<p>A little advice would be to not take a negative approach. When writing negativly it will make the adcoms feel negative. Try writing your essay with a positive approach.</p>
<p>well, in most cases you have the personal statement and then a short answer.
My long personal statement was a sort of "story" about what my life is now, my thought process and what my aspirations are. very philosophical and "creative"</p>
<p>my short answer is more concise reasoning. and in many cases I cited specific areas and courses in the department that interested me. I also try to use some of the language from the school's academic mission etc.</p>
<p>I think a personal essay necessitates UNIQUE experiences otherwise the content will sound quite quotidian. If you donot have a unique experience, i would say you must stick to creative ones.</p>
<p>Honestly, my sister is a student ambassador at NYU's Admissions office. She told me that the admission counselor have real fun reading essay from "INTERNATIONAL" students coz they have unique and different experiences.</p>
<p>Realize that its much easier to do harm than to do good with essays. Before worrying about the artistic merit of your essay, start early and have many people (professors if possible) proof read it so that it is absolutely flawless gramatically and properly answers the question. If you don't have anything spectacular to say (not everyone does, I didn't) just make sure the essay doesn't hurt you. Be articulate, and make sure it reads like something written by an adult and not a naive child or worse, an idiot. Here are two stories I have heard in the past that are good examples of what not to do. A guy had excellent stats and go into Stanford with a standard essay, and got rejected from Pepperdine, a small private, writing something along the lines of, "You will be sorry if you let someone like me slip by." Another guy wrote his essay about discovering a fibonacci sequence in a Tool song. Aside from advertising his horrible taste in music, I imagine that such a topic could be disastrous if executed in a way thats is anything short of genius.</p>