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How to Write About Yourself

Last Updated: July 31, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Lucy Yeh . Lucy Yeh is a Human Resources Director, Recruiter, and Certified Life Coach (CLC) with over 20 years of experience. With a training background with Coaching for Life and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at InsightLA, Lucy has worked with professionals of all levels to improve the quality of their careers, personal/professional relationships, self marketing, and life balance. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 5,657,201 times.

Whether you're writing an essay about yourself for a scholarship, a self-introduction, or a personal bio for a job application, coming up with the right words to capture what makes you unique can feel challenging. Fortunately, there are tips and tricks that can make writing about yourself a breeze. Want some help getting across just how impressive, interesting, and skilled you really are? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about putting yourself into words effectively, complete with examples.

write essay on yourself

Writing of the Autobiographical Nature

Step 1 Introduce yourself...

  • Who are you?
  • What is your background?
  • What are your interests?
  • What are your talents?
  • What are your achievements?
  • What challenges have you faced?

Step 2 Start with a...

  • What is your most interesting or unique quality? What word(s) describes you the best? Choose that topic.

Step 4 Use a few good details.

  • Bad: I like sports.
  • Ok: I'm a fan of basketball, football, tennis, and soccer.
  • Good: My favorite sport is football, both to watch and to play.
  • Better: When I was growing up, I would watch Big Ten football with my dad and brothers every Saturday, before we'd go outside and toss the football around. I've loved it ever since.

Step 5 Be humble...

  • Braggy: I'm the best and most dynamic worker at my company right now, so you should want to hire me for my talents.
  • Humble: I was lucky enough to be awarded three employee of the month awards at my current job. Turns out it was a company record.

Writing Personal Essays for School

Step 1 Choose a memorable story to tell.

  • Common themes or prompts for autobiographical essays include overcoming obstacles, great successes or spectacular failures, and what you learned about yourself.

Step 2 Focus on a single theme or purpose.

  • Depending on the assignment, you may need to connect a personal anecdote to a reading or an idea from class. Start brainstorming topics that are connected to that idea, to give yourself a variety of options to choose from.

Step 3 Write about complex topics, not cliches.

  • Common autobiographical essay cliches include sports stories, mission trips, and dead grandmothers. While these can all make for excellent essays if done well, it is difficult to stand out when telling the story of how your lacrosse team lost a big game, then practiced hard, then won. It has been written before.

Step 4 Limit the timeline...

  • If you want to tell the story of your nasty break-up, start with the break-up, do not start with the star-crossed way you met. You have got to get immediately to the tension in the story.

Step 5 Use vivid details.

  • When you have an idea of your topic, start writing a "memory list" of specific things that you remember about the event. What was the weather like? What did it smell like? What did your mother say to you?
  • Your opening paragraph will set the tone for the rest of the essay. Rather than telling the dull biographical details (your name, your place of birth, your favorite food), find a way to express the essence of the story you are going to tell and the themes you are going to explore in your essay.

Step 6 Start in the...

Writing a Cover Letter for an Application

Step 1 Find the prompt.

  • Outline your qualifications and highlight your talents in a cover letter.
  • Write about who you are.
  • In a cover letter, describe how your education and experience qualifies you for this position.
  • Explain how this opportunity will benefit your career goals.

Step 2 Match the style to the purpose.

  • When in doubt, keep it brief and serious. If you are unsure whether or not telling an amusing anecdote about your friend's bachelor party is appropriate in a cover letter, it is probably best to leave it out.

Step 3 Describe why you are writing in the first paragraph.

  • "I'm writing to apply for the entry-level position with Company Inc. advertised on your website. I think my experience and training makes me an ideal candidate for this position."
  • Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to include your name in the body of the letter: "My name is John Smith and I am applying...." Your name will be included in the signature , as well as the header of a cover letter, so there is no need to put it in the text itself.

Step 4 Structure the cover letter as cause and effect.

  • Who you are and where you come from.
  • Where you want to go.
  • How this opportunity would potentially help you get there.

Step 5 Detail your talents and skills specifically.

  • Be as specific as possible. It is alright to note that you are "A passionate leader in all walks of life" but it would be much better to write about an example of a time you lead in a surprising way.
  • Stay focused on skills and talents that connect specifically to the thing you are applying for. Extracurricular involvement, leadership roles, and other types of outstanding achievement may be important to you personally, but it may be totally extraneous. If you include something, ensure to connect it specifically to the goal of the cover letter.

Step 6 Describe your goals and ambitions.

  • Be as specific as possible. If you are writing a university cover letter, it is obvious that you have to have a degree to get a job as a doctor, but how did you come to choose this field? Why did you choose this school? What, specifically, do you want to take away from the experience?

Step 7 Explain how both parties will benefit from your selection.

  • Be careful about using a cover letter to critique a business. It is not the time to describe the suffering of a particular brand over the previous fiscal quarter, then promising that you will be able to turn it around with your ideas. That might not go over well if you are hired, and then you are unable to live up to the promise.

Step 8 Do not mistake...

  • Even if it is impressive, a high GPA or class ranking does not belong in a cover letter. Highlight it on your resume, but do not include it in two different places of the application.

Step 9 Keep it brief.

  • Mailing address
  • Telephone and/or fax number

Lucy Yeh

Expert Trick : Save time and effort by creating one generic format that you can use for many different job applications by tweaking the specific content for each one. Start with a general introductory paragraph , then a section or two fleshing out your resume and expertise as it relates to the job, and finish it off with a closing paragraph and a note of thanks.

Writing a Short Biography Note

Step 1 Write about yourself...

  • Pretend you are writing about someone else. Write your name and start describing that person like a character or a friend: "John Smith is the Executive Vice President of Company Inc..."

Step 2 Explain your position or title.

  • If you are a jack of all trades, say so. Do not be afraid to list "actor, musician, mother, motivational speaker, and professional rock climber" if they all apply equally.

Step 3 Briefly list your responsibilities or accomplishments.

  • It is common to list degrees that you have received. Pay particular attention to anything that ties into the work you are writing about. If you have special training, include it here.

Step 4 Include a bit of your personal life.

  • "John Smith is the Executive Vice President of Company Inc., in charge of marketing and overseas acquisitions. He received an MBA with distinction from Harvard and lives in Montauk with his cat Cheeto."
  • Do not overshare. It can seem funny to immediately start with "John Smith loves rafting and hates eating Cheetos. He's a total boss" and such bio notes can be appropriate for some venues, however be careful to avoid awkward oversharing. Telling everyone about your killer hangover might be best left for after work talk.

Step 5 Keep it brief.

  • Stephen King, who is one of the most successful and popular authors in recent history, has a bio note that just lists the name of his family members, his hometown, and his pets. Consider leaving out the self-congratulation entirely.

Community Q&A

wikiHow Staff Editor

  • Remember that you’re supposed to talk about yourself, it’s the main topic. Don’t talk about your friends or family, even though you may feel tempted to. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
  • If you are having a difficult time writing about yourself, search online for examples of personal writing, in order to get some ideas and inspiration. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
  • Don't think about how others feel about you. Everyone thinks from a different perspective. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0

write essay on yourself

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Write an Autobiography

  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/how-to-write-about-yourself
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
  • ↑ https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/narrowing-a-topic/
  • ↑ https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/essay-about-self-writing
  • ↑ https://writingcommons.org/article/using-first-person-in-an-academic-essay-when-is-it-okay/
  • ↑ https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/6-unconventional-ways-start-cover-letter/
  • ↑ https://english.washington.edu/writing-cover-letter
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/career-goal-statement-examples
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/resume-vs-cover-letter
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/whats-the-ideal-cover-letter-length
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/how-to-format-a-cover-letter-example
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/first-vs-third-person
  • ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-bio/

About This Article

Lucy Yeh

If you have to write an autobiographical description of yourself, write down a list of your talents, interests, and accomplishments. Use this list to help you choose one specific topic for your description, such as your academic achievements or your leadership qualities. Use specific, unique details to support your topic, such as being awarded an academic scholarship or the fact that you were president of the newspaper in high school. You can list bits of your personal life, but be careful not to overshare. If you want to write about yourself a cover letter or personal essay, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write an Essay About Yourself

write essay on yourself

Writing an essay about yourself is no easy feat — although you may know yourself better than anyone, it can be tough to get the perspective needed to write about yourself in essay form. Despite its challenges, writing essays about yourself is one of the most crucial skills in the college application process, and we have some key tricks to make it easier. Keep on reading to learn about some of our best techniques to write about yourself naturally!

  • Outline your experiences

Ask friends and family for input

  • Don’t be too humble…
  • Let your personality shine!

Try journaling

Read more: How to start a scholarship essay (with examples)

Outline your impactful experiences

Before you dig into prompts, try writing out a bullet-point list of meaningful experiences you’ve had. Underneath each bullet point, reflect on what they might demonstrate. Here’s an example:

  • Working as part of a team
  • Learning to balance school and work responsibilities
  • Honing communication skills
  • Developing writing skills
  • Fostering a passion for my school community
  • Learning to meet deadlines and balance responsibilities
  • Learning to balance school and volunteer responsibilities
  • Gaining an attention to detail

This is a little different than a typical resume — rather than focusing on your specific duties, try to focus on how the experience shaped your character. If you notice a lot of overlap between the experiences, that’s perfect! You can point out these recurring themes to make for an effective essay with a strong overarching point. Making lists like this early on in your writing stage can be helpful, and you may find yourself coming back to consult the list for many future essays.

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When writing about yourself, it is important to reflect on your strengths, and who is better to do that than a supportive team of family and friends?

Consulting family and friends is a great way to learn about strengths that you might not even know you had. Your friends choose to hang out with you for a reason, and they often notice your good qualities that you take for granted. Having your friends point these out can be useful for an essay, as well as a general pick-me-up!

And if you’re looking for a perfect anecdote to answer a prompt like “How have you demonstrated a commitment to your community ,” who better to remember your past acts of kindness than your parents? 

Also recommended: Top essay & writing scholarships

Is it okay to ask friends and family to read my essay and offer feedback?

Some students may be wondering, is it okay to ask for additional help from friends and family? And the short answer is: absolutely. Additional essay reviewers can offer valuable feedback as you write your essay. With this said, students should make sure that they are maintaining their own voice in the essay. Outside reviewers should not be rewriting the essay or having a heavy hand in changing the written voice.

Don’t miss:  How to respond to the Common App essay prompts

Don’t be too humble

There is a time and a place for humility. But don’t worry if you feel like your essay is verging on the braggadocios. These essays are an opportunity to showcase your best qualities, and you should not be worried about putting your best foot forward and telling the reader all the reasons why they should be impressed by you.

What makes these essays effective is that they both include your relevant experiences and demonstrate why they are so significant. You may feel as though you are making mountains out of molehills, but it’s important to emphasize the importance of your experiences. This is the main objective of writing about yourself.

Also recommended: How to write a 500 word essay

Let your personality come through

Most essays written about yourself will be written in first-person. This provides a perfect opportunity to add some flair to your writing. While your first priority is to include impactful examples and communicate your points effectively, it is also important to leave a lasting impression on the reader.

If you see an opportunity to show off your sense of humor or use a more personal tone, don’t be afraid to do it. As long as your remarks are appropriate, on-topic, and not too frequent, they can help put you ahead of the pack.

Recommended:  How does an admissions officer read your application and essays?

A great trick for becoming comfortable writing essays about yourself is to try keeping a journal. Journaling helps eliminate the pressure of writing an essay while helping you become comfortable writing about yourself in an informal setting. Spending 10 or 15 minutes every night writing about your day, or answering some informal prompts can help you to get more in touch with yourself and jog your memory about past events that could be useful for an essay. 

Don’t miss:  Scholarships360’s free scholarship search tool

Next steps for students

Now you’ve learned about the goals and techniques for writing an essay about yourself. Your next step should be to focus on making your writing effective and efficient. Make sure that your conclusion ties everything together impactfully . And once you’ve finished your draft, ask family members, friends, or college counselors to read over it and provide suggestions. Good luck, writers!

Related:  Overview of common scholarship essay prompts

Frequently asked questions about how to write an essay about yourself

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15 Tips for Writing a College Essay About Yourself

What’s covered:.

  • What is the Purpose of the College Essay?
  • How to Stand Out Without Showing Off
  • 15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself
  • Where to Get Free Feedback on Your Essay

Most students who apply to top-tier colleges have exceptional grades, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities. How do admissions officers decide which applicants to choose among all these stellar students? One way is on the strength of their college essay .

This personal statement, along with other qualitative factors like teacher recommendations, helps the admissions committee see who you really are—the person behind the transcript. So, it’s obviously important to write a great one.

What Is the Purpose of the College Essay? 

Your college essay helps you stand out in a pool of qualified candidates. If effective, it will also show the admissions committee more of your personality and allow them to get a sense of how you’ll fit in with and contribute to the student body and institution. Additionally, it will show the school that you can express yourself persuasively and clearly in writing, which is an important part of most careers, no matter where you end up. 

Typically, students must submit a personal statement (usually the Common App essay ) along with school-specific supplements. Some students are surprised to learn that essays typically count for around 25% of your entire application at the top 250 schools. That’s an enormous chunk, especially considering that, unlike your transcript and extracurriculars, it isn’t an assessment of your entire high school career.  

The purpose of the college essay is to paint a complete picture of yourself, showing admissions committees the person behind the grades and test scores. A strong college essay shows your unique experiences, personality, perspective, interests, and values—ultimately, what makes you unique. After all, people attend college, not their grades or test scores. The college essay also provides students with a considerable amount of agency in their application, empowering them to share their own stories.

How to Stand Out Without Showing Off 

It’s important to strike a balance between exploring your achievements and demonstrating humility. Your aim should be to focus on the meaning behind the experience and how it changed your outlook, not the accomplishment itself. 

Confidence without cockiness is the key here. Don’t simply catalog your achievements, there are other areas on your application to share them. Rather, mention your achievements when they’re critical to the story you’re telling. It’s helpful to think of achievements as compliments, not highlights, of your college essay.  

Take this essay excerpt , for example:

My parents’ separation allowed me the space to explore my own strengths and interests as each of them became individually busier. As early as middle school, I was riding the light rail train by myself, reading maps to get myself home, and applying to special academic programs without urging from my parents. Even as I took more initiatives on my own, my parents both continued to see me as somewhat immature. All of that changed three years ago, when I applied and was accepted to the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco. I would be studying Arabic and learning my way around the city of Marrakesh. Although I think my parents were a little surprised when I told them my news, the addition of a fully-funded scholarship convinced them to let me go. 

Instead of saying “ I received this scholarship and participated in this prestigious program, ” the author tells a story, demonstrating their growth and initiative through specific actions (riding the train alone, applying academic programs on her own, etc.)—effectively showing rather than telling.

15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself 

1. start early .

Leave yourself plenty of time to write your college essay—it’s stressful enough to compose a compelling essay without putting yourself under a deadline. Starting early on your essay also leaves you time to edit and refine your work, have others read your work (for example, your parents or a teacher), and carefully proofread.

2. Choose a topic that’s meaningful to you 

The foundation of a great essay is selecting a topic that has real meaning for you. If you’re passionate about the subject, the reader will feel it. Alternatively, choosing a topic you think the admissions committee is looking for, but isn’t all that important to you, won’t make for a compelling essay; it will be obvious that you’re not very invested in it.

3. Show your personality 

One of the main points of your college essay is to convey your personality. Admissions officers will see your transcript and read about the awards you’ve won, but the essay will help them get to know you as a person. Make sure your personality is evident in each part—if you are a jokester, incorporate some humor. Your friends should be able to pick your essay from an anonymous pile, read it, and recognize it as yours. In that same vein, someone who doesn’t know you at all should feel like they understand your personality after reading your essay. 

4. Write in your own voice 

In order to bring authenticity to your essay, you’ll need to write in your own voice. Don’t be overly formal (but don’t be too casual, either). Remember: you want the reader to get to know the real you, not a version of you that comes across as overly stiff or stilted. You should feel free to use contractions, incorporate dialogue, and employ vocabulary that comes naturally to you. 

5. Use specific examples 

Real, concrete stories and examples will help your essay come to life. They’ll add color to your narrative and make it more compelling for the reader. The goal, after all, is to engage your audience—the admissions committee. 

For example, instead of stating that you care about animals, you should tell us a story about how you took care of an injured stray cat. 

Consider this side-by-side comparison:

Example 1: I care deeply about animals and even once rescued a stray cat. The cat had an injured leg, and I helped nurse it back to health.

Example 2: I lost many nights of sleep trying to nurse the stray cat back to health. Its leg infection was extremely painful, and it meowed in distress up until the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t mind it though; what mattered was that the cat regained its strength. So, I stayed awake to administer its medicine and soothe it with loving ear rubs.

The second example helps us visualize this situation and is more illustrative of the writer’s personality. Because she stayed awake to care for the cat, we can infer that she is a compassionate person who cares about animals. We don’t get the same depth with the first example. 

6. Don’t be afraid to show off… 

You should always put your best foot forward—the whole point of your essay is to market yourself to colleges. This isn’t the time to be shy about your accomplishments, skills, or qualities. 

7. …While also maintaining humility 

But don’t brag. Demonstrate humility when discussing your achievements. In the example above, for instance, the author discusses her accomplishments while noting that her parents thought of her as immature. This is a great way to show humility while still highlighting that she was able to prove her parents wrong.

8. Be vulnerable 

Vulnerability goes hand in hand with humility and authenticity. Don’t shy away from exploring how your experience affected you and the feelings you experienced. This, too, will help your story come to life. 

Here’s an excerpt from a Common App essay that demonstrates vulnerability and allows us to connect with the writer:  

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain. 

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

In this essay, the writer isn’t afraid to share his insecurities and feelings with us. He states that he had been “ appallingly ignorant ” of his brother’s pain, that he “ often felt out of step ” compared to his brother, and that he had felt “ more and more alone ” over time. These are all emotions that you may not necessarily share with someone you just met, but it’s exactly this vulnerability that makes the essay more raw and relatable. 

9. Don’t lie or hyperbolize 

This essay is about the authentic you. Lying or hyperbolizing to make yourself sound better will not only make your essay—and entire application—less genuine, but it will also weaken it. More than likely, it will be obvious that you’re exaggerating. Plus, if colleges later find out that you haven’t been truthful in any part of your application, it’s grounds for revoking your acceptance or even expulsion if you’ve already matriculated. 

10. Avoid cliches 

How the COVID-19 pandemic changed your life. A sports victory as a metaphor for your journey. How a pet death altered your entire outlook. Admissions officers have seen more essays on these topics than they can possibly count. Unless you have a truly unique angle, then it’s in your best interest to avoid them. Learn which topics are cliche and how to fix them . 

11. Proofread 

This is a critical step. Even a small error can break your essay, however amazing it is otherwise. Make sure you read it over carefully, and get another set of eyes (or two or three other sets of eyes), just in case.

12. Abstain from using AI

There are a handful of good reasons to avoid using artificial intelligence (AI) to write your college essay. Most importantly, it’s dishonest and likely to be not very good; AI-generated essays are generally formulaic, generic, and boring—everything you’re trying to avoid being.   The purpose of the college essay is to share what makes you unique and highlight your personal experiences and perspectives, something that AI can’t capture.

13. Use parents as advisors, not editors

The voice of an adult is different from that of a high schooler and admissions committees are experts at spotting the writing of parents. Parents can play a valuable role in creating your college essay—advising, proofreading, and providing encouragement during those stressful moments. However, they should not write or edit your college essay with their words.

14. Have a hook

Admissions committees have a lot of essays to read and getting their attention is essential for standing out among a crowded field of applicants. A great hook captures your reader’s imagination and encourages them to keep reading your essay. Start strong, first impressions are everything!

15. Give them something to remember

The ending of your college essay is just as important as the beginning. Give your reader something to remember by composing an engaging and punchy paragraph or line—called a kicker in journalism—that ties everything you’ve written above together.

Where to Get Free Feedback on Your College Essay 

Before you send off your application, make sure you get feedback from a trusted source on your essay. CollegeVine’s free peer essay review will give you the support you need to ensure you’ve effectively presented your personality and accomplishments. Our expert essay review pairs you with an advisor to help you refine your writing, submit your best work, and boost your chances of getting into your dream school. Find the right advisor for you and get started on honing a winning essay.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

write essay on yourself

9 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself

You know yourself better than anyone else, but writing about yourself can still be tough! When applying for scholarships or to college, essay prompts  can feel so general (and yet so specific!) that they leave us stumped.  So we’ll show you 8 tips to write an essay about yourself, so that you can land more scholarships. (Psst – Going Merry makes applying easy .)

1. Create a List of Questions

2. brainstorm and outline, 3. be vulnerable, 4. use personal examples, 5. write in the first person, 6. don’t be afraid to show off…but stay on topic, 7. show personality , 8. know your audience, 9. proofread and edit.

Let’s start with some examples of personal essay prompts:

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • Describe a challenge or event that made you who you are today.
  • What are your short and long-term goals, and how do you plan to achieve them?
  • Write about a time you failed at something. How did it affect you?

These are just a few of many scholarship essay prompts that require you to look internally, to answer a question, solve a problem, or explain a scenario in your life.  

We get it. You might not be a big fan of bragging about yourself, or you might want to keep your personal stories to yourself. But by opening up and sharing your story, you can show scholarship providers, colleges and universities who you are, and why you’re deserving of their scholarship.

(Don’t just take our word for it – check out our scholarship winners page full of students like you who were brave enough to share their stories with us).

how to write an essay about yourself

To get started, check out these 9 tips on how to write an essay about yourself:

After reading through the scholarship essay prompt, breathe, and make a list of smaller questions you can answer, which relate to the big essay prompt question. 

Let’s say the main essay prompt question asks you, “What were challenges or barriers you had to work to overcome?” Then the smaller questions might be something like:

  • What is your background? Family, finances, school.
  • What was challenging about that background?
  • What’s your greatest accomplishment? How did you get there? How have previous challenges influenced your goals?

Think of these questions as mini-prompts. They explain your story and help you answer the main essay prompt with more details than if you just answered it without a plan in place.

After considering smaller questions, it’s time to brainstorm your answers.  Take out a pen and paper – or open up a document on a computer – and take your time in answering each mini-prompt. Organize your responses in order:

  • Intro to main essay prompt.
  • Answer about 3 mini-prompt questions.
  • Conclude by rewriting the answer to the main essay prompt with a summary of your mini-prompt answers.

This organization will help you stay on topic and answer the prompt directly. (Or check out these 6 scholarship essay examples for alternative essay structures.)

Don’t be afraid to let your strengths, challenges, and personal stories shine through in your essay! Scholarship and admissions committees love to see that you’re self-aware how you can improve as a person, or how you’ve grown because of your experiences. Honest writing can help tell the best stories (in this case, YOUR story).

how to write an essay about yourself

Since this essay is all about you , you should make your answer as specific as possible! Avoid using generalizations (e.g., “I’m really good at music). Instead, go for more personalized statements (e.g., “My fourth-grade teacher Ms. Matay really inspired me to pursue my interest in the clarinet”). Your personal examples are what will help your scholarship essay stand out among the thousands of applicants..

 You’re telling your story, so write from your perspective! You can narrate your story. You can provide an overview of what you learned from your experiences. However you choose to answer the prompt, we recommend writing in an active tone, and using “I” and “me” throughout your essay.

Most students worry about bragging in their essay, but we say go for it! This is your time to shine, so highlight your accomplishments and strengths.  Review your essay to make sure that you’re keeping the tone informative and that you’re still on topic. (Brag while answering the essay prompt; don’t just mention random, unrelated but impressive facts about yourself!)You can use this brag sheet where you can brainstorm your accomplishments. While the worksheet is geared toward requesting letters of recommendation , you can still use it to write out your hobbies, interests, college list , and strengths to help you answer your scholarship essay prompt.

how to write an essay about yourself

Just because it’s an essay doesn’t mean it has to be dry and boring. This essay is all about you, so let your personality shine through. If you’re the class clown, you can use a bit of humor. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, don’t be afraid to show emotion. Trying your best to express who you are as a person will have a huge effect on the admissions or scholarship committee!

If you’re applying for a scholarship, research the scholarship provider. If you’re applying to college, research the school. Understanding what makes the provider/college unique and what their motivations are, will allow you to incorporate that information in your essay. For example, many scholarships are funded by private companies that sell products. You might want to reference those products in your essay. A good example of this is Emily Trader’s essay for the Life Happens organization , where she uses her personal narrative to explain the importance of insurance planning, since that is the mission of the organization (which is funded by insurance companies).

The last step in answering your essay prompt is to double-check your work! One typo can be distracting and cause scholarship providers to scratch their head while reading the essay. ( Psst, humble brag: Going Merry’s application platform includes spellcheck because we’ve got your back .) In addition to proofreading for typos and grammatical errors, also consider whether the sentence or paragraph structure makes sense. Are you breaking paragraphs in the right place? Are you using topic sentences well to signpost your main ideas? Does the essay flow? Consider these “bigger” structural questions too.  You might also want to ask a friend, family member, teacher, or guidance counselor to review your essay. They might catch something you didn’t see the first time around, and that can really help your essay! In fact, that is scholarship winner Daniel Gill ’s #1 tip. (Another tip is to apply for scholarships using Going Merry !)

how to write an essay about yourself

Also, check out this helpful list of the 10 most common scholarship essay topics while you’re brainstorming!

Top 10 Most Common Scholarship Essay Prompts Graphic

Now that you know how to write an essay about yourself, it’s time to start applying for scholarships! Remember: You’ve got this. 

Sign up for your free Going Merry profile . From there, you can easily upload and submit your essay for thousands of scholarships. We make it easy so you’ll only need to enter your profile information once! And then, you can apply away. In fact, we even have some bundled scholarships so that you only enter your essay once, to apply for multiple scholarships at the same time.

Or if you’re not ready to register, simply sign up to receive an email with 20 new scholarship opportunities each week. Just enter your email address below:

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How to Write a Short Essay About Yourself: Step-By-Step

Updated 06/4/2022

Published 06/19/2020

Yvonne Bertovich

Yvonne Bertovich

Contributing writer

Learn how to write about yourself with confidence, including step-by-step instructions and examples of things to write about yourself.

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

Writing or even talking about yourself may not come easily to you. However, for professional or educational reasons, it’s often a necessity. There are other instances when writing about yourself may make more sense, as you can provide the rawest and most honest perspective.

Jump ahead to these sections:

Steps for writing about yourself, tips for writing about yourself creatively or confidently.

  • Examples of Things to Write About Yourself

You should feel empowered—not intimidated—in taking on a writing project about yourself. Use it as a way to challenge how you view your own experiences, talents, and more. We’ll discuss some steps for writing about yourself as well as provide a few examples.  

Writing isn’t for everyone, especially when it’s required. As much as you may dislike it, following the steps below can help the process go that much more smoothly.

If you find that following a different order than what we’ve recommended for you works better for your process, feel free to adjust accordingly. 

Step 1: Determine your purpose 

What’s causing you to write this “thing” about yourself? What exactly are you writing? It may surprise you that people write all kinds of pieces for themselves—even writing your own obituary isn’t out of the question anymore. 

The more specific you can get with yourself about your purpose will help the rest of the process. If it’s something stressful, like a college admission essay or a cover letter, try to frame the project in a different light. 

For example, “I’m writing this essay to show people my heart and how passionate I am about removing disparities and barriers in healthcare. I believe in my abilities, and I want to further my education, so I can help heal people.”

Step 2: Ask yourself some questions 

For any good piece of writing, there has to be fact behind it (if even these facts are abstract in narrative or fiction). The best way to gather facts about any subject is to ask a variety of questions, both soft- and hard-hitting. 

You may ask these questions internally, during research, or directly and literally. Treat this question step as a self-interview.

Here are some questions to ask yourself . You may also ask yourself:

  • What is my goal of writing this piece?
  • What themes or ideas do I want to focus on?
  • What are my strengths and weaknesses?
  • What are some important lessons I’ve learned?
  • What do I want others to know or understand about me?

Step 3: Organize your answers 

After asking yourself the example questions above as well as others, you should be sure to write down your answers and begin organizing them if you haven’t already. 

It may be tempting to just answer your own questions in your head as you go—but don’t. This will just make the writing step more difficult. You may think that you’ll remember every good point or profound thought you come up with, but memory is a tricky thing. 

If you’re working through your questions during a time when you’re not ready or able to sit down and type or scribble them out, at least make some notes in your phone or in a journal so you can have some descriptive hints for later. No matter how big of an epiphany you may have, it’s possible you’ll forget it. 

Step 4: Write a draft 

If your ideas are already fairly organized, writing your draft should come fairly easily to you. The draft process, however, is when you can start spicing things up with anecdotes, your own personal voice, themes, metaphors—all that fun stuff. The point in you writing something about yourself for yourself is for the very reason that you can make it unquestionably you .

Dull, watered-down words or even over-hyped language from a thesaurus plug-in isn’t going to impress anyone. Writing something about yourself (unless the assignment is creative or unorthodox) isn’t the time to act like something you’re not.

All of this being said, don’t stress yourself out too much. Letting your ideas flow freely and then editing or revising them later is how you should approach the process anyway. You don’t want to put too many restrictions on your ideas from the get-go. Warring with yourself about your ideas while writing is only going to tire you out sooner. 

Think about it—you may spend hours trying to write a piece while overthinking that’s no better than a draft you could have written in 30 minutes on the fly. Not being totally in love with your first draft is normal. It just allows you that much more room to improve. 

Step 5: Put your progress aside

Much like during the draft process, it’s very possible to overthink your work after it’s mostly done. If you constantly keep re-reading it or rehashing your ideas in your head, they may start to sound odd, or you may try to add where you need to trim. 

For example, the same concept applies to repeating the same word over and over aloud — it’ll likely start to sound strange or even wrong the more you hear it. This also applies to music — ever play a song you love over and over till you hate it? 

You need to give your words and your brain some time to rest away from each other until you try to make any drastic edits or changes. That being said, you may love what you’ve written already and decide you don’t need to change a thing—that’s great!

Step 6: Review and edit

After your break, you can pick up your writing once again. Read it with a critical eye. Go back and think deeply about your purpose and any provided prompts. Have you answered everything you intended to or are required to?

It’s not uncommon—though devastating—to write an entire piece only to realize you wrote from the wrong frame of reference or focused on the wrong issue. For example, if you were asked to write about a challenge you overcame in your life by following an important virtue, but you only wrote about winning a basketball championship and not the struggle behind it, this may miss the mark. 

If you find a good number of issues in your work, don’t feel tempted to scrap the entire thing. What may work instead is to copy and paste your writing line-by-line into a new document. This way, you can save as much as possible while being sure to resolve even small discrepancies.

Step 7: Finalize your work

After you’ve undergone the brutal process of self-editing (or enlisting help from someone else you trust) you can prepare yourself for the home stretch. Finalizing your work shouldn’t take very long.

Y our process may differ; however, it’ll likely come down to reading over your work a few more times just to make sure you haven’t missed words, punctuation, or proper grammar. 

It’s OK to use this step to feel proud of yourself, too. You may not take a lot of time to reflect on your life and everything you’ve been through—it’s important to practice self-love in this way and celebrate your accomplishments.

Talking or writing about yourself may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For example, did you need to provide a fun fact recently but draw a blank? You’re not alone. In fact, many people have a false assumption that they’re boring. 

On the flip side, perhaps you’re used to talking about yourself, or, at least you’ve got the “fake it till you make it” type of confidence down-pat. However, you too can only benefit from adding a bit more razzle-dazzle to your spiels and writing assignments. Here are a few tips for writing about yourself creatively or confidently.  

Allow yourself space

If you have an upcoming project or writing assignment that has you on edge, consider stepping away. Even if you don’t consider yourself an outdoorsy person, a walk around the block may help you breathe and get your creativity flowing. Naturally, the more sound your idea or angle, the more confident you’ll feel about your upcoming performance.  

Keep that ego in check

An underinflated ego is just as bad as an overinflated one. Pay close attention to your internal dialogue when approaching new projects or writing tasks (or, honestly anything that comes up during your day). How much of what swirls around in your mind is fact? How much of it is just fleeting thoughts or opinions? You are not your thoughts, and you always have choices. Make good ones and be kind to yourself. 

Try this: Instead of thinking to yourself, “Wow, this is a really complex writing assignment. I can’t do this.” Or, “How am I ever going to get into my dream school with this essay? I’m not a strong writer.” 

Change your internal dialogue to, “I have good ideas. I may not have my plan figured out right now, but I’ll get it done,” or, “I have so many great skills to bring to the table and I am very passionate about what’s brought me here. I will convey this the best I can.”

Crowdsource

Sometimes an outside opinion can give us much-needed perspective. Ask your friends, family, loved ones, or coworkers to describe you in a few words or even in abstract ways. Don’t view this as you’re fishing for compliments. Ask your loved ones for honesty, as this insight can only help you when writing about yourself. 

Build up a fuel bank

Pulling inspiration out of thin air may not always be possible. However, if you build up a few reliable sources of inspiration, the next time a project hits, you’ll be prepared. You can fuel your creativity and confidence in a variety of ways. 

For example, you can create certain playlists for different moods, save favorite art or graphics in a digital folder or keep printed versions in your home or office, write down affirmations or notes-to-self in a journal or app, and so on. 

Reflect on past accomplishments and setbacks

Even if you aren’t a fan of journaling, writing about yourself is far easier if you take the time to reflect, if only mentally. If you know you have a deadline to write about yourself in the near future, you may want to physically or mentally jot down a few real-life examples or experiences that come to mind. 

But how do you get in the right headspace to reflect? What if you only witness recurring thoughts about past events while trying to fall asleep? Be sure to practice the first tip in this section: Give yourself some space to think. For once, limit the distractions, keep all other screens put away or turn on your "do not disturb" feature.

Now, think about some past accomplishments or setbacks that may not even seem relevant to the topic of the assignment. You may have an epiphany about unrelated things or discover something about how you operate. For example, you might realize that you feel less nervous in social and professional settings if you call out your anxiety as being excited. 

Examples of Writing About Yourself

Even if you feel super confident about writing about yourself now, we wanted to provide a few short examples to help you get started. Your tone, word choice, and more may differ depending on which piece you’re working on.

Here are some tips for writing or publishing your life story you may also find helpful. 

In a memoir or essay

Those were probably the best and the worst days of my life. I had never felt more happy and never felt more sad. I felt as though I were so close to having everything I had ever wanted, yet it seemed with every step forward, I had to take two steps back. It was exhausting. How did I get through it? To be quite honest, I have no damn idea. 

Perspective helped. I knew I could have had it way worse; I knew that my struggle wasn’t unique. I knew, too, that even when the small wins would come they’d have yet another loss right on their tails. I paid dearly for having too much heart and optimism, so I regularly had to hose myself down with logic and pessimism. 

On your blog or website

If you’re reading this, it’s too late. Just kidding! That’s just a really good Drake album. I wanted to take some time to talk about what’s been going on in my life lately for those of you who are nosey enough to care. Again, kidding, I know some of you really care. I’m so grateful to have even this small following that I have. It’s wild, really. Who would have thought that people want to know what’s going on in my head at any given time? Joke’s on you guys, though, because I don’t fully know all the time. 

I guess I’ll start off by saying that work has been a whirlwind. As you all know, it isn’t an easy time for anyone, so please don’t take this declaration as a complaint. I’m thrilled to still have a job despite everything going on. However, leaving this reflection at just that would be doing both myself and you all a disservice. It’s weak. It doesn’t really describe what’s been going on. Allow me to continue.  

In a college essay

When I was young, my grandmother told me I couldn’t please everyone — that some people just wouldn’t like me for no reason at all. This was very hard for me to swallow at times. What does this have to do with who I am today and why I plan to attend your university? 

Well, this early lesson demonstrates that in order for this world to keep spinning, we all have to be unwavering in our own pursuits. We are ourselves. We can’t be anyone else. In that, we all have the responsibility to bring our unique talents, wisdom, and heart to the table — even when we’re seated across from people who may not like us. 

Sometimes Only You Can Do It

Writing about yourself may always be challenging for you, but who better to do so than who knows you best? If you work through the process in every situation and give yourself some patience, there’s no question that you can’t craft something amazing. You may also be interested in this article about how to write family stories .

Your written words mean more than you think. This becomes a part of your legacy when you're gone, and it's one of the ways you'll be remembered. While many families choose custom urns from Foreverence or even to craft memorial diamonds from Eterneva , your words are something that live after you're gone.

While it might not seem natural at first, learning to write about yourself, your perspective, and your experiences carries a lot of significance. Who knows who might read these words when you're gone?

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17+ Great Ideas for an Essay About Yourself

An essay about yourself should present you in a positive light, but also leave your reader with a greater understanding of what it is that makes you tick. What’s your inspiration and motivation?

In this article, I’ll give you a range of ideas to include in your essay about yourself. These ideas will show you how to tell a compelling story about who you are.

Pick one or more of these ideas and use it in your essay to improve its quality.

how to write an essay about yourself

1. Come up with One Word about Yourself and Put it in your Title

Your essay heading sets the tone for the rest of the essay.

One way to get yourself started on the right track for your essay describing yourself is to ensure you have the one key word that describes you in the title.

How would you describe yourself in one word?

Here’s a few ways I’d describe myself:

  • Introverted

Now, if you need to write your essay in a way that presents you in the best way possible, then of course you’d select the one that does that!

So for me, that’d be ‘optimistic’.

I could then set my title to something like: “An Essay About Chris, the Eternal Optimist.”

Here, your reader has been introduced to the central trait I want to reinforce in the essay right away. You’ve set the tone now.

Now that you’ve used that key term at the start, make sure you follow-up by using that same term a few more times throughout the piece so that you keep it as a clear motif throughout. I’d recommend at least using it in the introduction, body and conclusion.

2. Make it Personal using Anecdotes

The difference between a good and great essay about yourself is the use of personal anecdotes.

You want your essay to stand out because it’s thoughtful and unique.

Anyone can tell a story of who they are. Anyone can say: “Here’s who I am and here’s what’s good about me.”

Not everyone can tell a detailed, thoughtful and personal story that’ll show (and not tell) people who you are.

Personal anecdotes might include:

  • A discussion about your ancestry;
  • A story about how your ancestors came to your country;
  • A story about how your parents came up with your childhood nickname;
  • An important story from your childhood;
  • A personal challenge that you currently face;
  • A personal challenge from the past that you’ve overcome

Or anything else that shows your personality! So, let’s zoom in and take a look at how you could write about each of the points from above.

3. Describe your Ancestry

Dig deep – way back. Who are your ancestors?

Two of the best questions you can ask to tell a really good story about yourself are these:

Who are your ancestors?

How did your ancestors shape who you are.

What is your connection to them?

Let’s take them one at a time.

Your ancestors might be Greek, or Scottish, or Irish, or Italian. Maybe you have some Native American ancestors or maybe they were Pioneers heading to America?

You can start this essay by explaining your ancestry to really start shaping a quality story about yourself. One example is to tell a story about how your ancestors came to your country.

For me, I’d talk about how my Ancestors were a loose collection of quirky characters who came to Australia for a better life. Some were “10 Pound Poms” – British people seeking a better life. The paid 10 pounds to get on a boat and head to a new world. And others were convicts, sent out for stealing sheep.

Is there an interesting hook about your ancestry to start your essay?

Your ancestors should mean a lot to you. They should show you the path to a better life. What sacrifices did they make for you to be who you are today?

I could talk about how they had a tough life to come from working-class backgrounds. They worked the land and battled hardship to give me what I’ve got.

Now, I’m a happy, free, relatively wealthy person because of their hard world.

Who you are is because of your ancestors.

For me, they are the reason I value hard work. I also know my grandfather fought hard for a good wage for people on the railways. So, I have a sense of solidarity with hard-working working-class people because of him.

I also believe strongly in the importance of living a free and happy life because my ancestors are Australians. We’re Aussies! We work hard and have fun. That’s something my ancestors gave me, and I’ll carry all those values forward for my children one day, too.

Can you see that telling a story of your ancestors can really reveal a lot about what’s deep inside you? They show you your values and they’re your guiding star.

4. Tell the story of how you got your Childhood Nickname

Here’s another interesting story idea that can get your essay started on the right track.

How about telling the story of how you got your childhood nickname?

Here’s an example: My sister’s nickname was Boo Boo.

(She’d be made at me if she knew I told you that!)

She was called Boo Boo because she was always hurting herself! She was always having “boo boos”, which was our slang for “mistakes”.

Here, her nickname tells a story about herself. It tells a story about how she can sometimes be a little bit clumsy. This could be a good personal story to use to introduce herself to the reader.

Do you have a unique nickname story?

5. Tell an Important Story from your Childhood

Do you have any childhood stories that really reflect who you are?

This story might be:

  • Tell the story of a childhood family holiday: Your story of your family holiday might highlight how important family is to your sense of who you are. Did the family holiday show you how much family is important to you?
  • Tell the story of a time you realized something: I remember seeing a kid at school being bullied once and feeling really uncomfortable about it. I ended up sitting with him during the lunch period because he was upset. That was the day I really realized that something deep inside me is a sense that kindness is one of the most important things in the world.

Have a think. Are there any stories from your childhood that you can tell that reveal something about who you are and what your values are?

6. Start with “When I’m old I will look back and reflect on…”

Here’s a strategy that works really well.

When you start from the perspective of someone looking back, you often reflect on the things that are most important.

Have you ever seen an older person telling a story? It’s often a story told from the perspective of wisdom . We might call this 20/20 hindsight.

So, start your story by discussing what you’ll look back on about your life: what will you be proud of? What parts of your personality would you want to reflect on with pride?

It might be:

  • “When I’m old I will look back and reflect on the things I did to help other people. For example, one time I … [did this]”
  • “When I’m old I will look back and reflect on the quality time I spent with my family. My family is the most important thing in my life. One of these quality times is when …”
  • Any other ideas you have?

7. Or, Start with “In ten years I will be…”

We can flip Step 6 on its head, and talk about where you want to be in 10 years. This will force you to reflect upon what’s most important to your future.

When talking about your goals and how those goals are linked to your values.

Here’s some examples:

  • “In ten years time I will be just returning from an amazing trip around the world. I have a strong sense of adventure and I want to spend the next 10 years fulfilling my dream of adventure.”
  • “In ten years time I want to be busy working in a not-for-profit doing something for people less fortunate than me. This vision drives my decisions that I make today. It drives my desire to … [study a course?]”
  • What will you say if you start with “In ten years time…”?

8. Describe your Interests

No matter how you start your essay, you need to make sure that your story shows what you are interested in.

Your interests are what you do in your spare time

You might, for example, be interested in a particular topic. This will show how you’re set apart from others. We all have different interests.

Here’s a few examples of people’s interests:

  • Dinosaurs: Ross Gellar from the TV show Friends would write in his story that one of his biggest interests is dinosaurs!
  • Sports: Many people put sports at the center of their interests and motivations. Are you passionate about a sport that you watch or play? This could be included in your essay about yourself.
  • Reading: Many young people love to read. You can talk about this as something you love, and then discuss how reading helps you think more deeply about issues in this world.

What are your interests? Could you use these as the basis of your essay about yourself?

9. Describe what Motivates You

Right at the core of your essay about yourself should be a message about your motivations. What is it that you dream about? What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning?

A motivation is different to an interest. Your interest is what you do in your part-time. Your motivations are your long-term goals that will give you fulfillmen t.

People want to see what makes you tick.

Your motivations don’t have to be for money or a career. A lot of people are deeply motivated by their passions like:

  • Getting fit, or pursuing fitness goals;
  • Being a part of a community;
  • Helping others out, especially the less fortunate;
  • Making their family proud;
  • Seeing amazing, remarkable things;
  • Inventing or discovering something that improves the world

For me, my biggest motivation is my blog. I take pride in it and how it helps people out. So maybe I’d tell the story of my blog, and how it reflects my intrinsic desire to help people learn new things.

So, what motivates you?

10. Identify your Current Personal Challenges

Teachers like to see that you are taking a proactive role to address or overcome personal challenges. So, you can base your essay about yourself on a current personal challenge.

The important thing for an essay on a current personal challenge is this:

  • Identify what your challenge is; and
  • Explain how you are working hard to address it.

Your challenge might be a personal disability, a setback you’ve recently had, or a goal that you’re working towards achieving.

  • Wanting to join the military: You could talk about your major challenge being a career goal like getting accepted into the military. Then, you’d need to show something about how you are addressing this by, for example, following a rigorous exercise regime.
  • Living with a disability: Maybe you have a disability or medical problem that you need to address. You could talk about how it hasn’t stopped you from believing in your ability to achieve. While it might make life harder, show how you’re a determined person who won’t let adversity get in your way.

By revealing how you are overcoming your challenges, you’re revealing something about yourself. You are showing your marker that you’re a hard, diligent worker. That you have resilience and drive. And that you’re someone who strives to achieve.

11. Identify the Biggest Challenge you’ve Overcome

If there’s challenges in your rear-view mirror that you have already overcome, you can also talk about that.

Pause for a moment and think about the biggest achievement of your life. Was it getting that score you wanted in a science test? Was it making it into the football team after a lot of training and practice?

By telling the story of a personal challenge that you have already overcome, you’re showing how you’re a competent, capable and resilient person.

Here’s some examples of overcoming challenges:

  • Winning a team sport: Talk about all the work you did as a team in the lead-up to the win. Did you take advice from the coach and use it to become better? Did you learn that you had to work as a group to succeed?
  • Getting an award: Were you awarded once for your skills? What did you need to do to win the award? Was it hard work that paid off?

12. Be Humble

It’s important to strike the appropriate tone for your essay about yourself.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they too hard to sell themselves. This usually makes you sound arrogant and self-absorbed.

One of the best ways to sound humble is to express gratitude. When discussing who you are, what you achieved and what your strengths are, remember to mention who it was who helped you get there.

People you might be grateful for include: parents, teachers, siblings, friends, your country and mentors. Talk about how they were instrumental in your success. Maybe they were patient with you, presented opportunities for you, or forgave your mistakes.

It’s also good to make sure you don’t compare yourself to others. It’s not a good idea to say “I achieved better than anyone else.” Focussing on how you worked hard for your achievements is enough: there’s no need to talk about how you’re better or the best. Focus on the effort you put in, not the fact that you’re better than anyone.

To learn more about tricks on being humble, I recommend this good summary of ways to be humble from Forbes.

13. Describe your Personality Type

Here’s another interesting way of approaching the essay.

If you’re struggling to explain yourself, you can take a quiz that tells you what your personality type is. Something really nice about these quizzes is they not only give you words to explain what your personality type is, but they also give you some ideas to talk about.

Here’s a few good personality type quizzes:

  • 16 Personalities : This quiz decides which personality you are from 16 types, such as debater, entrepreneur, adventurer and entertainer. I got the ‘Advocate’ meaning I am driven by “idealism and morality” and am mainly an introvert. What are you? Share in the comments below!
  • Learning Styles : This quiz finds out how you learn. Are you the sort of person who learns in solitude or with others? Are you an introvert or extrovert? Another alternative is the VARK quiz which sees which sort of category of learner you are: Visual, Auditory (sound), Read/Write, or Kinesthetic (using your body).
  • Career Quiz : This quiz asks you a range of personality questions to give you ideas about what you want to talk about. Then, it’ll suggest the ideal career for you based on your personality!

14. Include Details you’d put on a CV

You want your essay to tell a story about yourself.

But you also need to include hard, solid details.

So once you’ve told your story of yourself, go through your CV (or ‘resume’) and see what else you can include. Can you include details about your strengths that you have listed on your CV?

Maybe you can also include points about your previous jobs or education achievements that you have listed on your CV.

This will help back up your story with hard evidence.

You might also find out that there are a lot of details on your CV that will give you story ideas. You might not think you’ve achieved remarkable things until you look at your CV and reflect on the hard work you put into each of the jobs or achievements you have listed there.

15. Describe your Physical Attributes

Another thing you can weave into your story is an outline of what you look like!

It’s one of the first things you read about someone in any story.

Here’s how Mr. and Mrs. Dursley in Harry Potter is introduced:

“Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours.”

How would you describe your physical attributes? Remember not to be negative about yourself, but you could describe yourself as tall, short, stocky, or lanky. How about your hair? Is it frizzy or straight, long or short?

16. Explain who is your Biggest influence and Why

The person who is your biggest influence would reveal a lot about who you are. Are you influenced by someone because of their power and strength, or wisdom and insight? Are you influenced by people for their nobility and patriotism, or their sense of adventure?

This will show your reader what makes you tick.

One of my big influences is Alex Honnold. He is a famous rock climber. What does that reveal about me? Well, it shows that I admire adventurous people and people who follow unconventional careers.

Who is your biggest influence? What does this reveal about you? Can you weave this into your essay about yourself?

17. Conclude by Returning to your Opening Hook

In this article I’ve shared with you a ton of ideas that you can use for your essay about yourself.

No matter which idea you select, I recommend including this last tip.

You should start your essay with an interesting ‘hook’ or anecdote about yourself.

I recommend concluding your essay by returning to this opening hook. We call this the ‘closing the loop’ method. You can start it something like this:

“I began this essay by telling the story of how I’m inspired by my father. I want to return to this point, as it’s the most important point in this essay. All of the points in this essay about myself have highlighted how I’m driven and motivated to live up to his amazing example. I have discussed…”

…And then you’d sum up what you discussed!

I outline the exact process of how to conclude an essay using this ‘closing the loop’ method in this post on how to write great conclusions .

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Frequently asked questions

How do i write about myself in a college essay.

Most importantly, your essay should be about you , not another person or thing. An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability.

Your essay shouldn’t be a résumé of your experiences but instead should tell a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

Frequently asked questions: College admissions essays

When writing your Common App essay , choose a prompt that sparks your interest and that you can connect to a unique personal story.

No matter which prompt you choose, admissions officers are more interested in your ability to demonstrate personal development , insight, or motivation for a certain area of study.

The Common App essay is your primary writing sample within the Common Application, a college application portal accepted by more than 900 schools. All your prospective schools that accept the Common App will read this essay to understand your character, background, and value as a potential student.

Since this essay is read by many colleges, avoid mentioning any college names or programs; instead, save tailored answers for the supplementary school-specific essays within the Common App.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding your message and content. Then, check for flow, tone, style , and clarity. Finally, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors .

If your college essay goes over the word count limit , cut any sentences with tangents or irrelevant details. Delete unnecessary words that clutter your essay.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

If you’ve got to write your college essay fast , don’t panic. First, set yourself deadlines: you should spend about 10% of your remaining time on brainstorming, 10% on outlining, 40% writing, 30% revising, and 10% taking breaks in between stages.

Second, brainstorm stories and values based on your essay prompt.

Third, outline your essay based on the montage or narrative essay structure .

Fourth, write specific, personal, and unique stories that would be hard for other students to replicate.

Fifth, revise your essay and make sure it’s clearly written.

Last, if possible, get feedback from an essay coach . Scribbr essay editors can help you revise your essay in 12 hours or less.

Avoid swearing in a college essay , since admissions officers’ opinions of profanity will vary. In some cases, it might be okay to use a vulgar word, such as in dialogue or quotes that make an important point in your essay. However, it’s safest to try to make the same point without swearing.

If you have bad grades on your transcript, you may want to use your college admissions essay to explain the challenging circumstances that led to them. Make sure to avoid dwelling on the negative aspects and highlight how you overcame the situation or learned an important lesson.

However, some college applications offer an additional information section where you can explain your bad grades, allowing you to choose another meaningful topic for your college essay.

Here’s a brief list of college essay topics that may be considered cliché:

  • Extracurriculars, especially sports
  • Role models
  • Dealing with a personal tragedy or death in the family
  • Struggling with new life situations (immigrant stories, moving homes, parents’ divorce)
  • Becoming a better person after community service, traveling, or summer camp
  • Overcoming a difficult class
  • Using a common object as an extended metaphor

It’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic. However, it’s possible to make a common topic compelling with interesting story arcs, uncommon connections, and an advanced writing style.

Yes. The college application essay is less formal than other academic writing —though of course it’s not mandatory to use contractions in your essay.

In a college essay , you can be creative with your language . When writing about the past, you can use the present tense to make the reader feel as if they were there in the moment with you. But make sure to maintain consistency and when in doubt, default to the correct verb tense according to the time you’re writing about.

The college admissions essay gives admissions officers a different perspective on you beyond your academic achievements, test scores, and extracurriculars. It’s your chance to stand out from other applicants with similar academic profiles by telling a unique, personal, and specific story.

Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial to avoid distracting the reader from your college essay’s content.

A college application essay is less formal than most academic writing . Instead of citing sources formally with in-text citations and a reference list, you can cite them informally in your text.

For example, “In her research paper on genetics, Quinn Roberts explores …”

There is no set number of paragraphs in a college admissions essay . College admissions essays can diverge from the traditional five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in English class. Just make sure to stay under the specified word count .

Most topics are acceptable for college essays if you can use them to demonstrate personal growth or a lesson learned. However, there are a few difficult topics for college essays that should be avoided. Avoid topics that are:

  • Overly personal (e.g. graphic details of illness or injury, romantic or sexual relationships)
  • Not personal enough (e.g. broad solutions to world problems, inspiring people or things)
  • Too negative (e.g. an in-depth look at your flaws, put-downs of others, criticizing the need for a college essay)
  • Too boring (e.g. a resume of your academic achievements and extracurriculars)
  • Inappropriate for a college essay (e.g. illegal activities, offensive humor, false accounts of yourself, bragging about privilege)

To write an effective diversity essay , include vulnerable, authentic stories about your unique identity, background, or perspective. Provide insight into how your lived experience has influenced your outlook, activities, and goals. If relevant, you should also mention how your background has led you to apply for this university and why you’re a good fit.

Many universities believe a student body composed of different perspectives, beliefs, identities, and backgrounds will enhance the campus learning and community experience.

Admissions officers are interested in hearing about how your unique background, identity, beliefs, culture, or characteristics will enrich the campus community, which is why they assign a diversity essay .

In addition to your main college essay , some schools and scholarships may ask for a supplementary essay focused on an aspect of your identity or background. This is sometimes called a diversity essay .

You can use humor in a college essay , but carefully consider its purpose and use it wisely. An effective use of humor involves unexpected, keen observations of the everyday, or speaks to a deeper theme. Humor shouldn’t be the main focus of the essay, but rather a tool to improve your storytelling.

Get a second opinion from a teacher, counselor, or essay coach on whether your essay’s humor is appropriate.

Though admissions officers are interested in hearing your story, they’re also interested in how you tell it. An exceptionally written essay will differentiate you from other applicants, meaning that admissions officers will spend more time reading it.

You can use literary devices to catch your reader’s attention and enrich your storytelling; however, focus on using just a few devices well, rather than trying to use as many as possible.

To decide on a good college essay topic , spend time thoughtfully answering brainstorming questions. If you still have trouble identifying topics, try the following two strategies:

  • Identify your qualities → Brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities
  • Identify memorable stories → Connect your qualities to these stories

You can also ask family, friends, or mentors to help you brainstorm topics, give feedback on your potential essay topics, or recall key stories that showcase your qualities.

Yes—admissions officers don’t expect everyone to have a totally unique college essay topic . But you must differentiate your essay from others by having a surprising story arc, an interesting insight, and/or an advanced writing style .

There are no foolproof college essay topics —whatever your topic, the key is to write about it effectively. However, a good topic

  • Is meaningful, specific, and personal to you
  • Focuses on you and your experiences
  • Reveals something beyond your test scores, grades, and extracurriculars
  • Is creative and original

Unlike a five-paragraph essay, your admissions essay should not end by summarizing the points you’ve already made. It’s better to be creative and aim for a strong final impression.

You should also avoid stating the obvious (for example, saying that you hope to be accepted).

There are a few strategies you can use for a memorable ending to your college essay :

  • Return to the beginning with a “full circle” structure
  • Reveal the main point or insight in your story
  • Look to the future
  • End on an action

The best technique will depend on your topic choice, essay outline, and writing style. You can write several endings using different techniques to see which works best.

College deadlines vary depending on the schools you’re applying to and your application plan:

  • For early action applications and the first round of early decision applications, the deadline is on November 1 or 15. Decisions are released by mid-December.
  • For the second round of early decision applications, the deadline is January 1 or 15. Decisions are released in January or February.
  • Regular decision deadlines usually fall between late November and mid-March, and decisions are released in March or April.
  • Rolling admission deadlines run from July to April, and decisions are released around four to eight weeks after submission.

Depending on your prospective schools’ requirements, you may need to submit scores for the SAT or ACT as part of your college application .

Some schools now no longer require students to submit test scores; however, you should still take the SAT or ACT and aim to get a high score to strengthen your application package.

Aim to take the SAT or ACT in the spring of your junior year to give yourself enough time to retake it in the fall of your senior year if necessary.

Apply early for federal student aid and application fee waivers. You can also look for scholarships from schools, corporations, and charitable foundations.

To maximize your options, you should aim to apply to about eight schools:

  • Two reach schools that might be difficult to get into
  • Four match schools that you have a good chance of getting into
  • Two safety schools that you feel confident you’ll get into

The college admissions essay accounts for roughly 25% of the weight of your application .

At highly selective schools, there are four qualified candidates for every spot. While your academic achievements are important, your college admissions essay can help you stand out from other applicants with similar profiles.

In general, for your college application you will need to submit all of the following:

  • Your personal information
  • List of extracurriculars and awards
  • College application essays
  • Transcripts
  • Standardized test scores
  • Recommendation letters.

Different colleges may have specific requirements, so make sure you check exactly what’s expected in the application guidance.

You should start thinking about your college applications the summer before your junior year to give you sufficient time for college visits, taking standardized tests, applying for financial aid , writing essays, and collecting application material.

Yes, but make sure your essay directly addresses the prompt, respects the word count , and demonstrates the organization’s values.

If you plan ahead, you can save time by writing one scholarship essay for multiple prompts with similar questions. In a scholarship tracker spreadsheet, you can group or color-code overlapping essay prompts; then, write a single essay for multiple scholarships. Sometimes, you can even reuse or adapt your main college essay .

You can start applying for scholarships as early as your junior year. Continue applying throughout your senior year.

Invest time in applying for various scholarships , especially local ones with small dollar amounts, which are likely easier to win and more reflective of your background and interests. It will be easier for you to write an authentic and compelling essay if the scholarship topic is meaningful to you.

You can find scholarships through your school counselor, community network, or an internet search.

A scholarship essay requires you to demonstrate your values and qualities while answering the prompt’s specific question.

After researching the scholarship organization, identify a personal experience that embodies its values and exemplifies how you will be a successful student.

A standout college essay has several key ingredients:

  • A unique, personally meaningful topic
  • A memorable introduction with vivid imagery or an intriguing hook
  • Specific stories and language that show instead of telling
  • Vulnerability that’s authentic but not aimed at soliciting sympathy
  • Clear writing in an appropriate style and tone
  • A conclusion that offers deep insight or a creative ending

While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.

You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.

Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.

In most cases, quoting other people isn’t a good way to start your college essay . Admissions officers want to hear your thoughts about yourself, and quotes often don’t achieve that. Unless a quote truly adds something important to your essay that it otherwise wouldn’t have, you probably shouldn’t include it.

Cliché openers in a college essay introduction are usually general and applicable to many students and situations. Most successful introductions are specific: they only work for the unique essay that follows.

The key to a strong college essay introduction is not to give too much away. Try to start with a surprising statement or image that raises questions and compels the reader to find out more.

The introduction of your college essay is the first thing admissions officers will read and therefore your most important opportunity to stand out. An excellent introduction will keep admissions officers reading, allowing you to tell them what you want them to know.

You can speed up this process by shortening and smoothing your writing with a paraphrasing tool . After that, you can use the summarizer to shorten it even more.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

In your application essay , admissions officers are looking for particular features : they want to see context on your background, positive traits that you could bring to campus, and examples of you demonstrating those qualities.

Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.

You don’t need a title for your college admissions essay , but you can include one if you think it adds something important.

Your college essay’s format should be as simple as possible:

  • Use a standard, readable font
  • Use 1.5 or double spacing
  • If attaching a file, save it as a PDF
  • Stick to the word count
  • Avoid unusual formatting and unnecessary decorative touches

There are no set rules for how to structure a college application essay , but these are two common structures that work:

  • A montage structure, a series of vignettes with a common theme.
  • A narrative structure, a single story that shows your personal growth or how you overcame a challenge.

Avoid the five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in high school.

Campus visits are always helpful, but if you can’t make it in person, the college website will have plenty of information for you to explore. You should look through the course catalog and even reach out to current faculty with any questions about the school.

Colleges set a “Why this college?” essay because they want to see that you’ve done your research. You must prove that you know what makes the school unique and can connect that to your own personal goals and academic interests.

Depending on your writing, you may go through several rounds of revision . Make sure to put aside your essay for a little while after each editing stage to return with a fresh perspective.

Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your language, tone, and content . Ask for their help at least one to two months before the submission deadline, as many other students will also want their help.

Friends and family are a good resource to check for authenticity. It’s best to seek help from family members with a strong writing or English educational background, or from older siblings and cousins who have been through the college admissions process.

If possible, get help from an essay coach or editor ; they’ll have specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and be able to give objective expert feedback.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding message, flow, tone, style , and clarity. Then, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

  • What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
  • Whom do you admire most and why?
  • What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

In a college application essay , you can occasionally bend grammatical rules if doing so adds value to the storytelling process and the essay maintains clarity.

However, use standard language rules if your stylistic choices would otherwise distract the reader from your overall narrative or could be easily interpreted as unintentional errors.

Write concisely and use the active voice to maintain a quick pace throughout your essay and make sure it’s the right length . Avoid adding definitions unless they provide necessary explanation.

Use first-person “I” statements to speak from your perspective . Use appropriate word choices that show off your vocabulary but don’t sound like you used a thesaurus. Avoid using idioms or cliché expressions by rewriting them in a creative, original way.

If you’re an international student applying to a US college and you’re comfortable using American idioms or cultural references , you can. But instead of potentially using them incorrectly, don’t be afraid to write in detail about yourself within your own culture.

Provide context for any words, customs, or places that an American admissions officer might be unfamiliar with.

College application essays are less formal than other kinds of academic writing . Use a conversational yet respectful tone , as if speaking with a teacher or mentor. Be vulnerable about your feelings, thoughts, and experiences to connect with the reader.

Aim to write in your authentic voice , with a style that sounds natural and genuine. You can be creative with your word choice, but don’t use elaborate vocabulary to impress admissions officers.

Admissions officers use college admissions essays to evaluate your character, writing skills , and ability to self-reflect . The essay is your chance to show what you will add to the academic community.

The college essay may be the deciding factor in your application , especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

Some colleges also require supplemental essays about specific topics, such as why you chose that specific college . Scholarship essays are often required to obtain financial aid .

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CollegeBasics

5 Steps To Write An Essay About Yourself

write essay on yourself

Writing essays and academic papers are two such responsibilities for which students often face challenges throughout their academic life.

In fact, self-introduction essays are among the most typical assignments students confront among the many other essays.

Writing an essay about yourself necessitates you to possess excellent writing and storytelling abilities.

To produce a great personal essay, students must devote time, patience, and work. This article will educate you on how to write an essay on yourself, your family, a personal experience, and so on.

However, if you are time-pressed and unable to compose an essay, there are services that write same-day essays for students too.

When Might You Need to Write About Yourself?

Self-introduction essays or writing an essay about yourself is required during various circumstances of your academic and professional life.

Aside from the obvious cases, such as a personal statement or self-evaluations/appraisals, here are other situations where you’ll be required to write an essay about yourself:

  • For graduation school applications
  • When writing biographies
  • For career advancement opportunities
  • In cover letters and resumes
  • Seeking internship opportunities
  • In grant proposals

Most people think that writing an essay about yourself is one of the easiest tasks to do. Nonetheless, that may not be the case for most students.

One must possess good college writing skills to put their best foot forward and impress the reader to stand out among their peers. And here’s how you can do it correctly and confidently.

What Must the Self-Introduction Essay Include?

Writing an essay about yourself is a perfect opportunity to write about your strengths, achievements, and unique characteristics that provide an insight into yourself.

You may be confused about what exactly to write or express in your self-introduction essay. So, in this post, we will explain what you can write about yourself that will help you score brownie points and stand out amidst the competition.

Also, check out these examples and samples on self-introductory essays .

For instance, when writing about yourself, consider your path and the things that have shaped you into the person you are. You can also write about various things such as:

  • Your hobbies
  • Your aspirations and dreams
  • The things you want to learn
  • The things you are best at

How to Write an Essay

Before composing an essay, understand the basic structure and prepare an outline to avoid any mistakes down the road.

So if you are wondering how to structure an essay, remember that all essays follow a basic structure – introduction, the body, and conclusion.

Introduction

This is the first part of the essay, and it must pique the reader’s interest. You must add a ‘hook’ here to keep the reader glued.

You must provide a thesis statement at the beginning of your writing that exhibits the main idea of your essay.

Overall, the introduction must provide a brief overview of the entire essay in an engaging way.

The section contains a minimum of three paragraphs that explain the major themes or story of the essay. Ensure that each paragraph connects smoothly with the next. It is best to write in chronological order to avoid confusion.

This is the last paragraph or last section of the essay, and it must logically conclude your story. Here you can highlight the lesson you’ve gained throughout your experience. It is better to keep this section short.

Essay Structure

This is the basic structure that one must follow when writing an essay. Once you understand the essay format, create an outline that includes:

  • An introduction about yourself
  • Your most significant professional experience
  • Noteworthy awards or personal accomplishments
  • Relevant information about your personal life

Note: Make sure you use an appropriate tone if it is not mentioned. While an informal tone is used when writing about personal experiences, remember not to use any ‘slang’ words that might look unprofessional.

Steps to Writing an Effective Essay

write essay on yourself

Use particular anecdotes to highlight your accomplishments and traits without appearing pretentious.

You can also write about difficulties you’ve encountered or mistakes you’ve made to demonstrate vulnerability and personal progress.

1. Self-Reflection

The first step is to reflect on the topic before you begin writing to determine what you want to include in your essay.

Having a thorough brainstorming session can help a lot. However, here are a few starter questions that can help you:

  • What has influenced your hobbies or future ambitions?
  • What are you most pleased with?
  • Why do you look up to someone in particular?
  • Consider how your values and aspirations mirror your target university’s program and culture as you self-reflect. Develop tales that highlight the fit between the two.

2. Write Something Extraordinary

Using the questions above, pick an incident or some strong point about yourself to elucidate.

Remember that you must write about a single incident or quality that makes you stand out. Avoid talking about two qualities or two incidents.

3. Define the Goal

Read the essay guidelines and align your writing with that. The goal of your essay must reflect well in your words.

4. Know Your Audience

Think about your audience’s expectations and interests. It is critical to capture their attention and keep them reading your work until the finish.

5. Detailed Outline

The outline must be detailed and include all significant points.

Once the outline is ready, you can expand it into a full-fledged essay using the vital points. After completing the essay, proofread for typos and grammatical errors to ensure there are no mistakes.

These are the steps that college students can follow when writing self-introduction essays.

The first step to writing a successful essay is selecting an incident or quality that you want to write about.

It is recommended that you brainstorm the ideas and create an outline to avoid mishaps later.

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Descriptive Essay

Descriptive Essay About Myself

Caleb S.

Writing a Descriptive Essay About Myself - Tips and Tricks

Published on: Jan 24, 2023

Last updated on: Nov 29, 2023

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Writing an essay about yourself can be tough - especially if you're not sure where to begin.

Not to worry! Writing an essay about yourself doesn't have to be difficult. With a little bit of pre-planning and organization, you can easily craft the perfect descriptive essay.

In this guide, you will find some simple tips and tricks to help you write the perfect descriptive essay about yourself.

So continue reading to learn more!

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Descriptive Essay - A Brief Overview

Before you jump into writing your essay, it's important to understand the basics of a descriptive essay.

A descriptive essay is a type of essay that requires you to describe something in detail. The goal is to provide readers with a full description and make them feel as though they're experiencing it themselves.

That’s why, it's important to include details so readers can connect with the you on a deeper level.

Tips to Write a "Descriptive Essay About Myself"

Now you must be asking yourself, "how do I write a descriptive essay about myself?"

Once you understand what a descriptive essay is, you need to start brainstorming ideas for your essay.

Here are some tips to help you write a descriptive essay about yourself.

Pre-Writing Tips

Before you can jump right into the writing part, you need some preparation. Follow these steps to get ready for an excellent essay.

  • Brainstorm & Define Your Subject Matter

Begin by thinking of something about yourself. For instance, your interests, personality traits, or important life events. Once you have your subject matter in mind, define it more specifically so that it’s easier to discuss in detail.

  • Make a List of Key Qualities

Once you have your subject matter defined, make a list of key qualities that you’d like to focus on. This will help guide the structure and content of your essay.

  • Gather Examples

Collect real-life examples that support your key qualities. These can be stories, anecdotes, or events. This will help make your essay more engaging and informative for readers.

  • Make an Outline  

Arrange your list of qualities, examples, and other material in a neat descriptive essay outline . This will help you write a coherent essay with an engaging flow of information.

Writing Tips

Now that you’re prepared, simply get started with writing your first draft. Follow these tips:

  • Use Creative Writing Techniques

When writing a personal essay about yourself, don’t be afraid to get creative! Try using vivid language and descriptive words to bring your essay to life. 

  • Use Anecdotes & Stories

Incorporate stories and anecdotes into your essay to make it more engaging. This will also help readers connect with you on a deeper level.

  • Give Detailed Descriptions

Make sure to include lots of details in your description and be as specific as possible. This will help readers understand and visualize your subject matter.

  • Keep it Positive

Make sure to focus on the positive aspects when writing about yourself. This will help readers walk away with a good impression of you.

Finishing Your Essay

Once you’re done with writing your first draft, you need to go over it once again to polish and make it perfect. Here’s what you need to do:

  • Check & Revise

Once you’re done writing, be sure to take the time to read and revise your essay . Read through your essay one last time and look for typos, spelling errors, or grammatical mistakes. This will help make sure that all of your ideas are well-organized and error-free

  • Get Feedback

Once you’re done revising, ask someone to read your essay and give feedback. This can be a friend, an English teacher, or anyone you trust. They may have some helpful suggestions that can help you strengthen your argument and make it more compelling.

Descriptive Essay About Myself Examples

Before you get started, it can be helpful to look at some sample essays. Here are a few good essays you should check out!

Sample of Descriptive Essay About Myself

Example of a Descriptive Essay About Myself

Descriptive Essay About Yourself Example

500 Words Essay About Myself

Short Essay About Myself

Descriptive Essay About Myself 200 Words

Read more descriptive essay examples to know how descriptive essays are written.

"Descriptive Essay About Myself" Topics

When writing about yourself, you can choose a variety of topics and perspectives to write about. Here are some topic ideas to get you started:

  • Describe your life experiences during high school
  • Describe your favorite sport or hobby you do in free time
  • Tell a story from your childhood
  • Describe the most important lesson you've ever learned 
  • Describe your goals in life
  • Talk about the most meaningful moment in your life
  • Describe a challenge you've faced and how you overcame it
  • Describe an experience that changed your life
  • Discuss ways in which you've grown as a person

These topics will give you a great starting point for your essay. You are free to explore whatever topics feel most relevant and meaningful to you.

You can also take a look at other descriptive essay topics here.

With these examples and tips in mind, you would have no problem writing a compelling and descriptive essay about yourself.

However, don't worry if you need expert help to write your essay! We've got you covered!

We at MyPerfectWords.com offer descriptive essay writing service to help you craft the perfect essay. Our descriptive essay writers are capable of creating any type of academic assignment.

We understand how important your work is, so we use only reliable sources and guarantee originality. Get in touch with the best essay writing service online today.

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Caleb S. has been providing writing services for over five years and has a Masters degree from Oxford University. He is an expert in his craft and takes great pride in helping students achieve their academic goals. Caleb is a dedicated professional who always puts his clients first.

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How to Write a Personal Essay for Your College Application

write essay on yourself

What does it take to land in the “accept” (instead of “reject”) pile?

How can you write an essay that helps advance you in the eyes of the admissions officers and makes a real impression? Here are some tips to get you started.

  • Start early.  Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself time when you don’t have other homework or extracurriculars hanging over your head to work on the essay.
  • Keep the focus narrow.  Your essay does not have to cover a massive, earth-shattering event. Some people in their teens haven’t experienced a major life event. Some people have. Either way, it’s okay.
  • Be yourself.  Whether writing about a painful experience or a more simple experience, use the narrative to be vulnerable and honest about who you are. Use words you would normally use. Trust your voice and the fact that your story is interesting enough in that no one else has lived it.
  • Be creative.  “Show, don’t tell,” and that applies here — to an extent. The best essays typically do both. You can help your reader see and feel what you are describing by using some figurative language throughout your piece.
  • Make a point. As you finish your final body paragraphs ask yourself “So what?” This will help you hone in on how to end your essay in a way that elevates it into a story about an insight or discovery you made about yourself, rather than just being about an experience you had.

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We’ve all heard about the dreaded “college essay,” the bane of every high school senior’s existence. This daunting element of the college application is something that can create angst for even the most accomplished students.

  • AA Amy Allen is a writer, educator, and lifelong learner. Her freelance writing business,  All of the Write Words , focuses on providing high school students with one-on-one feedback to guide them through the college application process and with crafting a thoughtful personal essay. A dedicated poet, Amy’s work has also been published in several journals including  Pine Row Press ,  Months to Years,  and  Atlanta Review .

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How to Write a College Essay About Yourself

David Sep 30, 2020

How to Write a College Essay About Yourself

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The scholarship you’re applying to requires that you write an essay about yourself. Easy peasy, how hard could it be? After all, you’ve been living with yourself for the last 17+ years! You know yourself better than anybody. You open your computer to start typing but your mind goes blank. Everything that you know about yourself suddenly seems unworthy of a $5,000 scholarship. 

What in the world can you write about that will spark enough interest in the scholarship committee? Before you start panicking, check out our step-by-step guide on how to write a college essay about yourself.

Step 1: Brainstorm 

The first way to tackle any scholarship essay prompt is to start with some thinking. We highly suggest that you take time before starting to write to brainstorm the essay prompt. This will not only get your creativity flowing, but your essay will be more organized and cohesive.  

Brainstorm Ideas 

To start brainstorming, sit down in a quiet space with a pen and paper. Think about your background, your family life, your family’s financial state, your academic history, your childhood, your education, sports you play, and anything else about yourself that makes you who you are. If you’re stuck, strike up a conversation with your parents or friends about yourself to get you rolling. Jot notes about yourself down on the paper.

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Now, it’s time to take the facts you’ve written about yourself and dig deeper. The goal of your scholarship essay is to tell a story about yourself that will convince the scholarship committee that you deserve to win. How can you turn facts about yourself into a compelling story?  What information can you provide about yourself that will broadcast your character? 

It helps to think about who your audience is. To do this, get to know the scholarship organization better! Visit their website and read their ‘about’ section. What do they stand for? What kind of students do they award? 

Your audience might be interested in how much you studied to get your 3.8 GPA. Your GPA and test scores may have helped get you into college, but they might not be enough to win you scholarship money. Thousands of students have near to perfect GPAs, and writing about it can be a bit dry.  

Your audience wants to read about the challenges you’ve faced along the way or meaningful experiences you’ve had. Did you have to watch a younger sibling every day after school because your parents were at work? Have you experienced mental health challenges or learning disabilities that have made studying hard for you? How did you decide that you wanted to study business in college? This is what we mean when we say to dig deep. Go past the surface level.  Talk about the experiences you have had that have gotten you to where you are today. 

Step 2: What to Include in an Essay About Yourself 

A scholarship essay about yourself is obviously very broad. You can take your essay in many directions. Remember, you want to provide information about yourself that makes your essay worth reading. Including facts about yourself in your essay is fine. But, you better be seasoning those facts with a lot of flavors. 

Here are some ideas to include in your essay. 

Topics You Can Address in Your Essay

There are plenty of ways you can talk about yourself in your essay. Remember, your essay must focus on yourself and your personal experiences in life. You can choose one or two of the following topics as the basis of your essay.

  • Experiences that have inspired your degree choice.
  • Challenges you’ve faced that have impacted your life and education.
  • Unique hobbies you have or the sports you play. 
  • How you’ve changed over the years. 
  • Your experiences in school. 
  • Professional goals you have for the future. 
  • Your achievements.
  • Special relationships that have inspired you. If you choose this topic, remember the essay still needs to focus on you.

The topic you choose to write about should be one that you can connect back to your education or career goals. If it didn’t impact your education or career in some way, it’s likely not relevant for the scholarship.  

Remember, you need to talk about the why and the how. For example, why are you pursuing a degree in law? Why did you choose this degree path? How will a law degree help you in your future? How have past experiences led you to dream of becoming a lawyer? 

Step 3: Sketch an Outline

Now that you have an idea of what you’ll write about it, it’s time to get organized. Creating an outline is your final step before starting to write. Choose one or two of the topics we suggested and start breaking down what you’ll write about in each paragraph. Your essay should consist of an introduction, 3-5 body paragraphs, and a conclusion. 

Check out our tips on what you should and shouldn’t include in your essay: 

  • Impress from the start of your essay.
  • Place yourself in the reader’s shoes. Do you show enough of your personality in your essay? Do you convince the reader that you deserve to win? 
  • Do your research and learn about the organization. Try and connect yourself to their initiatives. Do you have a hobby or goal that matches the organization? What can you bring to the organization?  
  • Only include relevant information. If something seems unnecessary or out of place, it probably is.
  • Write in the first person, this is about you after all.
  • Give specific examples. Don’t say you struggled during freshman year, instead, show what that struggle looked like.
  • Show off your strengths and achievements. 
  • Make your essay interesting! If it doesn’t captivate your audience from the start, it’s not good enough.
  • Proofread and edit your essay. Those little spelling mistakes can cost you the scholarship. They are distracting and they don’t do a good job at convincing the reader that you’re professional. Everybody makes mistakes but it’s on you to check your work before submitting.
  • Use the correct format .
  • Write about academic weaknesses in your transcripts. This is your chance to take responsibility for the ‘D’ you received during freshman year algebra. You might write about your struggles with algebra and how you were motivated to improve by getting a tutor. Definitely do not play the victim card by blaming a teacher! 
  • Making mistakes is human! Write about what you learned from your mistakes and how they have made you stronger.
  • Be authentic- write how you speak (of course, with correct grammar). Trying to impress with big words from the thesaurus isn’t as impressive as you think. 
  • Follow the essay instructions! You can write the best essay but if you don’t follow instructions, you risk being disqualified.  
  • Lie- Making up stories to win over the scholarship judges isn’t going to win over anybody! Lies scream inauthenticity. Trust us, it’s obvious when students lie and scholarship judges aren’t impressed.
  • Brag- If you think that bragging about your 4.0 GPA is going to win you scholarship money, you’re wrong. Show off your confidence in a way that doesn’t come across as overbearing and arrogant.
  • Use the essay as an opportunity to divulge your deepest darkest family secrets. This is not the place to cry your heart out or disclose personal information.
  • Be vague about your professional goals. What sounds better, awarding a student with clearly defined goals or a student who doesn’t know what they want to do in life?
  • Repeat the same information over and over again. You will have your readers yawning! 
  • Use cliches. Cliches are overused! Be bold and different. 

Step 4: How to Start an Essay About Yourself 

As with all scholarship essays, your essay about yourself should captivate readers from the very beginning. Start your essay with a creative introduction that will make the readers want to continue reading your essay. You may choose to start with a personal story or experience. 

Avoid using cliches such as “from a young age” or “for as long as I can remember.” Also, avoid using quotes. These are other peoples’ words, not your own.

At the end of your introduction paragraph, you should have a thesis statement that makes it clear to the reader why you are applying for the scholarship. They should be able to taste your enthusiasm and understand your motivation for applying. 

How to Start an Essay About Yourself Example

When it comes to my passion for teaching others, you might say I wasn’t given much of a choice in life. As the older sister of four, it was my responsibility to lead the way and teach my two younger brothers and sister. At least, I assumed that responsibility. I helped them with everything from school projects to packing for camp in the summer. It’s no surprise to me that years later, I have chosen to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Education at the University of Texas in the fall. With this scholarship, I will be able to pursue my degree in education and return to my hometown to teach in a local elementary school after graduating. 

Step 5: What to Include in Your Body Paragraphs  

Your body paragraphs are the meat of your scholarship essay. This is where the scholarship readers really get to know you. Your body paragraphs should each contain an argument with supporting details and examples. 

Your job in these paragraphs is to bring your personality out as much as possible. You also want to connect your arguments with your educational and career goals, and of course, to the scholarship you’re applying for. Make sure you relay to the reader how the scholarship will help you fulfill your goals.

How to Write a College Essay About Yourself Body Paragraphs Example

My role as a teacher to my little brothers and sister was only the start of it. As soon as I was of appropriate age, I started babysitting my neighbors on the weekends to earn extra money. Sure, that meant sacrificing my weekend nights with friends, but I was able to save up quite a lot of money from my Friday night and Saturday night gigs. For me, it was never only about the money. I loved spending time with the little kids. I would come up with fun activities to do with them, like “restaurant night,” where we would create menus and whip up ice cream sundaes in the kitchen. 

By high school, it was clear to me that I wanted to be a teacher. I took several classes in high school that confirmed this dream of mine. I particularly enjoyed my early childhood education class where I learned theories in childhood development, classroom management techniques, and about developing curriculum. I even started to write up my own curriculum and made my younger siblings be in “school,” with me as their teacher. I don’t think they were too happy about all those extra hours of school… 

Over the last year, I completed an internship as a teacher’s assistant. Every Tuesday and Thursday I spent half the day working with a 3rd-grade teacher at the local elementary school. I learned so much from this experience, like how to manage behavior problems and how to encourage shy students to participate in lessons. I can’t wait to come back to my hometown and work as a teacher after college.

Step 6: How to End an Essay About Yourself  

By the time you get to writing your concluding paragraph, you may feel an urge to finish up your essay quickly. But, your concluding paragraph is also important in making that final last impression. Don’t rush through it. 

Your concluding paragraph should wrap up your essay while giving an overview of the main points of your essay.  You should do the following in your concluding sentence: 

  • Restate your thesis in other words. 
  • Give an overview of the arguments you made in your body paragraphs. 
  • End your concluding paragraph with a big thought related to your future.

How to End an Essay About Yourself Example

You might say that my upbringing made me who I am today, but I think it’s a lot more than that. I wouldn’t have the confidence I have today in myself and in my future goals if it weren’t for my studies and jobs throughout high school. I am so excited to start my degree at the University of Texas and keep developing the tools and skills I need to become the best teacher I can be.

Step 7: The full Example of How to Write a College Essay About Yourself

Now that you have learned how to write a solid introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs, it’s time to put it all together. Here is the full example: 

Final Thoughts 

The “Tell Us About Yourself” scholarship essay prompt might feel frustrating. It can feel intimidating but it’s really not so bad once you know how to tackle it. 

Use these tips and you’ll be good to go. Time to start writing!

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David Tabachnikov is the CEO of ScholarshipOwl. Formerly at Waze and Google, David is an experienced CTO/R&D manager with over 10 years of experience of leading tech teams. David fervently believes that students should have greater access to education, and is passionate about using technology to help them achieve that goal.

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Essays About Yourself: 6 Essays And 7 Writing Prompts

Learning more about yourself will help you be more mature and aware of your personality. Here is a list of samples and prompts on essays about yourself.

Nature Vs. Nurture is an ongoing debate that continues to this day. Although research supports that external factors have a more significant effect on an individual’s personality, it can’t be denied that parents still pass on some quirks to their offspring. 

We never stop discovering ourselves. We always find new things to explore. A great way to build a stronger connection to yourself is to write about yourself. To create an essay about yourself means to share a part of yourself. 

If you’re having difficulty composing an essay about yourself, here are 6 essay examples and 7 prompts to help you get out of the gate.

Check out these top essay writing techniques to incorporate into your work.

1. I Am Enough by Adrianna Adame

2. discovering myself by claire van de weghe, 3. expressing myself as me by david – buffalo grove, 4. self efficacy and why believing in yourself matters by sophie garcia, 5. know thyself: a short essay on the importance of knowing by jeremy divinity, 6. benefits of being yourself by marcia warner, 7 essay prompts about yourself, 1. best childhood memories, 2. exciting things about me, 3. being an introvert or extrovert: advantages and disadvantages, 4. goals in life, 5. accomplishments in my life, 6. my strengths and weaknesses, 7. my fears.

“I believe that I am enough… I am good enough to be myself without the burden of negative thoughts and unrealistic expectations. I am good enough to get the help that I need from others. I am good enough to live a happy life.”

Adame’s essay emphasizes acceptance of one’s self. She discusses her past experiences and how she conquers her fears and insecurities. The subtle distinction between reality and your idealistic expectations for yourself shows that growth will only occur when you begin to accept who you are. 

“I’ve realized that more than anything, I want the strength to stand on my own, as an individual. Even when I’m faced with pressure or judgment, I want to be able to be myself authentically.”

Discovering yourself takes a lot of process and time. The author uses her own experiences to write an essay about finding herself in due time. To pursue yourself and be what you need to be, you must express yourself genuinely and evaluate your self-discoveries to gain confidence.

“We all have our own identities that reflect who we are. I’m… a thousand other things, not all of them so good, but in each one of those identities, I have a personality and an attitude that allows me to express myself.”

In Grove’s essay, he gives examples of different self-expressions, noting that each individual has different ways to express themselves. Our emotions, feelings, and words are strokes that make up the painting of us – each one unique. 

“Self-efficacy is the first step towards success… Pulling from your own experience of achieving a goal can boost your self-efficacy… Having self-efficacy would have made you push yourself towards your goal.”

In this essay, Garcia highlights the definition and importance of self-efficacy in achieving self-confidence. She elaborates on examples and relates them to self-awareness and dependence on yourself. To avoid unfortunate outcomes, people must have a realistic perception of themselves. Therefore, self-efficacy components are required to meet the desired progress and success.

“If you know yourself, you will come to realize that everything that you need is within you. All of the power in the world lies within each and every one of us. It is deep within, waiting to be unburied… Nothing outside of yourself has any dictation on who you are and how you go about your life.”

Divinity’s essay tackles the importance of valuing who we are without society’s expectations. You should know yourself without the pressure of what others want you to be; self-reflection will drive you to the best version of yourself.

“We have two personalities that you may not be aware of. Our inside and outside. Our inside consists of subjective feelings of what we think and feel and can be the side of us that we don’t tend to show. On the other side, our outside consists of somebody molded by our world view.”

Warner talks about inside and outside beauty. She also mentions how society affects the way we grow and evolve. Finally, her essay reminds its readers that admitting desires and confronting uncertainties are signs of bravery.

After reading different example essays about yourself, you’re now ready to create one tailored to who you are. The following are some prompts you can use when writing.

Essays About Yourself: Best Childhood Memories

Share any childhood memories you cherish. It can also be memories from a more recent time. This prompt will help you reminisce about the events and the feelings that accompanied you. When your readers have similar memories, your essay will trigger them to remember what they felt and thought back then, resulting in an insightful and engaging piece.

Every individual has something interesting about them. You can list all the interesting facts and things you want people to know about you. The traits, attitudes, skills, or habits you have that you think are not familiar to anyone.

Essays About Yourself: Being an Introvert or Extrovert Advantages And Disadvantages

Are you an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert? This prompt asks you to lay down your characteristics to recognize your attributes better. Listing the pros and cons of this subject will assist readers in how they can better connect and react to others with the same traits.

What keeps you going? In this prompt, you can share goals you’ve had since you were a kid and how those goals changed or if they’re still the same. Then, include what you did and plan to do to achieve those goals. Your piece can encourage and motivate others to look forward to reaching their goals in life. 

Listing your achievements doesn’t make you look like a braggart – as long as you write to share your accomplishments to inspire others. For example, you can write about the steps you took to reach your achievements and if there are any tips you want others to be aware of that will help them reach the same success you have.

Our strengths and weaknesses are products of our experiences, and no two experiences are the same. Talk about your strengths and weaknesses and explain why you consider them. Then, share how you developed them and what you plan to do to keep or overcome them. 

Are the things you’re afraid of the same as when you were a child? If yes, what are these fears? If not, why did these change? This prompt can explain what you’re afraid of and why. It doesn’t have to be something tangible, like clowns or dark spaces. It can also be a feeling or a scenario, such as being abandoned and forgotten. 

You can use this prompt to relate with your readers with the same fears.

Are you having trouble with words and grammar? See our lists of 9 of the best essay checkers to help you improve your writing.

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Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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write essay on yourself

How to Write an Essay about Yourself

write essay on yourself

Although you may know yourself better than anybody else, writing an autobiographical essay — an essay about yourself — can be hard. But don’t worry because you’ve come to the right place! 

I’m Constance, and I’ll show you how to write an essay about yourself in five simple steps. We’ll also write a sample essay together! 

Let’s get started!

Write an essay about yourself in five easy steps:

Step 1. Plan the word count for each paragraph.

Planning the word count for each paragraph will be much easier when you know the exact number of words you need for an essay. It will help you organize your ideas and present them clearly and concisely.

Any essay has three key elements:

  • The introductory paragraph (introduction).
  • Three body paragraphs.
  • The concluding paragraph (conclusion).

For example, you can follow the diagram below to easily distribute 300 words across the five paragraphs in a 300-word essay:

write essay on yourself

Step 2. Choose your essay’s main point and its supporting ideas.

First, you need to come up with one main, overarching point. To do that, you can choose one quality that describes you best. It doesn’t really matter if it is something people can see (your appearance) or not (your kindness, intelligence, etc.) as long as you pick just one.

What do you want to say about yourself? What do people say about you? Whatever you think of, it will be your essay’s main point — your thesis.

For example, “ I am a kind person .” This thesis will be enough for now. In the next step, you’ll better understand how to expand it into an entire essay.

Now, divide your topic using the Power of Three to prove your main point using three supporting ideas.

write essay on yourself

The Power of Three effectively divides an essay’s main idea into supporting points. It is a three-part structure that helps produce your body paragraphs .

Let’s try it for an example of an autobiographical essay with the thesis, “ I am a kind person.”

For example, here are three supporting ideas describing a kind person:

  • I am a good listener .
  • I always try to speak positively and avoid criticism .
  • I am always ready to lend a helping hand .

Excellent! Now we’re all set for the next step!

Step 3. Write your introductory paragraph.

Here are the key components of an introductory paragraph in writing any essay:

write essay on yourself

The first sentence is the introduction, which should catch the readers’ attention and make them want to know the person in the essay (you).

The rest of the paragraph is the thesis statement and three supporting points.

Example of an introductory paragraph about yourself

“Although I am not perfect, others see my good qualities. Many people say I am a kind person because I am a good listener, I always try to speak positively, and I love helping others with their tasks. I like listening to my family and friends when they need support. I also like to use kind words and avoid negative and forceful language. And I am always ready to lend a helping hand whenever someone needs it.”

Note that our introductory paragraph goes from a general statement to three specific ideas that support our main idea.

A general statement (our introductory sentence) briefly sets the essay’s context. Next comes our thesis statement and three supporting ideas.

Step 4. Write your essay’s body paragraphs.

After the introductory paragraph, you will write body paragraphs containing the supporting ideas for your thesis. Here’s how to structure a body paragraph:

write essay on yourself

Keep this diagram in mind when writing your body paragraphs. Start with a topic sentence, and then provide a brief explanation and example/s.

Paragraph 1

“Many people tell me that I am a good listener. I listen carefully whenever people talk to me, making sure they know I’m willing to hear them out and that they have my support. For example, whenever my friends want to talk to me about their problems, I listen carefully and avoid interrupting them. After they talk, I ask questions about their feelings and thoughts about their situation before giving them advice.”

As you can see, our first sentence in this body paragraph is a topic sentence . It gives context to our body paragraph and briefly summarizes it.

Our second sentence describes an empathetic person. And the remaining sentences illustrate our main point (topic sentence) by providing examples.

Paragraph 2

“Regardless of whom I am talking to, I always try to speak positively to make them feel good. I try to talk in a positive manner that inspires and encourages others and expresses my respect and gratitude for them. I also avoid mocking, insulting, or cursing at people. And even in uncomfortable situations, I try to offer constructive feedback instead of complaining or grumbling because I do not want any negative energy to rub off on the other person. The other day I spoke with my friend who had made a mistake. I never criticized her and offered some good advice to help her correct the situation.”

Just like paragraph 1, paragraph 2 follows the same structure outlined in the diagram. It proceeds from a general statement to more specific points .

Paragraph 3

“I am always willing to lend a helping hand. I love helping others and finding ways to make tasks easier for them, especially my family. I always wash the dishes and clean our kitchen without my mother telling me to do so. I also like helping my dad fix things in the garage and repair things in our house. And I also like helping my siblings with their school projects and homework.”

Once again, paragraph 3 follows the body paragraph structure. Now, we’re all set for the final step — the conclusion.

Step 5. Write the conclusion.

If you want an easy and quick way to write a concluding paragraph for your essay about yourself, just restate your main idea and its supporting points using different words.

Let’s try this method to write the conclusion for our essay.

“No one is perfect, but it is great if people know you best for your positive qualities. Many people tell me I am a kind person, and it tends to draw them to me. I listen carefully and attentively whenever people talk to me. I speak in a positive manner. And I love helping others and making things easier for them.”

Note how we paraphrased our introductory paragraph to restate the points we’ve already made. Keep this in mind when writing any essay.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful! Now go ahead and write an essay about yourself!

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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How to Write An Essay About Yourself (With An Example)

Author: Rafal Reyzer

You know yourself better than anyone else, don’t you?

You can commonly speak of yourself, describing your strengths and weaknesses. You know how to present yourself to other people. Yet, when it comes to writing an essay about yourself, you find it complicated. No worries, you are not alone in this world, thousands of students fail at this type of paper. This brief guide will uncover the key working tips for mastering an essay about yourself.

Exploring Personal Essay Varieties

Personal essays are, at their core, a way to introduce oneself to the reader. They can capture your current life, pivotal moments from your past, challenges faced, and how you overcame them. These narratives are written in the first person, making them personal and intimate. Depending on the context, personal essays can serve various purposes. For instance, it might be tailored to showcase your qualifications during an admissions process, convincing the selection committee of your worthiness. Alternatively, it might serve as a brief introduction when entering a new academic setting.

Broadly, there are two primary personal essays you might encounter:

  • College Application Essays: As the name suggests, these essays support your college application. Often, these require persuasive skills, as you’ll need to stand out from other applicants.
  • High School Personal Essays: These are more general, and focused on introducing you and your experiences within the educational setting.

Despite the different contexts, both types of essays might share characteristics in tone, language, and content. For in-depth insights on personal essays and other formal writing forms, check out these writing tips . If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed by a writing assignment , remember professional help is just a click away.

a young man writing an essay in a notebook

How to Write An Essay About Yourself

1. prepare a list of key questions.

First off, you should take a deep breath, and relax. No jokes, the best ideas come to your mind, when you are not stressed. Secondly, prepare a list of key questions like you are to interview yourself. Let’s pretend the main focus of the personal essay is on your life challenges.

The prompt questions may look as follows:

  • What was the hardest challenge you came across in your life?
  • How did you manage to cope with that? (If you did not cope with a challenge, you can always find a creative way out)
  • What third-party help did you involve to manage the hurdles (if any)?
  • How did challenges affect your accomplishments in life and relationships?

Just make sure to reveal the history of challenges and their solutions without sharing any irrelevant info.

2. Create A Brief Outline For Your Essay

After practicing your imaginative interview, try to structure everything in the outline. For instance, as per essay writing company professionals, the introduction will be a brief hint at your main life challenge that made you who you are today. Do not go into much detail. The body of your essay will be focused on the solutions and overcoming previous hurdles. The conclusion will be just a summarization and reference to your introduction. Same as with other types of assignments, do not forget about a thesis or a hook. An outline is your draft where you can fit various scenarios for your paper. That’s it.

3. Cover a Relevant Topic Related To Your Studies

Telling a reader, or a professor that you visited a circus where you saw animals, and that changed your inner world is #Nah. It’s especially important to relate to more relevant events when you write an admission personal essay. Try to relate everything to the studying gains. For instance, an admission commission won’t be much impressed by your vague information if they can’t see any facts or evidence that put you above the other candidates. Every paragraph should reveal your skills, your success during the studying process, and your potential about what you can gain once you enter your chosen college or university.

4. Your Personality and Creativity Matter

Shine bright like a diamond in your essay, no jokes. The times when boringly structured papers, containing plain food for thought, are just hard to read and differentiate from hundreds of other essays. Show your best by making jokes, if acceptable. If you are humble, it will help you. If you are a very humorous person, explain how humor makes your life better.

notebook map coffee on a white background

Settle in a creative environment and your essay will reflect the same quality.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Show Off

Showing off is not always a bad idea if you know how to do it smoothly. Speak of your strengths without commenting on others. Speak of your major achievements by thanking the others. An essay writing help can also help you make your show-offs mild.

6. Format and Revise Your Draft

Luckily for many students, personal essays do not require any reference paper, but there are other crucial elements you shouldn’t overlook. When finalizing your writing, double-check the font, size, margins, borders, among others. If you write for your college professor , just ensure you are both on the same wavelength. If it is an admission personal essay, there are all requirements posted on the college or university website, or you can occasionally find them with custom writing services.

7. Mind the Mistakes

The worst thing is to submit a flawless paper (in your opinion), and then get it back with underlined grammar and spelling mistakes. To avoid such unpleasant events, you can always rely on free online editors like Grammarly, and the Hemingway App which can help understand whether your paper is easy or hard to read. For the best results, you can also ask your friends or relatives to read your essay and give sincere feedback. For instance, they may also know your personality and can say whether you manage to express yourself in the best manner. If you still struggle to deliver a proper personal essay, an essay writing service might be your floating ring too. A professional custom essay service helps students with different academic assignments, meeting the toughest deadlines. I hope that you got some valuable insights from this short article and that you’re now ready to tackle any personal essay assignment! Next up, you may want to explore a guide on how to write more creatively .

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How to Write an Essay About Yourself With Tips and Examples

22 December 2023

last updated

Essays are essential in demonstrating student’s proficiency in writing academic texts. Basically, this proficiency includes writing creatively and without notable mistakes and errors. By considering writing essays about themselves, students should follow the same approach that they use when writing other types of essays, including research papers. In essence, authors should focus on preparation, stage set up, writing process, and perfecting their compositions. Also, these steps are essential in ensuring the writer’s essay is of high quality. In turn, these essays on yourself do not rely on external research to strengthen the main arguments. On the other hand, papers rely on personal anecdotes to make them authentic and original. Hence, a student needs to learn how to write an essay about yourself.

General Guidelines of Writing an Essay About Yourself

Essay writing is one of the activities that students engage in to develop their creative writing skills. Unlike a research paper , an essay that a student writes about yourself does not rely on external research. Basically, one can argue that this type of article is exploratory. Also, it explores the writer’s life across different settings, such as school life, home life, and social life. While such essays may differ from a research essay in content, it follows the same structure: introduction, body, and conclusion. Then, a research paper utilizes external research to make it relevant, but a personal essay that a student writes about yourself uses personal anecdotes to create relevance. In other words, since such a piece explores the student’s life, it is only prudent for a person to include one or several stories that give readers a glimpse into their personality.

How to write an essay about yourself

Writing an Essay About Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide

The strategy of writing academic texts is almost the same, regardless of the kind of the type of text. In short, whether academic writing involves a research essay, report, thesis paper , dissertation , or personal story, writers must engage in some activities, which are similar across these types of papers . Basically, these activities include preparation, stage set up, writing process, and wrap up of the writing process.

Step 1: Preparation

Preparation is the first step in writing an essay of any type. Basically, this stage has several components, including defining the topic, preparing ideas, and considering the audience. Concerning the topic, a person who writes about yourself can use the instructor’s theme or choose one if none is provided. In the latter case, authors should settle for a topic that interests them, one that they can find information to back up claims and arguments easily. When it comes to writing all about me essay, students should choose topics that allow them to capture a broad perspective about their lives. On preparation of ideas, students need to reflect on their lives, including positive and negative experiences and strengths and weaknesses. About the audience, they should write with expectations of instructors in mind.

Step 2: Setting Up the Stage

After preparation, the next step in academic paper writing is to set up the stage. Basically, components of this step include making notes, creating an essay outline , and creating an annotated bibliography. When writing an essay about yourself, a student should make notes when reflecting on your own experiences. In this case, a personal anecdote comes into play. Then, authors should use a personal account, highlighting a positive or negative experience and areas of strength or weakness. When it comes to creating an outline, students should use academic standards of essay outlines – introduction, body, and conclusion. Although it is unnecessary to write down these headings, authors must ensure that those reading all about me essays can identify where each of these sections begins and ends. In turn, there is no need for an annotated bibliography since no external research is required.

Step 3: Writing Process

After preparing and setting up the stage, students start writing their essays about themselves. Basically, components of this step include making the first draft, ensuring the paper captures everything that authors intend to write about, has a thesis statement , and captures the writer’s concluding thoughts. In this case, first drafts are essential because it allows writers to have an opportunity to perfect their papers through revisions and editions. Then, the thesis statement is the writer’s guide. Besides, it dictates what authors should focus on in body paragraphs. In turn, concluding thoughts are the writer’s words that summarize lessons learned. Hence, each of these components is essential in an essay about yourself.

Step 4: Wrapping Up

After writing the first draft, students begin to write the final draft. But before they start, they should read and reread the first draft to ensure it is free of any grammatical mistakes and other writing errors, such as inconsistent arguments and illogical flow of ideas. For example, if writers identify such mistakes and errors, they should revise and edit an essay about yourself accordingly. In turn, revisions help authors to eliminate inconsistencies in arguments and illogical flow of ideas, while editions help them to fix grammatical mistakes, such as a lack of punctuation or wrong use.

Use exceptional writing services that guarantee original and well-researched papers.

Main Features of Writing All About Me Essay

1️⃣ topic and concluding sentences.

When writing an essay about themselves, students should begin each body paragraph as they would in any other article – start with a topic sentence. Basically, this sentence captures a single idea that writers interrogate in a particular section, meaning that it offers an insight into the paragraph’s content. On the other hand, a concluding sentence is final thoughts about what writers have said in a specific section. Then, rules of academic writing dictate that the concluding sentence links the topic sentence with the thesis statement. In other words, it is the part of a single paragraph that creates sense for readers regarding the topic sentence and its place in the writer’s main argument.

2️⃣ Transition, Peer Review, and Final Draft

Students need to ensure that, as they write an essay about themselves, they create a logical flow of ideas from the beginning paragraph to the end. Basically, such elements may be transition words, like “consequently,” “furthermore,” “nevertheless,” and “hence.” To ensure that students do not miss identifying errors in their essays, they should subject their work to a peer review. For example, this aspect involves giving the first draft to a mentor who reads through it to make sure it is perfect. When mentors are satisfied with the paper’s quality, students start writing the final draft. However, they should also read through it at least twice and subject it to peer review before submitting it to a specific department.

3️⃣ Specific Information

As indicated, writing an essay about yourself differs from a research paper because it does not rely on external research to back up claims and arguments. Instead, writers utilize a personal story to shed light on their experiences and attributes. In this sense, such personal anecdotes are the specific information necessary for an essay about yourself. Moreover, this information is specific to a person provided through reflective writing. Hence, a personal essay that a student writes, which is about yourself, should be exploratory, descriptive, and thoughtful.

Common Mistakes

Like any other academic text, writing an essay about oneself is often prone to mistakes. For example, some of the common mistakes that writers or students make when writing an essay about yourself include writing about things that do not help readers to have a proper grasp of their personality and using exaggeration. Basically, writing an essay about yourself should enhance the readers’ understanding of authors – their life experiences, attributes, likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. In turn, exaggeration involves using information that is likely to be untrue to impress readers. To solve the first mistake, writers need to focus on personal anecdotes, as they help to highlight instances of the author’s life that is worth noting. To avoid exaggeration, students should desist from trying to impress and seek to be authentic in their writing.

Example of Writing an Essay About Yourself

My First Year of School by Zac

I walked into the classroom, shaking in terror. The class was full of howler monkeys, but I was not with howler monkeys. I was with a bunch of five and six-year-old kids. I acted as if I was watching a horror movie until I met the super lovely Mr. Keig. Mr. Keig was the best teacher in the universe.

Mr. Keig was like a giant to us, and he still is. At first, I was scared of Mr. Keig, but I found out he was super friendly. He taught me how to read and write. Add and subtract. He even taught me how to make school fun. At the beginning of school, I was horrified by math and reading. I was soon shown that those subjects were not formidable opponents, but I had yet to meet my match.

Writing. I hated writing. I had met my match, my enemy, my formidable opponent. The reason I hated writing was that I wrote slowly.  It took too long for me to write, and I was always the last one to finish my newest story. It was also ever boring for me. It was hard to find inspiration or the urge to take a step up. Math and reading, on the other hand, I sped through like Speed Racer. I was still shy, and I only had a few friends in the first couple of weeks of kindergarten. I figured out making friends was not a piece of cake. I eventually made friends. Thank God that problem was over.

Even though we got to play and create our own art, sometimes, school days were dull. Sometimes days felt like they were two million years long. There were other times when I was terrified about a test, and it seemed like the paper was laughing at me, and my pencil was dodging my paper. I was sweating, shaking, and FREAKIN’ out. I eventually pulled it together and got my test done. Relieved, relaxed, and incredibly calmed down. Tranquil and thrilled I was. It felt like I was soaring through the sky a million miles per minute.

What I learned from my year in kindergarten was to face your fears.  If you are scared, don’t run away from your worries. Another lesson I learned was not to judge a book by its cover. I assumed the school was going to be extremely hard, and tests were going to be impossible. I assumed wrong. The school (kindergarten) was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. While kindergarten was a bit challenging, I knew I could succeed if I set my mind to it and work hard.

Summing Up on How to Write an Essay About Yourself

Essay writing is an essential activity in a student’s life, as it exposes one to the dynamics of creative writing. When writing such an essay, authors learn how to use personal stories to highlight their positive and negative experiences, including strengths and weaknesses. In essence, such stories replace external evidence that writers use in research essays. Then, the guide to effective writing of such an essay includes several components, including preparation, stage set up, starting the writing process, and wrapping it up. Also, these aspects of writing an essay about yourself allow a person to build own thoughts, organize papers, and perfect academic texts. As a result, perfection involves revising any inconsistent ideas and illogical arguments and revising any grammatical mistakes, such as punctuation errors.

When writing an essay about yourself, a student should master the following tips:

  • Be thoughtful, but not fretful. Writers should, through reflection, highlight areas of their lives that provide an insight into their personality. In this case, they should do it without fear of what readers might think about them.
  • Keep an essay personal. The majority of the essay’s information should be about an author. For example, such elements involve talking about life experiences, attributes, strengths, and weaknesses. In turn, the use of personal anecdotes is essential in achieving this goal.
  • Do not guess what readers want to hear. Students should not seek to impress readers, but they need to inform them.
  • Feel free to be creative. Without exaggeration, authors should use personal stories creatively to keep readers interested in essays.
  • Tell readers something that they do not already know. The best way to keep readers interested is to use stories that writers have probably never shared publicly. In turn, such stories or experiences inject all about me essays with an aspect of amazement.
  • Ask for input from close ones. Students can ask parents, friends, mentors, counselors, coaches, and teachers to provide ideas, as they know about personally.
  • Polish a paper about yourself. Essays should not be about the writer’s story only. In turn, it should demonstrate the writer’s proficiency in writing by lacking grammatical mistakes and other notable errors.

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

How to start an essay with a quote with examples, how to title an essay: basic guidelines with examples.

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Introduction Paragraph for an Essay About Yourself

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  • Dec 5, 2023

Introduction Paragraph for an Essay About Yourself

The “ Write about yourself” is a common essay topic. It is a frequent topic in school assignments, college, and even some entrance exams. This gives an analysis to the examiner or teacher about your writing skills. They also get to know about your interests, academic background, and hobbies. In this article, we will cover how to write a captivating self-introduction in an essay about yourself.  

This Blog Includes:

Key elements of my self intro paragraph  , draft beforehand , hooks are key in essay, introduce yourself , mention your talent and qualities , mention your success story, proofreading is important, essay about myself sample.

Also Read: Essay on Forests for Students in 500 Words

The most important thing in a self-introduction essay is to decide what to include in your content. To help you with this, we have mentioned below the key elements that you should include in an informative essay. 

  • Your name 
  • Your educational background 
  • Your current profession 
  • Your interests and hobbies
  • A big achievement 
  • A challenging incident 
  • Your future goals

How to Write an Essay About Myself 

Writing an essay about yourself doesn’t mean giving every detail of ourselves. We should be mindful of what we are writing, and check whether it is relevant to state that fact or not. Here are some tips to help you write a professional and interesting self-introduction essay. 

To write a self-introduction with all relevant information in proper order, you need to prepare beforehand. You need to prepare a structure and collect all the information that has to be included in that structure. 

Starting your essay with an interesting line or question will grab the attention of your readers. Always remember, an essay that begins well always ends well. Mention something interesting that will help to hold the interest of your readers. For example ‘I’m Shrey, but you can call me S.’

When you begin to introduce yourself, don’t get confused about what details to mention. Just assume as if you are introducing yourself to a stranger who knows nothing about you. Mention your name, education qualifications, and your current job role. 

Don’t mention something as your hobby just because it sounds great. Your essay will only be appealing to read if you are authentic and original. Mention your true hobbies, and professional skills and if you think it’s very common and making your essay dull, you can state why you like it so much, or how has it impacted your life or profession. If it’s somewhere related to your profession that’s why you took this career path. 

Must Read: Viva Self Introduction: Tips and Tricks

Mentioning your passion or interests isn’t enough. You can tell a tale to show how much you like it, for example, you can say that you have won this many dance competitions or choreographed for your college fest. You can also tell a story about your biggest achievement that makes you feel proud. You can share an incident that was challenging for you and how you overcame it.  This will give clarity to your personality and make your essay more exciting to read. 

For a quality essay, only content is not important you need to make sure that your paragraph is free of grammar and spelling mistakes. While proofreading make sure the order of your essay is making sense and the sentence structure sounds good while reading. 

It’s always easy to understand through an example and samples. We have given a sample below for your reference that will help you to get more clarity. 

“My name is XYZ and I’m a psychologist by profession. In the most basic words, I assist others in discovering their strength. I’ve spent my life learning human behaviour and helping people overcome their barriers; and in this process each time I have learned something new. My job has brought me all around the world and allowed me to work with individuals from every sphere of life.

I graduated from XYZ University, Noida where I was appointed as the life coach for my active listening and problem-solving skills. My profession doesn’t award me much with materialistic things but it’s fulfilling to see someone living his/her life happily after I helped them to overcome their issues and barriers.”

Related Articles

In an Essay about myself, you should stick to the information related to you only. You should not mention things like political interests, relationship status or more.

An Ideal essay length is about 350 to 400 words. Similarly, go with myself introduction essay. Shorter than this length is not good enough.

Yes, you can share a life incident in your self-introduction paragraph that is around your biggest accomplishment or a challenging incident. 

While you are writing a self-introduction paragraph make sure you are being original and true. Everyone is unique and that must be highlighted in your essay. Hope the information provided above is useful for the readers. 

For more information on such related topics to level up your interview preparations, visit our  interview preparation  page. Check out our  career counselling  blogs and follow  Leverage edu.

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Alivia Mukherjee

Alivia is an associate content writer at Leverage Edu. She specializes in writing blogs on Indian Exams, Scholarships and study abroad topics. She can be found writing, designing and developing great content which are SEO focused.

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The Lasting Value of the Personal Essay

This writing form has a value that goes beyond the college application as it nurtures self-reflection and inspires creativity.

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I still remember my own personal essay that I wrote decades ago during my college admissions process. My essay focused on movies and how movies were a conduit of curiosity. It was also about the death of my father and how movies, in part, had provided a common ground for us—a connection. Although my essay, of course, was not the sole determining factor in my admission, it’s a predominant memory from that time of my life. To this day, I feel it had a persuasive effect on my admittance.

In fact, now looking back, I can’t recall my grade point average or my class rank or the final grade that my English teacher gave me on my literary analysis of Heart of Darkness. Even my exact SAT score, back then a real measure of academic aptitude, remains fuzzy to me all these years later, “shaded in wistful half-lights,” as described by Norman Maclean. I can, however, remember nearly every sentence, if not quite every word, of the personal essay I submitted to my first-choice college, which has undoubtedly, for me, over the years remained one of the most important pieces of writing I have ever produced.

The personal essay is an enduring literary genre and an art form that provides often-challenging material in English classes. In my Advanced Placement Language and Composition course, we frequently read works from an array of authors from various eras, including Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Joan Didion, André Aciman, Brian Doyle, Dr. Oliver Sacks. These writers function as exemplars for my students to both analyze and model not only for their rhetorical value but also for their stylistic technique and philosophical ruminations.

Power of Personalization

One of the most predominant rhetorical strategies we recognize in these texts is personalization. And so Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” has impacted my students throughout the years with its frank depiction of psychological tension, addressing philosophical themes on an existential level that never fail to capture their attention—so much so, that a group of students painted a mural on the wall outside my classroom, a visual interpretation of Woolf’s essay that they titled Memento Mori .

The candor and intimacy of Dr. Oliver Sacks’s depiction of his final days before his death from cancer have engendered numerous touching and insightful comments from my students during our Socratic seminars analyzing his almost unendurably moving personal essay, “My Periodic Table.” 

Students respond viscerally, it seems, to the personal. Sadly, many students have been touched by some of the same tragic subject matter that we analyze through these texts. During our seminars and journal assignments, my students have revealed their own personal connections to some of the personal essays we read in class, connecting, I think, to the shared experiences that we have all had throughout human history. 

Our students often find themselves facing a vortex of standardized tests, AP exams, and benchmarks throughout the school year, which often emphasize the formulaic. The active process of personal choice on topic and subject seems lost. So often my students ask me questions when writing an essay, seeking a particular answer, as if literary analysis were calculus. Missing is the creativity, the exploration of writing free from academic constraints like rubrics and scoring guides. Writer-editor Steve Moyer asserts in  Edsitement , “Nuanced thought... requires a greater gestation period than the nearly instant gratification made possible on Twitter.” I have witnessed this impatience from my own students.

There can be a restlessness in the writing process, a hesitancy for revision or drafting. Personal essays require self-reflection and a free-flowing freedom from rigid form that my students embrace in a way that they don’t with an argument or research-based essay. On more than one occasion during parent-teacher conferences, I have had parents tell me that their child used to love creative writing, but somewhere along the way, the rigor of school seemed to have killed it.

Personal essays, then, restore that creativity, since they encourage a freedom from form. Students can experiment with style and figurative language and syntax in ways that the traditional academic five-paragraph essay often thwarts.

Personal essays also allow teachers to really get to know our students, too. The inherent intimacy of a personal essay, the connection between the writer and the reader—in this case, a student and a teacher—provides insight into the concerns, the dreams, the emotions of our students in addition to allowing us to assess how they exercise their compositional skills, including imagery, syntax, diction, and figurative language. Here, then, a teacher has the best of both worlds. We’re able to both connect to our students on an emotional level and evaluate their learning on an academic level. Personal essays also serve as an emotional outlet. 

There seems to be a common assumption that personal essays for high school students serve only the college application process, so the process begins during their senior year. Personal writing, however, should occur throughout a student’s academic experience. The narrative essays that most elementary school students encounter evolve into the more ruminative, philosophical, and reflective personal writing they will encounter during their senior year from many of Common App essay prompts.

Many teachers implement journal writing in their classrooms that provides a firm foundation for the type of personal writing that the college admissions essay requires. In my own class of juniors, the last assignment we complete for the year is a personal essay. My intent is to help prepare them for the college essay they will write, hopefully, during the summer so that they will have a solid draft before the application process begins. 

Teaching our students this strategy in their own writing benefits them in their futures, not only for the imminent college application process but also for job interviews. For example, I was mentoring a student, a senior who had no desire to go to college, about the job interview process he would soon face after graduation. We rehearsed and practiced the types of questions he might encounter from a future employer. I encouraged him to remember the personal details of his experience, personalizing everything in a way that would allow him to ideally stand out as a job candidate.

Through personal essay writing, my overarching, grand ambition is to instill in my students ultimately a love of reflection, looking back on their experience, reminiscing on significant memories that linger, carefully considering the seemingly little moments that, only upon reflection, have an enormous impact on us.

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If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point—usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex—the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. “What’s different about College X,” she’ll say confidently, “is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.”

Whether or not you’ve heard the phrase before, it gets your attention. Can anyone teach you how to think? Aren’t we all thinking all the time; isn’t the proof of our existence found in our think-think-thinking, one banal thought at a time?

On Thinking for Yourself

The tour eventually ends, and in a couple of hours, you’re on another college campus, and while you’re marching from that institution’s climbing gym to its sophomore-student housing, a different tour guide spins on his heel, speeds up, and lets you in on his school’s secret: “What’s different about College Y,” he says—with what seems to be complete confidence that you haven’t heard such a thing before—“is that our professors don’t teach us what to think; they teach us how to think.”

Each of the guides seems to think this is a point of difference about his or her college, which is itself a sign that they have spent a lot more time in the “what to think” school of higher education than in the “how to think” one. When you’re visiting a college, walk through the corridors of some of the humanities departments. Look at the posters advertising upcoming events and speakers, read the course listings, or just stand silent in front of the semiotic overload of the instructors’ office doors, where wild declarations of what they think and what they plan to make you think will be valorously displayed.

Does this look like a department that is going to teach you how to think?

The truth of the matter is that no one can teach you how to think, but what they can do is teach you how to think for yourself.

To the extent that I have learned how to think for myself, it’s because my father taught me. Usually by asking me a single question.

For the love of God, I hated that question. And for some reason I always, always forgot to see it coming. My father was an academic and a writer who cared a great deal about teaching, and he was never off the clock.

There we’d be, chatting away, when some new subject or other would heave into view, and I’d launch into a long assessment of it. I’d be certain—absolutely positive—that I was right. My father would listen, head cocked a little to the side, often smiling a bit, sometimes raising his eyebrows after an especially bold point. For some reason, I would feel encouraged—not wary—and I’d bash ahead into bolder assessments.

Eventually, I’d run out of steam and finish up, with some sort of gesture meaning “case closed.”

There would be a moment of silence. And then my father would say—gently, because there was zero need to say it any other way: “And what is the best argument of the other side?”

The best argument of the other side! Jesus Christ— the other side? The whole point of the argument was to destroy the other side! I was there to illuminate and then devastate the other side by engaging deeply with the worst it had to offer.

Which is usually a light lift.

I had learned the style and the rhetorical turns of making a great case, but I didn’t know the first thing about fortifying it with facts, reason, logic—or the best argument of the side I was treating in such a cavalier way.

You don’t have to delve into the arcana of the Third Reich to destroy anyone making a case for it. But these layups rarely present themselves in decent places. Most of the time, the subjects we talk about are—for all of their flattening by cable news and internet wormholes and all the rest of it—extremely complicated.

A teacher should never do your thinking for you. She should give you texts to read and guide you along the path of making sense of them for yourself. She should introduce you to the books and essays of writers who disagree with one another and ask you to determine whose case is better.

Many college professors don’t want to do that today. They don’t want to “platform” a writer they think is wrong; they don’t want to participate in “both sides-ism.” The same thing is true for the students who pound on the doors of lecture halls and pull fire alarms and throw garbage cans down hallways to protest the 45-minute speech of a visitor.

They believe in sympathetic magic. They believe that words—even those spoken within a lecture hall—will damage them and their classmates. The truth is that they’re scared. They don’t think their ideas can outmatch those of the hated speaker.

Is there anything more satisfying than watching a debate in which the sophist gets defenestrated by someone smarter, better prepared, and obviously right?

Don’t bang on the doors of the lecture hall. Universities should book this character in the biggest auditorium they have. Broadcast him live on a campus radio station. Tell him the only requirement for his visit is that he engage in debate with a student—and then track down the young woman or man who owns this subject. And the professors who can help him or her to make the strongest possible case.

Do you think evil can stand up against that student’s case? It can’t.

The truth bats last.

In the broadest possible sense, “what’s wrong” with the modern American university is that although it still understands itself to operate under the model established by the 19th-century German university—which emphasized academic freedom, seminars, and laboratories as means of allowing students to discover the truth for themselves—it’s becoming a parody of that model. The professors are going to tell you what to think, and you’re going to backfill that “truth” with research of your own.

To college-bound students, I would say this: The college campus is full of salesmen eager to get you to buy the deluxe model without so much as a test drive. But it’s your life and your mind, and—as of present writing—you have every right to think and speak and write for yourself. You’re needed out here.

This essay is adapted from the introduction to the book On Thinking for Yourself: Instinct, Education, Dissension .

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​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Krystal

How to Travel and Write an Essay

T raveling to new places and having new experiences can provide wonderful inspiration for writing essays. Immersing yourself in different cultures, interacting with new people, and exploring unfamiliar terrain engages your creative mind. Using your travel adventures as essay topics allows you to share your insightful reflections. Reading reviews of essay writing services can give you ideas on engaging writing styles and techniques to make your travel essay compelling. Here are some tips for traveling and gathering material to write a compelling essay.

Pick a Focused Travel Goal 

Rather than trying to do everything, pick a particular aspect of travel on which to focus your essay. This could involve food, architecture, nature, art, history, or interacting with locals. Choosing a specific emphasis will help shape your travels and give your essay direction. For example, if you want to write about regional cuisine, plan your itinerary around visiting iconic restaurants and food markets. Or if exploring national parks is your priority, design your trip to hike various trails and take in diverse landscapes. Picking a travel concentration spotlights what matters most for your essay topic.

Keep Detailed Notes and Media

Be sure to keep notes about your travel experiences, as memory alone is unreliable. Use your phone or a notebook to write descriptions of key places and events. Capture telling details, snippets of overheard conversations, interesting quotes from people you meet, and your personal reactions. In addition, take ample photos and videos to add visual elements and jog your memory later when writing your essay. Gathering detailed sensory information, verbatim conversations, and media will enable you to vividly convey your travels.

Get Off the Beaten Path 

While tourist hotspots yield common experiences many travelers share, explore lesser-known areas for fresh essay material. Wandering side streets and alleys or chatting with shop owners away from crowds provides unique perspectives. Hiking secluded trails showcases wilderness most never experience. Seeking out locals’ haunts and hidden gems exposes you to rare sights, sounds, and people unlikely to appear in standard travelogues. Venturing off the predictable beaten path unveils captivating topics to distinguish your essay.

Step Out of Your Comfort Zone 

Challenge yourself on your travels by trying things outside your comfort zone, which will give you intriguing insights to inform your writing. Sample exotic cuisine with ingredients you can’t identify. Learn basic phrases in the native language. Navigate public transportation on your own. Talk to strangers from very different backgrounds. Accept an invitation to an unusual cultural event. Pushing past familiar habits and fears boosts opportunities for uncommon experiences, stimulating reflections to share in your essay. Facing uncertainty and discomfort allows you to access a fuller, richer range of travel moments.

Reflect on Your Interior Journey 

While cataloguing external places and events, also focus inward on your inner terrain. Note how travel affects you emotionally and psychologically along with the physical destinations and activities. Record when you feel wonder, irritation, joy, sadness, connection, isolation. Analyze what triggers these responses. Ponder how unfamiliar surroundings surface unanticipated reactions, or how you apply filters and assumptions unconsciously. Consider if this self-discovery challenges or reinforces your worldviews. Examining your interior shifts alongside exterior impressions provides deeper insight. Reading an Academized review reinforced the importance of weaving together outer and inner dimensions to craft a multi-layered essay.

Find Themes and Connections

As you travel and gather essay material, look for overarching themes that emerge. Do certain ideas or patterns recur as you journey? Do you keep learning similar lessons? Find common threads to tie together diverse experiences for a unified essay focusing on key themes. Or spotlight thought-provoking contrasts revealed through your travels. Additionally, consider connections between your voyage and broader context. How do your observations reflect historical, social or cultural phenomena? Can you compare and link your individual trip to larger collective issues? Identifying meaningful themes and links helps shape a compelling, impactful essay.

Craft a Strong Essay Structure 

Once you return from travels filled with observations, memories, artifacts and inspiration, it’s time to organize everything into a structured essay. First, revisit all your travel documentation and media, inventorying the best highlights to develop your central idea. Craft an introduction hooking readers’ interest while overviewing essay themes. Use each subheading to structure key travel experiences into engaging sections reinforced with vivid details, quotes, and examples. Analyze how these experiences interrelate and what insights they reveal associated with your themes. End with a powerful conclusion synthesizing main points and their significance. Edit carefully to refine language, verify facts, streamline structure while intensifying descriptions. Follow this process to translate your travel discoveries into an engaging, insightful essay.

Adding organization through focused subheadings provides natural breaks allowing readers’ eyes to rest while you emphasize key sections. Incorporating variable sentence types creates welcome rhythm and pacing variation. Contrasting longer complex sentences with shorter punchy ones, and trading sentences brimming with adjectives for straightforward construction alternates language patterns to maintain reader interest. Using low perplexity sentences when suitable enhances comprehension. Integrating these creative writing techniques keeps your travel essay lively, clear and compelling from start to finish.

So captivate readers with an essay unveiling your travel adventures and realizations. Immerse in cultural curiosities, venture off script, expand beyond your comfort zone and analyze what you uncover. Then organize intriguing experiences into an engaging essay emphasizing unforgettable impressions that reveal broader insights. With planning and attention, your travels can form the basis for a memorable, meaningful essay.

The post How to Travel and Write an Essay appeared first on Sunny Sweet Days .

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  1. How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay

    How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples Published on September 21, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on May 31, 2023. An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability.

  2. How To Write About Yourself: Great Tips For Personal Writing

    How do you write an essay describing yourself and your accomplishments without making it sound like a resume? Well, just like most things, you get better at writing about yourself … by writing about yourself. You practice. That's it.

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    1 Introduce yourself. Writing about yourself can be tough, because there is so much you can say. You have a lifetime of experiences, talents, and skills to summarize in a paragraph, or two. Whatever kind of writing you are planning on doing, whatever your purpose, just think about it like you are introducing yourself to a stranger.

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    1. Know your audience Knowing your audience allows you to convey your message effectively. Apart from that, it allows you to talk directly to whoever your reader is. This can be done by doing research in advance. So, if you're writing an essay about yourself, you need to have some idea as to who will be evaluating your essay.

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    How to Write an Essay About Yourself By Gabriel Jimenez-Ekman Reviewed by Bill Jack Updated: February 6th, 2024 Writing an essay about yourself is no easy feat — although you may know yourself better than anyone, it can be tough to get the perspective needed to write about yourself in essay form.

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    Types of Writing Essays How To Write an Essay About Yourself (and Cement Your Writing Style) By Alvin Park , Staff Writer Updated July 19, 2022 Image Credits The "about me" essay is a classic assignment. Part of that comes from its practicality; it's a good way to introduce yourself to new people.

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    A strong college essay shows your unique experiences, personality, perspective, interests, and values—ultimately, what makes you unique. After all, people attend college, not their grades or test scores. The college essay also provides students with a considerable amount of agency in their application, empowering them to share their own stories.

  8. An Essay About Myself: Writing Tips and Tricks

    There are a lot of things to take into consideration when writing a personal essay, from which details are the most intriguing to potential readers to developing your own personal experiences into a story and knowing how to write sensitively about subjects and people in your life without causing offense.

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    1. Create a List of Questions 2. Brainstorm and Outline 3. Be Vulnerable 4. Use Personal Examples 5. Write in the First Person 6. Don't Be Afraid to Show Off…But Stay on Topic! 7. Show Personality 8. Know Your Audience 9. Proofread and Edit! Let's start with some examples of personal essay prompts: Tell me about yourself.

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    "I'm writing this essay to show people my heart and how passionate I am about removing disparities and barriers in healthcare. I believe in my abilities, and I want to further my education, so I can help heal people." For any good piece of writing, there has to be fact behind it (if even these facts are abstract in narrative or fiction).

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    An essay about yourself should present you in a positive light, but also leave your reader with a greater understanding of what it is that makes you tick. What's your inspiration and motivation? In this article, I'll give you a range of ideas to include in your essay about yourself.

  12. How do I write about myself in a college essay?

    Frequently asked questions How do I write about myself in a college essay? How do I write about myself in a college essay? Most importantly, your essay should be about you, not another person or thing. An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability.

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    by CB Community Written by CB Community Writing essays and academic papers are two such responsibilities for which students often face challenges throughout their academic life. In fact, self-introduction essays are among the most typical assignments students confront among the many other essays.

  14. How to Write an Essay About Yourself with Confidence

    How to Write an Essay About Yourself with Confidence January 8, 2018 Tell me about yourself. Whether you hear these words as you introduce yourself to a new group of people or read them on an essay assignment, they can be intimidating.

  15. A Complete Guide to Writing Descriptive Essay About Myself

    1. Descriptive Essay - A Brief Overview 2. Tips to Write a "Descriptive Essay About Myself" 3. Descriptive Essay About Myself Examples 4. "Descriptive Essay About Myself" Topics Descriptive Essay - A Brief Overview Before you jump into writing your essay, it's important to understand the basics of a descriptive essay.

  16. How to Write a Personal Essay for Your College Application

    Here are some tips to get you started. Start early. Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself time when you don't have other homework or extracurriculars hanging over your head to ...

  17. How to Write a College Essay About Yourself

    Step 4: How to Start an Essay About Yourself. As with all scholarship essays, your essay about yourself should captivate readers from the very beginning. Start your essay with a creative introduction that will make the readers want to continue reading your essay. You may choose to start with a personal story or experience.

  18. Essays About Yourself: 6 Essays And 7 Writing Prompts

    6. My Strengths and Weaknesses. Our strengths and weaknesses are products of our experiences, and no two experiences are the same. Talk about your strengths and weaknesses and explain why you consider them. Then, share how you developed them and what you plan to do to keep or overcome them. 7. My Fears.

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    Step 1. Plan the word count for each paragraph. Planning the word count for each paragraph will be much easier when you know the exact number of words you need for an essay. It will help you organize your ideas and present them clearly and concisely. Any essay has three key elements: The introductory paragraph (introduction). Three body paragraphs.

  20. How to Write An Essay About Yourself (With An Example)

    How to Write An Essay About Yourself. 1. Prepare a List of Key Questions. First off, you should take a deep breath, and relax. No jokes, the best ideas come to your mind, when you are not stressed. Secondly, prepare a list of key questions like you are to interview yourself. Let's pretend the main focus of the personal essay is on your life ...

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    📚 General Guidelines of Writing an Essay About Yourself 🔗 Helpful Links 📝 Writing an Essay About Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide 1️⃣ Step 1: Preparation 2️⃣ Step 2: Setting Up the Stage 3️⃣ Step 3: Writing Process 4️⃣ Step 4: Wrapping Up 📋 Main Features of Writing All About Me Essay 1️⃣ Topic and Concluding Sentences

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    The " Write about yourself" is a common essay topic. It is a frequent topic in school assignments, college, and even some entrance exams. This gives an analysis to the examiner or teacher about your writing skills. They also get to know about your interests, academic background, and hobbies.

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    Use a casual and friendly tone. 1. Develop a strong introduction. A concise, informative self-introduction can immediately interest the reader and make them more likely to continue reading the rest of your document. Write a short statement that accurately describes your skills and qualifications.

  24. The Importance of the Personal Essay in High School

    The personal essay is an enduring literary genre and an art form that provides often-challenging material in English classes. In my Advanced Placement Language and Composition course, we frequently read works from an array of authors from various eras, including Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Joan Didion, André Aciman, Brian Doyle, Dr. Oliver Sacks.

  25. Colleges Are Lying to Their Students

    This essay is adapted from the introduction to the book On Thinking for Yourself: Instinct, Education, Dissension. On Thinking for Yourself: Instinct, Education, Dissension By Caitlin Flanagan

  26. How to Travel and Write an Essay

    Traveling to new places and having new experiences can provide wonderful inspiration for writing essays. Immersing yourself in different cultures, interacting with new people, and exploring ...

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