Of everything in the U.S. application, the personal essay is usually what unsettles families the most — and it's easy to see why. Most university systems outside the U.S. rely on academic records and exam results to do the talking; they don't ask students to write about who they are. A 650-word piece of writing carrying real weight in an admissions decision has no real equivalent in many countries, so it's natural for it to feel strange at first.
Why this feels so unfamiliar
By the time applications are due, grades and test scores are already on the transcript, and activities and honors are already listed elsewhere in the application — in fact, the essay is the one part of it still fully in the student's hands. It's the one place where your student's voice, values, and personality come through directly, in their own words — not just what they achieved, but who they are and what they'd bring to a campus community once there. That shift, from résumé to reflection, is the biggest adjustment for students and parents alike.
The two kinds of essays
Students applying through the Common App write one personal statement, capped at 650 words. It responds to one of several open-ended prompts — about a challenge, an identity, a moment of growth, or a topic of the student's own choosing. Many schools — especially the most selective ones — also ask for supplemental essays: shorter pieces that respond to that college's own questions, unlike the personal statement, which is sent to every school a student applies to through the Common App.
It isn't academic writing
This is where a lot of strong students have trouble, especially ones used to formal, structured writing. The personal statement doesn't need a thesis statement or a five-paragraph structure, and writing in the first person is expected, not avoided. It should sound like how your student actually talks and thinks — honest and specific — rather than the more formal way they'd write for a school essay. It still needs to be careful, well-proofread writing — colleges use it to judge writing ability. It just isn't the kind of writing most students have been trained to produce.
What makes an essay work
Students often get stuck trying to find the perfect event or topic, when what tends to matter most isn't the event itself but the growth around it — what changed, whether that's something the student understood differently about themselves, about other people, or about the world more broadly. An essay that only describes something that happened reads as a story; one that also reflects on how it shaped the writer tends to read as real insight.
It may help to see this in practice: a handful of colleges publish real admitted-student essays alongside notes on what admissions officers responded to — Johns Hopkins keeps a good running collection here. It's worth a look before your student starts a draft.
Instead of asking what admissions officers want to hear, your student should ask what they'd want a stranger to understand about them after reading it. Essays written from that place tend to read as genuine. Essays written to sound impressive tend to read as exactly that, and admissions officers notice the difference.
A note on AI
It's tempting to rely on tools like ChatGPT when a deadline is close, but most colleges are explicit that this essay has to be the student's own writing, and admissions readers can spot text that doesn't sound like a teenager wrote it. Used in a narrow way, AI can be fine — checking grammar and spelling, or generating a few starter questions to help with brainstorming. It shouldn't draft an outline, write passages for the student to lightly edit, or translate an essay written in another language into English. A simple way to check is to ask whether a trusted teacher could reasonably do the same task: proofreading, yes; writing the essay itself, no. The same line applies to AI.
How a counselor can help
My role in the essay process isn't to write the essay for a student or rewrite their draft until it no longer sounds like them. It's to ask the right questions, help a student find the story only they can tell, and guide them through drafting and revision with honest feedback along the way. Most students are surprised by how much clearer the process becomes once they realize the essay isn't a test to pass — it's a chance to be heard.