Part of my job as a Peer Advisor/Tutor to high school students is that when it comes time for college applications, I’m everyone’s go-to gal for every step of the application process. This is a job I particularly enjoy, because I have discovered that I have a knack for admissions essays and personal statements. They require just the right combination of drama, intrigue and personal inflection that I excel at (not to toot my own horn).
But I remember distinctly when I wrote my own personal statement, and I know the feeling of utter incompetence that overtakes you when you sit down to answer the important questions that college’s request to make the decision to accept you or reject you.
Part of me thinks the idea of an essay about your personal life being relevant to deciding whether or not a person is a right fit for your university shouldn’t be as important as it is.
However, I suppose I understand the importance of distinguishing yourself to potential universities in a way that expresses your individualism. Whatever, just because I understand it doesn’t mean I agree with it.
During the year, I get kids that have no idea where to even begin with their personal statements. I always tell them the same thing: Answer the question.
Different schools ask different questions, but most stick to the usual kind of question: “What event in your life has effected you the most?” “Write about a time in your life when you had to overcome an obstacle.”
These questions aren’t difficult in theory, but when you sit down to answer them, you draw a blank.
The key to these questions, as I’ve discovered while writing my own and helping others with theirs, is to write what you can and embellish later. Just answer the question first, and then add the drama and the accouterments later. Usually they can figure it out at that point, and we work together to find a happy medium of dramatic flare and gentle bragging. A little goes a long way with flare and style.
It wasn’t until recently, when I was completing an application for myself, that I encountered an application essay question that truly stumped me. The question on my study abroad application simply asked, “Why do you want to go here?”
Why?
Why do I want to go to Oxford?
There is no good way to spin blind ambition and crippling anxiety paired with an inferiority complex-- and I’m the spin master! My first thought was to use the oxford comma as a metaphor for my life, but then I thought that the admissions people probably wouldn’t appreciate the joke. Then I thought about quoting “Harry Potter” with a reference to my poor Slytherin soul, but I also thought the better of that.
I’ll probably end up writing about how in my quest to be the best, I found my way to Oxford, and will not actually be the best at anything if I don’t get a chance to study at one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. I have a little bit longer to pinpoint my exact reason for wanting to go to Oxford before I’m ready to send in my application, but rest assured: I’m questioning every decision I’ve ever made up until this point. Why do I want anything? Why do I do the things I do?
Why?
