Choosing Essay Values that Set You Apart
by Sarah M.
When it comes to showing your values in college essays, it can be easy to fall into the realm of cliché. There are a few key values that most, if not all successful applicants definitely have and often write about: discipline, focus, adaptability, independence. These are of course important values to have, but when it comes to setting yourself apart in essay, they’re not the best to write about. So, how to do you showcase some of these excellent qualities while also demonstrating more of your own unique quirks?
One way to approach this is to sneak around the issue. In other words, you can write an essay that does very much demonstrate values like hard work, but frames the story with more interesting and personalized narratives and details.
- One student wrote a first draft of their common app personal statement about his rather amazing accomplishments in ice hockey: the moral of the story was discipline, even in the face of difficulty and discomfort.As we revised this draft, we worked on pulling out unique details in this admittedly boring essay. What had initially attracted him to ice hockey in the first place? What inspired him to keep going past injuries and obstacles, to attain such distinction? We brought in anecdotes from his family, in order to show that it was in fact his father’s chronic illness that provided some of his motivation. He pursued sports because he wanted to take full advantage of his ability to be strong and healthy, and so the values we ultimately focused on his this piece were self-love and loyalty. This gave the story a completely personal flavor, while still accomplishing his original goal of demonstrating his work ethic.
- Another student wrote a first draft about independence: she had a lot of excellent research experience, and she wanted to show how she had taken initiative to learn and develop these skills on her own. Much like the first example, the early drafts of the essay showed a very impressive person in a very generic way.As we revised, we ended up focusing on her childhood love of “Choose your own adventure” books. She was able to write an essay that—again—did establish all her research credentials and her incredible initiative, but did so through a funny and endearing story about how she spent much of her leisure running scenarios and dealing with different outcomes in imaginative childhood books. The secondary values she chose to bring out were adventure, humor, and flexibility.
So, as you approach your personal statement, do consider the large and central values that you want to show, but also consider how you will make this story interesting and personal. In order to do that, it can be very effective to choose a set of “secondary” values that show something not just about your accomplishments, but about your own strange and fascinating personality.