How to Write a Personal Essay on a Research Project
by Michelle P.
From our past blog posts, many students would be aware of the importance of summer research or other research project experiences during the school year.
Not only is research a good way to demonstrate a specific academic interest for colleges, it also helps students deepen their enthusiasm and exploration for later career directions.
But whether your research project centers around analyzing data on native bumblebee populations or creating an app with healthcare applications, how should a student go about writing a personal essay about their research project for a summer program or college applications?
How much information can you share on their research project, so that an admissions reader can understand what it is about? How can a student write about their research while also talking about its influence on themselves?
1.What was a problem you were trying to solve or understand?
Can you sum up what your research is about in 1 or 2 sentences?
This will help your readers clearly understand why your research would be important, or interesting, or beneficial. If you feel stuck on this, take a look at a few news headlines on scientific discoveries, or on announcements from a college department page related to your area of research.
2.What were some difficulties or challenges you faced in the project? The more specific, the better.
It would be rare for a research project to run 100% smoothly.
What were some areas where you struggled? Or what were some parts of research that did not go as expected? Did you have to end up adapting certain parts of research, or getting advice from more experienced mentors?
Or maybe you and your team members clashed on a new direction to take a research project in after some unforeseeable variables affected a piece of code, or some petri dish samples.
3.Something new you learned about yourself or an area where you grew?
Regardless of the topic of your research, one of the most important parts of your personal essay would be to drawing connections between your research experience and any values you learned.
In other words, why was your research project meaningful to you personally? Was there something new about leadership, or intellectual humility, or society that you felt you understood as a result of your experience in research?
Your personal essay on a research project will want to highlight not just why your research is important to the world at large, but why and how it impacted you.