KNIGHTDALE HIGH SCHOOL
OF COLLABORATIVE DESIGN
RESUMES & PERSONAL STATEMENTS
College admissions and scholarships often require a résumé and one or more essays. If you are a high school student with little to no work experience, writing your first résumé can seem like a daunting task. Similarly, while most students have had to write essays for class assignments, the idea of a personal statement is often very mystical and perplexing. Although there are many ways for a student’s personal essay to go awry, one of the biggest and most challenging tasks students face is picking the right topic. For whatever reason (fear, laziness, procrastination being among the most common), when students cannot decide on a topic, they often end up recycling information from their resumes into their essays. Do not be one of them.
Résumés
A résumé is simply a list of things you have done while in high school and is very standardized. When college admissions officers ask you for a resume, they essentially want a short summary, in list form of all the things you did in high school. Please note that resumes are usually no longer than one page.
Personal Statements
More likely than not, when admissions officers receive your application, they have already read thousands of others and are waiting to be enchanted by your application package. By this time, not only will they have read thousands of other essays, they may have also seen thousands of other resumes. Thus, if you don’t want to bore your reader to death, steer clear of the “list” essay that describes in slightly more detail something that you have already written about on your resume. According to Emily Farrel of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Most [five paragraph admissions essays] are so boring, you would need to sew your eyelids open. Why? These essays reflect all that success: When I became a leader through my role in the Spanish club. What football means to me. How marching band has enhanced my character. In other words, same experiences, same essays.“ Keep this in mind when thinking about your essay topic.
College Essay Guy
College Essay Guy is a site/blog that publishes sample admissions essays from real high school seniors. It also features Common App tips, writing exercises to get you started, advice on answering common prompts like the "Why us?" question, the "significance of an extracurricular activity" statement, and more.
STEPS FOR ESSAY WRITING
1. Decide what quality you want to reveal in your essay.
2. Ask parents, friends, siblings, counselors, etc. what they see as your best quality.
3. Get inspiration from your photo albums. Seeing 7-year-old you with mac and cheese all over your face might spark your memory about a quality in yourself you forgot about.
4. Write about something you do every day (a bus ride, for example) and how that has impacted you over time, instead of writing about that a single great experience you had one time.
5. Tell a story.
6. Start keeping a journal.
7. Get feedback from the people who know you best.
8. Proofread. Always proofread.