After successfully completing this week's Learning Module, you should be able to:

• Know what a narrative is and the role personal statements play in scholarship and college applications

• Understand the key features and terminology for narrative writing

• Review requirements and evaluate responses for the information requested in the Common Application Transfer Application and the Jack Kent Cooke Transfer Scholarship

• Read best practices for successful personal statements 

• Review the Essay #1 assignment sheet and begin planning your own personal statement that uses a narrative and incorporates information requested in either the Common Application Transfer Application or the Jack Kent Cooke Transfer Scholarship

This week you'll begin the first formal essay assignment. That essay will focus on your identity, though in a slightly indirect way. You'll write a personal statement that uses a story from your life and covers the information required for either the Jack Kent Cooke Transfer Scholarship application or the Common Application for college admission. This kind of writing is both practical since you could use your statement to apply for scholarships or college admission (you're not required to apply, of course) and useful for our course since it gives me a chance to focus on sentence-level issues and grammar rather than on formal argument and evidence.  

In a personal statement you're often responsible for helping readers get to know you, helping them see that you're an ideal candidate, and for providing all additional information requested. Along the way you have to work hard to provide enough details so readers aren't confused in your story, offer a main point that communicates something important, and usually emphasize conflict, challenge, or struggle to keep things interesting. Keep in mind, because this kind of writing focuses on a narrative (a.k.a. story) from your life, you should expect to use the pronoun "I" and will not use outside sources. 

By the end of this week you should be familiar with the assignment, have looked at the assignment sheet and some samples, decided on a story you want to tell, and made a plan to complete your first draft. Next week we'll begin by reviewing the scholarship and transfer applications in more detail and talk about the storytelling techniques that will ensure you have a successful essay. 

Note: You are not required to submit a real scholarship or transfer application for this assignment. We'll use that as our motivation and subject, and the essay you write for our class would work as a personal statement when you need one; however, it's entirely up to you whether you use the essay when you apply somewhere in the future.

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You can see a video walkthrough of this week's assignments and where to submit them here.

What Is a Narrative? 

A narrative is simply a story made up of connected events (e.g. I did this, then I did that, then I did something else, etc.). The word itself means to describe or tell something, but it is also related to the idea of a skill or craft with telling stories. This is important to keep in mind because narratives don't simply state the facts; rather, they try to tell what happened in an entertaining and engaging way that connects to readers individually. We see narratives like this all the time in books, movies, and all kinds of oral histories. On top of that, some of the same skills we use to make narratives engaging can help make our formal college essays later in the semester more interesting. 

To get started, it's helpful to point out that sometimes (though not always) narratives are arranged using a basic structure that looks like this:

Note that if you start in the middle of the action with the conflict upfront you have to remember to fill in the exposition gaps--the details about who, what, where, and when--as soon as you can so readers aren't confused. These are called essential details (more on that in a minute). 

Keep in mind, how you start your own story is always up to you and often depends on the story you tell. The key is to be sure you're making a deliberate decision about how you plan to get people listening and how you'll keep them from getting lost with missing details.

Key Features and Terminology for Narrative Writing

In addition to having one of these storytelling structures, narratives are also very focused on providing details that make the story clear and help it feel alive; they're also focused on managing conflict or tension in order to keep reader attention. 

Details

Narrative essays are all about detail. That's because you're sharing a story with someone who doesn't know you and because you want to make sure your story connects with their experience so it's relatable. We typically do this by focusing on two different kinds of detail.

Essential details are the place, location, time, and anything else that could make us feel lost without your help. When readers are wondering how old you are, or where your story takes place, or how long ago it happened, they're not as likely to focus on what you're saying.  

Vivid details are those that paint a picture and often make the narrative more entertaining (something you should always pay attention to when you write); they include things like how you felt, what the scene looked like, and what sounds you heard--especially dialogue. Of course, it's important to be careful: if you give too much detail (painting overly detailed visual scenes, quoting every word said, or trying to cover all five senses at every moment) you can overwhelm the reader, drag down the pace to an uncomfortable level, and distract from the information that you know is most important. 

The Role of Conflict in Narrative

Another thing to remember as you choose a story about your identity to tell is that the central part of any good narrative is conflict (just think of the ways reality television has become so popular). That's because conflict helps develop a reader's interest in your story as they want to hear how things work out, and it generally gets your reader's attention. Believe it or not, if you've worked hard to present yourself as a good and sympathetic character early in your narrative then readers will even become invested in seeing you succeed and overcome whatever conflict stands in your way. That's something we want to make sure we capitalize upon as we write.

Keep in mind, this conflict doesn't have to be big. It's really just a challenge, confrontation, tension or struggle you encountered. For this essay that might mean a time someone bullied you, said something they shouldn't have, or just didn't take you seriously because of who they thought you were. As you'll see in the sample essays, we often start in the introduction by setting things up (place, age, and any other essential details) and end the introduction by establishing our conflict. The thesis--which in a narrative is delayed and goes at the start of the conclusion (also called the moral or main point)--then shows some resolution to the conflict which helps readers feel there is at least a small amount of closure.

One final aspect of narratives to consider is that they are rarely problem-free stories of once-and-for-all victory. That is, a sophisticated narrative will try to be as honest as possible. It will try to make all of the struggle clear. It will value failures as much as it values triumphs. It will let you say that you're still working on things. Keep this in mind as we get started planning our essay. 

The bottom line: make sure the way you decide to answer the scholarship/application prompt has a story or several small related stories, make sure the story has a conflict or tension, and be sure you plan ahead for a moral/main point at the start of a conclusion. 

What Is a Personal Statement?

In simple terms, a personal statement is a short narrative essay typically written in response to a question or series of questions that are part of an application. That application could be for college admission, consideration for an internship or summer program, or for a scholarship. These applications are sometimes very specific and sometimes very vague, both of which can be frustrating in different ways. 

Another thing to remember is that there is no set expectation or formula for how a personal statement should be written. Instead, we use best practices (things that have worked in the past), a rhetorical consideration of our audience, and some basic criteria to be sure everything necessary has been provided. In addition, there is generally no widely accepted standard for length, and from application to application you might need anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages. Our assignment, you'll see, has tried to manage that by using real applications as our model so you can plan your work with less uncertainty.

Rhetorical Considerations

I mentioned that one thing that influences how we write a personal statement is something called rhetorical considerations; those generally ask us to think through the following questions:

•  What kind of text am I required to provide?

•  Who am I as the author?

•  Who is my audience?

•  What is my purpose?

•  What is the setting or context?

Knowing these things before you start can help make sure your writing is effective. So let's break them down as they apply to the personal statement you'll write for our Essay #1. 

Q: What kind of text am I required to provide?

A: You have two different options for this assignment, and each one has a different prompt you'll work to answer: Option 1) you can complete the Common Application for Transfer essay (see the "Personal Statement" section here or keep reading for an explanation), OR Option 2) you can complete the Jack Kent Cooke Transfer Scholarship Application essay (see page 16 here or keep reading for more details) . The first option asks you to write an essay under 650 words and loosely tie into seven (actually, six) different prompt options. The second option should be around 500 words (the official length isn't very clear) but has a clearer focus with a simple prompt.

For the document type it's clear they're looking for a personal statement. That's why we're not going to give them a research-based argument or a simple resume or a personal letter. If I was writing a personal statement for the first time and I wasn't taking a class or working with someone more experienced, I'd start by doing some research to see how personal statements should look and what approach they take (you can also see our samples below). If you use Google to find other advice or samples, just be sure you understand that there's more than one kind of personal statement for different kinds of applications; the material here, and your professor's answers to any questions, will be focused on our specific assignment. 

For the page format, neither application asks you to use MLA or APA , so for an actual application I'd suggest planning to copy/paste content where asked; however, for our class I'll ask you to use MLA page format because your statement is going to be submitted as Essay #1 for a grade. Another consideration is how you'll turn the work in. Both applications (if you were to submit your work from our class to apply) ask you to paste the content into an online application; however, for our class I'll ask you to submit a Word compatible file (i.e. download as .docx from Google Docs or Word). One way to think of this is that you'd typically write the personal statement in advance (using a spelling/grammar check like Grammarly) and paste it into the system even if you weren't doing it for this class. 

Q: Who am I as the author?

A: Well, you're a student. You're interested in a scholarship or being accepted to a four-year transfer college. You've got a life story, and you've got an important lived identity. You probably know your goals, and you might have some idea what could stand in your way. Your job as you write a personal statement is to show all that to readers. Just keep in mind, it's equally as important to give them the information they request in the prompt. 

Q: Who is my audience? 

A: It's most likely that your personal statement will be read by professors and administrators who serve on an admissions or scholarship decision committee. It is important in developing your personal statement to carefully consider this audience: What tone will they expect? Will they be uncomfortable if your story is too informal? Will they be tired of reading something they've seen ten million times? Will they be busy and in need of clear, simple writing?

These are hard questions to answer, and they rely on a bit of careful assumption on your part. The trick is to make sure you consider them carefully and be deliberate in your approach. 

Q: What is my purpose?

A: It's helpful to remember that you're not strictly showing or informing in this kind of writing; you're trying to persuade the reader to pick you. That's why we work so hard to show our best attributes and explain the parts that might not be great. But it also means we want to use the personal statement to fill gaps in what your audience might see in other parts of the application. For example, if you earned a low grade in a course that's in your ideal major you could use the story in your application essay to help explain what things might have caused you not to perform at your best. That makes a narrative or personal story really important; the rest of the material in your application covers the basic facts, but what they don't show, what the story focuses on communicating, is who you are as a person. 

It may also be helpful to think of the personal statement as your single opportunity to allow the application committee to hear your voice. Most of the time, committees are sorting through huge stacks of applications and essays, perhaps doing a quick initial sort to find the best applicants and then later reading some of the personal statements more thoroughly. Given that information, you will want your statement to quickly engage the readers and to clearly demonstrate what makes you a unique candidate apart from the rest.

Q: What is the setting or context?

A: This one is tough. Usually we think of setting as time and place. Time refers to things like the fact that this is 2024, that you might be _____ years old, and that your readers might be _____ years old. As the Purdue OWL explains, "Americans in the 1950s, overall, communicate differently than Americans in the 2000s. Not that they necessarily speak a different language, but these two groups of people have different assumptions about the world and how to communicate based on the era in which they live." Basically, it's important to think about what language choices are best at a specific time and are going to bridge this gap in expectations in order to not leave readers feeling out of place or alienate our readers.

Time is connected to how place influences your writing. That fact that most of us live in the Boston area and are sometimes writing for an audience someplace else in the United States might also affect what we can say without explanation (Will they know what The Common is? Will they understand how trash the T is? Will they know what the letters RCC stand for? ). But more than that, place also includes the idea of a scholarship or admissions application committee, one within a university. How you write your story has to reflect what members of that university community might expect of you as a potential student. 

Covering Requested Information

One of the biggest challenges for this assignment is to both tell a story and to provide the additional information being requested by an application. While it's still early in the process, you should plan ahead as you chose a story so that your narrative is a good vehicle for both. 

Looking at the Common Application essay prompts you'll see a few decent directions to start and would need to focus on using only one of the six possible prompts:

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Note, there's a seventh prompt that asks applicants to upload an essay from another class, but that won't work for our purposes (and you should not use a Common Application essay that you already might have written). It's also not advisable if you find yourself applying using Common Application in the future since you lose a lot of the exposure to your personality and identity colleges might gain if you told a story. 

With any of these six prompts, the key again is to think of a story from your life that will work to support how you answer the prompt. In fact, no matter what you pick you'll want to avoid just answering it head-on and make sure you use a personal story. 

Using the Jack Kent Cooke scholarship as your model, you'll need to incorporate as much of this as you can in the introduction, conclusion, or along the way as you tell your story: 

This statement should provide information not elicited elsewhere in the application, such as leadership roles, family, educational, philosophical, or other life experiences that have influenced your achievements and career decision. Also include professional and civic activities that you consider important. The narrative should be concise, emphasizing those areas most important to your intellectual development.

While this can seem like a lot, it's important to read the description closely, especially where it says "information not elicited elsewhere in the application"; that means you should not just be listing your accomplishments as they would appear in a resume or application questions. The rest are a few different options that might or might not connect to your experience. If you've got something, speak on it; if you don't, then tell a story that shows something positive about you as a student (e.g. that you don't give up, that you care about your community, etc.). 

We'll work through these a little more later, including how to parse each prompt to determine how many "asks" (i.e. pieces of requested information) each one makes (for example, #1 has one "ask" but #3 has three "asks") since you'll need to cover them all to be successful. For now, just make sure you understand what the two essay options you have are and how they're different. And you'll want to start thinking a little about a story you could tell as well as which one of the essay options makes the most sense.  

Best Practices for Successful Personal Statements

As I mentioned before, some things we want to keep in mind as we plan for the personal statement are best practices from a credible source. Here are a few things adapted from the Purdue OWL: 

Answer the Questions that Are Asked

Don't be tempted to use the same statement for all applications (even if you already wrote one for another class). It is important to answer each question being asked, and if slightly different answers are needed, you should write separate statements. In every case, be sure your answer fits the question being asked.

Tell a Story

Think in terms of showing or demonstrating through concrete experience. One of the worst things you can do is to bore the admissions committee. If your statement is fresh, lively, and different, you'll be putting yourself ahead of the pack. If you distinguish yourself through your story, you will make yourself memorable.

Be Specific

Don't, for example, state that you would make an excellent doctor unless you can back it up with specific reasons. Your desire to become a lawyer, engineer, or whatever should be logical, the result of specific experience that is described in your statement. Your application should emerge as the logical conclusion to your story.

Find an Angle

If you're like a lot of people, your life story sometimes lacks drama, so figuring out a way to make it interesting becomes the big challenge. Finding an angle or a "hook" is vital. 

[Note, even boring stories can be told in an interesting way. One approach is to focus on conflict, which is some kind of struggle or challenge that held you back. For this assignment, that's the "angle" I'd suggest focusing on]

Concentrate on Your Opening Paragraph

The lead or opening paragraph is generally the most important. It is here that you grab the reader's attention or lose it. This paragraph becomes the framework for the rest of the statement.

Don't Include Some Subjects

There are certain things best left out of personal statements. Don't mention potentially controversial subjects (for example, controversial religious or political issues). Even though those things might be relevant to your story or even a part of your identity, it's generally not worth the risk to include them. 

Write Well and Correctly

Be meticulous. Type and proofread your essay very carefully. Many admissions officers say that good writing skills and command of correct use of language are important to them as they read these statements. Express yourself clearly and concisely. Adhere to stated word limits.

Avoid Clichés

Stay away from often-repeated or tired statements. Even though they're familiar, they don't show that you have original ideas or creativity in your expression. As you think about your story, take a second to review this additional explanation about clichés. 

Begin Planning Your Own Personal Statement

While I don't need you to write a full draft of your narrative quite yet, I do want you to do some work to think about a story you want to tell. Don't worry! This will be quick and painless, and it'll give your professor a chance to help you develop some confidence that you're on the right track. 

For the next assignment in this week's Learning Module (explained below) I'll need you to send me a quick email (see tips on writing emails here) describing the story or stories that you want to tell for the Essay #1 personal statement. Remember, the story will be about you, it'll show something good that you want a scholarship or admissions committee to see (maybe that you're passionate about your family, or that you can overcome challenges, or that you've got a strong personal motivation to achieve your goals), and it should help us see an initial conflict to keep people interested. You should plan to tell me 1) the thing you're trying to show the committee about yourself from the story, 2) what personal story or stories you plan to tell, and 3) the conflict or central challenge in the story that you see and something positive about you when you overcame it. 

For example, if I were doing this assignment I'd submit the following as my email: 

I want to show the committee how I persist to achieve my goals even when things are hard, and I want to show how things seemed harder since I was the first in my family to go to college. I'd start by talking about how I once took a chemistry class in my first year of college that was so hard my midterm grade was a D even though I had studied for hours every night after I finished work at 10:00 pm and in every free minute I could manage before every exam. I was ready to just take the D (or worse) and basically give up (which would bomb my GPA and make me less likely to graduate), but someone in the class who had more experience with college told me to go talk to the professor (something I didn't even know I could do since my only experience with professors was in movies). I finally went to talk to the professor even though I was embarrassed and she connected me with a study group and offered extra help. My grades eventually improved and I finished with an A-, which was so surprising and helped my confidence for other hard classes later. More importantly, it showed me the value of being responsible for my own learning as a first generation college student and reaching out for help even when it's hard to do. 

That's it. If you're not sure what you want to write about just send me a potential idea, something like telling a story about how you started college, since you're not locking yourself into anything at this point. If you can't think of anything at all you should email or text your professor right away so we can work together to find something before the due date. If you've got more than one story and aren't sure which one you want to use, send me both and I'll let you know if one stands out over the other.

Key Takeaways

• Essay #1 is a personal statement that fits either the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship Application guidelines OR the Common Application for Transfer; it uses a narrative (i.e. a personal story) to show the committee something positive about yourself and works to include any other requested information.

• Narratives focus on storytelling and must include essential details (the who, what, where, when so we're not confused), vivid details (what you saw, smelled, heard, and felt so we connect to your story), and conflict (some struggle or challenge) so readers get interested.

• The narrative at the center of your personal statement can either follow an organization with setup, rising action, and resolution or it can start right in the middle of the conflict and fill in the blanks later.  

• Because there are no formal rules or standards for personal statements, we have to use best practices from successful examples, some rhetorical considerations (like audience and purpose) to be sure we're giving readers what they need, and criteria later to be sure we've done everything we need to do. 

Reading to Review

Essay #1 Assignment Sheet

Essay #1 Scoring Rubric

For examples of successful college admissions essays:

"'When Normal Life Stopped’: College Essays Reflect a Turbulent Year" excerpts from The New York Times

"From the Heart to Higher Education: The 2021 College Essays on Money" full essays from The New York Times

For Common Application essays:

"Essays that Worked" from Johns Hopkins University (acceptance rate = 12.8%)

"Essays that Worked" from Tufts University (acceptance rate: 14.6%)

"Essays that Worked!" from Connecticut College (Acceptance rate: 35.1%)

Note, there are not very many (if any) verified successful samples for the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship essay; if you decided to follow a model you find online make sure you check that the source is a credible and reliable place for information. Keep in mind, the essay style and approach is not different than the Common Application, so those samples are still relevant. 

Process Portfolios Assignment Sheet

"When I Applied to College I Didn't Want to 'Sell My Pain'" by Elijah Megginson writing in The New York Times

"Application Essays" from the University of North Carolina

Read more about the Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship

Read more about the Common Application for Transfer and see what schools accept Common App