Hello!
I am applying this year, and just finished my personal statement. However, after reading a little, I became very scared: I am a STEM student (astrophysics), and I wrote my PS on a personal experience and how it changed me. This experience was going through anorexia, and the whole essay has a very social and sometimes critical tone. I wanted to write about it because this experience really changed me for the better, but after researching a bit, I realized that most STEM applicants that got admitted wrote about their passion for science. I do have an essay about astrophysics and my love for it, but I thought the universities would ask me for that in the specific essay prompts! I didn’t know that I was supposed to write about it in the PS. Also, I come from Brazil, and the school curriculum here is the same for everyone (we can’t choose classes, everyone has to take them all, and all of them are at a very high level, the topics covered are equal to the ones covered in AP), which means I have had four years of Philosophy, Social Studies, History and Demographic Geography as well as biology, math, chemistry and physics. This school carrier has influenced me a lot, and I guess I am a bit more inclined to humanities than your average science student. Can anyone tell me if it’s ok to be a little more humanities-inclined in my PS while applying for STEM? My first college choice is Yale…
IMO If your grades and test scores in STEM fields show a high aptitude in math and science then it’s probably fine to discuss something more social in your essay.
The possible issue I can see with the essay you propose is that it better be very convincing that you no longer suffer from anorexia or any other emotional issues. Colleges are sometime wary of taking on students who may be prone to emotional illnesses and breakdowns, especially when faced with the stressful challenges of studying a demanding topic in a foreign culture far from home.
Also, what do you mean when you say your essay has a “critical tone?” Critical of what or whom?
@Scipio Yes, my grades and test scores are definitely better in STEM. Also, almost all my extracurriculars are in STEM. The only one that is not is show jumping.
I made it very clear that the anorexia was due to my stepmother when i was 9. I also made it clear that I stopped considering the situation as negative a long time ago, and got better in 2014, when I started fighting against all kinds of intolerance, something I wish to continue and maybe even evolve in college. I really made it a point of not focusing too much on the negative aspect, and more on how the experience changed me for the better, and what came out of those changes. Could this be a problem? I do have an essay about astrophysics, and, considering my passion for it, I could write endlessly. But this topic was supposed to describe something that I want in college that wouldn’t be seen in any other part of my application.
Also, when I say critical tone, I mean that after years of studying Social Studies, I couldn’t talk about prejudice in Brazil without briefly addressing the enormous contradiction of the vast ethnic diversity and the lingering intolerance due to the more-recent-than-in-other-countries archaic and slavery-based society. This is basically just to explain what I want to change in my surroundings.
Thank you so much for your reply, by the way!