I know that the essay is the place where I can advocate for myself and that I should let the admissions officers know who I am, but when does the essay become too personal that it’s no longer a good essay? I have an awful experience that I want to write about, but I can’t decide if it’s too personal.
The essay is supposed to be personal. The admissions officers want to see a glimpse of you as a person rather than a bunch of numbers. However the worst thing you can do is try to justify a bad part of your application in your essay. For example, trying to justify bad grades with a sickness or something. Write about your experiences and how you learned from them.
This is also a question I struggled with lol. Imo, most colleges will LOVE some degree of vulnerability/personal touch but like not enough to make them go “Does this person need to see a psychiatrist?” I find that being pretty personal is ok as long as
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you frame the essay in a positive way; as in, nothing that could remotely seem like whining, unless obviously you were homeless or in something most people would consider extremely a serious/extraordinary circumstance. but even then in general they want something positive bc it helps tell them how you’re going to react to serious obstacles like that in the future
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there’s a certain level of emotional distance. for example the sentence “I absolutely hated my life, and I wanted to cut my foot off and let it bleed” is like… heavily emotionally tinged and will probably make the reader uncomfortable. for ex, “(serious event) made me question (my ability to function in a certain context)” is less sentimental. It sounds a little cold but the content should speak for itself not the theatrics
Basically, you can talk about extremely serious things. It’s how you talk about them. ALSO, something I learned, but is just my opinion–you have to ask yourself so what if the college knows ____? On the applicant they want to know “Are they a good student? and/or a good person who’s going to revolutionize some field or help out a lot of people in the future?” For example, I’m hard of hearing (ok not super serious but) and I never mentioned it. It affected me in a lot of ways but it didn’t answer those questions and so I talked about something else.
There may be no such thing as “too personal.” Sexual content may be the only topic that is off limits. On the other hand, it is important not to be overly self-indulgent. Whatever you write about should reveal something important about your character that will give the admissions office insight to you and a sense of your potential contribution to the future class. Follow that rule and fire away.
Your goal is to make them want you on campus – it isn’t about sharing your darkest moments, or any kind of catharsis for you. Save that for your diary or therapist. Do not take the prompts too literally – there is definitely a possibility of sharing TMI, and not making them say, “Yes! We want this student on campus”. The best essays are often on small topics.
In my opinion, if it is something you would feel uncomfortable talking about with say, your parents, don’t include it. You have no idea where the person whose reading your app is coming from.
Of course there is. It’s an ADMISSIONS essay, not personal therapy.
If the content makes the reader uncomfortable to read it, or if you would be embarrassed if it got published in a newspaper, then I’d think twice about using it.
This.
Admissions officers are very clear that it is not the experience that they are interested in, but what you have done with the experience. It is hard to overestimate how many times AdComms have heard similar stories- at one 4 college road show all of the admission reps had read genuinely dozens of “I saved a life when…” essays- and they were all true! who knew that many teenagers had actually saved a life?! In fact, there are probably few -if any!- awful experiences that they have not read essays about. What the reps were saying is that an amazing or terrible event or experience is just that- but what does it have to do with who you are today? @excelessays point is the key: what is your message?
Also, your essay is not really a place where you ‘advocate’ for yourself, it is a place where you market yourself as a potential student at their college. Think about the difference in those words.
I agree that the personal/emotional connection helps, but the most important part is how you express what you have done, or how you havr changed or grown, from the experience.
For what it’s worth, I was uncomfortable with letting my parents read my essay, and it “worked” in that I was accepted to some schools that I applied to. However, my essay wasn’t about anythhing deeply taboo; I was just uncomfortable because I wrote about my family.
As long as the tone of the essay is positive and you have come out strong learning from a bad experience, I don’t see any problem in sharing personal things. The essay should be written in such a way that the admission guys see you as person with strong character. In my opinion, you can write about the awful experience you had if you can take any positives from it. Check out: http://www.studymode.com/essays/ to read essays which talk about bad experiences. Hope you can find a good reference from that.
Things not to write about: personal plights/drug experience/sob story
Some of the schools I have been looking into have a prompt where you’re supposed to describe the biggest challenge of your high school career. Is it okay to write about a sickness there as long as you aren’t whiny or anything? I personally don’t want to lie and write about something trivial like a lot of the sample essays I’ve seen. (one kid literally wrote about how he was more knowledgeable than his peers and had to help them with homework all the time…)
I think that the “event” or the “experience” is just the scaffolding to show something about you. Don’t wast too much time writing about the event. They don’t care about the event. They care about figuring out who you are and do they want you on campus. So, write about “you” in relationship to the event. I also agree with @intparent that stories about small topics are often more compelling. But only if the story demonstrates something about you. My advice is to “show” rather than “tell” when you write.
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Don’t write about anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother reading