All the essay prompts for the Common Application ask you to provide evidence of your personal growth. One particular prompt–the personal growth prompt–makes this request more explicit. Here you are asked to look at your circumstances, point of view, and personal understanding, and then provide evidence of how these things might have changed due to some accomplishment, event, or realization. Then you go on to reflect on these changes.
The Personal Growth Prompt
Here’s how the prompt is worded on the Common App.
Discuss an accomplishment or event or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
Next we will got through the prompt word by word and phrase by phrase to help you respond to this prompt in the best way possible. The more you think about what the prompt is asking, the easier it will be to come up with an excellent idea for how to address it.
Discuss Your Story for the Personal Growth Prompt
At first glance, this prompt doesn’t seem to have a story at the heart of it. However, the focus is on a transition, which implies a description of “before” and “after” this event, accomplishment, or realization. So you should retell the story briefly to help your reader understand the transition. As with the other prompts, you should then go on to put this event, accomplishment, or realization into a larger context. You need to interpret this story for your reader through analysis and synthesis.
Your story must be brief. But it must also be interesting for the reader. You don’t need to think of a story that is heroic or grandiose. While an “accomplishment” might bring about personal growth, sometimes the most mundane events or off-handed conversations can lead us to reevaluate ourselves or the world around us.
Again, the story is not the heart of your essay–it is the pivot between how you thought or felt before the accomplishment, even, or realization, and how you thought or felt after it. You need to define the transitional moment so that your reader can visualize this change. But the real meat of your essay is the reflection you will make that is based on this brief anecdote from your life.
By reflecting upon what happened after this event, accomplishment, or realization, you can give your reader a sense of your increasing maturity and your priorities, values, and personality.
Personal Growth and Understanding
As we grow older, we find that in some situations we feel—or are treated—as children, while in other situations we feel more like adults. Sometimes this transition is subtle. For example, you may perceive ways in which other adults begin to treat you with greater seriousness in places like restaurants, at the post office, and in other public places. Sometimes, however, this transition can seem more abrupt, as in the day you get your driver’s license or register to vote for the first time. Religion often marks this transition (first communions, bar mitzvahs), as do particular cultures (quinceañeras, debutante balls).
This prompt asks you to more closely examine your own transition from childhood to adulthood. Granted, for all of us, this transition is slow and gradual (and frankly, sometimes even we are not sure we have completely transitioned to adulthood!). But no matter our age, religion, or culture, this transition is marked by some memorable stories–stories that you are being asked to share with your readers.
But here again, remember that the meat of the essay is not the story of the transition. Rather the focus of this prompt is you reflection upon how you changed and grew as a result of this accomplishment, event, or realization.
Accomplishments or Events
The transition to adulthood is marked by both accomplishments and events. An accomplishment is something that you achieved through hard work. An event, on the other hand, is a happening in which you may have been more passive. But nonetheless marks a very important milestone in your life. Some of these accomplishments and events are formal (e.g., learning Hebrew and reciting the Torah before your congregation in a ceremony before your friends and family).
Other accomplishments and events are informal (e.g., you finally look old enough that when you enter a restaurant with your parents, the hostess no longer gives you the kiddie menu). College admissions folks do not care so much about the exact nature of these accomplishments or events. Rather they care about how you tell an interesting story about your transition to adulthood.
Realization
Unlike an accomplishment or event, a realization can have no outward manifestation that others can see or experience. You may, instead, experience some sort of internal “Aha!” moment. Your understanding changes. You see yourself—or others—in a completely new light. Perhaps you shared this realization with others, or perhaps it is one that is intensely private. But the change or transition is real, because it leads to a new and different understanding of yourself and the world around you.
Summary: The Personal Growth Prompt
This Common Application prompt is a great opportunity for you to reflect on your own maturation. High school is a time in life when we make great strides on the road from childhood to adulthood. This road is punctuated with various moments that lead us to reflect on how we are growing and changing. The Personal Growth Prompt invites you to identify one of these important moments and then reflect upon this growth and change.
College admissions officers want to understand the “real you” underneath all the academic and other data on the application. This prompt is a great way to show them who you really are.
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Mark Montgomery
Educational consultant and admissions expert
VIEW THE COMPLETE SERIES OF POSTS ANALYZING THE COMMON APPLICATION PROMPTS
Writing About A Belief or Idea
Writing About A Place or Environment
Writing About the Transition to Adulthood
Writing About Your Background Story
