Common Application: Personal Statement
Please write an essay (250 words minimum 500 words maximum) on a topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below. This personal essay helps us to become acquainted with you as a person and student, apart from courses, grades, test scores, and other objective data. It will also demonstrate your ability to organize your thoughts and express yourself.
1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
6. Topic of your choice.

588-word version
Although I had severely protested to my mother’s suggestion of graduating early, with reaffirmed confidence from my memories of Rebecca and the realization of my selfishness in light of my mother’s sacrifice for me and my brother, I could eventually grow out of my naiveté...

698-word version
Although I had severely protested to my mother’s suggestion of graduating early, with reaffirmed confidence from my memories of Rebecca and the realization of my selfishness in light of my mother’s sacrifice for me and my brother, I could eventually grow out of my naiveté...