How to Start Your Personal Statement for College Admission: Find the Unique Yourself

The personal statement is your opportunity to give the admissions committee a sense of the person behind all the grades and test scores. Many of the other applicants are likely to have similar academic credentials, but none has your particular experience, background, or outlook. A strong personal statement can set you apart from other candidates. Remember, the admissions committee is looking for reasons to accept you, and you can make a strongly favorable impression with a thoughtful, well written statement. While it may seem to you like an afterthought or a chore to be dispensed with as quickly as possible, nothing could be further from the truth. This is your best opportunity - short of a personal interview - to convey a sense of who you are, what is important to you, and why you would be an outstanding student.

Write short answers to a bunch of the following questions. Keep track of which ideas keep popping up, and when you seem to be repeating yourself. Limit yourself to one or two paragraphs so that you can answer as many of these as possible.

  • What experiences do you like talking about the most? What has been the most interesting, intriguing, and exciting part of your life – why, and what did you learn from it?
  • Discuss an activity or experience that has helped you to clarify your long-term academic goals.
  • Name a class or internship that you have taken to develop expertise in your major field of study.
  • Describe a person who has shaped your values or beliefs.
  • In five years, where do you see yourself working and what do you envision yourself doing?
  • Discuss a need of society that you hope to address in your career Use statistics and other published resources to document the magnitude of the problem.
  • Describe your hometown and explain its impact on your beliefs or values.
  • Discuss an obstacle that you’ve had to overcome to achieve your academic goals.
  • Write me a letter, and tell me everything you do, your personal history, and what matters to you.
  • What do you enjoy doing?
  • When I was in kindergarten, one of my best friends loved to eat so much that he would hum with joy when he ate. What makes you so happy that you can’t help but hum? When are you really you? When have you been so immersed in what you were doing that time seemed to evaporate?
  • What ideas, books, theories, or movements have made a profound impact on you? Be honest and don’t try to impress anyone.
  • Where or how do you seem to waste the most time?
  • How are you a typical product of your generation and culture? In what ways do you deviate from the norm?
  • Which famous person (alive or dead; real or imagined) do you most identify with, and why?
  • What errors or mistakes have you made that have taught you something about yourself?
  • How have you changed since you came to Grinnell?
  • What is something you haven’t tried yet, but want to? What is keeping you from trying this?
  • Of which decision or accomplishment in your life are you the most proud?
  • What do you wish you had done differently in college?
  • What makes you different from everyone else?
  • What kind of contribution do you want to make, and how?
  • When did you first become interested in your field of study and why?
  • What motivates you?
  • What are your goals? When did these become your goals, and why?
  • Describe an experience that changed you. How did you change? What does this change mean?

As you no doubt realize, the self-interview process will produce the material that you will then shape into your essay. Now you know what to write in your personal statement. Please read How to Write Personal Statement for College Admission to know how to write.

Most of the texts above were written by Doug Cutchins He is the Director of Social Commitment at Grinnell College. Please contact jack.zhang.usa@gmail.com if you have copyright concerns.