Which one of my interests should I focus my personal statement on? My potential college essay topics include but are not limited to:
Passion for writing (When I ask for a friend’s phone, their WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and/or Photos are no-no zones but for me it’s the ‘Notes’ app on my iPhone which is where I can be most likely found when creativity is pouring down on me. I love writing.)
Obsessions with quotes (I’ve spent a great deal of time scanning websites like Goodreads for quotes that give me goose bumps, you know those perfect combination of words that can speak to thousands of people. I thought of starting my essay with a quote but since I keep a collection of my favourite quotes, choosing one is going to be an arduous task. I enjoy reading poetic yet sophisticated articles online on any topic as long as they’re well written.)
My insatiable curiosity (I can use my passion for math as an example. I failed math through elementary and middle school because plugging in and solving for alphabets proved to be repetitive and boring especially since I had no idea why or how I got to the answer by doing that. Everything changed for me in high school, I fell in love with proofs and theorems, especially deriving the formulas and theorems. I could write a lot more about this but it would get pretty long.)
Most people have faced great difficulties, learnt from small (or big) failures, or had some sort of great adventure/learning experience in their lives that they would choose to write about but I don’t. College is most probably going to be my greatest escapade (I hope to make it one). My essay won’t be generic in any way and I would love to hear your ideas on how I could make it even more eccentric. A lot of people have written on the topics above, maybe you could advise me on something I should add to make mine stand out. I could also post a list of the quotes I can use in my essays if you’d like to help me pick out one. Thanks!
“I’ve spent a great deal of time scanning websites like Goodreads for quotes that give me goose bumps, you know those perfect combination of words that can speak to thousands of people.”
You could use this exact sentence in the intro of an essay about quotes. It definitely draws me in!
^^yes nice opener. But don’t make an essay full of quotes and not full of you!
I would give a try to each of your ideas and see which has legs. I really feel that writing is done through the process of putting pen to paper rather than just thinking of things randomly. Once you put ideas to paper you can see what generates from that and then shape your essay.
But since you mentioned Ivies in another thread, I’m not sure any of these ideas will “show” them why you belong there. Maybe re-work those ideas, after you get an idea what your target schools look for and like.
I was also debating between three essay topics. I ended up writing drafts for all three (err, two and a half), and picked the one I liked best. I wrote one at a college essay workshop, that took me an extra hour to write than everyone else there. (If it takes more than an hour to write the draft, scrap it immediately. It’s unsalvageable.) So the next morning I decided to write my other two essays before class that day, as I was really unhappy with how my original essay was done. One I scrapped almost immediately because I realized I had no idea where I was going with it. The other took me about half an hour, and I fell in love with it. I wanted to show it to everyone. My teacher also said it was significantly better than my original.
I’m a firm believer that only you know what essay says the most about you. Don’t take the advice of strangers off the internet who don’t know you. (The irony here. Haha.) I think all of your essay topics would work well as long as you crafted them well (and it looks like you’re set up to do so.)
