QuestionsAnswered.net

What's Your Question?

10 Easy-to-Use Stopwatch Apps

common app personal statement word count

Timers and stopwatches are important tools for fitness and training programs, but they are also helpful for a variety of other activities. Stopwatch applications are available as standard programs on many smartphone devices. However, those looking for an easy-to-use stopwatch app that is a step above the basic offering should check out these 10 picks.

Timeglass (iOS)

Timeglass is one of the top rated apps for Apple devices. It has a minimalist design that makes it easy to navigate. You get to choose the color and sound themes to customize the app to your preferences. With the stopwatch feature, the time counts up so you can time your workout. Additionally, set single-use and repeat timers for other activities.

common app personal statement word count

Stopwatch Timer (Android)

Stopwatch Timer for Android is designed for one-handed operation, so you can easily control it during a workout or other activities. It displays the time intervals in digital or analog format, recording minutes, seconds and milliseconds. The app allows you to store data to refer to later or send as a file through email, text or social networking.

common app personal statement word count

Multitimer (iOS)

Multitimer is a step up from the basic countdown timer clock and stopwatch on the iPhone. The display has several circles on the main screen that you can customize to different timers and stopwatches. The basic app is free and offers a quality, reliable stopwatch, but the paid version unlocks other features.

common app personal statement word count

Timer (Android)

Timer has a clean, simple look and is easy to use. One of its top features is the widget, which you can place right on your home screen. You can start and stop the stopwatch or timer clock countdown without having to open the app.

common app personal statement word count

Tabata Stopwatch Pro (Android, iOS)

Tabata Stopwatch Pro was designed with HIIT in mind. It helps you automate your workout with exercise, rest, cooldown and other intervals. It has a basic setup for people who are new to HIIT training, but is customizable for more advanced athletes with specific workout needs.

common app personal statement word count

Google Clock (Android)

Google Clock is perhaps the easiest stopwatch to use on Android devices. Simply start the stopwatch and click the “lap” button to record your lap times. Because the app was developed by Google, you can feel confident knowing that it will work seamlessly with smartwatch devices, too.

common app personal statement word count

Stopwatch Timer (Windows)

Stopwatch Timer for Windows devices is an easy-to-use stopwatch app with a minimalist design. Pin the stopwatch tile right on the home screen for quick and easy access. While using the app, the lock screen is temporarily disabled so you can access it quickly during a workout.

common app personal statement word count

Timer+ (iOS)

Timer+ is an upgrade from iOS’ basic Clock app. With Timer+ you can run multiple stopwatches at the same time and they all appear on the same screen. This app is optimized for use with Apple Watch, making it easy to use during exercise.

common app personal statement word count

Intervals (iOS)

Intervals is a timer designed specifically for interval workouts. Unlike the above-mentioned app, you control this app using your Apple Watch, though it runs simultaneously on your iPhone. Other features include voice controls and pairing with the Health app.

common app personal statement word count

Stopwatch and Timer (Android)

Stopwatch and Timer for Android has been one of the top timer apps since 200It performs basic functions without a lot of extra features. Those who want more features can upgrade to the paid version. You can customize the look of the app and rename the different timers to meet your needs.

common app personal statement word count

MORE FROM QUESTIONSANSWERED.NET

common app personal statement word count

BlogLines.com

How Apps Can Simplify Online Shopping

common app personal statement word count

Shopping apps have made online shopping easier than ever. With new apps and updates coming out every week, shopping from your phone is no longer a chore. In fact, using apps to shop online may be easier than using a computer with recent updates. Thanks to shopping apps, a catalog or a computer is no longer needed to buy an item you desire. But that is not all, there are many ways apps can simplify your shopping experience.

Buy From Anywhere

The best perk of using apps for online shopping is the ability to shop from anywhere. Whether you’re waiting for a doctor’s appointment or just bored at work, you can use online shopping apps to search for items you need. Mobile apps are more user friendly than mobile websites which makes it even easier to shop. Many popular shopping apps also have features where you can save your payment details.

Search for Deals

Using discount and coupon apps you can search for coupon codes for your favorite online stores. When you are at the checkout process many times you will see a slot for coupon codes. Doing a quick search with one of the many apps available makes it easy to find these discount codes. It only takes a few seconds and you can save some money when buying things you were going to buy anyway.

Read Reviews

If you’re looking for a specific product, using apps to read product reviews can help make the right choice. Making sure the product you’re looking for will work and last is important. After all, you don’t want to waste your hard-earned money. It’s also a good idea if you’re buying from websites you aren’t familiar with. Just using one of these apps for a few seconds could help you avoid shopping mistakes.

Manage Orders on the Go

Managing your online shopping orders on the go could help make your life easier and help your orders arrive quicker. If an item is out of stock in the color you want or the item will take a few days longer to arrive, the seller may message you and ask your choice. With online apps, you can reply quickly and make sure your orders are up to your standards.

Get Tracking Updates

We all get antsy when we’re waiting for our package to arrive. Instead of checking your shopping account every few minutes, you can get tracking updates through your favorite shopping app.

Make Returns Easy

Sometimes you buy something that just isn’t a good fit. Many online stores have a return policy if you request a return within 30 days. If you aren’t by your computer and nearing your return deadline, apps can help. By logging in to the mobile app of your favorite online shop, you can request a return and then print the label later. Some apps even have air printing available. That way, you can make sure you meet your deadline. You can also track your returns on the go to see when they arrive and when you can expect your refund.

MORE FROM BLOGLINES

common app personal statement word count

Admissions Blog

Undergraduate Admissions Uncensored

Common App Essay: Size Does Matter

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Craig

common app personal statement word count

Every year students ask me the same question:

“How long should my Common Application essay be?”

I am never shy about providing them with the response that best summarizes how they need to approach both the Common Application essay and the Common Application in general:

“Go Big or Go Home!”

Despite what the official directions on the Common App indicate, students writing a 250-word essay – the lowest end of the range that is officially acceptable to complete this essay – have a far lower chance of convincing college admissions officers of their admissions-worthiness than students who believe in the maxim, ‘bigger is better.” The official upper limit in acceptable length on the Common App essay is 650 words.

A well-thought out and well-developed essay of any true substance is not only not possible in 250 words, it’s barely possible in 450 words. This is why none of our clients have ever submitted a Common App essay consisting of fewer than 450 words. With that said, the true sweet spot in Common Application essay writing, for this current year’s prompts and prompts going back over a decade, is 500 to 650 words. This was even the case a few years ago when the Common App limited students to a mere 500 words. That experiment lasted for such a short time because colleges were getting such transparently superficial essays that they were a waste of time and effort for students and completely lacking any valuable insight helpful to college admissions officers.

Think of a 500- to 650-word essay as a smooth and enjoyable flight from D.C. to Disney World. In 500 to 650 words students have the space they need to achieve proper cruising altitude: writing a strong introductory paragraph that both grabs readers’ attention and clearly states the essay’s thesis. Next, just as one wants to have an enjoyable in-flight experience with the fasten seatbelt sight off and flight attendants passing out drinks and snacks, so to does a 500- to 650-word essay allow readers to relax a bit. In 500 to 650 words students are able to produce non-rushed, non-turbulent, highly valuable descriptive and specific body paragraphs that go a long way toward proving the essay’s thesis. Finally, landing a plane takes great skill, as does writing a conclusion to a college application essay. It’s not a simple rehash of the lift off (thesis); it should be complementary to it. Students who have 500 to 650 words to work with are able to smoothly touch down in a way that puts the cherry on top of the entire flying/essay reading experience. At the end of the day, admissions officers read your essays because they want to fly the friendly skies with you into your world. 500 to 600 words allows you to give them a proper flying experience and gives you the words necessary to differentiate your world from the world of other applicants.

In order to produce a great final draft essay, your rough drafts should be even longer than 650 words. It’s very common for our clients to create first, second, and third draft essays of nearly 1,000 words. Only through consistent and high quality editing can any essay be ready for submission to colleges and universities, and starting with too few words on initial drafts is a recipe for a puny little final draft essay.

So, the big take-away ideas on the Common App Essay are these:

Before I share more extremely important Common App essay advice, let’s zero in on what students are going to be writing about on this year’s Common App. None of the essay prompts are easy, and all require a great deal of time, thought, and drafting before members of the Class of 2022 can confidently hit submit on their applications.

The 2023-2024 Common Application essay prompts are as follows:

Choose the option below that best helps you write an essay of no more than 650 words.

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Honestly, I miss the old questions that existed through the 2016-2017 iteration of the Common App. The current questions indicate that the people behind the Common App are less and less interested in reading essays from normal teenagers and more and more interested in pushing teens to appear exceptional, idiosyncratic, or downright eccentric for the purpose of entertaining application readers and putting on a show of some sort of diversity. I would be surprised if many of the admissions officers could portray themselves accurately with these prompts. But we take the world we are given; this is what students in the Class of 2022 who will apply to Common App colleges and universities have to work this admissions cycle.

Remember that it’s always better to start brainstorming sooner rather than later, and if your essay is still not where you want it after working on it for a while, make sure to check out why your essay may be really bad or downright awful . You should aim to wrap up your Common App essay no later than early August, which will give you plenty of time to draft and perfect your essays for Common Application supplements.

Remember, if you want or need help with any part of your essay brainstorming and drafting, I’m here to help you .

Important Related Links:

2023-2024 Common App essay prompts: the best and worst for you

The Stats You Need: Most Popular & Least Popular Common App Essay Prompts

Why Your College Application Essay is So Bad

Why Your College Application Essay is Awful

Ultimate College Application Essay Brainstorm

Secret to a Successful College Application Essay First Draft

The Common Application

' src=

About Craig

Craig Meister is a college admissions coach and educational consultant. He previously held university admissions and high school college and career counseling positions in Baltimore, West Palm Beach, and Rio de Janeiro.

Filed Under: Advice & Analysis , Common Application , Essays Tagged With: Applications

Related posts:

common app personal statement word count

University Interviews

Personal Statements

Studying Abroad

Guide to GCSE Results Day

Finding a job after school or college

Retaking GCSEs

In this section

Choosing GCSE Subjects

Post-GCSE Options

GCSE Work Experience

GCSE Revision Tips

Why take an Apprenticeship?

Applying for an Apprenticeship

Apprenticeships Interviews

Apprenticeship Wage

Engineering Apprenticeships

What is an Apprenticeship?

Choosing an Apprenticeship

Real Life Apprentices

Degree Apprenticeships

Higher Apprenticeships

A Level Results Day 2023

AS Levels 2023

Clearing Guide 2023

Applying to University

SQA Results Day Guide 2023

BTEC Results Day Guide

Vocational Qualifications Guide

Sixth Form or College

International Baccalaureate

Post 18 options

Finding a Job

Should I take a Gap Year?

Travel Planning

Volunteering

Gap Year Guide

Gap Year Blogs

Applying to Oxbridge

Applying to US Universities

Choosing a Degree

Choosing a University or College

Personal Statement Editing and Review Service

Guide to Freshers' Week

Student Guides

Student Cooking

Student Blogs

Top Rated Personal Statements

Personal Statements By Subject

Writing Your Personal Statement

Postgraduate Personal Statements

International Student Personal Statements

Gap Year Personal Statements

Personal Statement Length Checker

Personal Statements By University

Personal Statement Frequently Asked Questions

Personal Statement Template

Job Interviews

Types of Postgraduate Course

Writing a Postgraduate Personal Statement

Postgraduate Funding

Postgraduate Study

Internships

Ivy League Universities

How To Write A College Admissions Essay

Fees & Funding

Online Degree

Platinum Express Editing and Review Service

Gold Editing and Review Service

Silver Express Editing and Review Service

UCAS Personal Statement Editing and Review Service

Oxbridge Personal Statement Editing and Review Service

Postgraduate Personal Statement Editing and Review Service

You are here

Common App Essay Word Limit

The maximum number of words you can submit for your Common App essay is 650 . It must also be a minimum of 250 words .

If your essays do not adhere to these guidelines, you will not be able to submit your essay online using the Common Application system.

Remember that the Common App essay is designed to test your ability to write clearly and concisely, so it's in your best interest to work to these word limits. 

To try and hit this word limit, take a look at our sections on the Common App Format and Structure , which will help you organise the content of your essay coherently.

The information here will help you see what is missing/needs adding to, and which parts could be cut.

Our collection of Common App Essay Examples can also help you decide which information to include in your essay, and keep your word count down.

Further information

For more tips and advice on putting together your common application for college, please see:

College Raptor

Google

What You Need To Know About The Common Application Essay

You can submit the Common Application to over 700 colleges across the US. If you’re applying to multiple colleges, you can fill out a single application form through the Common App. It then sends this application out to all the colleges on your list. As part of the process, you’re required to write a Common Application Essay. Think of it as your personal statement.

Here are a few things you need to know about the Common Application essay.

A high school student writing her Common Application essay on her laptop.

Navigating the Word Count

The Common App will specify the word limit for writing your essay. This has changed over the years. The current word count is between 250 and 650 words. The online application won’t accept essays that are below 250 words or over 650 words. Your essay must stay within the word count limit .

So what should you aim for? The ideal word count for your Common App essay is between 500 and 650 words. This word count gives you enough space to write an in-depth essay about your chosen topic.

Some colleges will state that you can send them a physical copy if the space in the online application isn’t enough. While you can certainly do that, you may want to consider sticking with the online option. Not only is it easier, the word limit can help keep your essay concise and focused.

Answering Those Prompts

The Common App provides prompts to guide applicants in writing their essay. These prompts are fairly generic, giving applicants a lot of room for interpretation. This is good news for you as it allows you to choose what angle you want to go with writing your essay.

The essay prompts do not stay the same every year. The Common App publishes new prompts fairly regularly so make sure you check the most current prompts. Don’t take the same approach as your sibling or friend, even if they applied only one year ago.

Tips For Choosing a Topic To Write About

For most students, choosing a topic to write about can be the most challenging part of crafting the essay. The prompts do allow you to write on any topic of your choice as long as it addresses their prompts.

Although the exact prompts may vary from one year to the next, they generally have the same theme. All questions are designed to learn more about you as a person. They’ve seen your academic records and read about your extracurricular activities in your main application. This essay helps them understand more about you aside from these accomplishments.

Things to think about when writing your essay:

Choose a topic you are passionate about. When you write on a topic you are genuinely interested in, your enthusiasm will come through in your writing. Never choose a topic just because you think it is more likely to impress the reader. If you don’t care about a topic, you’ll find it difficult to bring your essay to life. Worse still, the college admissions authorities will see through your forced writing. After reading through hundreds of essays, they can spot the difference immediately.

Make a list of your unique skills, achievements, personality traits and hobbies. Think about how you can highlight one or more items from your list to give the reader insight into what makes you, ‘YOU’.

Whatever topic you pick, make sure you expand on the idea. Don’t just write a bullet point on your personality traits or achievements. For example, just saying you are passionate about global warming, doesn’t tell the reader anything about you. What’s important is to highlight what you have done to avert it.

Perfecting Your Essay

500 – 650 words isn’t as much as you may think. But writing the Common App essay is not just about meeting any word count limits. This is your opportunity to tell the college admissions committee something about you that the rest of your application doesn’t. Your essay is what sets you apart from the other applicants. Writing an essay that stands out from the competition takes time. You may go with one idea and then decide to go with something different the next time you look at it.

The key to crafting a perfect essay is to start early. Starting on your essay early gives you sufficient time to brainstorm ideas and let them simmer. It also gives you time to change things up if you decide to do that. Most important of all, it gives you enough time to edit your essay.

Be ruthlessly objective when editing your essay. Don’t keep an extra sentence or even an extra word simply because you like the way it sounds. If it doesn’t add value to your essay, delete it. Do your editing over several days with a few days break in between. This allows you to read the essay with fresh eyes.

Peer Review

After you’re done editing, give it to your teacher, academic advisor or parent to read through it. Somebody who is reading it for the first time will be more objective about essay’s flow and organization. Revise your essay again based on their feedback.

Don’t put off writing your Common Application essay. Use these tips to get started early and submit an essay you’re proud of.

Use College Raptor to discover personalized college matches, cost estimates, acceptance odds, and potential financial aid for schools around the US—for FREE!

Email Address

college student icon

High School Graduation Year

' data-src=

Proudly creating in Iowa's Creative Corridor

Shemmassian Academic Consulting

Your Trusted Advisors for Admissions Success

Admissions and test prep resources to help you get into your dream schools

How to Write an Amazing Common App Essay (2022–2023) — Examples Included

Learn how to come up with a unique topic and choose the right common app essay prompt to write a strong personal statement and get into your dream college. plus, a full-length common app essay example.

common app personal statement word count

Writing a strong common app essay will help you stand out to colleges, beyond your GPA and TEst scores

(Note: This guide can also be found in our free, 110-page comprehensive guide to top college admissions,  How to Get Into America’s Elite Colleges: The Ultimate Guide . )

Part 1: Introduction

What is the common application.

Why does the Common App Essay—and other college essays—matter?

What are these mystical college essays, anyway?

Common App Essay Prompts 2022–2023

Part 2: Pre-writing your Common App Essay

Brainstorming Common App Essay topics

Freewriting

Essay writing timelines: how to write your Common App personal statement if you have six months, three months, one month, or even less

Part 3: Choosing your Common App Essay topic

Part 4: writing your common app essay.

What 'type' of essay do you have to write?

Writing and revising: common errors

Part 5: Common App Essay example

Part 6: frequently asked questions.

Applying to college: the phrase alone can instill terror in the hearts of high school seniors, and even in those of us who have lived through the experience.

Every year, the college application process seems to get more complex, and more intense. If you’re a student, you might be reviewing rumors and horror stories about that classmate of yours with perfect grades and a 1500 SAT score who somehow got rejected from every Ivy League school . If you’re a parent, you might be afraid of how much the college admissions system has changed and grown more competitive since you were your kids’ age, or perhaps you never had to navigate this system at all.

One of the biggest fears of many students and parents is the sheer anonymity of the process. You, the college applicant, have worked hard through high school, earning great grades, expanding your worldview through extracurricular activities , and contributing to your community… and now, it can seem pretty unjust to throw yourself at the mercy of an application system that seems arbitrary, blind to your personality, or even uncaring.

There’s good news, though.

The college application process has a logic to it—and it’s one that you, the applicant, can both navigate and trust. All those essays, all those forms, all those questions? They’re about getting you in touch with the most authentic and vibrant version of yourself. In fact, if tackled with intelligence, reflection, and organization, the college process can actually offer you a chance to make the admissions process about you as a person, rather than about a distant name on a screen.

You might be familiar with the Common Application , Common App for short, which serves as a single application shared by over 900 colleges, including every Ivy League school and similarly elite universities like Stanford, Caltech, and the University of Chicago. The Common App allows you to enter information like your name, demographics, extracurricular activities, and more just once for every school that uses it. It’s also where you’ll encounter “The Common App Essay,” otherwise known as your personal statement (PS), which is what this guide will focus on.

Though not every school uses the Common App—many state or public schools often have their own systems—the work you do in writing your Common App Essay will serve you in every other component of the process, including applying to non-Common App schools and writing the secondary and supplemental essays that often accompany both types of applications.

(Suggested reading: Which Schools Use the Common App? The Rank-Ordered List )

Why does the Common App Essay—and any other college essay—matter?

You may have heard the phrase “holistic admissions” thrown around—many universities follow this model, which means they don’t necessarily have an ACT or SAT cutoff score, nor do they require a certain number of AP/IB/Honors courses. Instead, they’re trying to get to know candidates as humans. Admissions officers are people—people who would be horribly bored if their job came down to just numbers, statistics, cutoffs, and counting up your AP, SAT, and ACT scores.

In order to get into your dream school, you’ll need not only great grades and test scores, but also a strong personal statement.

Why? Your personal statement is the single loudest ‘qualitative’ element of your application. It brings to life the student—you!—behind your statistics and demographics. It’s the way you communicate with the admissions committee as a person and potential member of the campus community. With more people applying to colleges every year, admissions officers know they can have their pick of bright and motivated students. In addition to seeing your talents and achievements on paper, they need a chance to imagine what you might be like as a walking, talking human being.

Many students and parents wonder how big of a role essays play when it comes to college admissions decisions. While the importance of college essays—which are written over a period of a few weeks or, ideally, a few months—varies from school to school, most experts estimate that they make up for anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of admissions decisions!

In other words, your four years of schoolwork, AP, IB, ACT, and SAT exams, community service, volunteering, and so on account for only 70 to 90 percent. These estimates are provided not to scare you, but rather to emphasize how critical it is for you to spend at least as much time on your college essays as would on any other high school pursuit.

Fortunately, we’re going to talk about every aspect of your personal statement in this guide and reflect on some of the lessons we’ve taken from nearly 20 years of coaching students through the college application process and getting into their dream schools.

Let’s define our terms:

Personal statement (PS): When people refer to the personal statement, they’re talking about the 650-word Common Application Essay, which all schools using the Common App will see. Your personal statement is your major chance to articulate the qualitative aspects of yourself to the admissions committee and the admissions committee’s major chance to get to know you as a person. Throughout this guide, "Common App Essay," "Common App personal statement," and "personal statement" are used interchangeably.

Secondary or supplemental essays: These are the essays that schools can choose to have you write on top of the core Common App Essay. They might invite you to talk more about an extracurricular activity on your resumé, to reflect on a quote from a famous alumna/alumnus of the college, or to share your thoughts on any number of wide-ranging topics.

Common App Essay prompts 2022–2023

Here are the 2022–2023 Common App Essay prompts —all seven prompts are exactly the same as last year. We’ll address how to think about them shortly, so just lodge them in your brain for now.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Broad, right? You’ve got 650 free words to articulate what moves you, what excites you, what animates or explains you.

This means your essays are not a place to restate what can already be found on your resumé, CV, or Common App Activities section . They’re also not a place to prove that you’ve had some major epiphany, changed the world, or seen the truth of reality at age eighteen. They can be but do not have to be—by any means—about a major traumatic experience. They can but need not discuss family, identity, race, gender, or class.

Instead, they are a place to give the admissions committee a chance to see the you that your friends, classmates, teachers, teammates, and family know. We’ve seen students write about the New England Patriots, the poetry of John Keats, their grandparents’ village, their obsession with keeping too many Google Chrome tabs open, how grilling meats represented a rite of passage, and many more topics that range from the super-serious to the lighthearted but still meaningful.

The Common App Essay prompts are diverse enough that they allow you to write about pretty much anything. Therefore, we encourage you to brainstorm your best stories first and then think about which question to answer. Admissions committees have no preference for which prompt you choose. Additionally, we encourage you to review additional successful college essay examples .

Furthermore, keep in mind that the Common App Additional Information Section contains an optional, 250-word space to describe how COVID-19 has impacted you . Therefore, you do not need to use your Common App Essay to provide this context. That said, it’s also perfectly fine to write about or touch on COVID-19— if the pandemic is a backdrop that allows you to shine a light on what’s unique and interesting about you in the manner we described above.

Let’s meet our students

Throughout this guide, we’re going to refer to a few Common App Essay examples. These examples are closely based on essays we have worked on with students over the past two decades—students who successfully met their admissions goals, including getting into multiple Ivy League and other top-tier schools.

Let’s meet our students now.

Student #1: Ramya: Ramya intends to be premed in college, but isn’t sure if she wants to major in biology or something else entirely. She’s spent her high school years participating in a variety of activities. She played soccer, but wasn’t the star player. She was involved in student government, performed in cultural shows as a dancer, and did speech events.

What’s not on Ramya's resumé? She is a rabid fan of the New England Patriots, despite living in California for most of her life. And, she’s very close to her father and has a tight-knit group of friends.

Student #2: Anita: Anita has an aptitude for English and history. She likes writing, but she’s not on the school newspaper, nor has she ever published a piece of fiction or poetry, which makes her nervous about calling herself a writer. She spends much of her time on mock trial—in fact she’s nationally competitive at it—and lots of people tell her she’d make a great lawyer. But she doesn’t think she wants to major in political science or philosophy; she may not even want to do anything associated with mock trial in college.

What’s not on her resumé? She loves the outdoors, though she has nothing concretely extracurricular to prove it—she’s never been a camp counselor or a Girl Scout.

Student #3: Josh: Josh isn’t sure what he wants to study. He’s a solid student, though no particular subject gets his pulse racing. In his free time he draws comic strips, and he’s had a few on display at various community events in his town. He plays basketball and piano.

What’s not on his resumé? Josh has a complicated relationship with piano—his parents pushed him into it, and he’d like to quit as soon as possible. And, he’s very close to his big brother, who recently left for college. He also has a little sister, who he’s never been tight with.

Student #4: Michael: Michael lives in a small coastal town and attends a big public high school. After school he has a job scooping ice cream, and though he’s not expected to contribute to his family’s income, he doesn’t have much time for clubs or sports, which aren’t very important at his school. He generally likes chemistry, but he isn’t sure what he wants to do with that. He doesn’t want to be premed, and he can’t imagine being a chemist, so he’s undecided about what to major in.

What’s not on his resumé? Michael is no great surfer by competitive standards, but he learned how to stand up on a board at a young age because his grandfather, who’s from Hawaii, taught him. His grandfather recently passed away.

Brainstorming Your Common App Essay Shemmassian Academic Consulting.jpg

Of course, the terrifying part of starting any new piece of writing—whether you’re a professional, seasoned author, or a high schooler planning for college—is the spooky glare of the blank page, that blinking cursor that doesn’t quite seem to yield to you.

One of the major challenges many students face when applying to college is knowing that they are full of passion and potential energy which hasn’t yet been converted into kinetic energy. That can make trying to communicate who you are, as well as who you hope to become, a daunting task. You might worry about sounding generic or not sounding like yourself or not sounding “smart” or “wise” enough.

The best antidote to all of these concerns, from writer’s block to finding your voice, is to prepare yourself emotionally and creatively well before you sit down to type out your personal statement.

Here’s how you can attack your Common App personal statement and secondary essays if you have a few months before they’re due. We are big proponents of starting early—ideally in June.

Why so early? You may not be thrilled at the prospect of spending the summer before your senior year on college applications. But getting going in June after your junior year and committing to a few exercises over the summer will be like spring training for summer athletes. By the time you get to August, when you’re drafting your Common App Essay and your secondary essays in full, you will be warmed up, and much of the hardest work—that is, the reflection and figuring out what you want to say—will be done for you.

Starting early will also give you time to hand a strong draft of your essay to the teachers from whom you plan to request letters of recommendation for college . If your recommenders know what you’re saying about yourself, they can help tell the same story about you but from a different perspective. This is crucial because your application is a chance to offer not only the facts about you but also a narrative of you—a sense of who you are, how you move through the world, and what you hope to become. That means that each component of your application—your Common App personal statement, your supplemental college essays , your teacher recommendations, and the classes you’ve taken—is like an episode in your story.

Nevertheless, we’ve also offered some adjusted timelines lower down in case you don’t have the whole summer to work with.

Brainstorming Common App Essay topics and working with prompts (2–3 weeks)

Review the Common App prompts and identify which ones get your juices flowing. You can also use our expanded prompts, given in the bulletpoints below, to help you brainstorm and freewrite over the summer. We’re starting with Common App Essay Prompt 7, since it is the broad, general question. Then we’ll circle back and go through Prompts 1–6.

Prompt 7: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Make a list of themes and broad topics that matter to you. What do you, your friends, and family spend a lot of time thinking about or talking about? (Note: This is not the same as asking for your list of extracurricular activities.) Tell the story of an important day or event in relation to one of these topics.

Who’s a family member who lives with you and is important to you? Think of a specific time they helped you with something. Tell the story. What’s an important conversation you had with them? Tell the story.

Think of any person—family, friend, teacher, etc.—who has been important to you. When did you first meet them? Tell the story. When did you have a crucial, meaningful, or important conversation with them? Tell the story.

Make a list of experiences that have been important to you. These do not have to be dramatic, tragic, traumatic, or prove that you changed the world, though they can be any of those. Perhaps a particular summer that mattered a lot? Or an experience with a friend or family member who shaped you—it could be a specific day spent with them, or a weekend, summer, or year.

Remember: Specific anecdotes are your friend when drafting your Common App personal statement. Try to think of a story you often tell people that shows something about you. One of the best pieces of advice we can give you—and something you’ll see reflected in all of the following prompts—is to anchor things in anecdote or story as much as possible.

Prompt 1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Where did you grow up? Describe your neighborhood, town, or community. Big or small? What makes it unlike other parts of the world? How has it affected you? What images are important for someone who has never been to your hometown/neighborhood/community to see? For instance, is there farmland all around you, grain silos, cows? A Chick-Fil-A on every block?

Where is home for your parents? Does their home impact your day-to-day life? Describe the first time you saw their home, in story form.

Did you grow up considering another place that is not where you currently live home? Tell the story of the first time you went there or the first time you remember going there. Was there a particular time—a summer, or a year—when that place became important? Tell that story.

What’s the most memorable thing about you? What do people in your community or school know you for? Tell the story of the first time you did this thing. Tell the story of the most meaningful time you did this thing—it might be, say, when you won a game, but it also might be when you lost a game, or when you quit the team.

How have you spent your summers in high school? In childhood? Tell a story of a memorable day during a memorable summer. Where were you? Why did it matter? Does what happened that day influence you today? How?

Prompt 2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

What major changes have you been through? A move? Changing schools? Losing a loved one or a friend? (Avoid writing about romantic relationships and breakups in your essays, but feel free to mine them in your freewriting.) Tell the story of the day that change occurred—the day you moved, the first day at the new school or the last day at the old school, the day you got bad news about a family member or a friend, etc.

Did you ever quit an extracurricular activity or a job? Why? Tell the story of the day that happened, and of the day you decided to quit.

What class was hardest for you in high school? Why? Tell the story of a specific class assignment that was difficult. Now tell the story of a specific class assignment that caused you to have a breakthrough, or changed your mind about something.

Have you ever been forced to try something you weren’t good at? How’d it go? Tell the story of the day you tried it. Who encouraged you to? Where were you?

Have you faced a disability, a mental or physical health issue, or other significant challenge while in high school? Think of a day when you are proud of how you handled or carried yourself in the face of this challenge. (Recommended reading: How to Effectively Write About a Disability in a College Essay )

Prompt 3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

What values did you grow up holding dear? Are they the same ones today? Tell the story of the first time you learned about these values—say, a morning at Sunday School or a conversation with a grandparent. If they’ve changed, tell the story of the moment (as best you can place it) when they changed—say, in a classroom, in a conversation with a friend, etc.

Is there a prevalent belief in your family or community with which you disagree? How did you come to disagree? Tell the story of an argument—cordial or not—that you’ve had with someone about this issue. Tell the story of a time you are proud of how you handled conflict in relation to this disagreement.

When were you wrong about something? Tell the story of how you figured out you were wrong. Who helped you get there?

Prompt 4: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Have you ever had an interaction with a stranger or someone whom you didn’t know well that left a profound impact on you?

How has your relationship to gratitude changed over time, either recently or in an earlier period of your life? What events spurred this change?

Have you ever been the recipient of an unexpected gift or favor that inspired you to “pay it forward” and help someone else who wasn’t anticipating it?

What are you thankful for in your life right now? Make a list of things, people, or circumstances for which you are grateful, no matter how big or small. You might even complete this exercise daily over a period of several days or weeks, similar to a gratitude journal.

Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

They say a piece of short fiction is about a moment after which nothing will be the same again. Have you lived through one of those moments? What was it? Tell it the way you’d write a short story.

Eureka! Have you ever had a moment when everything just *clicked*? Tell the story of that realization—set the scene, down to every image, who was or wasn’t in the room.

Forget medals, victories, grades—what intangible, off-your-resumé quality or moment of your life are you proudest of? Tell the story of the day that happened.

Prompt 6: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Let’s say you’re left alone an entire weekend in your house. What do you get up to? Tell the story of a time that’s happened—or imagine, on the page, what that would be like. Set the scene: what rooms are you in in your house, or are you in your house at all? Where do you go? What do you bring with you?

What activities have you self-started—that is, what have you done without ever being told to? Tell the story of the first day you started doing that thing.

What do your friends come to you seeking help with? Tell the story of a time when you think you did a great job of helping another person. Now, to make sure you stay humble, tell the story of when that person helped you.

At the end of this brainstorming exercise, our students, Ramya, Anita, Josh, and Michael, will have discovered even more things not on their resumé that can expand what all they might write about.

Freewriting (3–4 weeks)

Your job, if you’ve started this early, is not to start writing your draft immediately, or even to choose which Common App prompt you plan to select. First, you’re going to freewrite using the above prompts as a guide—choose the ones you like, or print them out, cut them up, and put them in a hat; each day, shake up the hat and grab one at random!

Freewriting is one of the fun parts, so the more you can do it, the better. There are a number of ways to approach freewriting, and all of them are meant to keep you limber, loose, and free. You want to sound authentic in your essay—which means not stiffening up under pressure, trying to sound formal, or more stereotypically “adult” or “learned,” as many students do. The more you can sound like you while freewriting, the stronger position you’ll be in when it comes to drafting the personal statement.

Buy a few composition notebooks: Those $1 things, available at Walmart or the like. Work in these for the summer. No need to get precious—no fancy Moleskines here, and no laptops or tablets unless you are physically unable to write by hand.

Why? Take the cartoonist Lynda Barry’s wise words here: “There is a kind of story that comes from hand. Writing which is different from a tapping-on-a-keyboard-kind-of-story. For one thing, there is no delete button, making the experience more lifelike right away. You can’t delete the things you feel unsure about and because of this, the things you feel unsure about have a much better chance of being able to exist long enough to reveal themselves.”

Set aside six minutes each morning, or a few times a week, for the period of time you’re freewriting. Six minutes, that’s it! Put your timer on, put your pen to paper, and don’t stop writing until the timer goes off. If you run out of things to write, write, “I don’t know I’m bored I don’t know help help I hate writing!” until new words come. What are you going to write about during those six minutes? You can try thinking about those Common App essay prompts—they’re so broad that they should let you in in some way. Think: what’s my obstacle, my identity, the thing I love?

Note that Anita isn’t sitting down to write her disquisition on “how my life as a mock trial champion makes me prepared to go to law school.” Instead, what might come out as she writes by hand is, “I remember the rush the first time I stood up at a mock trial tournament. I was wearing a blazer and my mom’s heels and they were so uncomfortable. It was so overheated in the room and I’d drunk way too much Mountain Dew. But why did I love playing this role of attorney? Was it the theater? The chance to finally argue without getting in trouble at the dinner table?”

If six minutes doesn’t work for you, or if you think you’re not getting in the zone in that amount of time, try doing three pages in your composition notebook instead. Write in big letters and double-space. Let your hand roam free.

Don’t show anyone anything you have written yet. And don’t reread it immediately. Let all that you’ve written sit, latent, so you’re not tempted to edit it right off the bat. Why? Allowing your writing to breathe away from you can prevent you from committing one of the cardinal sins of personal statement-writing—but also all writing!—trying to force the story into what you think it should be instead of what it is.

To get more concrete: let’s say Michael wrote about his grandfather teaching him to surf in answer to several of those prompts (about a crucial summer and a person important to him). But now he’s so excited about that that he immediately wants to turn it into his draft. As he’s writing, he gets self-conscious, thinking, Why am I writing about surfing when I’m not a competitive surfer, and when it’s only something I do occasionally? Or say Michael shows it to an English teacher, who gets distracted by the quality of Michaels prose—which was meant to be free and unedited—and tells him to choose another topic, since this one isn’t “singing” yet. Respect your process and let these things sit.

In order to have this kind of time freedom, you’ll have to start early. And if you spend your summer warming up and training for the main event, you can start rereading your body of freewriting by the end of July.

Essay writing timelines: How to write your Common App Essay if you have six months, three months, one month, or even less

(Recommended reading: The Ideal College Application Timeline )

In an ideal world, you can start writing and planning for your college essays the summer before your senior year. But many students have prior commitments that make following a six-month (June–December) timeline difficult. So here are a few adjusted timelines that can allow you to take advantage of the brainstorming and freewriting process even if you don’t have the full six-month window.

Six months—June to December (ideal if you are applying early action or early decision anywhere):

June: Brainstorm and work with prompts, 2–3 weeks

July: Freewrite, 3–4 weeks

End of July/beginning of August: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement

Week two of August: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)

Weeks 3–4 of August: Complete third and fourth drafts

Beginning of September: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor

End of September: Complete final draft

Now you have October to complete your secondary essays. November is usually when early action/early decision deadlines hit. So by the end of October, you will have completed your application for anywhere you’re applying early; now you can use the last few weeks of November to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December or January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

Three months—August to October (barely making the early application/early decision deadline):

First two weeks of August: Brainstorm and work with prompts

Second two weeks of August: Freewrite

First week of September: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement

Week two of September: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)

Weeks 3–4 of September: Complete third and fourth drafts

Beginning of October: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor

Week two of October: Complete final draft

Now you have the second two weeks of October to complete your secondary essays for anywhere you are applying early with a November due date, and the rest of November to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December and January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

One month—October to November (for regular decision schools):

First week of October: Brainstorm and work with prompts

Second week of October: Freewrite

Third week of October: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement

Last week of October: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in)

First two weeks of November: Complete third and fourth drafts

Mid-November, before Thanksgiving break: Seek feedback, if you have not already, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor

Last week of November: Complete final draft

Now you have December to complete any remaining secondary essays for schools with December and January due dates (most regular decision deadlines).

Mega crunch time—starting in November (in case you get started on your application really late and are down to less than one month, use the following timeline):

2–4 days: Brainstorm and work with prompts

2–3 days: Freewrite

48 hours after freewriting ends: Complete first draft of Common App personal statement

72 hours after first draft: Complete second draft (here is where the major revision work comes in). In addition, seek feedback between your second and third drafts, if you have not already done so, from a trusted admissions counselor, English teacher, or other advisor

48 hours after receiving feedback: Complete third draft

48 hours after third draft, if time permits: Complete fourth and final draft

Note: Some elite public universities, such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, have November application deadlines, so make sure that you write down your college list , with deadlines and requirements, by the end of September to ensure that you don’t miss anything.

(Related reading: How to Write Great UC Essays )

Struggling to write your college essays?

Get our free 110-page guide to help you with every single one: How to Get Into America’s Elite Colleges: The Ultimate Guide

100% privacy. No spam. Ever.

Thank you! Your guide is on its way. In the meantime, please let us know how we can help you crack the the college admissions code . You can also learn more about our 1-on-1 college admissions support here .

Choosing Your Common App Essay Topic.jpg

With all this free-written raw material in hand, it’s time to choose the right topic. What notes should your essay hit? Here are some characteristics that a good Common App Essay topic contains:

1. Anecdote and specificity.

As you saw in the prompts above, we’re big advocates of beginning with a particular story or anecdote. This is not the only way to start an essay, but it’s a classic one. Journalists call this a “lede”—it’s a hook that brings the reader into a wider topic. Your essay will always go beyond the anecdote, but an anecdote offers a reader an easy, smooth way into your personal statement.

A good Common App Essay topic can relate, as much as possible, to a particular anecdote, story, or even scene. Let’s say Josh found himself writing about his siblings—his older brother who just left for college, and his little sister who he’s spent more time with since his brother left. His essay shouldn’t start, “I love my little sister,” but instead, “I remember the first time my younger sister and I connected. It was July, and our older brother had just gone to college, leaving the two of us alone at home together for the first time.”

A good essay begins at a specific point in time and revolves around a specific event. An essay without an anecdote or specific story is an essay topic , not an essay. So, pull from your freewriting: where did you find yourself writing about a particular event, story, anecdote, or point in time?

Another way of thinking about this is: does your potential topic contain a person (other than you), a setting, and a beginning/middle/end? That gives you a character, a place, and a plot—all crucial elements of an essay.

One important note is that you don’t have to start with the anecdote—it doesn’t have to be your “lede.” That might make you formulaic. But you’ll want one to work with, to anchor the piece at some point.

2. Tension, conflict, and opportunity to show growth.

Josh might write a lovely reflection on how close he and his brother were, or how much he likes his little sister—but that doesn’t give the admissions committee much to work with. Why? Because your topic needs to display your ability to grow and show change over a period of time. If Josh has always had a perfect relationship with his sister, well—first, no one will believe that, and second, Josh is not really telling a story.

So as you’re identifying the right anecdote for your essay, make sure you have a point of tension—a point where we, the reader, wonder if everything will turn out okay. For Josh, this might mean beginning with a time before he and his sister were close—say, when all the siblings were in the house and there wasn’t much time for the two to connect. Then Josh would tell us about what changed as soon as the brother left, and in there he might find an opening anecdote.

3. A wider relevance or a ‘lesson.’

Your essay doesn’t have to demonstrate that you underwent some great metamorphosis or epiphany as a child or teenager, but does your possible topic have a takeaway to work with? You’re looking for something that you can put in your pocket and carry into the future, and in an impressive and ideal world, something that makes the reader of the essay say, “Wow, I like that way of thinking, and I might even return to that one day.”

Another way of thinking about this is: your essay is about how your past influences your future, or the way you think now. Michael has settled on his grandfather teaching him to surf. That’s a fruitful topic, not just because it contains two characters (Michael and his grandfather), but also because it contains a place (the ocean, or, say, a surf shop), a plot (Michael couldn’t surf in the beginning, then learned in the middle, now at the end Michael can surf and tell us about it), but also because the end includes a lesson and a chance to spin that forward, perhaps by talking about how the sport has taught Michael how to be calm and collected under pressure.

4. Some connection between your past, your present, and your future.

It’s common to see a student choose an important experience in their past, narrate the whole thing beautifully, but then forget to tie it to the present. Before you even start writing, think about whether your potential topic is influencing the way you think about the present, and, crucially, the future. Take Michael, again. He writes beautifully about his grandfather teaching him about the waves, but he’s not a pro surfer, and might even be going to college in the middle of the country. Does that matter? Not as long as he tells us how surfing influences him—as he did in extracting a wider lesson.

You might be afraid of picking that mythical ‘wrong topic,’ say, the one thing every admissions officer is secretly sick of reading about but which no one will tell you. Students often ask us: Should I not write about a dying grandparent? About coming out? About the meaning of my name? About politics?

Here’s a secret: the success of your topic almost always lies in the delivery—so absent writing about something flagrantly offensive, violent, or irresponsible, you’re unlikely to hit on that rumored thing the admissions officers can’t stand.

It is good to be afraid of cliché—but one of the truisms about clichés is that they become trite because they reiterate feelings we’ve all had. That also means that buried beneath many clichés is some authentic, particular, and personal relationship you have to your topic. If you’re working with a teacher, counselor, or advisor on your statement, they can help you discern whether you’re in cliché territory or whether you’ve bypassed it to a more fruitful realm.

But wait. There is one big rule. Be humble. Don’t try so hard to sound adult or beyond your years, that you end up coming across as a know-it-all. It’s better to show the admissions committee that you are capable of finding and making meaning through the experiences you’ve had as a young person, no matter how small or limited they may seem to you. If you’ll let us wax philosophical for a moment: that ability to make meaning from something that isn’t pompous or dramatic—and to do so without being aggrandizing—is the stuff of great art. So, you’re in a good tradition if you stick to humility and take a deliberate and honest approach to your essays.

5. Make a list of everything that seems like a fruitful topic.

From the questions and prompts, you should find that you have 3–5 strong topic areas and stories—stuff that got you thinking and feeling, and which produced what Hemingway called the “honest sentences” that comprise good writing. Start with the one that moves you most—that’s your personal statement—but save all the others as fodder for your secondaries, or as backup material in case someone you trust tells you to consider switching topics for some reason.

(Tip: the stuff that isn’t always linked to an anecdote or story but is important to you can often be useful for those secondaries.)

Let’s find out what our sample students chose to write about.

Essay #1: Ramya on the Patriots

Ramya could try to write something about medicine. Or she could write about soccer, dance, or speech. But none of those things seem to tell the admissions committee what they wouldn’t already know from simply reading her list of extracurriculars.

So we decide that Ramya is going to write about the Patriots. The question is how she’s going to demonstrate—through her football fandom—that she is a mature and thoughtful person who will be a good member of any college’s community. An ode to Brady won’t do the trick here—but what will is Ramya’s thoughtful reflection on how spending time watching the Patriots at a sports bar every Sunday with her dad has given her a relationship with her father that most of her friends have never enjoyed with their families.

Essay #2: Anita on the outdoors and poetry

The obvious thing—and the thing most teachers and advisors told Anita to do—is write about mock trial. It would be a good opportunity to give the admissions committee some insight into her psychology behind the success. She took a couple of stabs at it during free-writing, though, and it didn’t flow.

So instead Anita decides to write about a wilderness solo she took in North Carolina on a school trip, and about how it influenced her relationship with poetry.

Essay #3: Josh on piano and mistakes

We talked a lot about whether Josh would do best avoiding writing about piano—it’s the main thing on his resumé and sometimes it can be good to show things off-resumé, as Ramya and Anita plan to. Josh did some writing about his relationship with his sister and his brother, and that might find a home in the secondary essays. But it became clear that Josh has an obsessive, if not always positive, relationship with piano, and so there’s something there.

But how to write “about piano?”

We look at the themes that came up during Josh’s reflection. He found himself writing a lot about mistakes, public performance anxiety, and the pressure to get a piece just right. Focusing in, Josh thought about a specific piece which helped him get over some performance anxiety, so he’ll write about learning that piece and facing the fear.

Essay #4: Michael on surfing

We’ve already referenced Michael’s essay a few times, but he’ll be writing about his grandfather teaching him to surf and the lessons surfing has given him off the board and out of the waves.

You’ll see us return to these students’ ideas as we work through outlines.

Writing+Your+Common+App+Essay+Shemmassian+Academic+Consulting.jpg

If you’ve spent your summer freewriting and then carefully selecting the right essay topic, you’re now in a strong place to start writing—ideally at the end of July or early August. (Remember that if you are applying early action or early decision to schools, your deadline will come at the start of November, whereas regular decision applications will generally have December and January deadlines.)

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of this organized pre-work—it’s incredibly frustrating for a student to write an entire draft and then find that it’s just “falling flat” or “doesn’t sound like them” or “is clichéd.” Using the criteria we’ve already set out, though, you can avoid that scary feeling of having done a lot of work that you’ve got to shelve.

What ‘type’ of essay do you have to write? (a list of narrative strategies)

It’s important to remember that there are as many narrative strategies as there are television shows, books, movies, plays, and poems. We can’t exhaustively discuss all of them, or even most, but we can give you a few “modules” to play with.

At 650 words, each of these will be best understood as a five-paragraph essay, so a basic structure stays the same, but the way things begin and end will not.

1. The Specific Experience Essay: This module is one of the most flexible and powerful types of essays. It begins with a scene, memory, or anecdote, and then tells us what that scene, memory, or anecdote continues to mean to the writer. It’s a classic, and should not be underestimated. Michael’s essay about learning to surf with his grandfather will use this structure, but so too will Anita’s about taking a wilderness solo. Anita will use a slightly more subtle version of this, but both essays begin with a scene: “I was eight when my grandfather first took me to the water,” “The happiest two hours I have spent were on a boulder jutting into a stream in North Carolina.”

Resolving the Specific Experience Essay requires a student to point to some kind of realization garnered as a result of the experience. It doesn’t have to be an enormous Eureka! or epiphany, and in fact, it can come later. Michael’s reflection on the experience of learning to surf with his grandfather occurs over a decade after he first hit the waves. Anita’s comes during an English class two years later when she first reads the poetry of John Keats and William Wordsworth and realizes these writers were engaging with exactly what she experienced during her solo in the wilderness.

The trick Michael and Anita each pull off is spinning the experience forward so that it means something for the rest of their lives. Michael writes about how he understands meditative headspace as a result of standing on the board all those hours with his grandfather, and how his grandfather’s legacy will always be with him. Anita goes small with her reflection: she talks about how she learned to see art, and artful experiences, in her everyday life, and in small, quiet moments (this is especially good for Anita because it expands her away from just the hyper-intense mock trial competitor she might come across as).

2. The Patterned/Iterative Essay: This module is a little more advanced. Let’s take Josh's essay about piano playing. He might want to open with a scene of him playing piano on stage, but that’s a little obvious. The essay he’s going to write is actually about practice, and learning to stop making mistakes. So, what if he started each paragraph with a different mini-moment of him playing piano and making a mistake?

Paragraph 1: My first time erring on stage—I am six, and I’m playing Chopsticks. Then he’ll introduce the theme of the essay.

Paragraph 2: My second time messing up—I am thirteen, and… etc.

Then, the natural place for Josh to end it is the time he almost messes up but doesn’t, which shows us how he’s grown overtime.

3. The Circular Essay: In this essay, the writer begins with a scene or image or concept and then will circle back to that scene or image or concept before the end of the essay in order to make sense of the initial opening. This essay deploys suspense. Take Anita’s essay, which might open, “I spent my happiest moments lost and alone in the wilderness. How did I get here? To understand that, you’ll have to understand X, Y, Z about me…” and which might close: “...that’s how I found myself, at sixteen, lost—but entirely at home in the wild.”

4. The Mini-Odyssey Essay: The last classic and powerful module is the good old problem-driven essay. In this type of essay, our hero (you, the writer) meets a challenge in the first paragraph, and then the essay is devoted to showing us how it is solved. Let’s say Michael wanted to write not about learning to surf from his grandfather, but about learning that his grandfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

There’s a lot of narration that will be required for Michael to tell us about losing his grandfather—it’s too much to cram into the first paragraph. So Michael might distribute the narration chronologically, showing us first the bad news (the problem), then zooming out to reflect, then showing us how he faced it (addressing the challenge), probably failing to adequately face it perfectly the first time, and then eventually facing it successfully (the solution).

Those are just a few more narrative possibilities for structuring your essay. Right now, we’ll focus on Ramya’s.

Now, taking your chosen topic, it’s time to outline it. Outlining works great for some people as a pre-writing tactic, and we always recommend it. For others, it can be harder than simply getting down to writing. If you’re really struggling to outline and would rather just follow the pen to a first draft, that’s fine, but do yourself a favor and make outlining your second draft step. At some point, everyone needs an outline, but it’s your call when to do it. Let’s follow this through with Ramya’s essay on the Patriots. The model we’ll use for this essay is a five-paragraph, anecdote-driven essay.

By the way, here’s the prompt that helped Ramya settle on the Patriots: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? While this one isn’t among the current Common App essay prompts, it—or any other prompt—can be used to generate an essay that fits under the umbrella of the open prompt, Prompt 7.

So, with that in mind, Ramya’s going to write about the sports bar where she watches her team play every Sunday during football season.

1. Introduction: Ramya has a fun advantage to her essay: it’s unexpected. The heart of it takes place in a sports bar, and she may seem, on paper, to the admissions committee, to be an unlikely diehard football fan. So we begin at the bar and Ramya sets the scene with an anecdote:

It had been a rough week at school—drama with my friend group, hard tests, orchestra practice, exhausting soccer drills—but I knew where I belonged on a Sunday. At Dee's Sports Bar in San Jose, with my dad, watching our team…

She also tells us about Dee's itself, taking the chance to show the admissions committee that she has narrative skills in just noticing things:

By the end of the football season, the staff knew what we wanted to sit… we were loyal to Dee's, just as we had to be loyal to the Patriots, even when they seemed to be letting us down.

In telling this as a story, Ramya has given the admissions committee a human being to relate to from the jump.

2. Billboard/nutgraph/thesis paragraph: In the magazine world, they call the second paragraph in a piece the “billboard paragraph” because it broadcasts—as loud as a billboard—what the piece is about. Newspapers call the same thing a nutgraph, and academic papers might refer to it as your thesis statement. All these terms point to one thing: this is where you shout, HEY! THIS IS WHAT MY ESSAY IS ABOUT! This is where you meld the scene and characters of paragraph 1 with the thematic concerns you’ll address for the rest of the essay.

For Ramya, it goes something like this:

Dee's is where I learned to be loyal—to my team, the Patriots, from across the country—but also to my father, to my friends, and to myself.

Ramya’s essay is going to focus on loyalty: a big theme, one that would sound terribly weak if she introduced it in the first line or even paragraph, but one that is surprising and interesting here because she’s juxtaposed it against a unique setting and seemingly light fare—sports at a bar. (Ramya has, at some point, assured the admissions committee that she’s not drinking in this bar!)

3. Body paragraph #1: In this paragraph, Ramya will tell us something more about loyalty, and why it matters. She’ll add context. So she will zoom away from Dee's and tell us that, throughout high school, she started noticing a lot of her friends getting caught up in social drama, becoming competitive with one another, fighting about romantic situations; set against all this, as well as bullying, depression, and other difficult parts of high school, Ramya’s loyalty to the Patriots and Dee's served as a sanctuary—one of the things that kept her sane.

Now, it’s crucial to note that this isn’t enough for Ramya to write an essay about. “Here’s something that is important/valuable/meaningful to me” is sometimes where students stop. Ramya needs to advance that—to tell us something that shows maturity, shows an ability to reflect and introspect that will come in handy in college and adulthood…

4. Body paragraph #2: ...so she uses her next paragraph to make a bigger point: what other types of loyalty being at Dee's on a Sunday causes her to reflect on.

5. Conclusion: Now, Ramya will spin the whole thing forward and point our eyes toward that ‘lesson’—the thing that she can put in her pocket, which will serve as a kind of talisman throughout life.

Writing and revising: Common errors

Most people don’t outline. And even after outlining, many people fail to follow their outline. It’s natural that you’ll want to stray here or there, towards or away from the initial plan, but below are a few common errors that people make when they either don’t outline or ditch the guiding hand of their outline. As we go through some of these errors, we’ll also make a list of a few general tips and tricks for managing some of the toughest parts of your essay, including time, scene, epiphany, change, character, and more.

Here’s an excerpted version of how Ramya’s essay began at first:

As a 5’1.75” Asian girl, not many people would expect me to spend every Sunday in a bar watching football.... I was tired of streaming the games on my computer, and having it lag before every major play.

I want to thank Dee's Sports Bar for teaching me life lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Thank you for showing me the importance of loyalty, relationships, and laughter.

I have always been loyal to the Patriots….

It’s not a bad start, but it brings us to Common Error #1: beginning the essay by introducing oneself, instead of introducing the story, AKA, starting too broad. Ramya begins by trying to tell us who she is in a big, introductory, throat-clearing way, instead of choosing a specific route into who she is. It’s sweet that she’s small, but there’s a lot in here that we don’t need: we don’t need her height, nor do we need to know that she used to get the games in one particular way or another. We just need to know that she’s at the bar.

She’s only got 650 words. Which leads us to Tip #1: Take refuge in the anecdote, in the specific, in the particular. Everything gets easier if you choose something specific. Many writers—of college essays and other media—get stressed out, believing that they must convey their entire selves in an essay. This just isn’t possible to do in the capsule of space that is your Common App personal statement. And, it will ironically accomplish the opposite, causing your essay to look shapeless and meandering, therefore communicating very little about you.

If you instead use an individual story as a stand-in for something larger, or for something else, your essay becomes a kind of parable or lesson that educates your reader both about you and, hopefully, about a part of the world they’ve never previously considered.

Now, think about the first declarative sentence Ramya makes in that initial draft: “I have always been loyal to the Patriots.” Tip #2: Struggling to define your thesis statement? Look for your first declarative statement! Ramya’s essay can’t be about her perpetual loyalty to the Patriots—that won’t be enough. But the fact that her prose naturally settled on that as its first short, sharp sentence tells us that she’s making a statement she probably believes in. Loyalty now becomes really important as a theme.

Common Error #2: Hiding your thesis statement or burying it too low. Since we know that loyalty will have something to do with Ramya’s thesis statement, we now know we want it to arrive at the end of the first paragraph or at the start of the first.

Here’s how Ramya’s essay began at the end of 3-4 rounds of edits and revisions:

Just before 5 pm on Sunday, October 13, 2013, I was sitting in a bar, holding on to a feeling of optimism that was fading fast. But wait: it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn to drink; I turned to the TV screen. The score was 27-23, and the Patriots had missed too many opportunities. With just over a minute left to play, my dad—the man responsible for bringing me, a 15-year-old, to a bar—dejectedly asked me if we should leave. I reminded him a true sports fan never gives up on her team, no matter the situation. And after a miracle of a drive finished with an unforgettable pass into the corner of the endzone by my idol, Tom Brady, a swell of elated cheering and high-fiving from the fans in the bar ensued regardless of whether we had previously known one another. Loyalty brought us all together.

Another Common Error (#3!) that Ramya made was: Mixing up the conclusion’s sentiment with the billboard paragraph. Her second paragraph, in the original essay, read: “I want to thank Dee's Sports Bar for teaching me life lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Thank you for showing me the importance of loyalty, relationships, and laughter.” That’s a sentiment, but it’s not a thesis. And that sentiment is fine—it may have a place at the end of the essay—but it doesn’t belong in the second paragraph, because it doesn’t guide our reading of the rest of the essay. It isn’t strong and declarative yet.

This was the billboard paragraph Ramya reached after a few rounds of edits:

There are a few different kinds of loyalty. Loyalty to a team, to an establishment, to other people—even to oneself. Sitting in that bar over the last year, I feel like I’ve glimpsed them all.

A lot is working here! It’s short, clear, and leads us to Tip #3: define your terms. Ramya wants to talk about an abstract concept—loyalty. Many young writers wish to reflect on things like charity, service, leadership, loyalty, friendship, kindness, morality, etc—these are big topics. But Ramya isn’t just talking about loyalty, a word which could mean many different things to many different people. She’s defined loyalty for the purposes of this essay, which means now we are playing in her house.

As Ramya’s original first draft moved on, it stumbled into a very Common Error #4: the curious case of the missing lesson. Initially, Ramya’s penultimate paragraph offered a kind of ode to Dee's instead of showing the admissions committee that she has a bigger life takeaway from her time spent supporting her team—a problem we could see would happen as soon as we noticed the sentiment of “Thanks Dee's’” occupying the place that should have been reserved for a billboard paragraph. Returning to the outline, or making the outline partway through, would remedy that.

But don’t get stressed if your first outline feels like it’s getting away from you. Tip #4: Try a reverse outline. Once you’ve written one draft of your essay, print it out. (By the way: Tip #5: print stuff out! Don’t get stuck in an endless spiral of copy-and-paste—by printing out your draft, you can keep a draft next to you and then open a new document so that you feel free to rewrite entire paragraphs, or delete sections entirely.)

Then take your printout and write out what the function of each paragraph is in the margin. Might get a little tough, right? If you can’t answer the question, “What is the goal of this paragraph?” or, “What do I want the readers to garner from this paragraph?” then you’re probably missing a topic sentence.

Everything we’re talking about here—writing, noticing mistakes, correcting them—will take you at least three and as many as five or six drafts to get right. So, Tip #6: Don’t treat your early drafts like anything close to final. That means you’re going to have to get comfortable with simply putting idea to paper, and with cutting entire paragraphs or “points” within the essay. You’ve probably never written anything like the personal statement before, and you have to promise yourself to be iterative. Otherwise, you’ll lock yourself into a weaker version of the essay.

As you’re iterating, try Tip #7: Read your drafts aloud so that you can tell when things feel stiff or weak; this should sound like you. Reading aloud can help you catch things like Common Error #5: tonal errors—sounding too formal or too glib/casual. Ramya never suffered from either of these problems; she sounded like herself even in early drafts.

But many students feel that they either have to sound either formal to the point of stuffiness (“On a Sunday afternoon, my father would pick me up from my room and take me down to the kitchen, whereupon we would adjourn to Dee’s Sports bar…”) or “authentically young” to the point of disrespecting the reader (“On Sundays my dad’s like, let’s go to Dee’s Sports Bar, and I go okay so I come on down and we get going...”). When you’re staring at the blinking cursor until your eyes cross, it can be easy to fall into one of these traps, and to write in a voice that isn’t yours. When you read aloud, you can catch it.

Tip #8: The right essay-voice is the most polished version of your speaking-voice. You shouldn’t sound like you swallowed a thesaurus, but you should sound a little more formal than your text messages to your friends would.

Here’s what Ramya’s essay looked like, in the end:

Just before 5 pm on Sunday, October 13, 2013, I was sitting in a bar, holding on to a feeling of optimism that was fading fast. But wait—it’s not what you think. I didn’t turn to drink—I turned to the TV screen. The score was 27-23, and the Patriots had missed too many opportunities. With just over a minute left to play, my dad—the man responsible for bringing me, a 15-year-old, to a bar—dejectedly asked me if we should leave. I reminded him a true sports fan never gives up on her team, no matter the situation. And after a miracle of a drive finished with an unforgettable pass into the corner of the endzone by my idol, Tom Brady, a swell of elated cheering and high-fiving from the fans in the bar ensued regardless of whether we had previously known one another. Loyalty brought us all together.

There are a few different kinds of loyalty. Loyalty to a team, to an establishment, to other people—even to oneself. Sitting in that bar over the last year, I feel like I’ve glimpsed them all. As a Boston-born girl, my loyalty to the Patriots seems natural—even if it’s not so common for a teenage Indian-American-Californian girl to be as much of a sports junkie as I am. But I’ve seen that loyalty tested plenty of times. I’m completely invested in the Pats; I’ve been known to be giddy when they win, and tearful when they lose. However, finding a true home to watch Patriots games in California isn’t easy. So I owe Dee's Sports Bar a surprising amount. By the end of the season, the staff knew what we wanted to eat, and where we wanted to sit, so the sports bar felt like a second home.

My dad and I have a typical father-daughter relationship; I get mad when he doesn’t let me go out, he gets mad when I neglect responsibility. But in the year since we began staking out the bar, we’ve gotten so much closer. On the rides to and from, we talked about everything from school to politics to pop culture. And we talk about sports as equals. My best friend once told me that neither she nor her dad were willing to make the extra effort to find common ground. And I realized how lucky I was: sports offers my dad and me an inexhaustible topic that we can always turn to.

The bar also helped me figure out still another kind of loyalty—to myself. Junior year was an emotional year, full of difficult academics and the inevitable social drama that comes with high school. The bar showed me that I needed to look forward to something comfortable—a place with no drama, no obligations, and a common goal... or at least, a common desperate desire for victory. At the bar, nobody cared what I got on my last math test or which boy was asking my friend to prom. All that matters is the game. This realization isn’t limited to just sports; I figured out that I need a place to be completely myself—with my team and my dad. This included deciding that I only wanted to stay friends with people who make a positive impact on my life. These were such simple revelations, yet they made all the difference.

I have always been loyal to the New England Patriots. From my toddler days, as I sat mesmerized in front of the screen to today, as I analyze every statistic that I can get my hands on, I love every aspect of the team. But all of those trips to the sports bar taught me important lessons that apply beyond football. And for that, I am grateful.

Common App Essay analysis

In the end, what lessons can we take away from Ramya’s essay? Here are a few aspects of the essay that are most successful:

Ramya applies Tip #1 from earlier—taking refuge in anecdotes and specifics—to great effect. We can practically feel the tension of the game, not to mention Ramya and her dad’s investment in it. The result is a memorable, unique opening that compels us to continue reading.

Ramya’s thesis statement (“Loyalty brought us all together”) both telegraphs what the essay will be about and allows her to pivot naturally from sports fandom to the types of loyalty that she actually wants to show admissions committees: her relationships with her dad and with herself.

In discussing loyalty to herself, Ramya demonstrates maturity, independence, and the abilities to grow and absorb lessons. Reflections like “This included deciding that I only wanted to stay friends with people who make a positive impact on my life” help us see her as a person of integrity who can think for herself. As such, it’s easy to imagine her as a student who will make valuable contributions to a college campus.

While we noted earlier that Ramya never struggled with striking the right tone in this essay, it’s worth noticing the balance of polish and casualness that she achieves. The result is an essay that is effortlessly readable yet mature and, most importantly, authentic to her own voice.

Over 90% of our students get into one or more of their top 3 schools

Get our free 110-page guide for strategies to become the kind of applicant that selective colleges love to admit: How to Get Into America’s Elite Colleges: The Ultimate Guide

Part 6: Frequently asked questions

Common App Essay Frequently Asked Questions Shemmassian Academic Consulting.jpg

There’s more that goes into applying to college than what we’ve been able to cover here, including your grades, standardized test scores, and recommendation letters, but your essays are some of the most important materials. They form the cornerstone of the qualitative side of your application. Get these right and your entire application starts from strength. Good luck!

What books can you recommend for writing essays like this and others?

William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is the primer for nonfiction writing basics. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is a very slim volume that will help you ensure you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s when it comes to grammar and syntax rules.

Who should read my essays? Is there such a thing as too many readers? Too few? The wrong readers?

Think quality, not quantity. It’s best not to hand your essay to every person who comes your way, no matter how many smart teachers, friends, and peers you have at your disposal. Too much feedback can confuse your sense of mission.

So how do you know who to give your essay to? The right essay editor or guide is someone who knows something about you but isn’t your best friend or parent, and someone who you know can push you on storytelling and language.

There is such thing as having too many readers, so we recommend asking no more than one to three people to weigh in: an editor, counselor, teacher, or consultant should help you with the bulk of your essay; a friend or parent can listen to you read it aloud at some point or can read it without the ren pen lifted (meaning, they’re there to make sure you sound like you, rather than intervening and writing it for you). Parents who get too handsy with their kids’ essays can do their children a real disservice; it’s clear when someone who isn’t 18 was serving as the guiding force in the essay-writing process.

Often students want to know how to handle feedback they may disagree with. If it comes from someone you respect, think it over seriously, but remember that this is your voice. It’s okay to write the person or tell them that you value their input but you think the essay sounds more like you if you keep it as it was.

Does my essay have to be about something that happened in high school? How far back can I go?

Your essay can draw on whatever moves you, regardless of when the anecdote, event, or inciting incident you’re writing about occurred. However, what matters most, in terms of timeline, is that you show your readers how the event not only influences you now but will continue to inflect your thinking about yourself and the world as the years roll on.

I feel like I don't have enough space to write everything I want. What should I do?

This is totally normal! But feeling that you have more to say than you can fit is often a result of insufficient paring-down—that is, you probably haven’t chosen the right specific prompt to get your personal statement into particular, small territory.

That’s the key: finding the right question to answer, using all the prewriting tips and tricks and exercises we’ve outlined here. With the right question, you can use your Common App Essay as a window into who you are, rather than feeling burdened by the belief that you must communicate your ‘whole self’ in your application. You can’t box yourself up and hand your soul to the admission committee—but you can use those 650 words to give them some insight into some of the most important parts of you.

What is the Common App Essay word limit?

The Common App Essay word limit is 650 words. We strongly recommend using all 650 words, though you are not required to do so. If you’re well below that limit, it’s worth asking yourself why your personal statement is so short. Check it against the outlines we’ve worked through in this post. Have you used your five-paragraph essay fully? Has your essay demonstrated change over time, or personal growth? Perhaps you’ve told a story but forgotten to reflect on it.

The important thing is to ensure that you’ve fully inhabited each ‘element’ of the successful Common App Essay, as noted in this guide. Doing so will bring you close to the sensible word limit.

Should I explain bad grades in my essays?

Many students have the instinct to explain themselves, including any failings or perceived failings, while writing their applications. There are a number of ways you can offer the admissions committee context for something you think went ‘wrong’ in high school, whether that’s low grades, imperfect attendance, or something else.

Your recommenders might have a chance to write something about it in their letters, if they were in a position to see you during or after the rough period. You can also write about something going wrong in your personal statement if it has narrative energy; that is to say, if it would make a good essay regardless of whether or not it explained away a failing, go ahead and write about it.

An example might be an essay that discussed a student’s home life, say their parents’ difficult divorce during their freshman year. If the student had something introspective to say about the divorce, she might add a line or two that explains that her grades suffered during the incident, but she’d want to conclude the essay by not only showing how she righted things in the years after, but also how what she learned from the difficult period will influence her in the future.

It’s crucial to avoid sounding defensive about your weak spots in your application. If you have something that you think makes you seem a less-than-ideal applicant, turn it into your strength by explaining what you learned from it.

The Common App Additional Information section offers the opportunity to provide context about hardships you might have faced during high school. This is another place you could consider explaining bad grades or the like. Even here, it’s important to not simply state, “I had bad grades but improved them.” A better explanation provides context and explains what specifically helped you turn things around. For example:

During my freshman year, as my parents went through a difficult divorce, I became distracted and stressed, and my grades suffered as a result. I was able to work with my teachers over the summer after my freshman year, however, and attended summer school to make up for weak performance. My family also repaired itself after a few years and time in family therapy. Though I regret my poor grades from ninth grade, I am proud that I was able to improve quickly as a sophomore, and that I developed both stronger study habits and tactics for dealing with emotional stress as a result.

The second answer is specific and also demonstrates maturity gained thanks to a difficult period.

common app personal statement word count

About the Author

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on college admissions. Over the past 15 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into top programs like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT using his exclusive approach.

Wordvice

Academic Editing Services

Admissions Editing Services

Business Editing Services

Writer Editing Services

Our Editors

Client reviews.

How to Shorten a College Essay to Meet the Word Limit

common app personal statement word count

The college application essay is one of the most important components of applying to college. Application essays require a lot of time and effort, so you want to make sure you don’t make easy-to-overlook mistakes such as going over your college application word count.

Unfortunately, many students leave their admissions essay as the last step of their application process after studying for the SAT and learning how to request letters of recommendation. High school students don’t have the time, energy, experience, or organizational skills to prioritize their essay word count and word limits when writing their draft and receiving personal statement editing , recommendation letter editing , or cover letter editing , depending on your admissions documents. 

The good news is that being over the word limit in your admissions essay is not the end of the world. You’ve managed to output a lot of writing for your college essay. That’s a good starting point for revisions. All quality and successful admissions essays  go through the revision process, and a big part of the revision process includes reducing word count.

common app personal statement word count

This article will explore the following topics:

How flexible is the college essay word limit?

Your essay must stay within the required word limit whether you’re applying directly to your university or through the Common Application, which has become synonymous with the college application process. 

The Common App specifies the word limit required for each essay. Even though this has changed over the years– from 650 to 500 words in the past –the current Common App essay word count is somewhere between 250 to 650 words. 

Can you go over the essay word limit?

You must be careful about staying within the word limit for each application. Look at the essay prompts closely. Unless specified,  never go over the word limit for a college application essay .

It might be impossible to go over the essay word limit

Some universities may allow you to mail in a copy of your admissions essay, but most will use online applications with text fields that may cut off your essay if it goes over the maximum word count.

Admissions officers may just stop reading or toss out your essay

Admissions officers are busier than Santa’s elves during the winter holiday season. They read dozens if not hundreds of essays per day, and most of those will be rejected. If you fail your application, make sure it’s due to the content or something else; failing due to a simple word limit mistake would be a waste!

Following directions is a key component of being a student

If you told someone to do something and you were in the position to enforce it, would you accept the wrong result if 100 other people were waiting and did it right? Of course not. Therefore, the least you can do is to follow any instructions regarding college essay word limits to show admissions officers you will be a competent student at their school.

common app personal statement word count

Can you go under the essay word limit?

While going over the word limit is a clear and decisive issue, it’s a bit trickier to determine how short your college application essay should be. 

Pay attention to minimum word limits and word ranges 

Some essay prompts will have a suggested minimum– for example, 500 to 650 words. As mentioned above, online text input fields may cut you off at the maximum word count. Some may even have some red text reminding you to input at least 500 words. But you should always double-check these word count guidelines.

The essay is your opportunity to shine

Why would you be so lazy as to only write the minimum amount for your personal statement? This is a great opportunity for you to stand above and apart from other applicants, and choosing your words wisely while presenting your story fully is important.

Add some concrete examples

Examples of events and actions can help you meet the correct word count range. This also reduces redundancy in your writing while reinforcing and supporting your main points. College admissions officers love to hear about your unique experiences.

Why do students find essay word limits difficult?

Why staying under essay word limits is so hard

We now know several reasons why keeping your college essay length in the correct word range so you don’t violate any word limit is important. But  why is staying under essay word limits so hard? 

The essay has no structure or organization

The most effective things are stated simply. And the most effective college admissions essays organize, structure, and communicate efficiently. That doesn’t mean your personal statement will be short; it means that each point should be concise. 

For example, split your writing into clear paragraphs. Organize your essay into separate sections for your academic, leadership, volunteer, and personal experiences. Be sure to add a section on extracurricular activities. Make your structure clear to the reader so that word count will only be a minor consideration. 

The essay does not focus on the essay prompt

If you are having difficulty cutting your word count, look for sentences or even entire paragraphs that are not relevant to the essay prompt. Adding unnecessary information is an easy trap to fall into. Your anecdotes or stories might be interesting and funny, but do they help illustrate why you want to attend UC or Stanford? 

The essay lacks proper vocabulary and verb usage

This tip is more subtle but can really help you reduce essay length and word count. When writing, always use the most appropriate verb, preferably one verb only. It will drastically reduce your word count overall. This is because when you choose the wrong verb, you often must add more words to clarify. 

Average/Wordy:   “I hit the ball so hard it went over the fence.” 

Exceptional/Concise:  “I smashed the ball over the fence.”

The verb “hit” is a solely descriptive action verb. It provides no context about the degree to which you hit the ball, which is why “so hard” or other adverbs are naturally added to regular verbs to provide extra information. Changing the verb completely to something more engaging like “smashed” provides all the context you need. And you just saved 4 out of 11 words!

The essay uses a traditional introduction/conclusion structure

Many students applying to college fall into the trap of trying to fit their essay into a traditional structure consisting of an introduction, body, and conclusion.

With only 650 words, you can recover your word count by skipping the formal rigid essay structure. Instead, dive right into your essay. Your content and experiences are the most important components of your application essay, and you need every word.

Tips to reduce the length of your application essay

Here are some simple tips to cut down the length of your essay. Start with some broad admissions essay tips  first and move on to the easier grammar and proofreading-related steps below.

Remove adverbs

Here’s how to find if your admissions essay has a lot of adverbs: Look for “ly” words around your verbs. Often, these types of adverbs are just filler words and a reflection of spoken conversational English rather than accomplishing anything meaningful. Go through your essay and decide if each adverb is truly necessary. 

Unnecessary adverbs:   “ate quickly”, “ran quickly”

Stronger verbs:   “devoured”, “rushed”

Here is a list of common adverbs you can remove to reduce your essay’s word count:

common app personal statement word count

Remove filler words

Filler words are another crutch or may just be used out of habit. Go through your essay right now with “ctrl + f” or “cmd + f” for Mac users and delete every instance of  actually  and  very.  We promise they add nothing important to your writing. 

Example 

Filler words:  “I found myself actually surprised about how much I learned”

No filler words:  “I was surprised at how much I learned”

The word “actually” is pretty much useless. You must clearly state that you were surprised. Further, “finding yourself” is a conversational filler that comes off as unprofessional.

Avoid using too many prepositional phrases

Prepositions are common linking words such as  of ,  to ,  for ,  by ,  from ,  in , and  on . These are highly dependent on the context of your personal statement, especially when you reference narrative elements in your past. Go through your essay carefully and make changes to reword your sentences and cut down your essay word count.

Too many prepositional phrases:  “I struggled to work in a team in order to get a good grade in the group project”

Fewer prepositional phrases:  “I struggled with the team aspect of the group project”

There’s no need to verbalize that you worked in a team or to mention the grad aspect. Furthermore, these prepositional phrases add extra length to your sentences, which will not help you meet the essay word count.

Be clear and concise. Cut down your word count.

Be direct and decisive in your writing

Students are often told to avoid overgeneralizing groups of people or ideas but that they should also be precise in their English writing. This can lead to the author failing to commit to a concept and coming off as unsure or weak.

An overreliance on modifier words such as adjectives and adverbs is often the culprit. 

Too many modifiers:  “Although my high school grades were  sometimes   slightly  less than average, I  was able to  outperform  many  of my classmates, who often struggled to improve.”

Stronger verbs and adjectives:  “Although my high school grades were inconsistent, I later outperformed my classmates, who struggled to improve.”

You can see how the improved version appears more matter-of-fact, consistent, and even confident despite the admission of lower grades. 

Don’t be a narrator 

Do not waste time restating the common app essay prompt or telling the reader what you will discuss next. This would be fine for an informative article (like the one you’re reading now), but not for an application essay. Eliminating these structural road markers will greatly cut down your word count.

Too much narration:  “I will start by discussing my leadership experiences…” or “The next important part of my academic background was my….”

Less narration:  “I gained leadership experience when…” or “One of my academic achievements was…”

Consider college essay editors for extra help

Get help from a professional college essay editor

The college admissions and application essay landscape is very competitive, and this has led students to seek an edge. One reason why application essay editing services are so popular is due to their speed and quality. They free up students to prepare more college applications and focus on the content of their personal statements instead of drilling down things like grammar and essay word limits.

One of the best things applicants can do is write as many college admissions essays as possible without worrying at all about grammar or word count. Organize your essays by the essay prompt category (e.g. “Why X university?” or “Tell us about an obstacle you overcame”).

Then, send ONE type of each essay to a reputable proofreading company that offers  college essay editing services . When you get your changes back, apply them to all essays of that category. This minimizes the cost but gets you the most benefits. 

How to Shorten Your College Admissions Essay--light bulbs hanging

FAQ: How to shorten your admissions essay

Advice from our editing experts , can a college essay be longer than 650 words.

Can you use contractions and abbreviations in college essays?

Do citations count towards the college essay word limit?

Does the title count towards the college essay word limit?

How many pages is 650 words?

How do you shorten long sentences?

How many paragraphs is a 650-word essay?

PrepScholar

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, complete strategies: common app essay prompts (2022-23).

College Essays

common app personal statement word count

You can write about almost anything and make it work, so if you have an idea, don't let the fact that it doesn't fit neatly into one of these categories stop you. Treat these breakdowns as jumping-off points to help you start brainstorming , not the final word in how you need to approach the essay.

Make Sure You Look at This Year's Prompts

The Common App changes its prompts fairly frequently , so make sure you're familiar with the most up-to-date versions of the Common App essay questions . If you have friends or siblings who applied in past years, don't assume that you can take the exact same approaches they did.

This guide will go over the details of all seven current prompts, but first let's talk about some overall advice.

common app personal statement word count

Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional help from PrepScholar.

Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges.

Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now :

Craft Your Perfect College Essay

4 Tips For Finding Your Best Common App Essay Topic

As you're brainstorming and preparing to write your Common App essay, you'll want to keep these tips in mind.

common app personal statement word count

First, it means that you genuinely care about the topic and want to write your college essay on it— no one ever wrote a great essay on a topic that they felt they had to write about .

Second, it means that the topic shows off a quality or trait you want to highlight for the admissions committee . For example, say I wanted to write about my summer job with the Parks Department. It's not enough to simply tell a story about my feud with a raccoon that kept destroying all the progress I made repairing a bench; I would need to make it clear what that experience ;shows about my character (perseverance) and explain what it ;taught me (that there are some things in life you simply can't control).

Remember that the most important thing is that your essay is about you . This advice might sound obvious, but when you're used to writing academic essays, it can be tricky to dive deep into your own perspective.

#2: Take Your Time

Give yourself plenty of time to brainstorm and write so you don't feel rushed into jotting down the first thing you can come up with and sending it right off. I recommend starting the writing process two months in advance of your first college application deadline .

On a similar note, you should take the essay seriously: it's an important part of your application and worth investing the time in to get right. If you just dash something off thoughtlessly, admissions officers will recognize that and consider it evidence that you aren't really interested in their school.

#3: Avoid Repetition

Your essay should illustrate something about you beyond what's in the rest of your application . Try to write about a topic you haven't talked about elsewhere, or take a different angle on it.

A college essay is not a resume —it's the best opportunity to show off your unique personality to admissions committees. Pick your topic accordingly.

#4: Get Specific

The best topics are usually the narrowest ones: essays focused on a single interaction, a single phrase, or a single object. The more specific you can get, the more unique your topic will be to you.

Lots of people have tried out for a school play, for example, but each had their own particular experience of doing so. One student saw trying out for the role of Hamlet as the culmination of many years of study and hard work and was devastated not to get it, while another was simply proud to have overcome her nerves enough to try out for the chorus line in West Side Story . These would make for very different essays, even though they're on basically the same topic.

Another benefit of a specific topic is that it makes coming up with supporting details much easier. Specific, sensory details make the reader feel as if they're seeing the experience through your eyes, giving them a better sense of who you are.

Take a look at this example sentence:

General: I was nervous as I waited for my turn to audition.

Specific: As I waited for my name to be called, I tapped the rhythm of "America" on the hard plastic chair, going through the beats of my audition song over and over in my head.

The first version could be written by almost anyone; the second version has a specific perspective—it's also intriguing and makes you want to know more.

The more specific your essay topic is, the more clearly your unique voice will come through and the more engaging your essay will be.

Breaking Down the 2022-23 Common App Essay Prompts

Now that we've established the basic ideas you need to keep in mind as you brainstorm, let's go through the 2022-23 Common App essay questions one at a time and break down what admissions committees are looking for in responses.

Keep in mind that for each of these questions, there are really two parts . The first is describing something you did or something that happened to you. The second is explaining what that event, action, or activity means to you . No essay is complete without addressing both sides of the topic.

common app personal statement word count

Next, it had to have had some sort of real impact so you can explain how your gratefulness affected you. This means that, even if the event itself was small, it had to have brought about some sort of lasting change in how you live your life.

To start, brainstorm times when something went better than expected/you were happily surprised by an outcome/you were especially grateful/someone restored your faith in humanity. Remember, this has to be, overall, a positive situation, as you're being asked about an event that made you happy or grateful. This is in contrast to prompts 2 and 3 which focus more on challenges you've faced.

Once you have your list, eliminate any instances that didn't affect or motivate you. The key part of this prompt is explaining the impact of your gratitude, so you need to write about a time when gratitude made you do something you normally wouldn't have done. This could be focusing on self-care/self-improvement, paying it forward by helping someone else, shifting your values, etc. Colleges want to see how you changed because of this event.

For example, say you decide to write about your first time traveling through an airport alone. You're not sure where to go, and all the workers look busy and like they're just waiting for their break. You're wandering around, lost, too shy to ask someone for help, when a gruff-looking employee comes up and asks if you need something. When you admit you don't know how to find your gate, they take the time to walk you to it, show you which screen to watch so you know when to board, and tell you to come get them if you need any more help. It's much more help than you thought anyone would give you.

Because of that person's actions (and this is the key part), you now always keep an eye out for people who look lost or confused and try to help them because you know how intimidating it can be to be out of your depth. You also know that many times people feel embarrassed to ask for help, so you need to make the first move to help them. If you have a specific example of you helping someone in need as a result, including that will make the essay even stronger.

Avoid scenarios where you were the first person to help another. The prompt is asking about a time someone was kind to you, and  then  you reacted in response to that. You need to have the grateful moment first, then the change in behavior.

Additionally, avoid examples where someone treated you badly but you rose above it. This is a situation where someone was kind to you, and you decided to keep that kindness going.

common app personal statement word count

Common App Essay Prompt 6: Your Passion

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

This prompt is asking you to describe something you're intellectually passionate about .

But in addition to describing a topic of personal fascination and why you're so interested in it, you need to detail how you have pursued furthering your own knowledge of the topic . Did you undertake extra study? Hole yourself up in the library? Ask your math team coach for more practice problems?

Colleges want to admit students who are intellectually engaged with the world. They want you to show that you have a genuine love for the pursuit of knowledge .

Additionally, by describing how you've learned more about your chosen topic, concept, or idea, you can prove that you are self-motivated and resourceful .

Pretty much any topic you're really interested in and passionate about could make a good essay here, just as long as you can put can put an intellectual spin on it and demonstrate that you've gone out of your way to learn about the topic.

So It's fine to say that the topic that engages you most is football, but talk about what interests you in an academic sense about the sport. Have you learned everything there is to know about the history of the sport? Are you an expert on football statistics? Emphasize how the topic you are writing about engages your brain.

Don't pick something you don't actually care about just because you think it would sound good.

If you say you love black holes but actually hate them and tortured yourself with astronomy books in the library for a weekend to glean enough knowledge to write your essay, your lack of enthusiasm will definitely come through.

Common App Essay Prompt 7: Your Choice

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

You can write about anything for this one!

Since this is a choose-your-own-adventure prompt, colleges aren't looking for anything specific to this prompt .

However, you'll want to demonstrate some of the same qualities that colleges are looking for in all college essays: things like academic passion, maturity, resourcefulness, and persistence. What are your values? How do you face setbacks? These are all things you can consider touching on in your essay.

If you already have a topic in mind for this one that doesn't really fit with any of the other prompts, go for it!

Avoid essays that aren't really about you as a person. So no submitting your rhetorical close-reading of the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" you wrote for AP English!

However, if you want to write about the way that "Ode on a Grecian Urn" made you reconsider your entire approach to life, go ahead.

common app personal statement word count

Want to build the best possible college application?

We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies . We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools , from state colleges to the Ivy League.

We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools .

Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

Get Into Your Top Choice School

The Common App Essay Questions: 5 Key Takeaways

We've covered a lot of ground, but don't panic. I've collected the main ideas you should keep in mind as you plan your Common App essay below.

common app personal statement word count

#5: Don't Worry About What You Think You're Supposed to Write

There is no single right answer to these prompts , and if you try to find one, you'll end up doing yourself a disservice. What's important is to tell your story—and no one can tell you what that means because it's unique to you.

Many students believe that they should write about resume-padding activities that look especially impressive, such as volunteering abroad. These essays are often boring and derivative because the writer doesn't really have anything to say on the topic and assumes it'll speak for itself.

But the point of a personal statement isn't to explain what you've done; it's to show who you are .

Take the time to brainstorm and figure out what you want to show colleges about yourself and what story or interest best exemplifies that quality.

What's Next?

For more background on college essays and tips for crafting a great one, check out our complete explanation of the basics of the personal statement .

Make sure you're prepared for the rest of the college application process as well with our guides to asking for recommendations , writing about extracurriculars , taking the SAT , and researching colleges .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 ;points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Get eBook: 5 Tips for 160+ Points

Alex is an experienced tutor and writer. Over the past five years, she has worked with almost a hundred students and written about pop culture for a wide range of publications. She graduated with honors from University of Chicago, receiving a BA in English and Anthropology, and then went on to earn an MA at NYU in Cultural Reporting and Criticism. In high school, she was a National Merit Scholar, took 12 AP tests and scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and ACT.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Join the Conversation

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

  • For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

common app personal statement word count

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

How Long Should Your Personal Statement Be?

How Long Should Your Personal Statement Be?

Making sure your personal statement is the “right” length

What’s the right length for your personal statement? Is there a “right” length? In this article, you’ll find both simple and somewhat more nuanced answers to those questions, as well as tips on how to structure your personal statement in ways that take advantage of the “right” length.

How Long Should a Personal Statement Be?

The simple answer is, for the Common App main statement, 650 words max; for the Coalition App , 500-650; for the UC PIQ s, 350 max.

The better answer is … a little more complex. Hence the quotes around “right” in the intro.

For each of the above, you don’t have to use every single available word. So don’t just stretch things—that generally leads to weaker writing. (You already know this. When a teacher once asked you to write a 1,500-word essay, and you got to around 1,300 and then just added fluff phrasing to pad out the word count, it didn’t make your writing better. Also, just a heads up: Your teachers know you do this. In college, padding word count will hurt you. A buddy of mine found that out the hard way at Harvard. Don’t be like him. At least with the “learning the hard way” part.)

That said, you will, in our experience, virtually always end up with a better essay by having your early drafts over word count (within reason), then as you revise (more on that below), cutting the fat and refining phrasing to get under the maximum.

One nice thing about using the applications mentioned above is that, because you can use the Common App or Coalition platform to apply to hundreds of different schools, it’s extremely likely that you only need to write one personal statement. (Unless you’re applying to schools that use their own applications, like MIT or Georgetown —check out those links for guides to their prompts. But you can likely still reuse large elements of your Common App personal statement in those applications.)

Important side note regarding that last paragraph: Please don’t actually try to apply to hundreds of different schools. There’s no single number that works for every student, but 10 is likely fine .

While the personal statement’s length doesn’t vary from school to school, the supplements required by different schools do vary. And for many schools, in particular the most highly selective schools, you’ll have to write a bunch of supplemental essays. For those, we have a bunch of free guides you can check out. (For example, Stanford , and Harvard , and Yale )

How Long Should a Personal Statement Be When There Isn’t a Limit?

This is a fairly common question, but it doesn’t really have an answer … because there aren’t really any colleges that require a personal statement that don’t offer some kind of word-count limit. At least, none that I can think of.

That said, some colleges do have major supplemental essays with no hard limit. For example, the University of Chicago doesn’t specify a hard word count for either of its prompts (a “ Why us ?” and its Extended Essay, with a bunch of fun possible prompts to choose from).

For large supplements like UChicago’s Extended Essay that don’t offer a hard word count, we’d generally recommend aiming to keep it under 650 (same as the main personal statement). You can go over, but you’ll have to justify doing so with some really strong writing.

Tips for Writing Your Personal Statement

If you want a more in-depth version, check out this step-by-step guide . For now, here’s the brief version:

Brainstorm your content

Here are three exercises to get you started:

Values Exercise

Essence Objects Exercise

Feelings and Needs Exercise

More in this post on how to write a personal statement or in that guide above

Decide on how to structure your content

We recommend two approaches to structure, depending on whether you feel you’ve faced significant challenges and want to write about them (and to clarify, you definitely do not need to write about challenges in a personal statement —though that’s a super common misconception): 

If not focused on a challenge: Montage Structure

If focused on a challenge: Narrative Structure

Really? Outline?

In your first draft, don’t worry about a fancy opening or ending, and don’t worry (within reason) about length. For example, if you’re writing a Common App personal statement, and your first draft ends up being 800 or 900 words, you’re fine. You’ll have to cut eventually. But cutting is the easiest part of writing—it mostly involves just using the “delete” key. 

Don’t let word count stop you from exploring early on. It’s exploration, experimentation, and revision that lead to strong writing. Not word counts.

Revise some more

Probably some more

You get the idea

How does the “right” length for a personal statement play into that approach?

For a montage, you’ll probably have somewhere between 4-7 paragraphs, each exploring different values through different moments and experiences. And you’ll probably want to split that word count fairly evenly across those paragraphs, so somewhere around 90-160 words per paragraph (with some leeway).

For a narrative, you’ll want to split the word count fairly evenly between three separate sections of content (though to clarify, each “section” will probably have more than one paragraph): Challenges + Effects, What I Did About It, What I Learned. So about 215 words per section, give or take. (For an in-depth explanation of those sections, see the guides linked above.)

Examples of Winning Personal Statements

Montage Example

My Twitter bio reads: angry brown girl, feminist, singer, meme-lover. You will notice live-tweets of my feminist Pride and Prejudice thoughts, analyses of Hamilton’s power for musical representation, and political memes. Just as my posts bring together seemingly disparate topics, I believe there is a vibrancy that exists at the multidimensional place where my interests intersect.  Growing up as a debater and musician, it was easy to see the two as distinct entities where I had to make unequivocal choices. At the start of my junior year, I decided not to participate in the musical in order to work for Emerge California, an organization that helps Democratic women run for office. There I learned about data science, gender distributions in public office, and how to work with the evil printer. I also halted my voice and piano lessons to focus on building my student-led non-profit, Agents of Change. As someone who has diverted my energy into community activism, I can attest to the power of grassroots movements. It has been so rewarding to measure the impact that my team has had on my community. But even so, I felt that I was losing touch with the music that was such a profound part of me.  I found a new way of being when I started combining my artsy and political sides. I took an intensive class on protest music, where I learned how political movements have been shaped by the music of their time. While in the class, we were asked to compose our own songs. I am not a songwriter, but I am an activist, and I embraced the opportunity to turn music into an outlet for my political beliefs. As a first-generation American, I am dedicated to raising awareness about refugee rights and immigration. My songs about the Syrian Refugee Crisis let me find a way to bring the two sides of me together and gave me a rush that neither music nor politics by themselves would have provided.  This introduction led me to apply to the Telluride Association Protest Poetics program, where I dove deeper into my own identity. I wrote songs about police brutality and the ways that as a non-black person of color I am implicated in instances of subliminal racism. Over the course of the program, as I became more familiar with the visual, literary, and performance art we analyzed, I slowly started to realize that, though I confront colorism, jokes about Indian culture, and intra-community violence in some form every day, my proximity to whiteness still gives me immense amounts of privilege. I have come to know that this means I have a responsibility to both be at the forefront of movements, and conscious of not stepping over the voices of other intersectional identities. I hope that the music I choose to perform and the way I live my life can amplify, not overwrite, any of the struggles that others deal with daily.  Last year, I had another opportunity to use music to pay homage to an issue I care deeply about. In my South Asian community, mental health is an issue that is often papered over. When a member of my school community committed suicide, I was asked to sing “Amazing Grace” for the school to both unify and honor the student. Though I thought that I had really understood the power of music, holding that space for my entire school had a profound resonance that I still don’t fully understand.  My voice is an instrument for change -- whether it be through me raising my hand to contribute to a discussion in a classroom, speaking out against gun violence at a rally, or singing at an event of solidarity. I know that someday my voice, in conjunction with many other unique voices and perspectives, will make a difference.

We think there are 4 key qualities that strong personal statements possess : Values, Insight, Vulnerability, and Craft (probably in roughly that order of importance). You can check out that link for more detail and, once you’re done with your personal statement, put it through the Great College Essay Test. Let’s talk through how the essay above checks those boxes.

Values: Tons of ’em. She does a great job weaving values through every paragraph, and using detail and action to illustrate how those values have manifested in her life. Equality/social justice/representation, community/engagement, music, art, politics, mental health …

It’s useful to notice that rather than following the standard dictum “show, don’t tell,” she does a nice job showing, then telling. We’d recommend that latter approach, as it plays into craft (more on that below), but also ensures your readers on the admission committee (who may be reading pretty quickly) don't miss your point.

Insight: One way to think of insight is to frame it as your response to the question “So what?” Why do these moments and experiences matter to you? How have they molded you? And how have they shaped what you value and why you value it? That last question is one of the easier ways to start weaving insights into your essay—what are the lessons you’ve learned about the values you’re demonstrating?

Lines like, “As someone who has diverted my energy into community activism, I can attest to the power of grassroots movements,” or, “I slowly started to realize that, though I confront colorism, jokes about Indian culture, and intra-community violence in some form every day, my proximity to whiteness still gives me immense amounts of privilege. I have come to know that this means I have a responsibility to both be at the forefront of movements, and conscious of not stepping over the voices of other intersectional identities,” do a great job showing how she’s worked to develop skills of reflection. And there’s actually some nice insight in acknowledging that there are things that “I still don’t fully understand.”

Vulnerability: There are many ways to be vulnerable in a personal statement. One way the essay above uses is to offer up some of the things that matter to us, things that we hold close to our sense of self. Because when we do so, we’re risking having someone tell us we’re wrong. When this author takes that risk, and is willing to share where she’s found meaning, I feel closer to her.

Craft: That first line functions as a nice, quick hook—as soon as I read it, I’m curious where we’re heading next—in addition to thematically setting up the essay. She has some good variation of phrasing and sentence structure. And she’s clearly spent a good amount of time (as in, 5+ drafts) revising and refining. (Keep in mind that one thing you’re showing your readers is that you’re ready to write at the college level—meaning turning in a first or second draft probably isn’t putting your best foot forward … )

And since this post is about personal statement length, let’s look at how the author above apportioned her word count in a way that helps her show the admission officers who she is and what the skills, qualities, and values are that she’ll bring to a campus: 

Notice that the intro is pretty quick—it uses just over 50 words to give us a clear sense of focus and direction and voice. That allows the author to dedicate more like 100-150 words to each body paragraph, showing a different side of who she is and what she values. It wouldn’t necessarily be bad to have a longer intro, but keep in mind that it’s the moments and experiences in the body that demonstrate your values and insights that will tend to have the biggest impact on the reader.

And while she didn’t use every single one of the 650-word maximum, she came pretty close (636).

Narrative Example

My eyes flutter open and I see blinding lights. I feel an overwhelming nausea, grab the bucket next to me and throw up. I lay my head down in exhaustion and feel a cast around my head. I had just gotten surgery on my left ear to have bilateral cochlear implants for profound deafness. This was the start of my journey. I was the kid who had to spend hours after school rebuilding my speech and language skills with a speech therapist, the one who always wore my hair down so no one would notice the implants, the one at the swimming parties who would pretend I had to go to the bathroom just so no one would see me take them off. And every night I had to remember to charge my batteries, so I could hear the next day.  On top of all this, I was also shy. In school, I sat in the back of the class so no one would notice me. When my teachers forgot to turn on my microphone in class, I wouldn’t say anything because I was afraid to bring attention to myself. After school, I had to review my classmates’ notes because I couldn’t simultaneously write and hear everything the teacher said. I remember so strongly a feeling of unfairness that I was literally the only student in my school who had to deal with these issues.  There was one place where I was an equal and didn’t feel like I was constantly catching up: my ballet classes. There, I was more outgoing and didn’t constantly feel pressured to speak--dance was a language that didn’t require talking. Though dance became an escape, it still wasn’t enough to balance out my need to fit in. In order to overcome my nearly constant frustration, I decided I needed to connect to my deafness. I started an internship with a speech pathologist and for the first time interacted with other people with hearing loss: kids of all ages, each with their own struggles. During junior year, I did an independent study and learned more about the effects of deafness on language development.  When I heard about Leadership Opportunities for Teens (LOFT), a program that promotes leadership skills and self-advocacy with teenagers like me, I joined. There, I had an epiphany. During a discussion with other participants from all over the country, several of them spoke of being bullied, and I realized for the first time how supportive my own academic environment had been. Whereas other students dealt with taunting and physical abuse, I was in a school with accommodating teachers and students who were curious about my experience. The only person who had been contributing to my shyness and fear was myself. And from my dance experiences, I knew I was capable of more.  Armed with my new knowledge of the science of deafness and a little hope, I began advocating for myself. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I began to feel proud of my abilities to keep up with my hearing peers. Gradually, I found myself feeling more relaxed in school and empowered to try new things I had never done before, like running, volleyball, and cheer. I even began introducing myself to strangers. Now, as a senior, I find myself in leadership positions like yearbook editor and a freshmen mentor. And every time a teacher forgets to turn on the microphone, I raise my hand in front of the entire class and remind the teacher to please turn it on. And she does. I’ve spent my whole life dealing with my hearing loss and the obstacles it threw in my path. Looking back at the moment where I woke up from surgery, I don’t think of the nauseating side effects; I see it as a blessing that gave me the gift to hear and a challenge to overcome obstacles that have made me braver. — — —

Same game as above: Values, Insight, Vulnerability, Craft.

Values: Again, we see a bunch of values throughout the essay, especially in the actions she takes to work through her challenges: art/dance, community/engagement, autonomy, independence, self-awareness/perspective, exploration, growth, bravery …

And, as with the first essay, notice that she does a nice job of both showing and telling—her actions help us see what values she’s developed through her experiences, but she also takes the time to directly mention those values at times (e.g., “made me braver.”)

Insight: She does a nice job answering “so what” by reflecting on how these experiences have shaped her, for example, through how she came to understand that while dance was a useful escape, it wasn’t an answer to her problems, or through how she came to understand the support she had, and using that to consciously make different, braver choices that would lead to her growth.

Vulnerability: There are vulnerable elements throughout the essay, but in particular, notice how she offers up details early on (like her worries, fears, and anxieties) that are probably a little scary to share. But again, doing so makes me feel closer to her and the story she’s offering.

Craft: There’s a nice, quick hook that draws us in by giving us a quick sense of mystery through the images and sensations, then resolves it without leaving us wondering for too long. She does a nice job varying phrasing and structure, and uses clear transitions to give us a sense of place and connection. And, as with the montage essay above, she has clearly spent a good deal of time revising and refining.

Length/word count: This essay does a nice job of apportioning word count in the way we talked about above—about one-third for Challenges + Effects, one-third for What I Did About It, and one-third for What I Learned (some of which is sprinkled throughout the essay, but the bulk of which comes toward the end). Splitting the word count that way allowed her to create a nice narrative arc that takes advantage of every one of the 650 words available to her.

Check out these other personal statement resources:

How to Write a Personal Statement

Personal Statement Examples

How to Write a Challenges-Based (i.e., Narrative) College Essay That TBH Wasn’t That Big of a Deal

common app personal statement word count

The Length Requirements for the Common Application Essay in 2020-21

Learn about the maximum word count for your personal statement.

  • Essay Samples & Tips
  • College Admissions Process
  • College Profiles
  • College Rankings
  • Choosing A College
  • Application Tips
  • Testing Graphs
  • College Financial Aid
  • Advanced Placement
  • Homework Help
  • Private School
  • College Life
  • Graduate School
  • Business School
  • Distance Learning
  • Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania
  • M.A., English, University of Pennsylvania
  • B.S., Materials Science & Engineering and Literature, MIT

Students applying to colleges that use the Common Application will typically need to respond to one of seven essay prompts . For the 2020-21 application cycle, the length limit for the essay is 650 words. That limit includes the essay title, notes, and any other text that you include in the essay text box.

Fast Facts: The Common Application Length Requirements

  • Your essay needs to be between 250 and 650 words long.
  • You can't go over the limit—the online form will cut you off at 650 words.
  • The length includes the title, notes, and any other text you include in the online form.
  • Use your 650 words to tell a focused story and help the admissions folks get to know you.

History of the Common Application Length Limit

For years the Common Application had no length limit, and applicants and counselors frequently debated whether a tight 450-word essay was a wiser approach than a detailed 900-word piece. In 2011, that decision was taken away as the Common Application moved to a relatively short 500-word limit. With the August 2013 release of CA4 (the current version of the Common Application), the guidelines changed once again. CA4 set the limit at 650 words with a minimum of 250 words. And unlike earlier versions of the Common Application, the length limit is now enforced by the application form. No longer can applicants attach an essay that goes over the limit. Instead, applicants will need to enter the essay into a text box that counts words and prevents entering anything beyond 650 words.

What Can You ​Accomplish in 650 Words?

Even if you take advantage of the full length available to you, keep in mind that 650 words is not a long essay. It's roughly the equivalent of a two-page, double-spaced essay. It's about the same length as this article on essay length. Most essays tend to be between three and eight paragraphs depending on the applicant's writing style and essay strategy (essays with dialogue, of course, might have far more paragraphs).

As you plan your essay, you definitely want to keep the length requirement in mind. Many applicants attempt to do too much with their essays and then struggle to edit them down to 650 words. Realize the purpose of the personal statement is not to tell your life story or to give an exhaustive overview of all of your accomplishments. Let your list of extracurricular activities, academic record, letters of recommendation, and supplemental essays and materials show your range of accomplishments. The personal statement is not the place for long lists or catalogs of achievement.

To write an engaging and effective 650 word or shorter essay, you need to have a sharp focus. Narrate a single event, or illuminate a single passion or talent. Whichever essay prompt you choose, make sure you zero in on a specific example that you narrate in an engaging and thoughtful way. Allow enough space for self reflection so that whatever your topic is you spend at least some time talking about its significance to you.

Again, use the essay to narrate an engaging story. Make sure it highlights something you care about deeply, and be sure to provide a window into your interests or personality that isn't already obvious from the rest of your application.

A Final Word About Essay Length

With the primary Common Application essay, you will need to come in at 650 words or fewer. However, you will find that most supplemental essays on the Common Application have different length guidelines, and colleges that don't use the Common Application will have differing length requirements. No matter what the circumstances, make sure you follow the guidelines. If an essay should be 350 words, don't write 370. Learn more about some of the issues related to essay length in this article:  College Application Essay Length Limits .

Finally, keep in mind that what you say and how you say it is far more important than whether you have 550 words or 650 words. Be sure to attend to your essay's style , and in most cases you're going to want to avoid these ten bad essay topics . If you've said all you have to say in 500 words, don't try to pad your essay to make it longer. Regardless of length, and even if yours is a transfer essay , the best writing will tell a compelling story, provide insight to your character and interests, and are written with crisp and engaging prose.

common app personal statement word count

By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

peacock 1

  • FOR EDUCATORS
  • TRY FOR FREE
  • COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
  • CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Log In

  • Free Resources

How Long Should a College Essay Be?

by Story2 Staff , on Jul 22, 2021 11:39:34 AM

When you’re starting to write a college essay, you might find yourself wondering about the word count. How long or short should it be? Are word count limits suggested, or required? What happens if you go over the limit? Read on for answers to all of these questions, and more! 

College essay word count limits 

Most colleges do provide a word count limit or range. If there’s a limit, you should generally aim to get close to the limit, and if there’s a range, you should aim to fall within the range. Avoid going over the limit, as your essay may be cut off, or under the range. You don’t want to give readers the impression that you can’t follow instructions — that’s a surefire way to start things off on a bad foot, before they’ve read a single word of your essay! 

But what if there’s no limit or range provided? In those cases, we recommend sticking to the standard 400-600 words. That will give you enough room to make your case! 

Personal statements

The primary essay for your college application, often called a personal statement, is typically around 400-600 words. The Common App personal statement — which is used as the primary application essay by more than 800 colleges —  must be 250-650 words. Some schools don’t use the Common App, but their primary essays usually fall within the same range. The University of California system, for example, requires 4 essays with a maximum of 350 words. 

No matter where you’re applying, we recommend aiming for the higher end of the given limit or range, in order to properly showcase who you are as a person and student. 

Supplements & scholarship essays

Most schools require supplemental essays in addition to the personal statement. Supplemental and scholarship essays vary in length depending on the requirements of the school, but they are often shorter than the personal statement or primary essay, especially if multiple supplemental essays are required. 

Some schools require quite a few supplemental essays, each with very different word count limits. For example, Georgetown requires 4 supplemental essays, ranging from 250 to 700 words, and Stanford requires a whopping 11 , ranging anywhere from 10 to 250 words. The lower the word count limit, the more closely you should stick to it, unless you’re absolutely sure you can answer the prompt completely and successfully in fewer words. 

Overall, it’s best to stay within the word count limit or range — it’s provided for a reason! Writing too much will likely result in your essay being cut off, and writing too little may cause readers to think that you aren’t truly interested in their school. If no range is given, remember to stick to 400-600 words. This will give you enough space to demonstrate your interest and help readers learn about you! 

Want to see some real examples of essays written by students just like you? Check out our guide to personal statements and scholarship essays !

Go to College Admission Essays Made Easy.

For more info about college admission and scholarship essays and interviews, sign up for self-paced courses and our award-winning StoryBuilder writing platform FREE . Want to stay up to date on the latest tips and resources? Follow us @story2 on Instagram!

common app personal statement word count

  • "HirePower" (1)
  • accomplishment (2)
  • achievement (2)
  • application essay topics (2)
  • authentic voice (1)
  • brainstorming (2)
  • Careers (20)
  • college admission (34)
  • college admissions (41)
  • college applications (1)
  • college essays (23)
  • college interview (3)
  • common app (13)
  • communication (1)
  • Community (11)
  • discussion (1)
  • essay examples (1)
  • essay writing tips (15)
  • internship (2)
  • internships (1)
  • interviews (1)
  • juniors (1)
  • knowledge (2)
  • management (1)
  • moments method (2)
  • overwhelm (1)
  • preparing for college (1)
  • scholarships (2)
  • self discovery (2)
  • senior year (1)
  • seniors (1)
  • standardized testing (1)
  • storytelling (3)
  • strategy (1)
  • strengths (1)
  • student story (1)
  • students (1)
  • summer internship (1)
  • summer internships (1)
  • summer job (1)
  • summer program (1)
  • summer programs (1)
  • supplement essays (6)
  • what to do (1)
  • workplace (1)
  • Writing (1)
  • July 2021 (47)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • December 2019 (4)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • August 2016 (3)
  • March 2019 (3)
  • June 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (3)
  • January 2020 (3)
  • February 2015 (2)
  • August 2015 (2)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • August 2019 (2)
  • September 2019 (2)
  • November 2019 (2)
  • February 2020 (2)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • December 2012 (1)
  • June 2014 (1)
  • January 2015 (1)
  • March 2015 (1)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • May 2018 (1)
  • August 2018 (1)
  • November 2018 (1)
  • February 2019 (1)
  • October 2019 (1)
  • May 2020 (1)
  • June 2020 (1)
  • July 2020 (1)
  • September 2020 (1)
  • October 2020 (1)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • June 2022 (1)

peacock 1

  • Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy & Cookies

IMAGES

  1. Common App Personal Statement Examples

    common app personal statement word count

  2. Most Essential Information to Include in 300 Word Personal Statement

    common app personal statement word count

  3. ERAS Personal Statement Word Count

    common app personal statement word count

  4. Word Count Personal Statement Ucas

    common app personal statement word count

  5. 42+ Common App Personal Essay Examples Image

    common app personal statement word count

  6. IF you do not know how to extend personal statement word count, you can find out how to do it

    common app personal statement word count

VIDEO

  1. Personal Statement Suggestions

  2. Stanford Common App Personal Essays

  3. Make a statement without saying a word! go to the site today

  4. writing your personal statement

  5. Words to Use in Your Personal Statement for University

  6. How to write an awesome personal statement -- URL to re-upload in description

COMMENTS

  1. How Do You Download an App?

    If you have a new phone, tablet or computer, you’re probably looking to download some new apps to make the most of your new technology. Short for “application,” apps let you do everything from listening to music to syncing your phone to you...

  2. 10 Easy-to-Use Stopwatch Apps

    Timers and stopwatches are important tools for fitness and training programs, but they are also helpful for a variety of other activities. Stopwatch applications are available as standard programs on many smartphone devices.

  3. How Apps Can Simplify Online Shopping

    Shopping apps have made online shopping easier than ever. With new apps and updates coming out every week, shopping from your phone is no longer a chore. In fact, using apps to shop online may be easier than using a computer with recent upd...

  4. 7 Expert Tips for the Common App Essay

    The Common App essay word count range is 250-650 words. But just how long should your statement be? Admissions Blog advises aiming for around 500 words. And

  5. Common App Essay: Size Does Matter

    At the end of the day, admissions officers read your essays because they want to fly the friendly skies with you into your world. 500 to 600 words allows you to

  6. Common App Essay Word Limit

    The maximum number of words you can submit for your Common App essay is 650. It must also be a minimum of 250 words. If your essays do not adhere to these

  7. What You Need To Know About The Common Application Essay

    The Common App will specify the word limit for writing your essay. This has changed over the years. The current word count is between 250

  8. How to Write an Amazing Common App Essay (2022–2023)

    Personal statement (PS): When people refer to the personal statement, they're talking about the 650-word Common Application Essay, which all

  9. How to Shorten a College Essay to Meet the Word Limit

    The Common App specifies the word limit required for each essay. Even though this has changed over the years–from 650 to 500 words in the

  10. Complete Strategies: Common App Essay Prompts (2022-23)

    The exact word limit for the Common App essay has varied somewhat over the years, but the current range is 250-650 words.

  11. How Long Should Your Personal Statement Be?

    The simple answer is, for the Common App main statement, 650 words max; for the Coalition App, 500-650; for the UC PIQs, 350 max. The better

  12. How Long Should Your College Essay Be? What is the Ideal Length?

    Main application essays are generally 500-650 words. For example, the Common Application, which can be used to apply to more than 800 colleges

  13. The 2020-21 Length Limit for the Common Application Essay

    Fast Facts: The Common Application Length Requirements · Your essay needs to be between 250 and 650 words long. · You can't go over the limit—the

  14. How Long Should a College Essay Be?

    The primary essay for your college application, often called a personal statement, is typically around 400-600 words. The Common App personal statement