The College Essay

Storytelling is elemental to our human experience.

Like College Signing Day, prom, or graduation, writing the personal statement is an annual rite of passage for high school students. The writing process pushes students into the liminal stage between high school and college, which is often a frightening step for most teenagers who find comfort in the K-12 bubble. The personal statement requires introspection, retrospection, and futurespection as well as a rich mastery of personal narrative elements, such as purpose, story, and compositional elements including narrative form and structure, pacing, voice, authorial moves, and syntax. Our subservience to high-stakes tests, however, leaves students woefully under-equipped to craft creative nonfiction texts. Therefore, the collegiate expectation to submit an artful personal statement often serves as intellectual gatekeeping for our students. 

This unit is designed to engage students as emerging writers who write with purpose, voice, and passion. Opening lessons engage students in self-reflection around their core values, their experiences, their identities, and their voices. To get students thinking theoretically about the objectives of a personal statement, we will examine a few personal statements. In conjunction with our personal narrative bingo cards, students will examine masterful exemplars, essays that worked from Johns Hopkins, and samples from John Jay students in order to unpack effective compositional moves. These exemplars will also anchor focused dives into essential compositional moves such as: the single story tells a larger story, every writer’s choice serves a function, details show rather than tell, strong narrative arc, opening magnetizes reader, writer’s voice echoes in ears. Rounds of informal writing, holistic feedback, and focused workshopping will move students from writer’s paralysis to carving out their story to revising their personal statement to confidently celebrating our individual and communal truths.

 No longer will the personal statement be an obstacle to college admission but will function as a portal into mindful living, purposeful writing, and communal loving.