As you write your personal statement, you naturally might go searching for sample college essays that worked. This step might even seem as important to your college admissions process as improving your GPA and test scores.
Beware, though: searching for examples that claim to be “the best college essays” on social media can be dangerous if you don’t really know what college admissions readers are looking for.
You can read hundreds of personal statement examples online, but only 1 in 5 students applying to selective colleges like the Ivy League colleges actually submit compelling essays in their college applications. Below, you’ll find real world examples of students who beat the odds and wrote strong essays that helped them gain admission into top schools.
Our college admissions essay examples might surprise you. Here, you won’t find overly-creative metaphors, philosophical musings, or melodramatic essay topics. We can appreciate good writing “style.” But while “style” might work well in English class, it won’t necessarily get you into school — proving that you’ll be successful in college and beyond will.
At Prompt, we consider a “good college essay” to be one that showcases your college potential to admissions committees authentically, clearly, and concisely to make the most of the word count.
A quick disclaimer: these high school students didn’t write a successful college essay the first time they attempted a draft! Like any form of writing, personal statements need revision (usually 3-4 rounds of it) that goes beyond basic proofreading. And these writers worked one-on-one with a Prompt essay coach to keep them on the right track.
As you’ll see from the personal statement examples below, there’s no magic topic or writing technique that will get you into Harvard, Stanford, or any top school. However, all these essays have certain similarities:
Not only are these students sharing their stories in their common application essays, but they are revealing the growth of their character and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Though some writers briefly mention childhood or middle school experiences, all of these college essay examples primarily focus on recent experiences from their high school life.
In these personal essays, the students share their experiences in a clear and concise way, and identify their guiding message right from the beginning of their essay.
In each of these college application essays that worked, you can easily point out several of the writer’s traits that will set them up for success as college students and beyond. Admissions officers will be looking out for these traits too, so it’s key to make your compelling qualities the focus of your content.
(Some essay details have been changed or omitted to preserve the anonymity of our students.)
Student Profile — This student’s interests revolve around dance, music, and community service. They received a multitude of college acceptances, including Loyola Chicago (awarded the Presidential Scholarship), Drexel, Stony Brook, and Purdue.
Why this essay works — It’s a contribution essay that’s still focused on the writer.
This essay has a lot of different characters— multiple family members, nursing home patients —but all throughout, the writer avoids the common pitfall of focusing too much on others. Instead, their essay is always centered on the self and what they’ve learned from contributing positively to the people around them.
Admissions readers also love unexpected connections and insights–so it’s compelling to see the writer transition from a story that’s initially about competition into their takeaways about contribution.
Take a look:
I have lived most of my life in fierce competition with my identical twin sister. I worked relentlessly for some sort of recognition apart from her, which was difficult given that we shared the same dance team, performance level, and age category at competitions. In the dance competition value system, you are not special if you don’t win a trophy. At the age of sixteen, my sister received a coveted crystal trophy, but I received no awards. I was crushed that my sister, my best friend, excelled beyond me and without me. Ironically, my wish had come true: we received recognition apart from each other. But I felt inferior.
The next day, I considered that my scores were low because I was stylistically unconventional. I realized that dance was not about prize winning, but about artistic exploration. I fought the addiction—my reliance on competition to provide a sense of worth—and instead found confidence in pure artistry. I had genuinely appreciated my choreographer’s innovative style, so I endeavored to dance another piece by the same choreographer the following year despite having not won anything. Whereas my younger self was a servant to awards as a way to feel valued and useful, I now intentionally rehearsed my solo to give it the recognition it deserves. Ironically, by focusing on my artistry instead of trophies, I ended up winning first place the next year.
Then, during sophomore year, the city’s Rotary Club invited both me and my sister to dance for their fundraiser, a privileged opportunity that meant performing for the upper echelons of the city’s political, social, and economic worlds. Before discovering my individual artistry, I would have promptly taken the offer, but instead, I turned it down. I felt it was more important to elevate my sister and allow her to dance the main role. I knew that if I had chosen to participate, neither of us would have received the main role: because of our identical features, we would have been placed in a duet, side by side as balanced bookends. I wanted to reveal to the world that we were individual people and this particular event was more suited to her. I was ecstatic that she’d taken the spotlight and had found her own niche without my presence, and that I had escaped the “everything for myself” mentality in favor of contributing to the success of others, replacing shame and defeatism with integrity and love.
Both decisions helped me develop my artistic individuality and realize that while it is quintessentially human to long for attention, it is more important to respect oneself. In my life outside of dance, this lesson came in handy while shadowing doctors in a nursing home as a companion to patients. In this environment, I bestowed attention on others rather than to myself. It felt gratifying to contribute to a community and culture different from my own. Similarly, at home, I took the responsibility of cooking for my family of six, since both of my parents are essential workers and oftentimes unable to fix dinner. I prepared appetizers, main courses, desserts, and drinks to make mealtimes special. I saw a need and felt happy to fulfill it without need for recognition, because I’d matured out of entitlement and found self-esteem in generosity. My self-confidence gained through generosity has become part of my identity, as a form of self-expression.
I’m excited to embark on this individual journey in my academic future as well. I will pursue a nursing major, which necessarily requires separation from my sister who will pursue a different path in life. Having grown out of our competitive relationship, she and I can now lead parallel lives that are still mutually supportive. I look forward to college providing opportunities to find my own way in life, as new experiences and new people offer me chances to thrive as an individual.
Student Profile — This student’s extracurricular activities include several leadership positions, science, tutoring, and research. They were accepted into Duke.
Why this essay works — It reveals drive and growth through specific experiences.
At first, this writer spent most of their essay explaining their former behavior and perspective, rather than demonstrating their growth through specific experiences. In the final version, we can see how the writer weaves in important reflections with concrete examples of what they have learned from the unique challenges they’ve faced.
Here’s the final draft:
"Where is Squacky the Duck? What's your pretend name?" As an outside visitor to Trixie's imaginary world, I try to decode her fantasies. With one foot anchored in my reality, the other steps into her world of ambiguity and imagination. Working with Trixie and her peers each week at SPARK, a center for Autism Spectrum Disorder, has challenged the way I interact with others and pushed me to adopt new problem-solving techniques.
Like many others, I am more comfortable in a world of "right" and "wrong." In school, I have geared my academic and after-school activities towards STEM, where Math Team, engineering programs, and physics classes are challenging, but provide satisfying "right" answers. In a world of Newton's laws and the Golden Ratio, I can avoid uneasy feelings of uncertainty.
On my first day at SPARK during my freshman year, I was thrown into an environment of ambiguity. Each week, I engaged with autistic young adults aged 15-21 as a student mentor, working to help them develop emotional and social skills. Unlike math, I couldn’t learn how to be an effective student mentor; there were no formulas or strategies that would assuredly yield a "solution." Simple tasks proved to be much more difficult when taught to autistic individuals. I couldn't simply explain the rules of a game with my words. The challenge was to find creative ways to express what I meant in a way that could be best understood by Trixie and her peers. For instance, I might use a dry-erase board to draw out the guidelines or act them out using exaggerated hand gestures. However, there was no guarantee that this would work.
Over time, I've realized that an essential component to teaching is to establish personal relationships and trust. David, my assigned "buddy" for the past three years, loves memorizing and associating colors with holidays. At the beginning of each session, I ask him "Christmas colors? Easter colors?" and he quickly answers with a proud smile. This is our special way of connecting, like a secret handshake; I know that I found a way of reaching him through something that he finds special. However, because every patient is different, trust doesn't always occur in the same way. I need to consider their individual preferences and characteristics and use trial-and-error to find what works.
Working at SPARK simulated my more creative and intuitive side, but my inclination towards science yearned to understand more about autism, to deepen my knowledge of a community of which I had become a part. This past summer, after emailing over thirty autism specialists, I received a response from a scientist at the Seaver Autism Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. This provided me with an exciting research opportunity where I learned about the primary causes of autism, recent drug developments, and current clinical trials. This internship exposed me to Autism Spectrum Disorder at a genetic level, which gave me a different insight into autism than my work with SPARK. During the research project, I was able to relate my work to many of the described behaviors I had observed.
Having now worked in both the clinical and scientific sides of autism, I realize that there won't be easy and clear paths to progress. In working with patients at SPARK, however, I continue to develop new strategies to overcome each day's inevitable obstacles. I have accepted that I might not be able to resolve their problems in a traditional way, but that reaching them in their special worlds through their unique ways of communication can be just as rewarding.
While I previously thought that "understanding" meant having a definite answer, I now realize that, sometimes, understanding means finding new ways of thinking and accepting uncertainty. And as my math class recently switched from studying real numbers to studying imaginary ones, I know that even math isn't always going to be certain.
Student Profile — This student’s interests include math, computer science, technology, and sports. They were accepted into Georgia Tech, University of California Berkeley, and UIUC.
Where this essay started — the first draft
We want to prove that revision is key to writing a successful college essay. So, just for our last example, we’re going to show you where the essay started. Then, we’ll give you the final version to demonstrate how just a few rounds of revision can take a draft to the next level.
From the beginning, this student chose to write about a strong, but straightforward topic that highlights their most compelling traits and their potential for success in college.
However, the first draft in this essay writing process focuses too much on storytelling, rather than on highlighting the writer’s growth.
Let’s look through the first draft to see what could be improved:
I walked up to the pin-board situated at the back of my classroom. It was different that day, it still had all the frayed notices related to the various activities that were scheduled for that week, however, there was a fresh sheet of paper with bold text that instantly caught my attention. It read: “The problem of the month”. As I skimmed through the page I noticed a few symbols “f(x)”, “<”, “g(x)”. A math problem? I was familiar with these symbols from my calculus class and the order of their occurrence pointed me towards the squeeze theorem.
“Worth a shot”, I said to myself as I copied down the rest of the question on a sheet of paper and brought it to the table where a few of my friends were seated. I read out the question and before I could finish, the room lit up with ideas. “We could use this technique” one of my friends exclaimed as he pointed to a piece of paper. “Oh, we could use contradiction too” said another. I smiled, “problem of the month, how interesting”
My love for problem solving began in the fourth grade when a friend gifted me a Rubik’s cube for my birthday. I stared in awe as he effortlessly twisted the faces of the puzzle, conjuring it back to the solve state every time. I spent the next month browsing through a multitude of YouTube videos that held within them the secret of the Rubik’s cube. I would practice day in, day out, however, I could not manage to solve it.
One day, during our lunch break, a boy walked up to me while I was frantically turning the cube in the hope of it magically solving itself. He saw me struggling with a few steps and said, “Let me show you. We can learn together”. For the next week I spent my lunch breaks with him as we both tried to teach each other the aspects of the puzzle we had learned about.
“Yes, we solved it”, I screamed as I ran around the house. My twin sister stood in the hallway, fascinated by the puzzle, she asked if I could teach her how to solve the cube. I said, “Sure, let’s learn together”.
Being able to solve the Rubik’s cube was one of my greatest feats at the time. The experience taught me something universal which I have adopted ever since: collaborative learning. My friends are my biggest motivation and also my greatest critiques. Our love for learning allows each of us to improve collectively so that we can understand the world around us better. Discussing the solution of a conundrum within a group allows for better understanding of ideas which can be reinforced with the opinion of others producing a coherent representation of the solution. Most of the anomalies related to a solution are uncovered when one tries to explain the solution to a group of people. The Ideas might flow well as you process them in your mind, however, when explaining the idea to a group, any inconsistencies in logic are noticed instantly.
I believe that collaborative active thinking is the most powerful form of learning, especially for problems related to mathematics. I distinctly remember the moment when 2 of my friends and I sat huddled around a desk in school with our eyes glued to a frayed sheet of paper, silently thinking. “I think I’ve found the equation”, one of my friends said while pointing to the piece of paper. “The equation must be simpler for us to solve for this difference of consecutive numbers. Let us continue thinking” said the other. “wait a minute!”, I said, “that’s the formula for summation x squared”. Everyone around the desk had their eyes fixated on the sheet as I drew the Greek letter sigma besides the x squared. “Oh, that means that the answer is the first one of the consecutive numbers squared”, all of us said in unison as we marveled at the culmination of 10 days of relentless hard work. The problem of the month had finally been solved. I looked back at the clock on the wall of the class. It was 10 minutes past the end of our lunch break. The three of us dashed towards the Computer Lab, however, we had to wait outside as the class had already begun. As I sat on the bench outside the Lab, I said with a smile, “let’s start the next problem”.
This incident encouraged my growing interest in problem solving and mathematics. The ‘problem of the month’ became more than a problem, it became a community without which my high school life would be incomplete. To broaden this community, we decided to compile the 12 best problems that we had learned most about so that other students could walk the same path as we had, discovering their passion for mathematics in the process.
Where this essay ended — the final draft:
I walked up to the pin-board at the back of my classroom. The loose collection of notices related to the week’s activities held in its midst a crisp sheet of paper with a bold heading that caught my attention. It read, “The Problem of the Month.” As I skimmed through the sheet, I noticed a few familiar symbols: “f(x)”, “<”, “g(x).” A math problem? I knew these symbols from my calculus class, and their order pointed me towards the squeeze theorem.
I wrote down the question and eagerly brought it to a few of my friends. Before I could finish reading it to them, the room lit up with ideas. Each of us had a unique perspective to arrive at the solution. The plethora of approaches allowed us to share each other’s knowledge, as we traversed the intricacies of mathematics. This moment highlighted the importance of collaboration, which has played an enormous role in shaping the way I learn.
My love for problem solving began in the fourth grade when a friend gifted me a Rubik’s cube for my birthday. I spent the next month searching for algorithms and techniques to help me rearrange the pieces of the cube to create solid colored faces. One morning at school, a boy walked up to me as I spun the faces of the puzzle, frustrated but determined, in an unsuccessful attempt to reposition its pieces. He said, “Let me show you. We can learn together.” When we solved it by applying the techniques, my twin sister peered over our shoulders, asking if I could teach her how to solve the cube too. I said, “Sure! Let’s learn together.”
Solving the Rubik’s cube was one of my greatest feats at the time, because I learned something which I have adopted ever since: collaborative learning. My friends are my biggest motivation and also my greatest critics. Our love for learning drives us to understand subjects at a fundamental level so that we can apply them to understand the world around us better. Discussing solutions of a conundrum in a group helps me assimilate my ideas and reinforce them with the opinions of others, producing a coherent solution. Examining the flow of our ideas allows us to realize inconsistencies in our logic instantly, which in turn helps us learn new techniques and improve as a group.
My experiences with collaborative problem solving have shaped the way I share ideas with others. Looking back at my high school life, most of what I learned has emerged from discussions with other people. An especially memorable instance of this was my experience teaching a group of six 10th grade students from a school outside Mumbai. I decided to convert the conventional learning process into an enriching intellectual conversation. Instead of presenting concepts directly, I would derive them from theories that they were familiar with. The classroom became a platform for discussion rather than a lecture hall. The ideas presented by each of the students would amalgamate into the proof for a statement, making each of them feel like they had discovered the equations themselves. Mathematics, which most of the students dreaded, became a puzzle where each student contributed a piece to present the complete picture.
Mathematics is often associated with solitude. However, I believe that the process of understanding the subject would be incomplete without collaboration. A large part of the mathematical ideas I use today are a result of weeks of research and discussion. As I move into a new phase of my life, I hope to discuss the ideas that I have learned with the people around me and gain new perspectives so that I can become a better version of myself. I wish to further my endeavors through mathematical research, and in the process, inspire others to join me on my journey.
The final version still includes specific examples of the applicant’s initiative and intellectual curiosity, but the writer now balances their storytelling with key points of self-analysis and application. This is how readers know that the student has grown (and will continue to grow!) from what they’ve learned.
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