Here are some resources to help you better understand personal essay prompts and tips on how to write essays that will get colleges’ attention (in a good way!)
Rather than reinventing the wheel, as your librarian I compiled resources I think will guide you in the right direction and that provide support for common challenges to writing top-notch essay.
First, The 2015-16 Prompts for the Common App & (NEW) 2016-17 UC Personal Essay Instructions.
Resources for understanding the questions and writing your essay:
Do-It-Yourself college Applicatons: 10 Steps to the Common App Essay: This provides some concrete steps for just sitting down and getting the writing done. Best for a first draft.
Hacking the Common App Essay Prompts Part 1 & Hacking the Common App Essay Part II These articles offer great advice and some traps in the prompts that students will often fall into. Though geared towards last year’s apps, the advice is not sugar coated advice and offers tips to strategize how to make any writing prompt work for you.This two part article interprets what each question asks, alerts students to traps to avoid for each question, and offers a ‘hack’ or way to turn the question into a winning essay. I think this is one of the gems from this and something I see often in student writing, especially personal essays: “Students must discuss their personal experiences and not dwell on the generic experience.”
The Princeton Review has links to analysis of the questions and tips for choosing one from Montgomery Educational Consulting.
The UC Site also provides a worksheet for planning your personal essay and their questions give you ideas of what they want/expect to read. This is for the old prompts. If you find a new one before I update this link, please email me! In the meantime, here is an article about the new prompts.
Sample essays that worked:
UC Berkeley’s Top 8 Essays: As a creative writer (and yes, you should think of these as creative non-fiction, not an essay), one of the first things I learned is imitation. What are the poets I love doing and how are they doing it? What are the poets who are being recognized as changemakers, who are being publishes, who are winning awards doing and how are they doing it? Same thing for your personal essay. You may look at this and criticize, but Berkeley liked them. A lot. Why? What are these writings doing and how are they doing it? What can you learn and adopt to make your essay equally moving and unique?
From John Hopkins, here are samples of essays that worked for them. Each essay includes some commentary about what someone in their admissions office liked about the essay, giving you insight into why that essay worked. Apparently, titles make a big difference.
Sallie Mae has 5 sample essays from the book Accepted! 50 Successful College Admission Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe.
These are not as stellar as the links above, but the analysis of why is worth reading: The College Board has Sample Essay 1 and Sample Essay 2. Read the commentary. One is offered as a not-so-great sample and the other as a better sample.
Worksheets, Etc.
Here are two handouts I created back when I taught senior English to help you brainstorm, plan, and edit your essay. A good essay should go through at least 10 revisions. I suggest creating a group with some friends who are equal in skill and ambition and give each other honest, critical feedback.
The Virtual Librarian Blog 