In working with prospective college students, I’ve heard a lot of “don’ts” about how to write a personal essay. Everyone—their friends, their parents, their uncle who went to college in the 80s—has given them caveats. They’ve heard so much about how NOT to write their essay that they’re having a hard time figuring out how TO write their essay.
One thing I hear a lot is that you shouldn’t talk about stuff from your reesume in your personal statement. And I get why this Don’t is floating around out there. You have limited space to show the admissions committee the qualities that will make you a good fit. The essay is a chance to show something new about you, something beyond what the resume shows.
But here’s what I see: some students bend over backwards to avoid talking about important things that happened in their classes or extracurriculars. They’ve got a perfectly terrific story in mind about the day they experienced an amazing shift in perspective in their chemistry class, but they feel they can’t develop it because they “shouldn’t” talk about stuff from their resume in their essay. And heck, since your resume chronicles what you’ve done during your high school career, that prohibition knocks a lot of stuff off your list of potential topics.
So what do folks really mean when they tell you not to talk about items from your resume in your statement? Well, I think they mean “Don’t RUN your resume.” That is, don’t let your essay turn into a chronological list of what you did in high school. Don’t let it become a brag sheet of all your awesome achievements. Your essay is a chance to be more focused. It should let the admissions committee experience the kind of person you are: they way you think, the perspectives you’ll bring to bear on situations and discussions, the qualities you have that will make you a good student.
So no brag sheets. But it’s fine—totally appropriate, really—to let the stuff in your resume become the situation or background for your story. If you went to a summer camp at your local college, you can talk about it, but WHY are you talking about it? “To show that I did it” isn’t enough of a reason. What happened there? What did you do/learn/figure out that will show the committee members why you’d be a good fit for their school? That’s what they really want to know.