ESSAY ABOUT YOURSELF

ESSAY ABOUT YOURSELF: BEST ADVICE FOR DESCRIBING YOURSELF — WITH EXAMPLES

Types of essays

What Is an Essay About Yourself

An essay about yourself is an autobiographical piece focused on your life. This type of profile essay writing is about you, and unmistakably, in the non-fiction category. Writing an essay about yourself can be strangely introspective, and often means squeezing your life into a few paragraphs. Nevertheless, the goal is to explore important moments and experiences from your life. You will also need to condense them into a third-person narrative. Keep in mind, it shouldn’t sound boring, conceited, or dishonest. The best option for writing is to focus on a specific accomplishment or experience.

An essay about yourself should answer 6 simple questions:

• Who are you?
• What is your background?
• What are your interests?
• What are your talents?
• What are your achievements?
• What challenges have you faced?

In this article, we will follow some simple steps towards writing an autobiographical essay. At the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to write an essay about yourself.

The following are the steps you should take to write one:

• Brainstorm Ideas
• Introduce Yourself
• Writing The Body
• Writing The Conclusion
• Polishing It

Tips on how to write an essay about yourself

Common Usage

When you will ever need to write an essay all about you? Here are some situations where an essay about yourself is typically required:

• A large amount of institutions will request for you to write a third-person narrative about yourself as part of your college admission process. You’ll have to convince admissions that you’re meant to become a student in their college.
• A personal essay is also normally required if you’re applying for a scholarship. In this case, your piece needs to highlight your academic prowess. It will have to convince the college you’re asking for a scholarship from, to pay for your education.
• You might also be asked to write a short essay about yourself for a job interview or a casting. This can be done with the same format we’ve just outlined for you above.

How to Start an Essay About Yourself

If you’re not sure how to write an essay about yourself — begin by brainstorming. Write down a list of your talents, experiences, and achievements. Next, narrow it down to a more specific theme. Keep in mind that your essay opener should grab the attention of your audience. You can try starting off with an unusual experience, or a valuable life lesson. Give your readers a taste of something new, or something to ponder on.

Topic Examples:

• The moment your life changed forever;
• A tough choice you made;
• A near-death experience;
• The biggest loss you’ve experienced;
• A thing you want to change about yourself.

Check our list of essay topics to get more ideas!

It’s also important to avoid sensitive subjects because they can be controversial. These can be:

• Gender
• Religion
• Political situation
• Race and nationality
• Income level

First, Introduce Yourself

Remember, this is a story about your life, so introducing yourself like: “My name is David”, or “When I was born...” is dull and trivial. Instead, try a more original approach.Example:

“I was born the day before my grandfather died..” or “The point when my life changed was...”

Craft an introduction to your essay that will catch your reader's attention. This will motivate your reader to read the rest of the story.

Writing the Body

In this section, talk about your background. Try to avoid describing yourself systematically, instead, let your interests, experiences, goals, challenges, and achievements describe your characteristics. You should place everything you want to talk about in proper order before adding any details and make sure to make smooth transitions from one subject to another.

Avoid rambling on about things you want to highlight but don’t have importance to the aim of your essay. Digression can make your reader lose interest.

If you’re writing an essay about yourself for college or university admissions, describe your goals, motivations, and challenges you’ve overcome. Include your best qualities, studying attitude, productive hobbies, etc.

You might also be interested in discovering how to write a college admissions essay

Summing Up

After you’ve done all the previous steps, it’s time to write a conclusion. Your conclusion is your chance to summarize what you wrote, and leave any afterthoughts.

Let’s say that the main idea of your essay is about learning a lesson from a specific situation. In this case, you may want to write about what you learned or how it changed your life.

If that doesn’t help, you can try the “so what?” technique. Read your essay one more time and ask yourself “so what?” — in most cases, the answer will come to you.