; just work on finding and telling the best stories you’ve got.
5) Once you’ve done so, go through your stories and see if any of them could maybe work together. Look for patterns. Pick the most engaging story (or stories) and think about what they might show about you. After all, this is a Personal Statement, which means it’s about who you are, not about what you’ve done or what you’ve learned! (Of course you can do and learn things in the essay, but it can’t be about those things!) Look for patterns, begin to contextualize and comment on the best stories. And guess what? A great story can reveal a lot of great themes!
6) Avoid pat epiphany essays. Many (most?) students tend to write essays that conclude with something like “and that’s when I learned X, and now I always Y” or something like that. It’s not a death knell or anything, but it’s not very believable. People have epiphanies all the time, but we don’t really change that easily. I mean, I had an epiphany at age 19 that I’m messy but it’s not great to be messy. That was nice–I stopped being so defensive and defiant about my squalor–but guess what: I’m in my 40s now and still messy. I mean, I’m a little better about it, but not much. (There are exceptions, of course: If you were that hiker that got trapped under a boulder and had to chop off his own arm with a pocket knife, then it’s believable to say you changed in that one moment. But I haven’t met that guy and I don’t expect I ever will.)
7) Tinker and revise, tinker and revise, tinker and revise. Start too long, then cut the fat–working the opposite direction is usually disastrous and results in thin essays with lots of fluff. You have just 650 words to make your best sales pitch–every one of those words counts!
8) Perhaps above all, don’t focus on writing an essay that really “captures the essence of your identity.” People are flabbergastingly complex–we’re all sometimes leaders, sometimes followers, sometimes honest, sometimes dishonest, etc. If you’re set on writing an essay that really gets to the heart of who you are, you’re going to fall into paralysis or you’re going to write a 450-page memoir. No 650-word essay can capture a person’s essence (if such a thing even exists). Find your best story (stories), figure out what they might show about you, and go with that. If your best story shows you’re frank and honest and know the danger of polite lying, then that’s who you are. If your best story shows you thrive under pressure, then that’s who you are. Let the story drive the train! I really can’t emphasize enough how a good PS must be driven by its story (or stories)!
10) Lastly, a few very minor tidbits: (A) one trick to get a stranger to like you is to confess something bad about yourself. Self-deprecation–think a mildly embarrassing anecdote rather than a damning admission!–can get almost any reader on your side if executed well (esp. early in an essay). (B) Asyndeton is your friend: Using a list but omitting the conjunctions (like “I came, I saw, I conquered” instead of “I came, I saw, and I conquered”) produces a sense of gravity and magnitude that’s rarely consciously noticed but always felt. If you use this device wisely (at an important point in your story, a point that calls for seriousness or suggests great import), you can pull the strings of your readers’ emotions. An essay I read last year ended with something like “As I walked home from school that day, my thoughts once again turned to my friends, my family, my future.” It’s a pretty bland idea, but see how the asyndeton lends it an air of significance? © in all narrative writing, details are important–proper nouns, sensory imagery, time signals produce the kind of verisimilitude that good narrative writing requires.