by Royce Radcliffe

Created on: May 14, 2008

A college application is something that should be treated as if ones life depended on it because in some ways that is exactly the case. Your entire future will be influenced by nothing more than your choice of college and the first step toward choosing one is being accepted by one. The key to getting in is all right there in your personal college application. Luckily there is a tried and true method of differentiating yourself from the rest of the applicants-the personal essay.

It can be tedious to look over many students' answers to the same questions over and over. After awhile surely any on handling admissions is sure to see them start to blur together. Listing activities, awards won, GPA... including letters of recommendation... these things can all help you stand out from the rest of them but nothing more so than including a personal essay.

The most important thing to do is identify your theme before starting. You might want to tell a bit about your personal history, identify your major goals in life or perhaps focus solely on how you fit into what the college is looking for. This theme will be what keeps your essay consistent and seamless.

Now, there are some colleges that have specific essays. You should almost be thankful for this because it saves you the effort of even having to pick a theme. With a specified essay topic you should research the answer thoroughly and make sure to follow technical guidelines such as word count. However many college applications desire open ended personal essays.

Do not just confine yourself to an essay about your own life. Many colleges respect students who are forward thinking enough to want to write their essay on social issues. If you want to make it more immediately relevant you can choose to write your essay on problems facing the college campus you are applying to or perhaps a problem facing college campuses in general.

You might also want to write about the influences that have shaped who you are today. Your family,heroes, political figures, circumstances... whatever has influenced you the most. This is an indirect way of letting the admission committee know more about who you are as a person.

Or you could take the direct route and talk about your own accomplishments. You can talk about times when your leaderships ability or honesty or some other worthwhile quality has been tested and how you responded. Make sure to focus above all on how the experience accelerated your development in some area of your life.

You can also write about the future. Everyone has goals and people are usually to some extent even defined by them. Treat your goals in this essay as an extension of your personality.Talk about childhood ambitions and the events and attitude changes that molded your dreams into their current incarnation.

These tips ought to help get you started. Writing a personal essay for such an important application can be intimidating but at the same time this is what life is all about. We are presented with obstacles and it is up to us to overcome them. Writing high quality, heartfelt essay is one of ways in which you can influence the admissions committee as if you were there yourself.

(If you would like what is called the "Common Application" that is accepted by over 240 colleges and includes your choice of the six most common essay topics please go to: www.commonapp.org )

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