How to Self-Reflect for College App Essays

Who Are You?

Tips and Resources to Think About Yourself

If you are working on your personal statement for The Common Application or other college applications, the first step is to start to think about yourself.

Sounds easy enough.

Who am I?

What am I like?

How did I get this way?

What do I care about?

How do I learn?

Why do I matter?

For some students, reflecting on and analyzing their backgrounds can be a snap.

They enjoy that type of introspective, heady thinking.

For others, it can feel intimidating and baffling.

No matter how you feel about this process, you need to know who you are—or at least have some opinions about this—in order to write a meaningful college application essay about yourself. (more…)

Dig Deep: Show Intellectual Vitality in Your College App Essay

shovel

Go Deep to Reveal Your Intellectual Vitality!

 

When writing narrative-style college application essays, I advise students to start by sharing a real-life story that illustrates one of their defining qualities or characteristics.

Once a student shares a real-life story with a problem (either big or small), they can go on to explain how they handled it.

Then comes the most important part: What they learned in the process.

This analysis, reflection or questioning is the most important part of an effective college application essay.

Why? (more…)

Dig Deep: How to Add Depth to Your College App Essays

 

Hand Drawn Lightbulb

Go Deep
in Your College Application Essay!

 

When writing narrative-style college application essays, I advise students to start by sharing a real-life story that illustrates one of their defining qualities or characteristics.

All stories contain some type of problem. It’s just the universal nature of all stories—there’s a conflict of some type. I call these problems.

Once a student shares a real-life story with a problem (either big or small), they are poised to explain how they dealt with it.

Then comes the most important part: What they learned in the process.

This analysis, reflection or questioning is the most important part of an effective college application essay. Why? Because this is where a student can show colleges how they think, what they care about and what they value.

It’s called “intellectual vitality.” (more…)