Crafting a Compelling Personal Essay
Throughout high school, your teachers have taught you never to use the pronoun “I” in your academic essays (or if not, they should have). When writing a thesis statement, you don’t need to say “I believe” or “I will argue.” You simply state your opinion as if it were fact and you back it up with evidence. However, there is one very important essay you will write in high school that doesn’t just use the word “I,” but actually puts that word at the center: the personal essay.
The personal essay, sometimes called the “personal statement,” is the roughly 650-word document in which you get to tell college admissions officers anything you want about yourself. It is the heart and soul of your college application, the place where you can show colleges that you are more than grades, test scores, and accomplishments. It’s the part of your application where you can share your humanity. But writing an effective personal essay is tricky. How do you choose a topic? How do you put yourself in a good light without bragging? How can you show vulnerability without revealing too much of yourself? The open-ended nature of the personal essay can be freeing, but it can also be daunting. Here are some useful tips, exercises, and tactics you can use to ensure your personal essay makes a strong impression!
Read personal essays! It probably sounds obvious, but reading personal essays will make you feel much better equipped to write your own. There are some really incredible essayists out there who specialize in this genre: Nora Ephron, Joan Didion, Bill Bryson, David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, and David Sedaris, to name a few. Take an afternoon to read five or six essays by different authors and identify what you like or dislike about them. What makes them effective? How do the authors use imagery, humor, dialogue, etc. to keep their readers interested? Check out these publications to find great personal essays: Buzzfeed; The New Yorker; The Electric Typewriter.
Spend time brainstorming! Deciding what to write about isn’t easy and sometimes you have to go through three or four bad ideas before you land on a good one. Allow yourself the time to really think about all the possible directions for your essay and even start writing multiple versions to discover which is the most fruitful. If you truly have no idea what to write about, asking yourself these questions is a good way to start:
What am I most passionate about?
What moments in my life have shaped me the most?
What has been the biggest learning experience in my life?
Who inspires me and why?
What am I proudest of?
When do I feel happiest?
What is an obstacle I have faced and how did I overcome it?
Begin with a memory! Once you have chosen the general topic of your essay and know what you want to say, try to pinpoint a specific memory, scene, or moment that can launch you into that topic. Then describe that memory on the page as if you were telling it to a movie director and you wanted him to get every detail just right. Starting your essay with a specific memory is much more interesting than starting with a general introduction. Take a look at these two opening paragraphs, each centering around the author’s passion for the violin:
“I have always loved music. Even as a child, I would go around my house singing at the top of my lungs and beating out rhythms on the table. I saw my first orchestra concert when I was three and it made a huge impact on me. In particular, I became mesmerized by the violins. Starting at the age of four I begged my parents to put me in violin lessons. I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on the beautiful instrument. Finally, that day came.”
“The reddish-brown varnish on the wood was soft and warm under my finger tips, not at all what I expected. When I tucked the instrument under my chin for the first time, it felt like it was a part of me, like it was alive. I gazed down the fingerboard toward the scroll and saw an infinity before me. Every sound, every note, every melody I had dreamed of playing was suddenly within my grasp. I held my breath, wanting to stay in this realm of possibility for just a moment longer. Then I lifted my bow, placed it on the first string, and pulled.”
Which of these two paragraphs is more interesting? Which makes you want to keep reading? If you’re anything like me, the second paragraph is far more engaging because it puts me right there with the author. I can feel the violin in my hands. It’s exciting! A description of a moment like this is almost always a great way to start your essay. At the very least, it is a helpful exercise to get your creative juices flowing.
Tell a story! It is tempting to use your personal statement to list all your impressive accomplishments, interests, and good qualities, but doing so will lead to an incohesive jumble of factoids that will not stick in the minds of admissions officers. If you really want your essay to stand out, you have to tell a cohesive story. I don’t mean you need to begin with “Once upon a time,” but rather that your essay should have a clear arc and that it should show a development from beginning to end. If each paragraph is disconnected from the others or if each paragraph repeats the same idea, you’re not telling a story.
Be yourself! Your personal essay is, as the name implies, personal, so show who you are. Your writing doesn’t have to be formal. You don’t have to use big, complicated words (unless you use big, complicated words in everyday life). Don’t try to write the essay you think the admissions officers want to read. Write the essay that you want to write.