If you’re applying to college via the Coalition Application, the personal statement is in your future.
The Coalition Application essay offers an awesome opportunity for telling colleges your story. No pressure. You’ve got this.
How do I know?
Because I wrote the book on college essays and have worked with hundreds of students on their college applications, and I have yet to meet a student who wasn’t capable of writing a personal statement. With the right resources and a little hard work, of course. I can help with the first; you help bring the second.
In this guide to the Coalition Application essays, I’ll cover:
What even are the Coalition Application essay prompts?
Which Coalition Application essay prompt is best?
How should you answer the Coalition App essay prompts?
Plus, I’ll share some outstanding Coalition Application essay examples. Why?
I’m hoping they’ll inspire you.
What are the Coalition App essay prompts?
Here they are, as of 2023/2024:
Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.
What interests or excites you? How does it shape who you are now or who you might become in the future?
Describe a time when you had a positive impact on others. What were the challenges? What were the rewards?
Has there been a time when an idea or belief of yours was questioned? How did you respond? What did you learn?
What success have you achieved or obstacle have you faced? What advice would you give a sibling or friend going through a similar experience?
Submit an essay on a topic of your choice.
What’s the Coalition Application essay word count?
We’d generally recommend aiming for between 500 and 650 words. Why? Because that’s exactly what the Coalition App itself currently recommends.
Which Coalition Application essay prompt is best?
Some students spend hours agonizing over why topic #3 on the Coalition App might be better than topic #4, but it’s actually not super useful to spend too much time thinking about it.
Why?
If you look at the prompts (especially the “topic of your choice” option), you’ll see colleges are basically inviting you to write about anything you want.
In short, there’s no “best’ prompt.
Instead, consider that colleges are more interested in knowing two things:
What values, skills, qualities, and interests will you bring to the college campus?
Can you write?
If your essay answers those two questions well, you’re doing great.
But okay, for those of you who *really* want a prompt to guide your writing, I recommend this one:
Describe the world you come from – for example, your family, community or school – and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
What a lovely question. This is actually an old UC prompt (and it’s still used by MIT), one that can be a great starting point for any kind of college personal statement. The “world you come from” can mean almost anything: your grandma’s cooking, the neighborhood or home country in which you grew up, or even the challenges you’ve faced.
And your “dreams and aspirations” could mean your future career or major, or your hopes for your city, country, or the world, or how you want to live your values.
So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dive into the fun part.
How Do You Answer the Coalition App Essay Prompts?
This is the part I’ve been thinking about for 15+ years.
And while you might be looking for a guide for each of the prompts, I don’t actually think that’s the best way to find a great topic or write a great personal statement.
So how do you? I answer this question in more depth in my free guide to the personal statement, but here’s the TL;DR version.
It starts with great brainstorming. I recommend that you don’t look at the prompts at all when getting started, but instead spend some time digging deep. You can start with this blog post, which has a list of my favorite brainstorming exercises.
By the time you’re done, you should have a nice little menu of ideas, images, and experiences from your life that might serve as potential essay topics, either for your main essay or for your supplemental essays–or both.
Next, it’s time to find a great structure.
Will you focus on a challenge you’ve experienced and write what I call a Narrative Essay?
Or will you focus on a series of moments or images in your life and write a Montage Essay?
Guess what? Either can work; neither is better.
From there, I recommend planning to write 6-8 drafts and hitting up a counselor, English teacher, trusted mentor, or friend for feedback.
Once you’ve found a topic that reveals the values, skills, qualities, and interests you’ll bring with you to college, scan the prompts and see which fits best. Your essay more than likely fits for multiple Coalition Application prompts.
Don’t see one that fits? Just choose prompt #6. (Easy.)
Want to know what a great Coalition Application essay looks like? Here you go.
A Few Great Coalition Application Example Essays
Essay Example #1: Tic Toc
The clock slowly ticks on…
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
It’s 3:30 am and everything seems to be asleep. Normally, I’m coding at my desk with a glass of orange juice. What am I coding? Depends on the night, but you can tell from my whiteboard, as each night there is something new on it. This week it was modeling the flow of a rules engine for validating bank wires, one part of my work for Microsoft. The week before it was filled with data-flow models from my React UI to a SQL database for an app my school asked me to build.
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
But why am I doing all of this so late into the night?
I’m battling time. Seeing how much territory I can claim before my moments are up.
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
I didn’t know how to handle the idea of time as a kid and, when it became too much, I’d hide with my two stuffed dogs, my white blanket, warm vanilla milk, and the Calvin and Hobbes book The Days Are Just Packed. Under that blanket I would curl up and lose myself in Calvin’s antics as Spaceman Spiff.
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
Eventually, I found a much better way to deal with time: through soccer. Each day I would come home and rush through homework so I could go outside and practice until it got so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But after suffering twelve major injuries in between 6th and 11th grade I could feel all the time that I’d lost while recovering. This led to a burnout and caused me to transition away from soccer. So I did. During my recovery time I’d learned to code through personal projects and CodeAcademy. As I entered high school, coding started to take over, and all the time I’d poured into soccer instead went to coding, which led to some exciting personal projects such as a physics equation solver, a chip8 emulator and a compiler for my own language.
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
Recently, I’ve found another way to fight time: cooking. Last weekend I spent ten hours in the kitchen cooking a rosemary shrimp pan-seared in olive oil, a celery and green apple salad and a homemade pasta and ragu for my girlfriend’s family. I cook because it allows me to meditate, which allows me to reflect upon the past week. Without this time to reflect I wouldn’t change and if I can’t change, then I can’t learn. If I can not learn then I will not be prepared for my next battle with time.
Tic, toc, tic, toc….
Time never stops, so why should I? Why should I stop learning? I don’t think I should. I plan to continue waging my battle against time by learning everything that I can. And I will. But I also won’t forget things I love: Calvin’s sled, homemade pastas, lacing up cleats, and tinkering into the night. (500 words)
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Four Things I Love About This Essay:
The Values. I see a wide range in this essay, including knowledge, creativity, ambition, humor, family, meticulousness, and inspiration.
The Insight. This author offers lots of insights into who he is and how he thinks. Examples include: “But why am I doing all of this so late into the night? I’m battling time. Seeing how much territory I can claim before my moments are up.” and “I cook because it allows me to meditate, which allows me to reflect upon the past week. Without this time to reflect I wouldn’t change and if I can’t change, then I can’t learn. If I can not learn then I will not be prepared for my next battle with time.”
The Vulnerability. I appreciate that the author shares how he coped with anxiety when he was younger: “... when it became too much, I’d hide with my two stuffed dogs, my white blanket, warm vanilla milk, and the Calvin and Hobbes book The Days Are Just Packed.” He also shares a wide range of personal details.
The Craft. This essay has clearly gone through a series of revisions. Look at how spare the language is, for example, in the conclusion: “Why should I stop learning? I don’t think I should. I plan to continue waging my battle against time by learning everything that I can. And I will. But I also won’t forget things I love: Calvin’s sled, homemade pastas, lacing up cleats, and tinkering into the night.” These few words tie the whole essay together.
Essay Example #2: Pranks
Once, a teacher challenged me to make an assignment as difficult to grade as possible. What he failed to remember is that I am a programmer. It was quite a simple program, taking my answers, translating them into morse code, and spitting them out. Oh, and repeats were allowed. By my calculations, it would take him at least 8 hours to grade, and could last for days.
You see, the monotony of life is enough to drive a girl crazy. Everyone copes with some activity. I keep sane with pranks.
There was the time, for example, that my AP World History teacher gave us an assignment to write a letter home in the perspective of a Chinese immigrant in the 19th century. I did exactly what she asked, and in the proper language, too. Mandarin.
A good prank requires creativity, hard work, and a sense of humor. Without creativity, it’ll be boring. If the prank is half-assed, there’s really no point to it. A sense of humor is important on all parts; it’s not a prank if it’s not funny. I also dislike malicious intent; unless the victim is challenging the prankster, pranks should be harmless and all parties involved should be able to have a good laugh.
Sometimes my pranks are elaborate and require a lot of research and time. One example is “Autonomous Program 5,” a robot that would bust out a perfect rendition of All Star by Smash Mouth by beeping out the pitches. I spent hours for that one learning how pitches and their durations translated into code, but it was worth it in the end. Because Smash Mouth.
Some of my pranks are aimed to correct my greatest pet peeve: improper grammar. On a quiet autumn afternoon, when I should have been studying for a calculus test, I received a text that shook my world to pieces. “hey can u giv me sum notecard pls”. Blinded with rage, I snatched a notecard from my bag. There was a notecard. She wanted “sum notecard”. I ripped the card in half and scratched a plus sign on one of the disembodied halves. “Here you go,” I snarled as I reached her desk. “Your ‘sum notecard’.” She’s texted me with proper grammar ever since.
So, why do I do this? Sometimes, it’s educational. Other times, it’s for laughs. In some cases, I’m just trying to show off. There’s one underlying similarity in all of my pranks though: they’re done in good fun when life falls into predictable routines, which drives me insane. I despise feeling like a broken computer program running an infinite while-loop. If all I can do is run the same actions again and again to the end of time, I might as well merely be a series of zeros and ones. My pranks shake up the world around me for a bit, just enough for people in my immediate vicinity and I to laugh, and remember that despite our structured lives, we are still human. (500 words)
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Four Things I Love About This Essay:
The Values. In this essay, I see the values of humor, knowledge, culture, creativity, hard work, self-awareness, love of language, more humor, helping others, and more.
The Insight. I appreciate a few insights in this essay, but the last one in particular: “So, why do I do this? [...] My pranks shake up the world around me for a bit, just enough for people in my immediate vicinity and I to laugh, and remember that despite our structured lives, we are still human.”
The Vulnerability. There’s so much self-effacing humor in this essay; making fun of herself (and others) in a light way endears me to the author. I also like the risk she takes in using the word “half-assed.” It works.
The Craft. There are so many lovely moments that demonstrate craft, from “What he failed to remember is that I am a programmer” to the simplicity of “Because Smash Mouth.” Come on.
Essay Example #3: Allow Yourself to Feel
“Allow yourself to feel.”
At Forefront’s Day of Hope Conference, this was the keynote speaker’s wisdom for processing hardships. Unexpectedly, tears wet my eyes. I’d been leading my school’s Forefront program, facilitating peer-to-peer support, but in that moment, I wondered: had I even been feeling my own feelings? Was I now the one in need of support?
* * *
I flashed back to my childhood: In preschool, sitting in the principal’s office, crying that my dad was gone on a business trip. In kindergarten, both kicking around soccer balls with boys and playing “house” with girls. Along the way, realizing I acted differently from other boys my age. My dad’s voice echoing in my head, telling me to “man up,” “stop feeling that way,” or “snap out of it” when I was upset.
“Man up.”
Later, to compensate for being “too sensitive” and “soft,” I took advantage of my natural athleticism to build an outward appearance of “masculinity.” At the same time, I was learning to suppress my feelings and training myself to be emotionally illiterate.
While my emotional wellbeing suffered, my athletic career soared as I competed in five National Fencing Championships. My athleticism became the central pin to my identity, the source of my pride and self-worth, embellished by record sprint times and rows of medals.
In March 2018, a few weeks before the conference, I pushed myself past my breaking point, tearing the peroneal retinaculum in my right ankle. The injury and impending cast, surgery, stitches, bone sutures, and crutches meant I had lost what I felt defined me.
* * *
Between my injury and the conference, I felt like I was in free fall. I felt stripped of my identity: Would I ever run again? Ever have that life again?
But by allowing myself to feel, I started seeing past the pain. I saw how, for the past three years, Forefront had been the outlet for a compassion I’d long been too afraid to show. In the absence of sports, I realized mental health advocacy was deeply meaningful to me.
Inspired by that moment of self-realization at the conference, I accepted a position as a member of the Student Life Committee and later ran for ASB Vice President, where I worked with students, faculty, and administrators to improve school-life balance for the student body and tackle stigmatized social issues. Creating meaningful, lasting solutions to benefit my community ignited a passion that had long lay dormant during my work with Forefront. I found the power and voice to address the complex and seldom discussed issues that I had grappled with all my life.
I am learning to more fully embrace my non-traditional, empathetic, emotionally honest image of masculinity. I am finding the bravery to be vulnerable. The strength to cry. The power in showing weakness. I am allowing myself to feel, and in those moments of understanding and reflection, I uncover glimpses of who I really am. (486 words)
— — —
Four Things I Love About This Essay:
The Values. This author demonstrates vulnerability, self-awareness, athleticism, helping others, personal development, and more.
The Insight. The author offers a nice range of “so what” moments, including the realization “Was I now the one in need of support?” and pretty much everything in the final paragraph: “I am learning to more fully embrace my non-traditional, empathetic, emotionally honest image of masculinity. I am finding the bravery to be vulnerable. The strength to cry. The power in showing weakness. I am allowing myself to feel, and in those moments of understanding and reflection, I uncover glimpses of who I really am.”
The Vulnerability. This essay is vulnerable throughout, from first sentence to last.
The Craft. I appreciate the structure of this essay, with the brief opening to get our attention, the flashback that provides context, and the series of realizations that build on one another all the way through to the end. I also feel like not a word in this essay is wasted.
Essay Example #4: Chinese 3D Beading
A few years ago I grew interested in Chinese 3D beading. Beading requires that I focus on small details in the moment, but also think ahead and look at the big picture of how I want my finished artwork to look. Should the body of my unicorn pencil topper be metallic white or pearl white? Should the eyes be diamond-shaped beads to stand out from the body, made of circular beads? Beading has helped me understand how flat surfaces transform into 3D objects, and more importantly has taught me to visualize connections between seemingly unconnected elements.
This skill has been especially useful with my younger sister Grace, one of the most important people in the world to me. I’ve taught her to see connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, like music and math. Music has repeating variations of melody that make piano easier to learn, and similarly math has patterns that make it faster to find the solution. She comes to me with her frustration and confusion. She talks and I listen. I make sure she knows her pain is my pain and that we can resolve things together. Our relationship has taught me to build and value strong relationships with others. We all need human connection; no one can do it all alone.
Helping Grace build confidence has helped me do the same for others. As setter in volleyball, I decided the plays we ran and communicated to my team within seconds. I had to constantly plan ahead and strategize, always having a plan A, B, C, and even D. As team captain, I worked to build my teammates’ confidence. Every player needs something different—Delaney, for example, plays best when she’s relaxed and carefree, while Sandy responds to quiet, positive encouragement. Through supporting each other, our team played better as a whole.
Though I’ve only realized it in hindsight, these seemingly disconnected experiences have been preparing me to become an engineer. Being creative, noticing minute details, and working with my hands will be essential. Helping others, valuing relationships, and having effective communication skills and a collaborative spirit will make me an effective team member, as most engineers need to combine their great ideas with others’ to create groundbreaking inventions.
I am interested in exploring several disciplines of engineering. Growing up in California, I’ve experienced many earthquakes, and so would love to explore materials engineering and perhaps create material for buildings that is strong, yet affordable, lessening damage and injury. The new solar panels at my school inspire me to develop cost-effective storage of solar energy as a chemical engineer. As a biomedical engineer, I could work to improve prosthetic technologies, especially to benefit veterans, as this is the least I could do for people who are willing to sacrifice their lives for our country. I am eager to delve into the world of engineering to determine what field I will eventually pursue. (483 words)
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Four Things I Love About This Essay:
The Values. Through this essay, I see that the author values art, creativity, details, family, music, communication, connection, supporting others, leadership, collaboration, and more.
The Insight. Here’s a nice insight: “Beading has helped me understand how flat surfaces transform into 3D objects, and more importantly has taught me to visualize connections between seemingly unconnected elements.” Here’s another: “Though I’ve only realized it in hindsight, these seemingly disconnected experiences have been preparing me to become an engineer.”
The Vulnerability. I appreciate these personal details related to her sister: “She talks and I listen. I make sure she knows her pain is my pain and that we can resolve things together. Our relationship has taught me to build and value strong relationships with others. We all need human connection; no one can do it all alone.”
The Craft. I appreciate the specificity of her details: “Should the body of my unicorn pencil topper be metallic white or pearl white? Should the eyes be diamond-shaped beads to stand out from the body, made of circular beads?”
Essay Example #5: My Teachers
Art was one of my first teachers.
I’ve been drawing since I was eight. Sketching and shading using pencils ranging from 6H to 6B, I allow my strokes to flow from light to shadow. As carefree as drawing may seem, it requires extreme precision. If the curve of a bottle is even a little crooked or a hair is even a fraction off, the entire image can become distorted, so I have to redraw a simple line many times to achieve the desired result. The light and shadow that make up these sketches has taught me to appreciate the beauty of small things.
But I’ve also had other teachers in my life.
My best friend, Kim, even after she was gone, has been a teacher for me. I learned from her passing that, although shattered, I could pursue things I love to become motivated again. I began to take time off to socialize and appreciate nature. I developed a love for photography as I could capture the fleeting moments of sunrise or sunset. I began to work harder academically and set time aside to learn more about physics and computer science. Through this tragedy, I learned to apply a new perspective to my life and recognize what’s truly important to me.
For the past four years, I’ve learned a great deal from my students as well. As a tutor, I encounter two types of kids: those who need less help and those who need more support than their parents assume. I regularly taught a boy whose parents believed he was struggling with fluency. However, I soon realized that he also struggled with spelling, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. It was initially challenging to make progress, but through weeks of reading exercises, not only had his fluency improved but his grasp of main ideas had as well. Through tutoring, I have become more capable of identifying issues and solutions.
The Stanford cryptography course has also been an important teacher. There, I delved into abstract mathematics, and its importance in encrypting and decrypting. The pages filled with Euler’s theorem, Fermat’s little theorem, and Chinese remainder theorem showed me how number theory makes encryption algorithms, like RSA and ElGamal, so hard to breach. I loved understanding how data is kept secure on computers and how math is utilized in computer science, algorithmically and through application of theorems.
Finally, mediating my fair share of disagreements among friends has taught me a lot. I have observed that many fights stem from the drawing of conclusions prematurely. So, although I’m compassionate, I’ve learned to understand others’ emotions without getting stuck in them and wait until I know all the details before coming to a conclusion. Because of this, I’m able to provide a solution that neither side has thought of. As a result, I’ve become known as the “group elder” among my friends, and I’m said to make everyone feel understood.
When I’m an artist, a friend, a teacher, a student, or a mediator, I’m learning. (499 words)
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Four Things I Love About This Essay:
The Values. In this essay, I see the values of creativity, meticulousness, close relationships, vulnerability, helping others, knowledge, compassion, perspective, leadership, and more.
The Insight. I appreciate this insight: “The light and shadow that make up these sketches has taught me to appreciate the beauty of small things.” I also appreciate this one: “So, although I’m compassionate, I’ve learned to understand others’ emotions without getting stuck in them and wait until I know all the details before coming to a conclusion. Because of this, I’m able to provide a solution that neither side has thought of.”
The Vulnerability. I appreciate the author’s vulnerability in the lines: “My best friend, Kim, even after she was gone, has been a teacher for me. I learned from her passing that, although shattered, I could pursue things I love to become motivated again.”
The Craft. I love the way the ending brings together the whole essay: “When I’m an artist, a friend, a teacher, a student, or a mediator, I’m learning.”
Special thanks to College Essay Guy coach Nicole Brochu for contributing to this post.
Nicole learned how to tell other people’s stories after a 30+-year career as a newspaper reporter, covering both the mundane and the unforgettable, from serial killer Duane Owen’s retrial, to the Bush/Gore nail-biter, to the homeless family of four who found refuge in a storage unit. Her ideal day is spent playing Cribbage with her dad, beating her husband at RummiKub and planning the next girls trip with her teenage daughters.
Top values: Creativity | Growth | Meaningful Work
