When I worked at Reed, my colleagues and I had a saying that we loved to share with applicants summing up the best personal statements: “Neither analytical nor creative, the personal essay is a combination of both that reveals who the student is.”
As stated by Fitzpatrick and Constantini, the personal essay can’t be entirely creative, but it also can’t rely on the DBQ-style that earns you a five on the AP US History exam, either. Further, the writer has to set aside the immense pressure they’re putting on themselves to write the “perfect” essay, which they imagine is going to win over the hearts and minds of their application reader. There’s truly no “one” thing that admissions officers are looking for; in fact, the more expected, formal, or trite a topic is, the likelier the essay is to fail.
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