The Common Application Personal Statement is a story about you (at most, 650 words). In order to tell that story you must answer a prompt. An essay prompt is simply a question the college asks you. The Common Application has 7 prompts, you choose one to respond to.
These are the directions from the Common Application:
The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don’t feel obligated to do so. (The application won’t accept a response shorter than 250 words.)
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
The key word in this prompt is “meaningful.” To answer this prompt effectively, consider why your background, identity, interest, or talent is significant to you. What does your talent illustrate about you? What have you learned about yourself because of your background? The college essay is all about reflection. What do you want readers to know about you after reading your essay? Why does it matter to you? They have no idea how you have changed and why you might be a good fit for their school. You can share these reflections in your essay. You could respond to this prompt by sharing insight gained from any background, identity, interest, or talent – a significant conversation, or a moment when you realized something important about yourself – anything that truly and vividly demonstrates who you are and answers the prompt in a thoughtful manner. Your experience does not have to be particularly impressive; you could write about how you developed compassion for older people while making meatballs with your grandma, or how you became more confident after navigating a car on an icy highway. The idea is to illustrates something meaningful. Choose a single moment or idea and explore it in detail. This prompt is particularly good if your background is integral to who you are. A possible storyline could center around personal growth, life-changing experiences, cultural roots, upbringing, chance encounters, and unexpected friendships.
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Prompt #2 is more specific than #1. In this case, the key sentence is at the end of this prompt: “How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” The readers will not judge you because you had a setback or failed at something. Everyone faces obstacles. The intent of the prompt is to help you reflect on how you deal with unexpected complications and disappointments; that insight can be incredibly revealing. Answering this prompt requires you to think more broadly about challenges and setbacks, reflect on the experience and demonstrate how you grew or changed as a result. It’s best to focus on the solution, not the problem. Keep the story positive. What do you want readers to know about you? Have you faced a challenge, setback, or failure that shows you are resilient, or demonstrates that you learned to be a leader? Are you the kind of person who can turn every difficult experience into something positive? If this sounds like you, this may be a good prompt to choose. This question is ideal for a strong failure story that, when told, can highlight key strengths in your character or lessons learned that have helped your self-efficacy and made you stronger. Aim to showcase humility, determination, resilience, maturity, and growth. A possible storyline might include a transition, struggle, failure, challenge, setback, or hardship.
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Prompt #3 also asks for reflection. It is one of the most specific prompts, and requires you to share how you think in a deeper way than some of the other prompts. In this case, the central story should showcase a time when you challenged a belief or idea. Maybe you raised your hand in class at your religious school and said you did not believe in God. Why did you do that? What happened? What did you learn about yourself? Perhaps you challenged a family rule or a school dress code. Did you challenge something you had always believed in, or question something you had long felt uncomfortable with? When has your opinion been unpopular? Why do you stand up for what you believe in? What is so important to you that you feel the need to challenge authority? Why? What inspires you to take action? During high school, you are constantly asked to look toward the future: Where are you going? What do you want to do with your life? Where will you attend college? What career will you pursue? Your college application essay offers an opportunity to look back, and this prompt is a prime example. If you are a deep thinker who asks a lot of questions, loves to play the devil’s advocate, challenges authority, or questions religious and other dogma, this might be a good prompt for you. This prompt is looking for an exceptionally challenging accomplishment that shaped you. It asks you to describe the thinking behind your actions. It wants to understand how your mind works. How did you get to the impressive or desired outcome? Speak passionately about beliefs and ideologies. This is a good choice if you are opinionated - just be careful not to go overboard. A good way to showcase your persuasive skills and passions, and also show that you can think critically and are open-minded. Possible storylines could center around standing up for something you believe in, a time when you pushed back against authority and societal injustices.
Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
Prompt #4 is more complex than some of the others. On the surface, it seems to be asking about a time you felt gratitude. But it’s not quite so simple. This prompt is both reflective and very specific. The key words are: reflect, surprising, gratitude, affected, and motivated. This prompt invites you to reflect on someone else’s kindness, but the story you tell should not be primarily about the other person’s act. It should be about how this experience affected you. What changed for you, or what did you do differently as a result? And the prompt doesn’t ask you to share just any act of kindness. Readers want to know about something someone did for you that made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. Maybe the other person surprised you with their kindness, or maybe you were surprised that you felt so grateful or happy. Or maybe the surprise came through in some other way. If you can identify a specific story that focuses on you, showcases a characteristic or trait that demonstrates who you are, fits these criteria, and also explains how your gratitude affected or motivated you to do something, this prompt might be for you. This prompt is looking for a story of kindness and gratitude. This response should be about something positive and heartfelt in your life. Specifically, the positive influence another person had on your life. A possible storyline could center around gratitude, joy, a life-changing experience, inspiration, paying it forward, an action that caused you to change your mindset or something that inspired you to take action and show kindness toward others.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
Prompt #5 is more specific, but still leaves room for reflection and interpretation. This prompt asks you to discuss something you accomplished, an experience, or something that sparked growth and understanding. Remember, you do not have to show that you mastered something challenging to answer this prompt effectively. Rather, you are being asked to demonstrate how you have grown from your accomplishment, personal growth or insight. What do you know or understand now that you didn’t know before? Colleges want to know about you, not the experience. What did you learn from your accomplishment, event, or realization? Why was it significant? What do you want readers to know about you? Think traits and characteristics, not accomplishments, not events, and not realizations. The best answer will illustrate the traits and characteristics you want to share with colleges, show insight into your character, and answer the prompt. This prompt is well-suited for a rite of passage into adulthood where you are accepting responsibility, limitations, and joys of being human. It’s best to focus on a specific event and how it impacted you and why it initiated a period of maturation. It is OK to not have all the answers, but should end with that you have more to learn and explore. Stay humble! Possible storylines include understanding others, learning to see the world in a new way, a “eureka” moment that changed your life, and elements of growth, transformation, and understanding.
Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
The key word in prompt #6 is “engaging.” This prompt asks about your intellectual curiosity. What motivates you? How and where do you get information? What do you do with it? Why? The college essay is as much a thinking task as it is a writing task; readers want to know how you think in this and any prompt. What gets you excited? What energizes you? What makes you tick? Think about who you are. Maybe you care about social justice. Perhaps you’re captivated by humor or technology. Is it football? Do you get lost in a good book? A family dinner discussion about world events? Do you scream at the TV during a political debate? How do you learn? The Internet? Your favorite teacher? Try asking yourself questions like these: Why is this topic, idea, or concept so engaging? How does it make me feel? Who do I talk to about these ideas? Where do I go to research new concepts? How resourceful are you when your curiosity is piqued to the fullest? The answer to this prompt should also reveal something to admissions about the breadth or depth of your interests. You can explore the big-picture concept overall or share an example of that concept in action. Whether you collected clothes and toiletries for a local family who lost their home in a fire or attracted ten thousand followers by tweeting a daily joke, the real story will come to life if you can explain why you did it. This is a good prompt if you are not usually someone who likes to talk about yourself, but you must be willing to talk about your feelings a bit or this can become too technical and not share who you are with the admissions team. Focus on your pursuit of knowledge, desire to challenge yourself, and the impact on you and your future goals. Potential storylines: others who share your passion, your favorite obsession, how you grew and matured, or reveal something to admissions about the breadth or depth of your interests. Choose a topic that you’re passionate about and have genuine knowledge.
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
The key word in this prompt #7 is “choice.” And while this prompt appears to be different from the others, the purpose is the same. Yes, applicants can submit any essay they want, but as the overall instructions clearly state, even an A+ paper must still illustrate something meaningful about you and show reflection. Suppose you want to submit a critical analysis you wrote for Honors English about a character in Jayne Eyre. Could it work? Maybe. Ask yourself what the essay demonstrates about you. Do you yearn for more than what traditional society allows, like Jane? Does the paper demonstrate how the book propelled you toward political activism? Does it show how the book changed you? After admissions officers read the paper, will they learn something new about you? If not, it won’t work as a college essay, no matter how well-written. Write about yourself–about what you love, where you come from, what you aspire to, how you spend your time, what bugs you, what inspires you. In any case, consider what you want admissions to know about you that can round out your application package. Remember, the college essay is about reflection. If you choose this prompt, be sure to tell a focused story that shows insight into your character that colleges wouldn’t know about you from the rest of the application. This is a last-resort prompt. Use it if you have an excellent essay written already that offers a great chance for admissions officers to understand what motivates you and why but does not answer one of the other prompts OR it’s a good chance to use a special story that didn’t fit elsewhere. Focus on a couple of specific moments in your life, personal growth, and takeaways.
Do not worry about picking a prompt just yet!
Watch the video.
Go to your CounselMore Essay Folder (in FILES tab) and complete doc Step 1: Understanding the Prompt.
Then continue to Step 2.