Personal statement with no experiences?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I'm trying to get into the ISEP study abroad program for next year in order to study in a country in Latin America, and I'm having quite a bit of trouble writing my personal statement.</p>

<p>It turns out that I have:
ZERO work experience (Because my parents are wealthy)
ZERO internships (Explained in the next paragraph)
ZERO volunteering experience (Because... I'm a bad person)
and ZERO life-changing moments to write about (Because of the aforementioned cushy life)
Fortunately my grades are decent, though.</p>

<p>I know this is my fault, so please don't tell me that. I just don't know where to go from here. What it seems like has happened is that my friends who come from a similar situation and are getting good internships etc have been focused on ONE single subject that they can devote all their time to, and as a consequence have done research and mini-internships along the way. Whereas I haven't really known what I was going to be doing so I'm going to end up with 3 degrees (Biology, Spanish, Chemistry), which in hindsight appears to be a bad choice since I'm not naturally intelligent. So I've just been constantly working on things for all these unrelated classes for 4 years with no free time to even ponder doing things outside of what's required of me. </p>

<p>That seems like a lot of useless background information, so I'll try to give a TL;DR:</p>

<p>Is it a viable choice to talk about ONLY academics in a personal statement?</p>

2

<p>What’s the prompt for the personal statement?</p>

<p>Given it’s for a study abroad program, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for you to mostly talk about your academics and your interest in Spanish and Spanish speaking cultures. Talk about what you hope to gain from the experience by living and studying in a foreign country and how it will positively affect your future. Internships and work experience may not even be particularly relevent for a study abroad application. </p>

<p>But you should definitely get some work experience, even if you don’t need the money. You have to have something to put on a CV or resume besides your degree.</p>

3

<p>My D wrote an essay for a summer program (before college) about how sheltered she was and how she grew up with cornfields for a constant view and how much the summer program meant to her as a way to get out and see something more, do something different.</p>

<p>That general theme might work for you, too.</p>

<p>I also agree that focusing on Spanish makes sense.</p>