Avoid casual statements and phrases, but make sure it is conversational. I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. The author here spends some personal statement essays at the end talking about her plans for a prescription-measuring smartphone app and her general interest in learning more about computer coding. Read more: How To Write a Powerful Personal Statement. Devouring his stash of Lemonheads was awesome, but not as gratifying as finally getting inside his room, personal statement essays. Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Email Copy to Clipboard.
What is a professional statement?
Why is boasting about a best friend SO much easier than writing about yourself? It can be overwhelming to personal statement essays out where to start. First, figure out what your choices are. Some colleges may have very specific college essay prompts. That said, many students apply using the Common App, which this year offers these 7 topics to choose from :. How did these moments in your life changed you, what did you learn from it, and how has it shaped your future plans? Some topics might include:. Remember to focus not just on the whatpersonal statement essays also the why — What were your motivations?
How did you feel? What have you learned? Some topics on this might include:. How did you find out about this person or thing? Why are you inspired? In what ways are you inspired? Is there anything that inspiration has made you do e. join a club, do an activity or internship on the topic? These can be milestones, hobbies, qualities, or quirks that are what make you, you. Topics to consider might be:. This is just a way to get ideas flowing! Start by writing a few sentences or paragraphs about any of your shortlisted topics, personal statement essays, and let the words flow. Write for about 15 minutes, on each shortlisted topic. We all have a story to tell, and we all have a different journey that led us to where we are today.
Write your personal statement in a genuine tone that reflects who you are. This means, in particular, not using big words just to show off. Or, even worse, you accidentally use the word incorrectly! Who will you be writing your personal statement for? What message do you want to convey? Make sure you keep within the required length. Some college or scholarship applications will allow you to write up to or words. There was a time when we used to rely on pencil and paper to write down all of our ideas and information including first-draft college essays. Now, personal statement essays, we mainly rely on screens, so our eyes grow tired, causing us to miss typos and grammar mistakes.
So save that document in an easy-to-find folder on your computer. Then stepping away from your computer and taking a break helps relax your mind and body and then refocus when you come back to edit the document. All the grammar things! Your personal statement reflects who you are, from the topic you choose to the style you personal statement essays it in, so impress colleges or scholarship providers with excellent structure and great grammar! We recommend asking a friend, personal statement essays, counselor, or personal statement essays to read your personal statement before you submit the document. One more set of eyes will really help you get a second opinion on personal statement essays tone, writing quality, and overall representation of who you are in your personal statement.
Get double-use out of your personal statement. Going Merry is your home for personal statement essays things scholarships—fill out a profile, get matched to eligible scholarships, and apply. You can even save essays so that you can easily upload the same one for multiple scholarship applications. We were inspired by the Common App to make applying for scholarships easier, personal statement essays. Register for an account hereget the full lowdown on how it worksor just sign up for the newsletter below to get 20 scholarship opportunities delivered to our inbox each each week!
Oh yes we do. First, here are some excerpts of personal statements from members of our very own Going Merry team! He made me laugh and taught me all the things that made me into a young tomboy: what an RBI is, how to correctly hook a fish when I feel it biting, what to bring on a camping trip. He is a man of jokes and words, not personal statement essays comforting motions. But as I grew older and I too became infatuated with words—albeit in written form—our topics of conversation became more diverse and often more profound. During these talks, my father would insert stories about his youth.
It came back to me, scrawled in red, on the first big history test of the year. The one the teacher had assured us was a third of our grade, personal statement essays. What happened? I had two options here. I could accept that I was in fact a D student despite what I had thought, personal statement essays. Or I could study hard for the next test and try to bring my grade up by the force of the average. It means I was lucky, or blessed, or anything else you want to call it. I have talent. The game just makes intuitive sense to me. It is far too easy to view talent as an excuse. For me, personal statement essays, it is a motivator.
For my talent, I will accept nothing less than a dream that only a tiny percentage of people ever get to experience. Talent is a responsibility. Because you had nothing to do with acquiring it, you are compelled to achieve every last bit you can with it. While I had grown used to thinking varsity would be it, that was not the case. Now, I can focus on the goal while I accomplish the steps. I was told that teens are moody, personal statement essays. I would grow out of it. Diagnosis and medication have saved my life, allowing me to see the world as people without my brain chemistry would, personal statement essays.
It might sound bad—as though kindness can only exist in the smallest forms. This is not what I mean. There are extraordinary people out there who devote their lives to doing very large, very important things for others. They are not the norm. What is normal are the tiny kindnesses. These do not cost a person much of anything. A slice of time, personal statement essays, a moment of openness, and little else. And here are 3 college personal statements, about what drove their interest in their intended major:. His parents had emigrated from Italy with his two eldest brothers in the early s in search of a better life in America. Their struggles as immigrants are in themselves inspiring, but the challenges they faced are undoubtedly similar to those that many other personal statement essays families had to overcome; because of this, the actions that my relatives embarked upon are that much more extraordinary.
As a native English speaker personal statement essays has had the privilege of studying viola and violin with trained, private teachers, I can only imagine the perseverance it took for my great-grandfather and great-great uncle to learn an instrument like the violin out of booklets and lessons that were not even written in their native language. Their passion and dedication to learning something new, something not part of personal statement essays lives as blue-collar, immigrant workers, and their desire to share it with others, has inspired me as a musician and a person. It is this spirit that has motivated me to pursue an MA at Composition at the University of XXX. I rushed to the restroom to throw up because my throat was itchy and I felt a weight on my chest.
I was experiencing anaphylactic shock, which prevented me from taking anything but shallow breaths. I was fighting the one thing that is meant to protect me and keep me alive — my own body. I became scared of death, eating, personal statement essays even my own body. Ultimately, that fear turned into resentment; I resented my body for making me an outsider. In the personal statement essays that followed, this experience and my regular visits to my allergy specialist inspired me to become an allergy specialist. Even though I was probably only ten at the time, I wanted personal statement essays find a way to help kids like me.
I wanted to find a solution so that nobody would have to feel the way I did; nobody deserved to feel that pain, fear, and resentment. My shadowing experiences in particular have stimulated my curiosity and desire to learn more about the world around me. How does platelet rich plasma stimulate tissue growth? How does diabetes affect the proximal convoluted tubule? My questions never stopped. I wanted to know everything and it felt very satisfying to apply my knowledge to clinical problems. distinct personal statement essays together to personal statement essays a coherent picture truly attracts me personal statement essays medicine.
It is hard to separate science from medicine; in personal statement essays, medicine is science. However, medicine is also about people—their feelings, struggles and concerns, personal statement essays. Humans are not pre-programmed robots that all face the same problems. Humans deserve sensitive and understanding physicians. Humans deserve doctors who are infinitely curious, constantly questioning new advents in medicine.
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When I was a senior, I took a first-year calculus course at a local college such an advanced-level class was not available in high school and earned an A. It seemed only logical that I pursue a career in electrical engineering. When I began my undergraduate career, I had the opportunity to be exposed to the full range of engineering courses, all of which tended to reinforce and solidify my intense interest in engineering. I've also had the opportunity to study a number of subjects in the humanities and they have been both enjoyable and enlightening, providing me with a new and different perspective on the world in which we live.
In the realm of engineering, I have developed a special interest in the field of laser technology and have even been taking a graduate course in quantum electronics. Among the 25 or so students in the course, I am the sole undergraduate. Another particular interest of mine is electromagnetics, and last summer, when I was a technical assistant at a world-famous local lab, I learned about its many practical applications, especially in relation to microstrip and antenna design. Management at this lab was sufficiently impressed with my work to ask that I return when I graduate. Of course, my plans following completion of my current studies are to move directly into graduate work toward my master's in science.
After I earn my master's degree, I intend to start work on my Ph. in electrical engineering. Later I would like to work in the area of research and development for private industry. I am highly aware of the superb reputation of your school, and my conversations with several of your alumni have served to deepen my interest in attending. I know that, in addition to your excellent faculty, your computer facilities are among the best in the state. I hope you will give me the privilege of continuing my studies at your fine institution. Having majored in literary studies world literature as an undergraduate, I would now like to concentrate on English and American literature. I am especially interested in nineteenth-century literature, women's literature, Anglo-Saxon poetry, and folklore and folk literature.
My personal literary projects have involved some combination of these subjects. For the oral section of my comprehensive exams, I specialized in nineteenth century novels by and about women. The relationship between "high" and folk literature became the subject for my honors essay, which examined Toni Morrison's use of classical, biblical, African, and Afro-American folk tradition in her novel. I plan to work further on this essay, treating Morrison's other novels and perhaps preparing a paper suitable for publication. In my studies toward a doctoral degree, I hope to examine more closely the relationship between high and folk literature.
My junior year and private studies of Anglo-Saxon language and literature have caused me to consider the question of where the divisions between folklore, folk literature, and high literature lie. Should I attend your school, I would like to resume my studies of Anglo-Saxon poetry, with special attention to its folk elements. Writing poetry also figures prominently in my academic and professional goals. I have just begun submitting to the smaller journals with some success and am gradually building a working manuscript for a collection. The dominant theme of this collection relies on poems that draw from classical, biblical, and folk traditions, as well as everyday experience, in order to celebrate the process of giving and taking life, whether literal or figurative.
As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection.
My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. My face burned long after I left the fire pit.
The camp stank of salmon and shame. In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill.
When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire. Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.
When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3, signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board. Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again.
Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track.
We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. Scrolling through, I see funny videos and mouth-watering pictures of food. However, one image stops me immediately. Beneath it, I see a slew of flattering comments. However, part of me still wants to have a body like hers so that others will make similar comments to me. I would like to resolve a silent issue that harms many teenagers and adults: negative self image and low self-esteem in a world where social media shapes how people view each other.
In this new digital age, it is hard to distinguish authentic from artificial representations. When I was 11, I developed anorexia nervosa. Though I was already thin, I wanted to be skinny like the models that I saw on the magazine covers on the grocery store stands. Little did I know that those models probably also suffered from disorders, and that photoshop erased their flaws. I preferred being underweight to being healthy. No matter how little I ate or how thin I was, I always thought that I was too fat. I became obsessed with the number on the scale and would try to eat the least that I could without my parents urging me to take more. Fortunately, I stopped engaging in anorexic behaviors before middle school. However, my underlying mental habits did not change.
The images that had provoked my disorder in the first place were still a constant presence in my life. By age 15, I was in recovery from anorexia, but suffered from depression. While I used to only compare myself to models, the growth of social media meant I also compared myself to my friends and acquaintances. As I scrolled past endless photos of my flawless, thin classmates with hundreds of likes and affirming comments, I felt my jealousy spiral. I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. Body image insecurities and social media comparisons affect thousands of people — men, women, children, and adults — every day.
I am lucky — after a few months of my destructive social media habits, I came across a video that pointed out the illusory nature of social media; many Instagram posts only show off good things while people hide their flaws. I began going to therapy, and recovered from my depression. To address the problem of self-image and social media, we can all focus on what matters on the inside and not what is on the surface. As an effort to become healthy internally, I started a club at my school to promote clean eating and radiating beauty from within.
Someday, I hope to make this club a national organization to help teenagers and adults across the country. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation. Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one. Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family.
I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one.
However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself. At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances.
Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities. Despite the attack, I refused to give up. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities. Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past.
I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we competed with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again. When I got there, his older brother, Tom, came to the door and informed me that no one else was home. I felt a weight on my chest as I connected the dots; the terrifying picture rocked my safe little world. Those cuts on his arms had never been accidents. Colin had lied, very convincingly, many times. How could I have ignored the signs in front of me? Somehow, I managed to ask Tom whether I could see him, but he told me that visiting hours for non-family members were over for the day.
I would have to move on with my afternoon. Once my tears had subsided a little, I drove to the theater, trying to pull myself together and warm up to sing. How would I rehearse? I knew Colin would want me to push through, and something deep inside told me that music was the best way for me to process my grief. I needed to sing. I practiced the lyrics throughout my whole drive. The first few times, I broke down in sobs. By the time I reached the theater, however, the music had calmed me. While Colin would never be far from my mind, I had to focus on the task ahead: recording vocals and then producing the video trailer that would be shown to my high school classmates.
I fought to channel my worry into my recording. If my voice shook during the particularly heartfelt moments, it only added emotion and depth to my performance. In a floor-length black cape and purple dress, I swept regally down the steps to my director, who waited outside. Under a gloomy sky that threatened to turn stormy, I boldly strode across the street, tossed a dainty yellow bouquet, and flashed confident grins at all those staring. My grief lurched inside, but I felt powerful. Despite my sadness, I could still make art. To my own surprise, I successfully took back the day. I had felt pain, but I had not let it drown me — making music was a productive way to express my feelings than worrying. Since then, I have been learning to take better care of myself in difficult situations.
That day before rehearsal, I found myself in the most troubling circumstances of my life thus far, but they did not sink me because I refused to sink. When my aunt developed cancer several months later, I knew that resolution would not come quickly, but that I could rely on music to cope with the agony, even when it would be easier to fall apart. Thankfully, Colin recovered from his injuries and was home within days. As our eyes met and our voices joined in song, I knew that music would always be our greatest mechanism for transforming pain into strength. Flipping past dozens of colorful entries in my journal, I arrive at the final blank sheet. I press my pen lightly to the page, barely scratching its surface to create a series of loops stringing together into sentences.
Emotions spill out, and with their release, I feel lightness in my chest. The stream of thoughts slows as I reach the bottom of the page, and I gently close the cover of the worn book: another journal finished. I add the journal to the stack of eleven books on my nightstand. Struck by the bittersweet sensation of closing a chapter of my life, I grab the notebook at the bottom of the pile to reminisce. At the age of five, I tore through novels about the solar system, experimented with rockets built from plastic straws, and rented Space Shuttle films from Blockbuster to satisfy my curiosities. While I chased down answers to questions as limitless as the universe, I fell in love with learning. Eight journals later, the same relentless curiosity brought me to an airplane descending on San Francisco Bay.
I reach for the charcoal notepad near the top of the pile and open to the first page: my flight to the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes. While I was excited to explore bioengineering, anxiety twisted in my stomach as I imagined my destination, unsure of whether I could overcome my shyness and connect with others. With each new conversation, the sweat on my palms became less noticeable, and I met students from 23 different countries. Many of the moments where I challenged myself socially revolved around the third story deck of the Jerry house. A strange medley of English, Arabic, and Mandarin filled the summer air as my friends and I gathered there every evening, and dialogues at sunset soon became moments of bliss. In our conversations about cultural differences, the possibility of an afterlife, and the plausibility of far-fetched conspiracy theories, I learned to voice my opinion.
As I was introduced to different viewpoints, these moments challenged my understanding of the world around me. In my final entries from California, I find excitement to learn from others and increased confidence, a tool that would later allow me to impact my community. Returning my gaze to the stack of journals, I stretch to take the floral-patterned book sitting on top. I flip through, eventually finding the beginnings of the organization I created during the outbreak of COVID Since then, Door-to-Door Deliveries has woven its way through my entries and into reality, allowing me to aid high-risk populations through free grocery delivery. With the confidence I gained the summer before, I took action when seeing others in need rather than letting my shyness hold me back.
I reached out to local churches and senior centers to spread word of our services and interacted with customers through our website and social media pages. To further expand our impact, we held two food drives, and I mustered the courage to ask for donations door-to-door. In a tower of canned donations, I saw the value of reaching out to help others and realized my own potential to impact the world around me. I delicately close the journal in my hands, smiling softly as the memories reappear, one after another. Reaching under my bed, I pull out a fresh notebook and open to its first sheet. All of these essays went through several rounds of review to get to where they are.
When I was very young my parents pressured me to succeed academically, play sports, make hobbies, etc.
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