The purpose of the personal statement

To understand when, for whom, and how much college essays affect the chance of admissions, it’s important to understand the purpose of the personal statement, since this essay is different from most (frequently all) essays a student has written during high school. Which is a weird bait and switch to pull on them: “We know we’ve been teaching you these other  ways to write this whole time, but now to get into college, we’re going to need you to do this totally different thing. Cool? Go.” But that’s why it’s really useful to understand some key differences.

For example, a typical English class essay is supposed to make an argument and support it with evidence (often the classic intro with thesis, three body paragraphs, conclusion that restates the thesis, hopefully in different words), and its tone is more analytical.

That’s not what students should be doing in a personal statement for college admissions.

The purpose of a personal statement for college admissions (such as the Common App main statement) is to demonstrate who a student is through illustrating the values, skills, qualities, and interests they’ll bring to the college and community. Generally, no explicit, argumentative thesis in the intro. Tone is more casual. The essay helps readers understand not just how a student thinks, but also how they feel, work, play, and live.

And possibly the biggest difference: Personal vulnerability can be a great thing to express in a personal statement (it’s one of the qualities that we think can make for an outstanding personal statement when we work with students), whereas in an academic essay, vulnerability tends to be unnecessary at the least.

So, with that framing in mind, when, for whom, and how much do college essays matter?

Essays generally aren’t what’s looked at first in the admissions process—as we mentioned before, GPA, rigor of course load, testing, and background are the first step. But as admissions becomes increasingly competitive (for example, Stanford has admitted between 3-5% over the last few years, especially taking into account athletes and legacies, who get in at a higher rate) essays, as a general rule, become increasingly important. That’s because, if your teen is hoping to apply to such schools, many applicants have near perfect (or actually perfect) scores.

[action_item]

Important side note: This is part of why we recommend building a list from the bottom up—the most amazing students in America can get turned down from the most highly selective schools. In fact, they do every year: There just aren’t enough spots for deserving students. So to our minds, it’s worth applying if students have the numbers. But they should also be sure to apply to a range of schools they’d be happy to attend.

For “your average run of the mill really smart person” (as our friend Parke Muth puts it) applying to highly selective schools, “essays can make or break you.” We don’t want to provoke anxiety by saying this (though we realize that may be unavoidable for some people), but instead emphasize that, the more selective the schools a student wants to apply to are, the more time they should spend on their essays.

Ideally, begin in early summer, and work through several drafts, possibly trying a few different topics and structural approaches. (We’ll offer a guide on essay writing in a bit, but because essay writing is complex, we’ll point you to other resources we offer that provide a more in-depth take.)

Weak or poorly written essays can torpedo an otherwise strong application, but it’s pretty rare for great essays to overcome a significant gap in numbers—if a student was hoping to somehow write their way into Harvard with a C+ GPA… you’re going to need to let them down easy.