<p>Here is a guideline of how to address certain situations. It may not apply to the essay you're writing, but if you do choose to use any of these topics as a platform then try to incorporate some of these ideas into it.</p>
<p>Question 1:What if a student does not have any hardships?</p>
<p>There are students who have lived a very privileged life and have a harder time trying to talk about a hardship. For those students, they need to talk about what they did with what they had. If you were given all these opportunities, did you take advantage of them? Details and examples are crucial!</p>
<p>For those writing about hardships, don't just say what you went through. What did you do to overcome it? How did you keep on going? Admissions need to see that you can make it here. if you tell them a sad story with nothing else, they wont really get to know you.</p>
<p>Question 2:What about when students write about their influences but not about themselves?</p>
<p>This is for the first personal statement. Remember there is a second part to that personal statement. people seem to just focus on the first part of it. Some students just talk about their influences but the reader wants to know more about YOU not everyone else. The admissions people will look at all of your app. Other than what is in the app, what do you want them to know? They also want you to focus more on what you have done than what you plan on doing. for example: If you talk about being passionate about helping students, instead of saying "Once i get into college,I want to start a tutoring program " they would rather hear something like " I tutor at a local middle school"</p>
<p>Question 3 : What if students are not giving specific examples?</p>
<p>Some students tend to just write a bit about something and then move on to something else. Its hard to have someone who is 17 be super personal but we need to know about YOU. What are you passionate about? What experiences have inspired you to do something and you actually did go out and do it? These personal statements should be self reflective and authentic. If you talk about failure, talk about how you persevered in different ways.
One thing admissions sees alot is people talk about sports and how they were the worst on the team and how they got really good at it. They dont really like to read those kind of statements.It has to include in what other ways this experience has taught you how to not give up.</p>