Personal statement, “the big essay” and basically its telling about yourself , what’s something college would know about you, and this is where a lot of students make mistakes because they think that they can say anything.

But to admission officer, who’s bright, and works for college professors. Do you think they want to read about a breakup? Or the about the time you had to change a tire in the middle of a rainstorm? They want to hear about the qualities of your mind, what is it that gets you fired up, that spark that is found within you

CommonApp's Personal Essay asks: "What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores?" Then CommonApp offers seven "prompts." Many of these prompts are part of the problem.

Prompt 1: "Some students have a background... that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it." So, you get a story about a student's big Irish family.

Prompt 2: "Recount a time when you faced a challenge... what did you learn from the experience?" So, you get a story about changing a tire in a rainstorm.

Prompt 5: "Discuss an ... event or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others." So, you get a story about a breakup.

Yes: You want to write an essay that's "personal." But most of you misinterpret that word. Think about your favorite book that prompted you to become a human rights attorney. What could be more personal than writing about that? And notice: That personal essay is inherently intellectual. And that matters because you're applying to be a student studying ideas with professors so you can gain skills and knowledge to go do something in the world.

No: You don't need to write about your favorite book or composer or philosopher. You can write about your summer job scooping ice cream, your grandmother, your car. You can write about your Irish family, changing a tire, or even a breakup. Often those pedestrian topics lead to the best essays. But only when you surprise and dazzle your reader by intellectualizing them.

That means saying something smart, interesting, thoughtful. Doing something creative and novel with that topic. Extracting an original insight from that experience that proves you're the type of person who can learn and say smart things about anything. How do you do that?

Diversity Essay Or the World You Come From Essay.

Example:

When I think about my Father, one thing stands out more than others: His calluses. When he showed me how to grip a football, how to change the oil on our car, or how to tape-off the corner of a wall before painting—I remember feeling his hardened calluses rough on my skin. His calluses intimidated me. I knew what they represented: A lifetime of hard, manual labor. Picking up heavy buckets of paint two at a time, carrying unwieldy aluminum ladders, gripping the handle of a paint-roller-for hours, for months, for years. Calluses are earned.

When you paint a room, you can cut corners. Who will climb up on the sink and look behind the cabinet to notice if the paint touches the wood? My Father would. He ensured that corner was painted to perfection. Some jobs we could ve taken two weeks to complete. The client's family was on vacation. Just me and my Father in their beautiful Greenwich home. My Father had us there by 7 am, took 20 minutes to wolf-down an Italian cold-cut sandwich for lunch, and we worked until the sun went down. He didn't want his clients to overpay for one minute. We knocked that job out in five days. That's how you earn calluses.

I don't have calluses like my Father. He didn't attend college. He made his way in the world tending bar and painting walls to perfection. Sometimes he doesn't think he's taught me anything; that he had nothing to offer a bookish, college-bound thinker. But he did. He taught me about taking pride in your work: When I'm reading Plato or Hemingway or Dostoevsky, I don't skim. I read every word. When I'm writing an essay on Pascal's Wager, I don't stop at one draft. I rewrite as long as it takes until I'm proud of it. And when I go to class, I'm never late. Just like my Father's painting clients, the point isn't if my teacher will know. The point is that I'll know.

My Father doesn't realize he taught me how to think, but he did. Because the habits he practiced, that he modeled for me, that gave him his calluses—those are ways of thinking, of being, of living. How you approach painting a wall tells you a lot about how you approach anything: Reading a book, writing an essay, or attending class. I don't have my Father's calluses, but I'm lucky to have his way of thinking.