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hi, i was looking for advice on my personal statement since i know it will make or break my application. since it is based on life experiences i have had a few and neeed some direction. i was born with a physical disability that for the most part did not hinder me academically but somewhat physically. my mother has been suffering from cancer and i have spending a lot of time nursing her when the rest of my family is gone which is often. i also spent a vacation, about 2 weeks, in a third-world country helping out in a shelter and with developmentally disabled kids. which one, all 3?sorry if i seem to be lamenting about my life, im not. i simply dont want to write another meaningless slick essay about how life is unfair and i should be rewarded with admission. i understand there will be others writing about worse situations and i want the admissions to get to know me. i want to stand out, i have a mediocre academic record and hopefully this will personalize my application. and if anyone has any ideas about how to be interesting with a sense of humor and a heart please help out.

By yip on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - 04:40 pm: Edit

Yeah what type of topics shine?

By lakr4eva on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - 11:02 pm: Edit

Dadster, Dave Berry or anyone else need help here!

By Dadster on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - 11:38 pm: Edit

Trying to write something the reader hasn't heard a hundred times before is tough, lakr. The top colleges get tens of thousands of applications every year. Having said that, though, it's still worth a good effort to create a strong essay. I'd start be scanning through some of the good essay books. I like Bauld's book. I'm a bit leery of the books that are mostly sample essays "that worked" - admissions decisions are a lot more complex than that.

Get some good people to read your essay(s), too - preferably someone who really knows writing. Good luck!

By authoress on Thursday, October 17, 2002 - 02:48 pm: Edit

I agree with Dadster that books of "essays that worked" aren't too useful, but there is one of those kinds of books that I found extremely helpful when working on my essays. It's called Essays that Worked, and it's edited by Boykin Curry and Brian Kasbar. I don't know if it's still in print; I found it in my high school library. For me, it was a confidence booster, since it included successful essays that were on very mundane or very off-beat topics, and I didn't feel so pressured after I read it to come up with the "perfect" essay idea.

By Sally R. on Thursday, October 17, 2002 - 07:13 pm: Edit

When I was a little girl I used to watch a show on TV called "Queen for A Day." It involved several female contestants with troubled lives explaining the particulars of their various hardships. Then, with the help of a Clap-o-Meter, the audience would determine which story was the most pathetic, and the winner would go home with a prize (usually a washer-dryer and a bonus collection of Ship 'n Shore blouses) that was designed to make her troubles vanish.

Unfortunately, college essays today often sound like submissions to the "Queen for a Day" candidate selection committee. Too many teenagers face struggles that no one should have to endure, especially young people. The result, however, is what I call the "Jerry Springerization" of personal admission statements.

Thus, my advice, lakr4eva, would be to consider writing about caring for your mother, but rather than providing an overview of the entire experience in a "Woe is me; look what I've coped with" tone, focus instead on one incident or one day that may have been funny. For instance, did something amusing ever take place that helped you grow closer to your mother or to learn a lesson that will serve you later in life or gave you greater understanding of human nature?

Here's an example of what I mean. Once I was visiting a friend who was undergoing chemotherapy and often wore colorful scarves or turbans to conceal her hair loss. On the day of my visit, she was about to attend a fancy party and was experimenting with a new scarf, happily noting that she still had enough of her bangs left to peek out beneath its edge. Just as she said that, more hair hit the floor and the bangs were gone. At first she was upset, but then we got out the Elmer's and actually tried to attach the fallen locks to the scarf itself. I cut off some of my own longer hair to assist in the effort and botched the job. By the time we were done, we were both rolling on the floor laughing hysterically. Luckily, I'm too old to have to write a college essay, but this episode might have made a good one all about friendship and/or resiliency.

During the course of your essay, you would most likely be able to point out that you spend a lot of time taking care of your mom while your family is absent. And, depending on what it is, you might be able to also make mention of your disability and how it was pertinent in the anecdote you are relating. But keep in mind that admission officers tend to like essays that focus on a narrow topic or incident but also allude to--or serve as parables about--broader truths.

Your two-week stay doing community service in a Third World country might be a good topic to write on briefly, if the application asks you to discuss an extracurricular activity that has been meaningful to you. (The Common Application, for instance, includes that question, so if you are applying to any of the several hundred Common App schools, you'll encounter it.)

Good luck to you.

By G_Sh_69 (G_Sh_69) on Friday, November 22, 2002 - 01:10 pm: Edit

I am palnning to transfer to Cornell from a community college in Houston, TX, and I want to know what do you think about my essay topic.
When I was 9th garde in high school(I was in my home country, not in the US) I becae very sick right at the time of the Final exams, so I missed the finals, and I had to wait to take them again at the end of summer but my illness was very severe (I could not move a half of my face) so that I also missed the exams in Summer; therefore, I had no way but to repeat 9th grade again; this was really hard because I have always been among the top students in my school. I am a person of strong will and I am very flexible,s ince things were out of my control I accepted the fact that I havce to repeat 9th grade again. Two months after the begining of school, and after my parents went to the ministry of education several times, they let me go to 10th grade with the condition of taking 9th garde finals in one month. When I went to 10th garde I was already 2 months behind(because I was in 9th garde), but I did pretty well, and handled all of the pressures and became the top student in my high school that semester.
This was a summery of what I want to write about, it might sound alittle confusing because I did not want to give the details here, do you think this is a good thing to write about as a situation that I handled very well.

By Musketeerlady (Musketeerlady) on Tuesday, November 26, 2002 - 10:19 pm: Edit

Sally, I love your story so much! I bet you had a great college essay! Like every other suffering students, I'm agonizing over that essay also. I can't make up my mind of what to write - and I can't make a good story out of it! Well, I came to the US a year and a half ago from Vietnam and went through the cliche culture shock. My parents are divorced so I'm pretty much on my own. I want to write about something that corporates both Vietnam and America - but I'm afraid to fall in the "dead" college essays pool... I don't mean to be "God, help me! I'm the sufferer!" but if any can help, I'm so grateful. Plus I am a junior plan to skip my senior year and go straight to college (no, I'm not a dork - I have a prob with my visa and need to renew it before they kick me out) My score is nothing so special (1330 SAT) so I know the essay is the only thing that can save me (my GPA is 4.0 but many have that also) If I come back, I know I will pretty much have to redo high school again - be a freshman again at 18!Please help!!! Thanks so much.