Personal Essay

Theme

 Write as a narrative, make it personal.

 Use a casual and conversational tone. Make it present in paragraph breaks, first-
person views, and sentence fragments.
 The personal experience you write about should reveal something about you (i.e.
Character strengths.)

Purpose of writing essay

 Colleges use personal essays to gain an understanding of the applicant.

 Critical thinking and creativity are appealing to colleges and can be fleshed out in
essays.
 The essay helps colleges differentiate applicants and find their respective unique
characters.

Strong college essays

 Have a strong first sentence that grabs attention.

 Introduce a problem or tension early in the essay.
o Immediate tension doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, can be simple.
 Have your audience in mind, and anticipate questions they might read.
 Don’t write too much irrelevant information, reveal the purpose of the essay to the
author
 Show not tell, demonstrate your qualities, and don’t explain too much.
o Use a combination of “showing” and “telling”
 Explaining the qualities can supplement the demonstration, not replace it.
 Active verbs are better than using multiple adjectives.
 Essays should be concise.
 The conclusion should leave off with a clear takeaway.
 Use parentheticals (parentheses) to help add detail without negatively impacting the
shape of the essay. Don’t use too much.
 Answer questions to create more questions and tensions.
o Use questions to build more momentum, and use sentences to move ideas
forward, with no filler.
 Weave in specific details to add imagery, and add brief anecdotes to provide further
insight.
 Use outside information or other anecdotes to tie things together.
o Make things more cohesive and amplify the importance of previous events.
 End off with a takeaway or lesson learned.
 Add a degree of authenticity and personality to the essay.
o Doesn’t have to be the most significant event you’ve participated in.
o Make sure that the essay can define you.
o What your experience was and the meaning of it for you is the most important
thing to remember.
 Think of qualities that the admission officers want to know about you.
  Don’t have to be too centered about yourself, but the focus should be on your own
personal experiences.
 Specific details are useful.

Getting Started
 What could this essay reveal about you that a list of achievements can’t?
o What makes you “you”, and what defines you.
o Write a list of phrases or words about you.
 Make a list of events or significant moments to choose from.
 Freewrite, talk out loud, or brainstorm ideas.
 Review your ideas, and choose the best one for your essay.

Drafting

 Start off with a simple first sentence, change it if you need to.
 Put placeholders if you need to.
 Let the draft be unstructured and messy.
 Don’t delete anything, start fresh in a new document.
 Write anywhere, anytime.
 Conclude your draft when you need to, can revise it later.

Revision

 Read your essay out loud to someone, and note what you want to change.
 Create a reverse outline of your essay. For each point in your essay, rephrase it and
describe its purpose.
 Don’t read your essay for a week and take a break from it, before coming back
refreshed to make changes.
 To play with structure, print out a hard copy.

Feedback
 Write down other questions you want to ask yourself or a reader.

Sample Essays: https://apply.jhu.edu/application-process/essays-that-worked/