If you’re applying to college, you are in the midst of an experience that is all about you. It is you applying to college, after all. These are your grades. Your activities. Your test scores. And your essay. And it is all about you. Which takes us to the title of this post: How to write a college essay about yourself.
Well, in some ways, every college essay is inherently about the writer — and, in this case, that is you. It is your college essay, so of course it is about yourself. But that isn’t all that a college essay is nor everything it has to accomplish. In your college essay, you need to communicate to the admissions office something they don’t get in your transcript, activities section, or resume. There are prompts that you can write in response to, but we recommend going with the “whatever you want” prompt so that you can make this essay exactly what you need it to be while keeping it entirely about yourself…but only in the best ways.
If you’re not sure what you need to say about yourself in your college essay, send us an email. We help students put together outstanding applications to earn acceptance to their dream schools.
Keep Yourself at the Center
As we said, this is about you. It’s your college application and it’s your essay, so you do need to keep yourself in the center of it. Don’t write about anyone else except as it relates to you or communicates something specific about you that you want the application readers to know.
For example, you really should not write about how awesome your grandmother is — except if it is to tell a story about you and your grandmother together. This is nothing against your grandmother, as she’s probably awesome. But this isn’t about her. It’s about you, so you need to (respectfully and humbly) keep yourself at the center of your college essay.
But Keep Your Ego in Check
Writing about yourself doesn’t have to be an exercise in “me me me” like a seagull vying for french fries on a beach boardwalk. Some things can be about you without becoming egotistical, and your college essay is one of those things.
For example, you can tell the story of your neighborhood — or a place you love — in your essay in a way that keeps you in the middle of it by contextualizing yourself within the bigger picture of your life and community. You could also write about a group project or team experience, which is inherently about you because you were (presumably) a member of that group or part of that team. Writing an essay about this type of topic would be about you, but it wouldn’t give you all the credit for successes or put all of the challenges on your shoulders. Instead, they’d be distributed across a micro-community in a way that only reflects positively on you.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Details
As you’re reading this post, you may have noticed that the examples we give are all really nitty gritty. The best way to write an essay about yourself is to lean into detail, as adding detail makes a narrator feel human. Tell stories and use dialog; have fun with words as you progress through the writing process. Even details like the style of a house, the background noise when a train goes by, or the precise combination of colors that come together to form a pitched ball, provide important context for the reader.
Your college essay is about you, and that’s a good thing. By focusing on yourself, you literally fulfill the brief you’ve been given, but you still need to be careful about how you write about yourself by checking your ego, keeping yourself at the center, and leaning into the details.
If you’re struggling with how to balance writing an essay about yourself with checking your ego, send us an email. We help students unlock their perfect application.