With the college application season around the corner, high school seniors and graduates are gearing up to fill out applications, describe extracurriculars, send transcripts, and write essays.
Cue the sinister music.
College applications essays and personal statements are the most dreaded parts of an application. Some colleges may require just the one on the Common App, while others may require two or three supplemental essays as well. What's more, the topic is left up to you to choose and decide upon, making the task all the more difficult. Sometimes, choice is an excellent thing, like in the case of restaurants where you have a menu of dishes to pick from, or the book store, with its enticing shelves of diverse stories. However, during the critical moments in your life, I have come to find that the power of choice is more of a pain. Let me demonstrate how.
What a happy time applying to college is, until you hit the “Writing” section. This section, unlike its counterparts, thrives on subjectivity and requires you connect a prompt to a reflection of a life experience of yours. For those of you who have already walked the philosophical path while having certain experiences, recording them and tucking the memories safely away, this is simply a matter of putting it into words. You have, unknowingly, made the hardest part of your application exceedingly simple. For the rest of you who, like me, are sitting and staring at their screen for a good minute, confused as to which experience would make you sound the most compatible with the university/college, here is my implicated-advice-filled story of swimming the harrowing waters of picking a personal statement topic.
In the beginning, I switched my CommonApp prompt nearly 12 times. They all looked interesting. However, when I realized that they were meant to relate to my experiences, I managed to go blank and have a swarm of ideas buzz around in my head at the same time.
I immediately thought of my Indian culture, and how it suited the first topic. But I want to be unique, was what my brain told me. Don’t thousands of Indian kids apply to university, using their heritage as their defining point?
So I looked for another.
Describing a problem I’ve challenged, eh? Well, I could talk about volunteering. But … doesn’t everyone do that, too?
This was becoming impossible.
I took a minute to really think about what I was good at and what I liked, and what I could write freely about. I skimmed through my entire application once again, and when I was staring at my activities section, it hit me. Throughout my CommonApp, I had stuck to a theme, and that theme was communication. In a university’s supplement, I had written about my much-loved multilingualism, and most of the extracurriculars I’d listed dealt with debating, connecting with people, and my love of words.
Debating? Connecting?
Model UN!
I’ve had a bit of a rollercoaster ride with Model UN. I had been rejected twice: once from the position of Secretary-General for my own school’s conference, and another from its Secretariat. However, later, I was able to redeem myself by obtaining the position of Presiding Officer for an environmental conference. This particular adventure of mine accurately reflected one of the prompts- the one about failure. It was perfect. I wrote a passionate narration and reflection about it, and was able to successfully condense my thoughts into the measly 650 word limit provided to me.
When I clicked “submit,” I felt pretty good. I had successfully chosen a topic that wasn’t too popular, but was something that I felt strongly about. I could relate wholeheartedly to the prompt and answer every part of the question. I had found an experience so inherently me, that college admissions officers would truly get to know me off of my application, which, in all essence, is the purpose of the personal statement.
My advice would be to simply pick a theme and stick to it. Are you an introvert? Extrovert? Athletic? Artsy? Or are you a completely random free-spirit like I am? Whatever it is, you are bound to find something that resounds all too loudly off your application. It’s a discreet pattern, but it’s there. All you need to do is find it.
