The Personal Statement.

Applying to College
1

<p>Help, please. :) I've been having some serious issues with getting this darn thing where I want it to be and right now it just sucks. Help?</p>

<p>Personal Essay – Common app</p>

<p>Community college rocked my world. Away from the loud, chaos-racked halls of high school, it was like a breath of fresh air. I excelled. I've always loved to learn - for as long as I can remember I've been full of questions. Getting sick during my sophomore year in high school dampened my enthusiasm. I was sick three to four days of five. I had to first drop my honors courses, then transfer schools and do a contract program to finish out the year and recover. Running Start was a welcome change. I was healthy, and motivated.</p>

<p>The classes available to me were limited. I had to concentrate on fulfilling my high school requirements and balance those with my A.A. degree, and my passions. From the time I was ten years old, I aspired to go into psychology. I love the human mind, how it functions, and what makes us tick. I was selected to be a Peer Mentor at Spokane Falls Community College. My job was to help incoming students feel comfortable with college. I had more "mentees" than any other student in the program. I also was selected to help an autistic girl and an international student from Somalia. For a while, all I wanted to do was to become a wonderful therapist - someone who would actually care about their clients. I still find this to be a wonderful path, but not the one for me.</p>

<p>My only struggle with picking a definitive direction is that I'm so drawn to so many of them. I've always been a fan of the social sciences, and writing. I considered majoring in English, or Journalism. I thought about a degree in History or Psychology. For a time, I toyed with the thought of Intercultural Communications. Languages are beautiful, and the successful communication of countries is imperative to the furthering of peace. I decided that this too wasn't for me.</p>

<p>I finally found my major when I took Philosophy. Philosophy wasn't by any means my first choice for a major. I'd never even considered it. My mother was a math teacher and a software engineer. My father was a Chinese, Japanese, and American History instructor at Spokane Falls Community College for 39 years. I spent several weeks in the summer for three years running at a Chinese immersion camp in Minnesota. Both of my parents were world travelers, and they shared their love for travel with me. At fifteen, we took a trip to France, England, and the Netherlands. When I graduated from college and high school at seventeen, I took another trip to Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. I’m still not sure exactly what I want to do with my degree, but I do know that I want it to take me places.</p>

<p>My introduction to Philosophy class was part of a Learning Community, 15-credit, three hour class. I loved it. The class was called The Heart of the Matter: Love, Sex, Power, and Madness. The class had me exploring the way that the world is, metaphysics, and how all of the subjects I love (History, English, Foreign Culture, Gender Studies, Psychology, etc.) fit together. It was enthralling. My only other Philosophy class was a Logic class, which grabbed me up from the first moment. I admired the marriage of deductive and inductive reasoning. The study of an argument; how to reason and to communicate ideas without the hindrance of fallacies appealed to me.</p>

<p>I would like to minor in English, and possibly Linguistics or Education. There are definitely some decisions still to be made. I’m hoping that my degree will open doors for me. I’d like to be an editor, a lawyer, a foreign relations specialist, or a professor. There are so many directions I’d like to go. Ideally, I will come out with my bachelor’s degree, but also with a heightened ability to think critically, write clearly, and communicate my ideas.</p>

<p>Since graduating with honors for my A.A. degree in June of 2010, I’ve been in purgatory. In spite of a dismal economy, I have managed to stay employed in a variety of positions, but it’s becoming time to move forward. There’s nothing like the structure of college to encourage an organized and controlled livelihood. I believe that Reed will provide me with the type of environment that will allow me to thrive as a student and as an individual.</p>

<p>Furthering my education and continuing on to get my M.A. is my eventual goal. My career choice remains a mystery. I am hoping that my experiences in the next couple of years will allow me to enrich myself and to further my education, and to find what it is that I’ve been looking for.</p>

2

<p>Um, it’s way too long. Also, I became confused in the paragraph about “I finally found my major when I took Philosophy.” You then go on to discuss the first phil. class, and then “my only other phil. class was a logic class.” So, was it your major? I thought a major usually required more than two classes in a subject area? I think you sound too undecided about your future goals too. Too many subject areas of interest, too many possible career choices. Not that most students aren’t just as undecided, but I think you should narrow this down by emphasizing your passions. More than one college rep on our tours said that the point of the essay is for the reps to get a sense of YOU - who you are. I get a sense of your intellectual pursuits, but not a whole lot about you as a person with a life philosophy of some sort. When is the essay/app due? Good luck. Hope my comments help.</p>

3

<p>You start talking about community college, high school and then you’re back to 10 years old. Try to make this time progression more smooth; even reduce your essay to a short period of time to make it more concise.</p>

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<p>There’s an abrupt discontinuity here. Again, try to make these progressions more smooth. It’s weird to read that you’re motivated in a line and then in the next that you’re not.</p>

<p>Get focused in one event, this is my advice. You can either write about your CC and HS experience or your vocation for psichology; not everything simultaneously.</p>

4

<p>As the above poster noted, your essay seems fragmented at times and lacks a smooth continuity. This can be fixed by choosing a smaller scope for your essay. Right now you’re trying to cover a huge range of topics and time (high school, community college, your grades, etc.) The result is a series of paragraphs that are more narration of your life instead of a true “personal statement.” </p>

<p>That being said, I think what you have posted is not really an essay, but more of a bank of ideas that you can pull from to write a more focused piece. The commonapp gives you a choice of a question you need to answer in your statement, and I don’t think your essay really does that. Try to come up with a general question/task in your head, read your essay, and ask yourself if you’ve stayed on track and met this goal. </p>

<p>I like the theme you were starting to develop about your passion for learning and possibly psychology. Zero in on a specific experience that highlights this. Perhaps you could talk about a traveling experience or that cultural immersion camp and how this changed your mindset/interests. Right now you have a big block of ideas, which is a good start. Just zero in on one idea and run with it. Just make sure you don’t run too far since the suggested length is usually 500-700 words. :)</p>

5

<p>Actually, there was no indication of any question to respond to. D: I also agree with all of these statements. I know it’s horribly choppy and whatnot. But my high school and college experience were the same thing. My four years in high school overlapped with two years in college. I can’t NOT talk about them. :)</p>

6

<p>If your school experience is the most important for you, write about it. Only about it. That will make your essay more concise in my opinion. You don’t need to tell colleges your whole history for them to know who you are. Did you know a psychologist can describe a person’s behavior after only a 1-hour talk?</p>

7

<p>If this is an essay for common app…don’t you have a prompt? Like “write about a obstacle you overcame, etc.”…or something? Am I thinking of the wrong “personal statement” essay?</p>

<p>Like SandroRodrigues noted, if you really want to talk about your HS/Comm college experience, limit it to that. Try not to go too far into tangential topics. In my opinion, as important as your education, interests, and passions are covering your schooling, major, other interests, and where this has all taken you is too wide of a scope for a personal statement. The reader may lose interest somewhere along the road. Try to pick an experience that encompasses your unique educational background, and write only about that. </p>

<p>Also a common mistake most people (myself included) make in their personal statements is trying to tie up every loose end at their essays conclusion. You don’t have to sum everything up so methodically at the end of your essay by telling the reader what you want to major in, your future plans, etc. Unless this is some sort of specific personal statement that asks for that, adcoms want to know about YOU through the essay, they don’t need to know everything from your educational background to your future plans. They will likely see this in the other parts of your app.</p>