Prompt Category 1: Overcoming a Problem
Personal statements (also known as college essays) are a major part of both college applications and scholarship applications.
Unfortunately for some, writing a personal statement isn’t as easy as it sounds. How are you supposed to write a great essay that sets you apart from the competition? How are you supposed to talk positively about yourself without bragging and coming across as arrogant? All of this in only a couple hundred words?
These are tough questions, but rest assured, we’ve got answers. This guide will walk you through a 7 step process that will help you write your personal statement, and increase your chances of getting into college and winning scholarships. In addition, at the bottom of this post, we have 7 (!) example templates that you can use to give you inspiration for your own personal statements.
Buckle up, here we go!
There is a lot of confusion about the differences between personal statements and scholarship essays. Before we begin, it’s important to clarify what a few of these commonly-used terms actually mean.
Now that we’ve explained the terms, let’s dig in and go through how to write a personal statement in 7 easy steps.
Thankfully, colleges and scholarship providers give you some direction on what to write about. Each application contains an essay prompt that you are asked to respond to. While these prompts are open-ended and can be answered in many different ways, they usually fall into one of a few categories.
Being able to identify the category an essay prompt belongs to is the first step in formulating an outstanding response.
Let’s go through the category types.
Simplify and focus your application process with the one-stop platform for vetted scholarships.
“You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down”. Muhammed Ali.
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing”. Henry Ford.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again, no you’re never gonna keep me down”. Chumbawamba.
You get the idea 🙂
We all encounter hardship at some point in our lives. This type of essay prompt asks you to identify a problem or failure you faced and to describe how you overcame the problem, and what lessons you were able to learn.
It’s worth noting that two essay prompts from The Common App this past year were from this category:
Have a look and see:
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma—anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
These kinds of questions ask you to pinpoint an important person or event in your life that helped shape you into the person you are today. For these kinds of questions, you should write about a specific formative experience, key event, or key person from your life. It’s better to focus on a specific event or person than to tell your life story.
This past year there were 2 questions of this kind in The Common App:
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
Are you open to new ideas? How do you express these ideas, especially when relating to people with different beliefs than your own?
This type of prompt aims to see how you engage with new and differing perspectives.
One of the questions from The Common App this past year is a great example of this category.
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
What do you want to do when you grow up? Do you want to become an astronaut? A doctor? A content writer?
These types of prompts are designed to help the committee understand what you’re interested in and how you plan to apply what you learn in college towards a future career. While there were no questions like this on The Common App this year, you might still see this kind of essay prompt if you are applying to a specialized program. Here is an example from the University of Southern California
Describe one example of how you might use design as a future architect. The admission committee will review this statement as a measure of your awareness, determination, and vision.
These prompts are pretty much what the title suggests. In this type of personal statement, you should let the committee know why you are interested in that particular school.
Some schools value creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and eloquent writing. As a result, you might get an essay prompt that asks you to write unique, and creative personal statements. For example, you might be asked how their school will prepare you for a job that won’t exist by the time you graduate.
The University of Chicago, notorious for its strange prompts, has asked “What can actually be divided by zero?”. The key to these prompts is to show off clever, creative, out-of-the-box thinking that relates to what and where you want to study.
DON’T. OVERLOOK. THIS. STEP. Many students think they’ll finish faster if they skip the planning and just start writing. The truth is that good brainstorming will actually save you time. When you brainstorm effectively you will
After reading the essay prompt options, and figuring out which category it belongs to, take some time to write down some thoughts and ideas that you could write about.
Here are some leading questions you can ask yourself that can help you think about what you can write for your personal statement.
Think of some problems you have encountered in your life. Once you have a problem (or two), think about how you overcame it. If you aren’t happy with how you overcame it then you can focus on what you learned from the experience. Here are some ideas that might help you identify problems you’ve experienced that might be good to write about.
This category of essay prompts probably requires the biggest amount of brainstorming. These questions want to know about your background, identity, interests, accomplishments, and more. Here are some ideas you can brainstorm that might help you figure out what to write for this type of personal statement:
The world is more polarized than ever before. For this reason, universities want to know how you handle differences. For these kinds of questions, it can be helpful to think about:
Future goals tend to be based on what you’d like to study but can also include long-term career goals. It’s important to show determination, vision, and ambition in these kinds of personal statements. For these kinds of questions it can be helpful to think about:
This kind of prompt requires much of the same brainstorming as the previous one. Ideas to brainstorm should be centered around why you want to attend this particular school. For example:
Since these are so unique, it’s hard to say what should be brainstormed. Consider each question on its own. Try to brainstorm a few creative, out-of-the-box ideas. See which ideas you feel most passionate about and take the writing in that direction.
Maybe, for a “history of you” essay prompt, you’re debating between writing about a few things. Maybe you can’t decide between talking about volunteer experience, a friend who impacted you, or how your identity affected who you became.
Now is the time to narrow it down and choose one topic you want to write about.
Your topic should be one that you can write an interesting story about, one that highlights your personality, and one that shows a side of yourself that can’t be found in your transcripts or resume.
If you aren’t sure which to choose, you can try this tactic of freewriting to see what comes easiest to you. The freewriting strategy recommends writing about a topic in an open way to see which topic is the easiest to write about, and which topics let you talk about the best ideas.
If you start coming up with a lot of ideas and things to write about for one of your topics, go with it! If not, move on to your next topic and try freewriting again.
Now that you have your topic, it’s time to create an outline on how to do it!
Like brainstorming, you should not skip this step! Creating an outline is like mapping out your essay. It makes the writing much much easier, and in the long run, will save you lots and lots of time.
When you have a good plan, you don’t end up rewriting the first sentence of your essay 100 times.
There are two common ways to structure your personal statement – the journey structure and the passion structure. If you are writing about a time of personal growth, you should probably consider the journey structure. The journey structure focuses on the before, during, and after of your personal growth.
If you plan to write about something you love doing, we recommend using the passion structure. The passion structure consists of multiple experiences all related to a single theme (e.g., your passion). This structure works well when you have a number of different experiences across your life that all played a significant role in shaping who you are today.
We have a whole separate post that talks about both journey and passion structures for personal statements.
Now that you have your outline, you are ready to finally start writing your personal statement!
If you’ve done everything until now, including writing a good outline, this should be quick and easy.
Keep in mind that no matter how many words you are asked to write, your personal statement should have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. We’ll quickly go over how to write each one
The introduction is crucial. It is your chance to grab the committee’s attention and convince them to keep reading. Your introduction should contain three things:
Your introduction should be short, sweet, and to the point.
Some ideas you can use for a hook are:
If you need more detailed guidance, this post talks about how to write a scholarship essay introduction
This depends on so many things. It depends on if you decide to use a journey structure, a passion structure or something else entirely. For that reason we’ll simply give you some tips to keep in mind while writing the body of your essay:
What makes you unique? What makes you, well…you? SAT scores and grades aren’t relevant here. What can you tell the committee about your character? What are some of your achievements? What are some of your goals for the future? The personal statement is the place to give readers an insight into who you are as a person aside from your test scores. Use this space to charm and impress.
It will help you charm and impress if you are honest and genuine. Write about what you hold near and dear to your heart, and not what you think readers are expecting to hear from you. Also, speak in your own voice that shows who you are! Don’t look for big synonyms because it makes you sound smarter. Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
Stories and examples are powerful devices that help people remember who they are. If you are passionate about animals, writing about your volunteer experience in an animal shelter is much more powerful than writing about how you love animals. Committees have to read through hundreds of scholarship applications. Examples and anecdotes will help your essay stand out. Better to prove it than to say it.
If you are writing a personal statement for a scholarship, your goals should also align with the mission of the scholarship committee. The same can be said of a unique school or program. To understand the mission, you’ll have to get to know the organization. You can do this by browsing their website.
Stay within the required word limit. If the maximum word limit is 500, don’t write 800 words. This is a sure-fire way to get you disqualified or to have the committee stop reading after about 500.
Your conclusion needs to give the committee one last impression of who you are. It should leave them remembering you.
Your conclusion should do these three things:
Some ideas on how to answer the question: why is this important
If you need more guidance, read this post that talks about how to end a scholarship essay
Once you finish writing, it’s super important to read the whole thing and to edit it before you turn it in. Editing your work means reading it through several times until you are confident that it sounds good and that there are no mistakes in it.
Before you do this, however, it’s a good idea to take at least a 12-hour break from the computer. Giving yourself a break will give your brain and your eyes some time to relax. You will be fresher and in a better state of mind to catch mistakes if you give yourself some time to breathe.
When you start editing, read your essay from top to bottom. Read it several times. Pay extra close attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, capital letters, and sentence structure.
Your personal statement is a reflection of you and your standard of work. If you submit an essay with mistakes in it, that says far more about who you are than anything you write in your statement. Submitting work with mistakes may give the committee the impression that you are lazy or careless. You obviously don’t want to do that.
Once you’ve read everything over everything and are confident that it’s flawless, have a family member, friend, teacher, or counselor look over it to make sure you didn’t miss anything. An extra pair of eyes can give a fresh perspective, and help you catch anything you may have missed.
Finally! It’s time to submit your essay. Great job putting in all the hard work.
Go buy yourself a cupcake or treat yourself to something nice. You earned it.
Need some extra inspiration? We’ve got 7(!) sample personal statements that you can use to give you ideas and ensure you are on the right track.
Each of the 7 personal statements below is for a different kind of prompt, as was categorized above. Some of the prompts are taken from this year’s Common App questions.
Common App Essay Prompt 2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
When I was a sophomore in high school, my parents decided that it was a good idea for me to spend less time on the couch playing video games and more time moving my body. They encouraged me to try out for the high school swimming team. I wasn’t particularly talented at the sport, but I did have a number of childhood swim lessons up my sleeve. It might also be a good time to mention that I went to a small private high school that accepted everyone onto their sports teams, so I didn’t have much to lose
Another thing worth mentioning is that I am from Minneapolis where we spend many winter days in below zero weather. Jumping into a not-heated-enough indoor pool at 6 am, 3 days a week isn’t exactly enticing. But, for one reason or another and against all odds, I didn’t put up much of a fight. I guess I knew deep down inside that it would be good for me to start doing something else with my life besides sitting behind a computer screen all day long.
As expected, I was accepted onto the swimming team but at a big cost- I was by far the weakest link. I seemed to overlook this minor detail and didn’t foresee the toll that it would take on me and on others. I quickly realized that I couldn’t just dance around the pool swimming like a drowning dog. I had a team that was counting on me, and in some weird way, I was counting on myself. Despite being majorly out of my comfort zone, I started to go to the gym a few times a week after school to increase my strength. I worked hard during swim practice and even put in some hours on the weekend. I had never pushed myself like that before, and I was really proud to see what I was capable of.
I may not have gone home with any medals, but by the end of the year, I had increased my speed and had mastered the butterfly stroke. It’s the little things in life, right? My parents also seemed pleased by the fact that I was no longer glued to the couch every day after school. I weirdly found joy in the sport, which was the last thing that I expected to find. I am much more open to trying new things now and have a lot more confidence in myself.
Common app question 1: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”
It was April of my freshman year of college and all my friends were heading to Cancun, Mexico for the quintessential college Spring break trip. I, on the other hand, was heading to Haiti, to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity for 7 days to rebuild homes that had been destroyed in the hurricane. For some reason that my friends found to be odd, the thought of my pasty white skin frying on the hot Mexican sand alongside hundreds of other college students didn’t quite appeal to me.
I have always been a woman of my own, and have never been one to follow in the footsteps of others. Sometimes that has gotten me into trouble, but more often than not it has made me a strong and independent young woman who isn’t afraid to stand out and be different.
I boarded the plane with my 12 other volunteer mates, with no expectations. I had never volunteered abroad, nor had I ever traveled alone without my family members. Not to mention, I was the only college freshman on the trip. I was looking forward to the wisdom that my elder companions were to impart on me.
Needless to say, the volunteer trip completely changed my outlook on life. While my friends returned with stories of drinking and partying (I’d hardly call that a story), I returned with the deep connections I’d formed with my volunteer mates and a passion for helping communities overcome natural disasters. After coming back from that trip, I decided to double major in emergency management and psychology. It is my dream to one day hold a position in the Red Cross. For now, I will study and absorb as much information as I can, and continue to volunteer around my local community. And, if the opportunity arises for me to take my knowledge and skills abroad, I will gladly do so again.
Common App Question 3 – Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
My mom always told me that happiness is right under your nose. Growing up, despite my privileges, I always dreamed of being elsewhere. My house wasn’t big enough, my clothes weren’t nice enough and my town was boring. I would sift through National Geographic magazines at the library, dreaming of laying on a tropical beach in Bora Bora or walking the cobbled streets of Lisbon. I was always searching for whatever else was out there. I promised myself that as soon as I finished high school, I would skip this boring excuse of a town and get out of here to see the world and find my true calling.
Once I started college, I used my newfound freedom to my advantage. The long breaks during school allotted me plenty of time to start seeing the world. I worked hard during the semester, in both my studies and my nannying job, and was able to fund my travels around the world. I saw the Eiffel Tower, walked on the Beijing wall, and was bewildered by the northern lights in Norway. During my junior year of college, I spent six months studying abroad in Barcelona. I binged on paella and Spanish omelets during the week, and on pasta in Italy and schnitzel in Germany over the weekends.
After the semester was over, I extended my visit and did a homestay with a local family in northern Spain. I became part of their family that summer, doing chores around the house and running to buy bread from the local bakery.
Despite loving the experience, after a while, I found myself missing the sub-par greek salads from the local diner in my hometown and the familiar faces I’d see when I went for Sunday morning bagels. I knew then and there that I was ready to come home.
I returned home with a newfound realization of how massive the world is and how much of it I want to see. But, I also returned finally to understanding what my mom meant when she told me all these years that happiness is right under my nose. True happiness is found when you’re around people who love and care about you. I will definitely keep traveling the world, but I won’t be taking my home for granted any time soon.
Describe how you might use what you learn in university in a future career. The admission committee will review this statement as a measure of your awareness, determination, and vision.
My name is Billy Meijers and I am a senior at York Secondary School. I plan to pursue my Bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. After I finish my bachelor’s degree, my plan and hope is to work as an elementary school teacher in Provo.
I have always known that I wanted to work as a teacher, thanks to my passion for working with children and teaching others. Throughout high school, I volunteered at a local homeless shelter with children and also worked as a day camp counselor during my summer vacations.
While teaching and working with children has always come naturally to me (which of course is a strong asset to have as a teacher) these qualities are not enough to make you a successful teacher. A teacher needs to know how to manage their classroom, develop curriculum, and work with a diverse group of students who come with their own unique needs. My desire to develop these skills is what is leading me to study early childhood education in college.
I am happy to say that I have already learned so much in high school. I am fascinated by the childhood development and psychology courses I have taken thus far. It’s so important to understand the psychology of young children to be able to respond to their needs and teach them. Learning about cognitive and behavioral psychology will help me within the classroom setting and I’ll be able to mold my curriculum using these skills.
I can’t wait to continue my studies and acquire more skills. I still have so much to learn about planning curriculum and managing classrooms. Next year I plan to start an internship at a local elementary school as a teacher’s assistant. With any luck, the next 4 years will prepare me to be an amazing teacher where I will be able to make a real difference in the world!
There are thousands of universities and colleges. Why are you interested in attending Michigan?
I always thought that I would follow in my family’s footsteps and go to George Washington University. When I say family, I am referring to my entire family- grandparents, parents, older siblings, cousins, you name it. I was the typical three-year-old child decked out in GW attire from head to toe, and you better believe that there is plenty of photo evidence to prove it.
I never really gave my future much thought, because it seemed set in stone that I would pursue my bachelor’s degree at GW University. My parents were so excited and never shied away from talking about it. However, everything changed for me when I visited the University of Michigan during my junior year of high school with my theater company.
I met several students in the theater department and connected with them right away. They told me all about the program and it instantly felt like a great fit. I had the privilege of seeing several plays during the weekend and my eyes glowed with both admiration and envy. As I looked up at that stage I knew wholeheartedly that that was where I wanted to be.
Upon returning home, I was surprised to find my mind wandering, dreaming of starring in plays at the University of Michigan. How would my family react if I didn’t carry on the GW legacy? I was so scared to share the news with my family and felt a gut-wrenching feeling for betraying our family tradition. But I couldn’t lie to myself- it was so obvious where my heart was.
I shared it with my family and they took the news better than I thought. They were sad that I don’t want to go to GW, but they want me to follow my dreams.
I would be honored to study theater at the University of Michigan. I have so much to learn from the excellent instructors and fellow students, and a lot to share with others.
By the time you graduate from college, there will be jobs that don’t exist today. Describe one of them and how The University of Chicago might prepare you for it.
With technology growing what feels like a million miles per second, and new inventions being created on the regular, it’s hard to know exactly what the future holds. The Institute for the Future predicted that 85% of jobs that students will perform in 2030 don’t exist yet. So, is there even a point in going to university if you’ll end up working in a job that doesn’t exist yet?
Absolutely! University can prepare you to work in a variety of fields, and not only for one specific job. In fact, because the future is so unknown, the best thing you can do for yourself and your future is to get a college degree.
Let’s take for example social media influencers. This is a new job that has only become mainstream over the last several years. Many social media influencers went to college and pursued degrees of all sorts. While they may not be directly using the degree they got in college, they definitely gained a lot of valuable skills from their studies, which helped contribute to their success today. College teaches many invaluable skills like critical thinking, writing, and communication. It also teaches you soft skills like teamwork, learning how to live independently, learning how to manage your schedule, and much much more.
Let’s imagine how university courses can prepare anyone for jobs a hypothetical job that doesn’t yet exist. With the heavy presence of social media and technology in all of our lives, you can imagine that many people are rapidly becoming addicted to their devices. Introducing the “digital detox therapist-” a career that is likely to exist by 2030, if not before. While there is currently no academic path to becoming a digital detox therapist, there are plenty of psychology and marketing courses that can prepare students for this career. Digital detox psychologists would need to have a background in addiction, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. They will also need to understand consumerism and marketing. As you can see, while there is no direct way to study for this career, college can still benefit you in the long run and make you a sought-after candidate for this hypothetical career and presumably many others.
David Tabachnikov is the CEO of ScholarshipOwl. Formerly at Waze and Google, David is an experienced CTO/R&D manager with over 10 years of experience of leading tech teams. David fervently believes that students should have greater access to education, and is passionate about using technology to help them achieve that goal.
