Personal Statement Resources Hi! My name’s Auden (they/them), and I’m a rising freshman at UC Berkeley studying Engineering Physics. There’s some important things I want to say. First, my word is not law, and the same thing goes for all of the links I put in here. They’re pieces of advice meant to guide you, not constrain you. Pick and choose what works. Second, people will be able to tell you if your writing is good, but not what will get you into [insert university of choice here]. College admissions is a complete and utter crapshoot. If you meet a minimum bar of capability, and are below the bar of utter insanity (by utter insanity, I mean you have won a Nobel Peace Prize, cured cancer, or similar), you have as good a chance as anyone else, and more importantly, you will be happy at and well served by any number of schools. (There are exceptions if you are filthy rich or a legacy, i.e., your parents went to the school you’re applying to - then your admissions chances increase a *lot*. But for most of us, it’s a crapshoot.) Admissions rate or the U.S. News ranking doesn’t actually tell you how much you’d like a school! Consider whether you’d like the weather, the area (e.g., rural, urban, suburban, region of the U.S., etc), if there’s student organizations you’d like, if the vibe suits you, how big the school is, how far away from home you want to be, if there are study abroad options, and things like that. (Also, if you are LGBTQ+ check out campusprideindex.org and make sure the area is safe!) I think there’s a good questionnaire at the beginning of Fiske’s Guide to Colleges that asks questions like these which are good to consider. (You can pirate a copy of Fiske’s free using gen.lib.rus.ec.) I know this sounds slightly rich coming from a UC Berkeley attendee, but I can genuinely say that the schools I was debating between ranged from Iowa State University (a perfectly good school with a very high acceptance rate) to Yale, and I knew I would be happy at any of them. In the end, my choice came down to what option was financially cheapest. I swear I’m getting near the end of my monologue, sorry! The last thing I want to tell you is that you will be okay. It will work out. There are people who surround you - counselors at your school, myself, and many others - who want to help. (Even admissions officers for the schools you’re applying to answer questions if you email them!) You will end up somewhere you are happy. If there is *anything* I can do to help - listen to you vent, read over an essay, or talk about college - let me know. DM me and I’ll get back to you! Finding a topic This was far and away the hardest part for me. Here’s how I’d sum up my advice: write down three words that you feel like sum up what you want to convey about yourself. Be sincere, but also be braggy! You made it this far, so now you get to flex. Mine were: kindness/empathy, always learning [yes, it’s two words, leave me be], and adaptability. I had a hard time with this too, honestly, so I asked people I know (family, friends) this question as well. Once I had my three, I treated them as sort of my ‘thesis’ for the personal statement. What experiences/stories do I have that show these qualities? How can I develop those qualities over time and show growth? That’s how I put together my essay. I’d like to point out that my final essay didn’t have one specific topic - I talked mostly about Science Olympiad, but also about moving, community, and other things. They meshed, but having multiple topics introduced complexity, kept it from being a ‘woo I did xyz extracurricular’ essay, and meant that I was forced to focus less on anecdotes from each story and more on what I was trying to convey with those anecdotes - those three words I picked. Resources: ● What are the meaningful things that define you? If you were to make a thesis for yourself, what would it be? ● Introduce complexity by combining two ideas ● Write the essay no one else can write ● What not to do: don't be pretentious/quirky. Have something substantial to say about your growth. ● More on what not to do. ● You only have 650 words, and you're a high schooler. Say what you mean, don't go over the top (though there's of course room for good writing). ● List of overdone topics/topics to avoid The First Draft™ You should have a list of “story pieces” that act as “evidence” for the “three word thesis” you’ve got. Now, it’s just time to put something on paper. The blank page can seem intimidating, but it will get easier once you slap it down. Your intro will be revised to be a better hook once you know where you’re going. My conclusions got revised an uncountable number of times. What you have to do now is construct the middle - where everything happens, the structure of the essay. Think about the best way to link your story pieces together into something that flows. If you took AP Language & Composition, think about your ‘line of reasoning’ - each anecdote/component should flow into the next and also connect back to your three words. Carry your themes through! Resources: ● How to brag nicely ● Starting off with a bang. Personally I think his examples are a little over the top, but yknow ● This is not an academic essay. Write accordingly. Can you tell I browsed r/A2C way too much last year yet? ● Wrapping it up Revising First: make sure your grammar and spelling is right. Go through with Grammarly (the free version catches most spelling and grammar mistakes) and check all the red and blue underlines in Google Docs. Read it out loud - bad phrasing and incorrect grammar is easy to skip over when reading, but saying it out loud forces you to catch it. Second, once you’ve read through for grammar/spelling a few times, it’s time to deal with the Word Limit. You should be using up most of your word count, so if you are one of those blessed few under the word limit, check to see if you’re really conveying those three main words. Are you conveying deep qualities about yourself? Do your anecdotes need more detail? Have you used active verbs? Perhaps you need to add another word, or find a story that has more meaning to you so you can talk about it more. Now, if you’re like most people I know, you will be over the word limit. Time to murder your burgeoning child, sorry. If you’re way over the word limit, you first need to sanity check yourself. Are you telling too many stories (spoiler alert: yes)? Look for the sentences that aren’t conveying something about you, or are adding too much description. You may need to completely rewrite with a different narrative structure, or with one less component. If you’re slightly over, it’s time to read over those sentences with a fine-toothed comb. Look for over the top phrasing that can be simplified into something shorter. Get a friend who writes a lot to help you cut if you’re really having trouble. It’s time to check the content again. (I’d recommend taking a break before this, because you probably need a set of fresh eyes. Set it aside for at least a week. This is why you don’t want to do stuff too last minute.) Check again that it hits those three main words you picked way back in the beginning. Does every sentence convey something about you and your personality? Do the sentences flow into each other? If you pretend it’s an english essay where the thesis is the three words and each story is your evidence, is it convincing? Finally, it’s time to run this by other people. Teachers, other seniors, and past seniors are all great options to read over your work. Prioritize the advice of teachers over students who are good writers over meh writers. If you really hate some advice, you don’t have to take it. The idea is to have the first piece of external feedback on your essay *not* be from the college admissions officer. I had a ton of people read over my personal statement, and honestly, it made me feel a lot better about it, so I’d wholeheartedly recommend sending it to as many people as possible. (Exceptions: be careful with random people on the internet. People do, apparently, steal essays. Don’t pay people to read your essays unless they’re like one of those super fancy people who actually have experience in the field. By which I mean don’t pay some random YouTuber because they know as little as the rest of us.) Resources: ● First and foremost: make them root for you. ● What to do when over the world limit. Also! Don't use passive voice! Or qualifiers! Speak directly! ● When under the word limit ● Okay I saw this on a random post I can’t remember but another way to catch spelling mistakes is to read the essay backwards Good luck, don’t die, submit a day before the deadline in case there are portal issues!
