Writing A Compelling Personal Statement for Your University of Texas at Austin Application

UT’s new essay requirements include a more open-ended personal statement. All freshman applicants to the University of Texas at Austin must submit a personal essay, between 500 and 650 words, which plays a crucial role in the holistic review process.

This long essay is a student's primary vehicle for communicating the aspects of their personality, perspectives, and relationships that a resume alone can't convey. It's their chance to give the admissions committee a sense of who they are and how they see the world.

HERE’S THE PROMPT

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.

Please keep your essay between 500–650 words (typically two to three paragraphs).

Students are used to writing academic papers, where their teachers provide clear prompts, a list of expectations, and even a rubric that lays out exactly what they need to do to earn full credit. Personal essays are a different beast. This prompt is particularly open-ended. That means the expectations can seem frustratingly amorphous, and no one can tell your student with 100% accuracy what they need to do to succeed. That freedom of thought, though, is representative of what college will be like for your student, so it’s a great chance to embrace that new mindset.

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how to approach UT’s personal essay

Refer to the Common App Prompts

Since this essay prompt aligns with the Common Application's personal statement, students can simplify their application process by using one of the Common App prompts for their UT Austin essay. This will allow them to write a single essay that can be submitted to all their schools.

Choose a Topic that Led to Growth

When choosing a topic for the personal essay, students should explore moments that have produced some type of change in their life or thinking. It could be a significant event or experience that completely changed the course of their life, or it could be a smaller, more personal experience that holds special meaning to them. The admissions committee wants to get a glimpse of who the student is beyond their application, understanding what they care about and how they make sense of the world. Students should choose a story that has a clear narrative arc demonstrating how they have grown or changed as a result of the experiences they describe, while showcasing their personality, values, and growth.

Focus On Recent Experiences

Although the story a student chooses to tell might be rooted in their earliest experiences, the primary focus of the narrative should be on the past three or four years. For most teenagers, high school is a period of rapid personal and interpersonal growth. During that time, students have probably begun to form their own individual ideas and beliefs, explore new interests, and take on more responsibility at school and home. They've also gained experience navigating new social and emotional challenges, and they may have started developing a stronger sense of what they have to contribute to the communities they belong to.

Use Specific Examples and Anecdotes

Specificity and vivid details are what make personal essays come alive and make them memorable for the reader. Students should make sure their essays sparkle with unique aspects of their experiences. This is why revision is key to personal essay writing—sometimes it takes multiple drafts to remember and layer in meaningful details.

Aim for At Least 30% Reflection

While the narrative part of a student's essay tells us what happened, the reflection tells us why living those experiences mattered to a student—not to the person next to them and not to a generic student, but to that student personally. The reflection aspect of the essay helps the reader understand how the student has grown and changed over time. It's where a student will look back at the narrative and think seriously about how they have changed because of it.

Ask for Feedback, But Proceed Cautiously

While we encourage students to have others whose opinion they respect review the essay for feedback on clarity, coherence, and impact, we do caution students not to have too many people weigh in. Sometimes having too many people offering different opinions about the essay can be paralyzing—especially when those well-meaning readers might not understand the job of a personal essay in college admissions. Ultimately, it should be an authentic essay a student feels represents them well, one they feel proud of sharing with admissions.

Proofread Carefully—But Don't Obsess If a Typo Slips Through

It goes without saying that once a student has completed their final draft, they should proofread it carefully. Using apps such as Grammarly can be helpful, but another set of human eyes is always a good idea. Despite a student's best efforts, sometimes a typo or a mistake can slip through, making them paranoid that this one detail will derail their entire application. Admissions counselors assure us that this is not the case. They realize everyone is human and mistakes happen, especially in such a stress-filled process as college applications.

THE BIGGEST PERSONAL ESSAY WRITING MYTH

Students often assume the admissions committee must want to hear about either their most impressive achievement or their most harrowing defeat. In brainstorming examples from their lives, students tend to focus almost exclusively on extremes (the highest highs, the lowest lows), which are usually things they've already listed on their resume as well.

These don't necessarily make for bad essay topics—in the hands of a thoughtful, introspective writer, virtually any subject can make for a compelling and personally revelatory piece. But both have certain risks.

Focusing too narrowly on extreme highs and achievements (including activities, honors, and so on) can result in essays that read more like long-form resumes than visceral, compelling stories. Too much of an external focus makes the essay flat, giving the reader little sense of the writer's inner life.

By contrast, when students write about extreme lows, including a traumatic event or loss, they can sometimes get too caught up in exploring painful thoughts and feelings. They also may not yet be ready to reflect on the experience. The experience begins to define the writer, instead of the writer defining the experience and placing it within the broader context of their personality and life. 

We often remind students that it's okay to pick what feels like a small topic. Often, it's the subtler experiences that are more defining.

THE IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTING ON INTERNAL EXPERIENCES

As students flesh out their essays, they should remember to include both external and internal experiences. 

Let's say, for example, that your student is a compassionate, caring person who has always believed in using their talents to strengthen their community. In their essay, they would want to include some details or examples that would help demonstrate how this quality manifests in their life. It's easy to talk about how they completed 150 hours of community service every year at a local homeless shelter—and they've no doubt already listed that on their resume. But their essay can—and should—explore aspects of those experiences that aren't communicated by the resume if they are truly meaningful for your student.

There's likely more to the story—an internal journey that your student hasn't yet communicated. Perhaps they were raised in a family that prided itself on toughness and self-sufficiency. As a child, they often heard adults in their life urge others to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or pass harsh judgment on people who were out of work and unable to support their families. When your student first started volunteering, they sometimes found themselves echoing these beliefs in their thoughts, especially during challenging or frustrating moments. 

But then they began to pay attention to those thoughts and reflect on moments where they arose. As they observed the social workers and other adults who worked at the shelter, they sought to learn from the way they talked about the communities they worked with. During your student's volunteer shifts, they began spending time talking with the people who came to the shelter, forming relationships with them and seeking to better understand their lives. In their free time, they watched documentaries about homelessness and checked out books from the local library. Eventually, as their convictions became stronger and their sense of purpose clearer, they began to have conversations with their family about the work they were doing, even inviting family members to start volunteering with them once a week. 

This learning process may still be ongoing, but they're proud of the change they've seen in their own thoughts and behaviors. They feel like they've finally begun to develop a more nuanced understanding of an issue they care about, as well as a more empathetic perspective toward the people they work with. And within their own family, they are making a quiet but intentional effort to expand their worldview and advocate for those communities. 

Bottom line: Unless the student articulates their internal experiences, the admissions committee won't know how important they were to the student's personal growth.

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