College Essays

College Personal Essays and Supplemental Essays

If you’re applying to college, you’ll need to write two types of essays: personal essays and supplemental essays.

The prompts for the personal essay may seem easier at first, because they simply ask you to reflect on some aspect of your life experience. But beware! It’s extremely challenging to write an effective personal essay for college. It takes patience, humility, and maturity — not to mention a lot of soul-searching. Furthermore, with only a few exceptions, every school you apply to will read your personal essay. That’s why we always begin with it when we provide college essay assistance to new students. Our approach to the personal essay is unique, and it’s a critical component of the college essay review service we provide. You can read Our Philosophy here to see how we’re significantly different from other college admission essay editing services.

Once you have a college personal essay you’re proud of, your college supplemental essays will flow more naturally. This is because 1) you’re already in the groove of writing, 2) you now have a good relationship with your writing mentor, and 3) you’re ready to respond clearly and confidently to more direct questions. In other words, you’re ready to build on the college essay prep you’ve already received.

Each school adopts a different approach to the supplemental essay, and the prompts range from generic (“Why do you want to attend our school?” “How will your experiences help us shape and grow our diverse community?”) to quirky (“If you could choose to be raised by robots, dinosaurs, or aliens, who would you pick?”). 

We have a whole range of tips for these supplemental prompts. For the “why us” prompt, we’ll always encourage you to to spend considerable time on the school’s website and come up with a specific plan to take advantage of its offerings. For the “diversity” prompt, we’ll push you to come up with a specific argument about how your background and experience, broadly defined, will allow you to contribute to the culture of the school.

But this is secondary to the deeper skills you’ll be developing:

-Thinking before you write.

-Engaging in a lot of back-and forth with your writing mentor.

-Coming up with a response that showcases your specific background and interests.

-Having the confidence to respond clearly on the page.

The essays (both personal and supplemental) can’t be “hacked.” No college essay editing service can tell you what you should or shouldn’t say to be accepted at a particular school. But you can learn critical skills that distinguish you from other applicants and that give you the edge in the admissions process.