I’m going to be honest with you guys. I’ve never been the best at writing, so writing my personal essay has been really challenging.

I’m applying to art schools like VCUarts, SCAD, SAIC and some other schools like GMU, JMU, CNU

I’ve gotten to the editing draft stage. Just wondering if anyone would want to read it and give me some feedback.😳

Please reply if interested, and I'll DM you

Hi, I'm applying ED and looking for feedback on my college essay! Please reply if interested, and I'll DM you! I'd love to give feedback to anyone who needs it as well!

Hello, I have two personal statement drafts, but I am having trouble choosing which one to ultimately use for my PS. They are both different essays that show different sides of me, so I was wondering if anyone could read them and help, so I can focus on adding final edits.

Please dm and lmk!

Can someone review my essay drafts and help me out ? I have never written one and dont have the resources to get professional help

Hi guys, I am an international student planning to apply to some US universities through the Common App, and I am not really sure about my personal essay. Could you please give me some feedback?

Thank you, and good luck with your application journey hope it will be rewarding in some ways!!

(I'll send it to you by DMs)

Hi! Would anyone please read/help me with my essay. I tried using lumisource for feedbacks but I feel like they're not accurate

Hey all! I am an international student (scandinavian) applying to Kenyon, Williams and Middlebury in a bout a week. I am curious if anybody would be able to review my college essay?

1 week until EA deadlines, and I pretty much just scrapped my old personal statements. They kinda sucked, were pretty corny, and just didn't really represent me.

I feel like I am a pretty generic applicant with nothing too special about me, so it's been pretty tough trying to come up with something unique to write.

Since every time I come up with a "good" idea, I end up finding out its bad or that it's super cliché, I just wanted to put some ideas in here to see if anybody can tell me if they are good or bad (and why)

1. How I overcame the challenge of social anxiety and found my place in the Model UN club (which I'm now president of) and how i try to help other ppl who i see myself in (super cliché, ik)
2. Moving from Silicon Valley to rural VA and how that affected me as one of the only POC's in the entire school, then how I gradually came out of that bubble (also super cliché)
3. (this one might be super corny and bad) likening throwing away a toothbrush after months of use to moving on to a new phase of life/accepting change, whilst talking about what I went through on each toothbrush phase

• The reason I have this one is just cause i remembered how I used to get sad or emotional before throwing away my brushes as a kid 😭

Anyway, if you have the time, please give me some brutally honest evaluations or tell me how I can come up with some better ideas

I'm insanely worried about my essay for commonapp and would appreciate any advice!!! Be as critical and honest as you have to! Please DM me if you're interested, I appreciate it soooo much!!!

P.S. If you'd be so kind to look over it and you're also a student applying I'd be more than happy to read yours and give you some feedback too!! DM me with your essay right away!! We gotta get a move on there's only so much time left! 💪🥹

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

I spent days trying to look older for a meeting about glitter. 

I was pitching a stall offering glitter, hair tinsel and face gems at Dopa World, a festival at Expo City in Dubai. I was proud I’d spotted something was missing. Before meeting its owners, I asked for a minimal French manicure: nude base, white tips. I wanted my hands to look as though I’d made an effort without revealing quite how much. 

My natural nails are uneven and never strong enough to grow long. I wear acrylics for birthdays and weddings because I like feeling feminine without being embarrassed by my hands. For this meeting, plain felt like too little; anything elaborate might be too much. 
I chose a black sleeveless top and tailored trousers. I wanted to look feminine and powerful. I also wanted to look older. Both owners were men, and I wanted them to hear my idea before noticing my age.

For my Media coursework, I was already making a magazine about young female entrepreneurs and power dressing. I could explain how women dressed for authority. Getting dressed myself was taking considerably longer. 

At the meeting, one of the owners joked, “Will we still be finding glitter in January?” I laughed, relieved that he was picturing my stall there. They told me they liked the idea and wanted to move forward. I took them at their word. I’d spent days wondering how they would see me; now I thought we were going to work together. 

Then my WhatsApp messages went unanswered. 

I’d told everyone the stall was happening. For three months, I watched that certainty become harder to explain. I was scared I'd end up looking like someone who announced big plans and never followed through.

I kept going back over the meeting. Had they wanted to avoid disappointing me? Did they think I was too young to handle a no? I couldn’t tell whether my age or gender had anything to do with it.

Eventually, I called.

No answer. I called from a different number. He picked up on the first ring. 

My stomach dropped. I pictured him carrying his phone, seeing my name appear and choosing not to answer. Picking up so quickly made me feel sure he’d been avoiding my number to dodge a confrontation.

Now I had him on the phone. I wanted to ask why. But I could imagine becoming the joke they told after hanging up: the girl who couldn’t handle being ignored. If I said nothing, I’d still have to face everyone I’d told about the stall. 

I suggested that perhaps he’d missed my messages. It gave him a way to explain the silence without having to defend it, and let me ask whether we could move ahead with the stall. I wanted a clear decision more than I wanted him to admit he’d avoided me. 

The booth was confirmed, rent-free, for 18 and 19 December at Expo City. 

I still couldn’t know what he thought of me. I’d supplied my own explanation: too young, too feminine, or too easy to dismiss. I’d been treating those guesses as things I needed to fix about myself. Calling meant risking an answer I might dislike, but it also meant speaking to him instead of continuing a conversation entirely in my head.

I still like acrylics, and I don’t want to give up something I enjoy to prove I’m serious about my work. My natural nails are still uneven. 

On the phone, he couldn’t see my nails, my suit, or how young I looked. I was still choosing carefully, but this time I was choosing my words. I stayed on the line, talking through plans for glitter, hair tinsel and face gems with an older man.

What I'd most like feedback on:
Does the opening grab you, or would you skim past it?
Is the realisation clear, and does the growth feel shown rather than just stated?
Does it sound like a real person, or too polished?
Is anything confusing, or could anything be cut?
After reading it, what three words would you use to describe me?

Red, blue, orange, yellow, green and purple. Six colors show up to the party of blocks. While cyan is in another time zone.

I am three lines from the top of the board. On the right side I’ve kept one column empty, a well, the way you save a seat for a friend who is “five minutes away.” The “I” piece, the long cyan one that drops straight into that well and clears four lines at once, has not shown up in fourteen pieces. Everything else keeps coming. I stack them higher and higher around my precious empty column. It’s fine. It’s coming. The “S” piece lands. The “Z” piece lands. The stack touches the ceiling, and the game politely informs me that I have lost.

I’ve played Tetris on Jstris since second grade, which is also when I started coding, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Both are about putting small pieces in the right place, fast. Tetris is the most satisfying game I know, except when I lose, which is, unfortunately, often.

I wasn’t improving for a long time, and even though I pushed harder and tolerated attacks better, I wasn’t moving, and I came to this conclusion: I lost every game the same way. Not by misdropping. By waiting. I was holding an open well for the perfect piece, and the perfect piece does not care about my schedule. I went to YouTube and learned what good players do when cyan is late. T-spins, where you twist a T piece into a slot it technically shouldn’t fit. Setups that turn a bad drop into the next good one. Suddenly every piece was a usable piece. My 40-line sprint went from “don’t ask” to under a minute, and the only way to push it toward 40 seconds was to stop praying for one piece and start planning five ahead.

Last summer I interned at Trigteq, a mining consulting company, and I walked in knowing approximately zero geology. My team was building a tool that takes drill data and shows what might be underground, where, and how sure the model is. I didn’t know what half the words in the spec meant. So I did what I do: I kept my column open and waited. My supervisor knew everything, and he was in meetings roughly ninety percent of the day. I sat with a half-finished dashboard and a growing list of questions, waiting for the one person who could unblock me.

Around the third time I reviewed the same unchanged code, I recognized the shape of it. I was holding a well—for the perfect time that rarely comes.

So I read the project documents and dug through old GitHub repos. I read geology textbooks and research papers and taught myself better visualization. I learned what a core sample is and why anyone cares. I built the thing wrong, broke it, fixed it, and when my supervisor finally had ten free minutes, I showed him a working version to critique instead of a question to answer. He found time more often after that, and I took every minute of it, because who turns down a free “I” piece? By the end of the summer, a geologist could click any point in the model and see how far to trust it, or test an imaginary drill hole before anyone paid for a real one. Somehow, by learning geology in self-defense, I had fallen a little in love with rocks. Garnet, mostly, which is, I have to admit, the exact red of the “Z” piece.

The best players aren’t the ones who never misdrop. They’re the ones with the most ways to clear a line.

I still like the “I” piece. Every time it shows up, I grin. I just don’t wait for it anymore.

hey everyone. I'm super new to this sub, so apologies in advance if there's any mistake in how I format things or if this isn't the right place to ask.

Basically, I have had my essay topic locked down for a couple weeks now, but I cannot for the life of me get the words out onto the page. I've tried doing those "word dump/wordvomit" exercises, but I just can't find it in me. i'm starting to get really overwhelmed, especially since my first deadline is in less than a week. If anyone can DM me and help me work through this, i'd be SO SO SO grateful :(

for reference, my essay topic is centered around how i've played 2,119 rounds of roblox arsenal and have only won 5. i was planning on connecting this to how i approach subjects/other hobbies that i'm not good at, but enjoy anyway. (i know, it's not super well worded.)

I'm an international student applying to Bowdoin ED, and I'm planning to major in engineering. I'm stuck between two possible Common App essay topics. I'd appreciate honest feedback on which has the most potential to become a memorable, personal essay rather than a generic one.
1. The childhood project that didn't work: When I was around 12, I built a hydraulic bridge using cardboard and syringes. One side worked, but the other didn't. I could explore my reaction to the gap between what I imagined and what actually happened, and how that reflects the way I approach problems.
2. Makeup: I love experimenting with makeup, getting the details right, and doing makeup for my cousin. I could explore how I approach experimentation and creativity, but also how I have to adapt my ideas to someone else's preferences instead of just imposing my own vision.
Makeup is also a form of self-expression and autonomy for me.

Can any uni student please review my essay? Since, people here are not familiar with us unis I’m doing everything without any assistance.

Hi! I’m an international student revising my Common App personal statement. I’d appreciate feedback on whether the story feels clear and authentic, and where the connection to my academic interests feels weak. I can share the essay by private message with a few people who are willing to give specific feedback. I’m looking for critique, not a rewrite.

Hello everyone! Hope everyone’s holding up during this busy week with the ED1 and EA deadlines coming up.

After dozens and dozens of rejections last fall, I ended up with a full ride at a T50 LAC. Ik how tough and complicated this process is for int students. I was fortunate enough to have a lovely mentor from Columbia University who helped me with everything for free. This fall, I thought I’d pass that support on to the community.

I’ll be doing free essay reviews throughout this month and next, and I’m happy to answer any application-related questions u have.

My main goal is to help int students who are applying on their own. Ik how it feels to be alone in this war. I hope my insights can help u even a little. Thanks!

Hey everyone, I’m a community college student applying to transfer for Fall 2027, and I’ve been struggling with my PIQs.

I’ve written two so far. One is about how I went from struggling academically and not knowing what I wanted to do to discovering my interest in criminology, which completely changed my approach to school.

The other is about helping one of my closest friends turn his health around after being hospitalized. I helped him with exercising, nutrition, and staying consistent, basically saved his life.

I feel like I have some good stories, but no matter how much I revise them, something feels missing. Sometimes they sound too basic, like I’m just listing what happened. Other times I try to make them more creative and they end up sounding forced or unnatural.

For those who got accepted to a UC, did you focus more on storytelling or answering the prompts directly? What do you think made your essays stand out?

Also, did anyone have their PIQs reviewed by someone who genuinely helped improve them?

I’d appreciate any advice because I’m honestly overthinking these essays at this point lol.

Would someone be willing to review my Columbia Supplements? I changed a couple of them and am unsure of how they read, especially with the word count being so low. All help would be appreciated--thanks!!

I am pretty close to finishing I think. I just need someone to read over my essay and see if the voice sounds like a high schooler, and does not sound over polished. And if I am getting my point across. I need my personal statement, one 250 word essay, and 4 100 word short answers reviewed. It would be help full if you can review at least one, if you can't review all.

“Kingsam, demand for the ball!” my coach said as I drifted away instead of checking in for the ball. The look on his face made my throat tighten. I wanted to explain that I was not ignoring his instructions; I was fighting a fear he couldn’t see.

I admired how confident the players around me were. They seemed to know exactly what to do before the ball even reached their feet, and I wanted to become that kind of player. I remember the first time I stepped onto the pitch in an organized game. I had trained for months, learning the game and preparing myself, but when the moment finally came, I felt a familiar hesitation. It was the same feeling I had whenever I had to speak up or put myself in front of others. I realized I wasn’t unprepared. I was afraid of being judged.

The insecurities I carried in everyday life followed me onto the field. My escape had become another place where fear dictated my decisions. I loved the thrill of soccer, but I didn’t love the responsibility that came with it. I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to make the mistake that everyone might see. I wanted the ball, but I didn’t want the pressure that came with receiving it. After almost every game, I would replay every missed touch and every moment I could have done better.

My dad listened more than he lectured, but one conversation stayed with me. “Stop trying to prove something to everyone and prove yourself wrong.” At the time, I didn’t leave that conversation as a completely different person. But his words gave me a perspective I had never considered. Maybe the biggest obstacle wasn’t my ability; it was the weight I gave everyone else’s opinion.

The next few months did not transform me overnight. I still hesitated to call for the ball and worried about making mistakes. But little by little, I began challenging that voice in my head instead of giving in to it. One call for the ball became two. A mistake that once would have stayed in my head for the rest of the game became something I could learn from and move past. Conversations with teammates became easier. I started realizing that I didn’t have to be perfect to belong. Slowly, I was rewriting my story.

That change eventually followed me off the field. I became more willing to speak up in classrooms, ask questions, meet new people, and pursue opportunities even when I wasn’t completely confident that I would succeed. I began advocating for myself instead of waiting for someone else to notice what I could do. That confidence also changed the way I looked at other people. I knew what it felt like to have potential but not know how to put yourself out there, so I wanted to help others do what I once struggled to do.

That mindset became part of why I founded a Cybersecurity and Computer Science Networking club at my school. I didn’t want it to only be about learning technology. I wanted students to have access to people, experiences, and opportunities that could help them enter a field they might not know how to enter on their own. I also pursued opportunities like my National Security Agency internship because I had learned that opportunities don’t mean much if fear keeps you from reaching for them.

Looking back, I don’t think soccer made me fearless. It taught me something more important: fear does not have to make my decisions for me. The same person who once drifted away from the ball now tries to step toward opportunities, even when I am uncertain about what will happen next. I no longer measure my growth by how rarely I feel afraid. I measure it by whether I choose to move forward anyway.

Hi! Im just about ready to submit my college application's, but I feel like im missing something (idk what) from my essay, and would love some feedback! :)

Title says it all, send me a DM

Thanks in advance!

Is “the human mind is a complex jigsaw puzzle of a million pieces” a good hook for a psychology major? Lmk i need help