Personal statements ask applicants to share stories that are meaningful to them and have shaped their identity, leaving students in tricky waters as they navigate between taboo, clichéd, and potentially damaging topics. In this article, we break down five common topics to rethink—and how to approach them more effectively. The main takeaway is to identify three personality traits or skills you want to highlight in your narrative, ensuring your writing remains focused, purposeful, and unique regardless of the subject matter. Consider the following examples:
Familial/Cultural Heritage
This is a tough one. In the melting pot and/or salad bowl that is the United States, exploring your cultural identity is an important milestone in many teenagers’ lives. For this reason, it is also one of the most overdone topics for personal statements. Remember: college admissions officers want to read about you, not your family. (Even in the event that you wish to tell your own immigration experience, it cannot be overemphasized just how many of these stories reach the desks of college admissions officers every year.)
Nevertheless, if a cultural heritage essay feels the most true to you, start by identifying some personality traits you wish to showcase through your story. For this example, let’s go with creative, determined, and community-driven. Say you’ve spent the past year translating and testing out a series of family recipes passed down to you over generations. You’ve learned through this experience the importance of determination (some of those techniques were tricky!) and community (remember all those lovely meals you shared with family and friends?), and you hope to bring those lessons with you to college by joining a culinary club on campus.
Clichéd “Callings”
Plaguing lovers of sports, music, and other performance-based activities is the allure of the clichéd “calling” essay. That big game. That opening night. Once again, these stories are popular because they’re formulaic: a fear was overcome, and a new sense of self-confidence was gained. I say this not to dismiss the value of these experiences, but to convey just how unoriginal they are to college admissions officers. Not to mention an additional risk: wasted real estate. You may feel compelled to dedicate a considerable portion of your word count toward explaining the technicalities of your hobby to an uninformed reader.
The trick with “calling” essays is to explain how these experiences shaped you, not how they made you feel. Perhaps your love for jazz trumpet fueled an interest in exploring the classical side of the instrument and, in doing so, motivated you to attend local symphonic shows, learn new skills, and eventually perform in a genre outside your comfort zone. With time, you developed an appreciation for artistic flexibility, self-confidence, and open-mindedness. This is certainly a more unique approach than “music makes me feel alive.”
Politics
Today’s political landscape may feel uniquely charged, but politics have remained a no-go for personal statements. Of course, this does not negate the fact that many teens are politically active and may feel that diminishing these passions would produce an inauthentic essay, so the main takeaway here is to prioritize specific issues and actions over abstract political ideas and affiliations.
An applicant involved in a local environmentalist movement may write about how they contributed to their organization’s efforts to secure clean water for marginalized members of their community and, in doing so, learned about the value of civic engagement, public speaking skills, and teamwork. This applicant may hope to bring these lessons to their college experience by campaigning for campus-specific anti-waste practices.
Mental Health Struggles
Another tricky one: deeply formative life lessons can be gleaned from tragic experiences, like family illness, personal trauma, or the death of a loved one, but they should be approached with considerable caution in personal statements, if not avoided altogether. Once again, essays recounting someone else’s experiences (e.g., a piece about a parent’s struggle with substance abuse) risk rendering the narrator a side character in their own story, regardless of the quality of the writing. Statements about mental health struggles can also suggest an incomplete reckoning with these hardships. The unfortunate truth is that universities will think twice before accepting an applicant who they believe poses a higher risk of experiencing mental health issues under the stress of college.
Let’s take another example. This time, our core tenants are empathy, responsibility, and a sense of justice. When writing about a parent’s illness, prioritize how it positively changed you: for example, taking care of a younger sibling taught you about the importance of community support as you relied on the generosity of neighbors, teachers, and other trusted acquaintances. With this knowledge, you began volunteering regularly with vulnerable children in your community and aim to become similarly involved in the city where you are applying to college.
Poor Grades
Avoid this topic at all costs. The vast majority of these stories follow the same logic: my grades were bad; I tried harder; my grades improved. Not only is this experience fairly standard as far as high school is concerned, but it raises sticky questions among college admissions officers, like “why weren’t you working hard to begin with?”
Remember: CommonApp and other university application platforms provide the opportunity to explain GPA drops and other academic red flags.
Still unsure? Every summer, the Enrichery offers a highly productive College Admissions Workshop (CAW) program for junior-year students seeking assistance drafting, writing, and editing college application essays, applying for scholarships, and constructing resumes.
Spaces are limited, so submit a request to contact us now at https://theenrichery.com/contact-us-submission/!
