Webinar Transcript: How to Get Started on the Common App Personal Statement (2026)
Anna Lu
(This is a transcript of a webinar from September 2026, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel.)
Anna Lu: Hello everybody, good evening. Just giving everyone a bit of time to come in. Thanks so much for joining us.
Today's topic is the Common App Personal Statement. So, the Common App, as many of you are likely familiar, is a very large college application platform that supports over a thousand colleges, and at the forefront of that is the Common App Personal Statement, or the Common App essay, which gets sent to every college that you apply to through the Common App.
Students are given 650 words to answer one of the many prompts—which is, I think, for many college essay writers, a daunting amount of bandwidth.
So, before I hand things over to our lovely panelists, I'd just like to draw your attention to the Q&A box on the webinar. If you have any questions throughout our presentation, please feel free to drop them in that Q&A box, and we'll reserve about 15 minutes of time at the end of the webinar just to address as many of your lovely questions as we can.
And also, if you see something on our slide and we move past it, and you go, “oh no, I want to go see what that was again,” we will be posting this full webinar recording on YouTube and sending out the link to all you attendees, so don't worry about missing anything.
But yes, all right! With that, I'll hand things over to Kyra and Nora and let them introduce themselves.
Kyra Jee: That sounds excellent, Anna, thank you so much for kicking us off, and hello, everybody! Welcome to “How to Get Started on the Common App Personal Statement.” As Anna mentioned already, this essay is the big one that you are probably thinking of most when you hear the words “college app essays,” and so we wanted to talk about it here on the first of September.
Once you have your footing in what readers are really looking for, then we can work back and make this essay into the core foundation of your application: who you are, what you're capable of, and what kind of person you will be on your college campus.
So, we have a lot to share with you today, so I will keep our introductions brief. My name is Kyra, and I'm the Director of Essay Services here at ILUMIN Education, and with me today is my teammate, Nora Salle.
Nora Salle: Hi all! Thank you so much, Kyra, for the introduction, and thank you, Anna, for setting us up today. My name's Nora. I am an essay specialist here at ILUMIN. I'm so happy to be here today to talk about this interesting and creative narrative that is the Common App Personal Statement.
Agenda
What is the Common App?
Which Prompt is right for me?
Tips: Crafting your Personal Statement
Debunking Common Misconceptions
Student Samples - Hooks & the “So What?”
A Simplified Timeline - Fall Semester
Hourly Essay Consulting
Kyra Jee: I'll show you our agenda for today. This webinar is primarily directed at our seniors who are in the midst of college app season right now, but if you are a younger student here scoping out what's in store for you next year, I think you'll still walk away with a few good ideas to noodle over for the year.
Tonight, we won't be handing out a LEGO brick-style, step-by-step manual for how to write the Common App Personal Statement, because if we did that, then all of your essays would come out identical, and it would totally defeat the purpose of this essay as what makes your application unique, and what makes you special as a candidate.
So instead, we are going to show you how to make your essay topics hit hard, we will highlight the prompts you can choose to write about, and most importantly, we'll break down the 5 most common misconceptions that we hear about the Common App from our students.
By the end of tonight, you'll have heard some big takeaways, and even a quick timeline for what the next few months ought to look like as you prepare for what's ahead.
Intro to the Common App
You’ll submit most* apps through the Common App Portal:
“My Common Application”
Same info sent to every school
Includes the Personal Statement
“My Colleges”
Unique questions asked by each school
Might include school-specific Supplemental Essays
Most applications cost $60-80 to submit
Maximum of 20 schools
*UCs have their own portal. So do CSUs! And a few others, like MIT or U of Hawai’i. But 1,000+ schools use the C/App Portal. So convenient!
Kyra Jee: So, let's go ahead and start with the basics.
Right now, going into senior year, you'll open one online account through the Common App portal (that's commonapp.org, if you haven't seen it before), which is where you will actually be writing and submitting your college applications.
The website has two main parts:
Part 1, which is called My Common App. That's where you'll answer some information that stays the same from school to school. This is your grades, your activities list resume, your test scores, and of course, the Common App Personal Statement.
This is what's so convenient about the Common App Portal, is [that] you can be applying to as many as 20 different schools on this platform, and thankfully, you only have to fill out this information the one time, and it will go out to any of the schools on that list.
The second part of this application is called My Colleges, and that's where you will add a module for each of the schools you're applying for, answering questions that are specific to that university and what they want to know about you.
These are things like what you want to major in, whether or not you are applying to be eligible for an honors program there. If you're filling out supplemental essays, you'll do that here.
And what that means is that you get to change your answer by school. You can apply to a certain major at one school and a different major at a completely other school. As long as it's in the My Colleges section, you will be tailoring that info up to the moment that you submit.
Nora Salle: A few more quick facts are, so most apps do cost $60 to $80 each, but creating your Common App Portal is totally free. So, if you are a senior right now, and you haven't opened up your account yet, now is definitely the right time to do so.
Like Kyra said, you can apply to 20 schools—so a second fact is you can apply to 20 schools through the Common App, but only 20 schools, keep that in mind. There are, of course, ways around this if you want to apply to more than 20, but for 99% of students, this twenty is more than enough.
And another thing, lastly, is: you should only submit… you will only submit one application at a time. So, just because the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an early action deadline of October 15th, it does not mean that you have to submit every school on your list by October 15th.
So, make sure to keep an eye out for specific deadlines per school.
College Essays 101
There are three types of essays: UC PIQs, the Common App Personal Statement, and school-specific Supplemental Essays. All essays should:
Speak directly to admissions officers
Offer more nuance than numbers alone
Should NOT be written like formal classroom essays
Help admissions officers determine fit-to-school
Are typically reviewed by AOs (NOT subject matter experts)
Should display passion, personality, and perspective
Nora Salle: So, a little on College Essays 101.
There are 3 types of college application essays.
The first type—the first are the UC PIQs, or University of California… Personal Insight Questions… and these will only go to the University of California campuses, and only University of California. We featured these essays in a different webinar a few weeks ago.
The second, which is what we're talking about this evening, is the Common App Personal Statement, which is like your North Star. And it goes out to every school you apply to through the Common App portal.
And the third: you may also be asked to write several school-specific supplemental essays, and we will actually be discussing these in another webinar two weeks from now.
Kyra Jee: All very true.
What is good to remember here is that by the time that you are ready to apply, again, senior summer going into fall, most parts of your admissions profile are already set in stone. Most of your grades are in, and what classes you're doing in senior year, if you have leadership roles, probably you've already gotten them by now, or you are just starting your last year of them. Your SAT and ACT might be done already; most of your AP exam scores are in.
And so, if all of those things are set, then it means that your essays are your last—and also your most nuanced, which is good—but your last chance to articulate what makes you a good candidate for admissions now that you are a senior.
Another good bullet point here is that typically your essays will be reviewed by the admissions committee, not by professors in whatever major you're applying for—it's kind of different from grad school—which means that for your Common App Personal Statement, part of your job is to not get overly lost in the weeds of your major, or of any particular topic, really, but to kind of keep a broader perspective on telling the story of who you are today.
Think about it from the perspective of an admissions officer, right? If you were responsible for putting together a first-year class of top students, but you know that you can't accept all of them. Maybe 25%, maybe 15% of the students you can take: what kinds of kids do you want at your college?
Yes, academically driven students, of course, that's easy; but also students that are compassionate, who are thoughtful, students who are good leaders, who ask questions about the way things are and start conversations about things that they care about. We want to imbue your essays with these characteristics, too.
Which leads us, on the next slide, to our first big takeaway.
Big Takeaway #1. Your mission: Connect with the Reader.
Who are you, beyond your numbers?
Kyra Jee: Your mission in this essay—above all other verbs we could have chosen, impress, astonish, surprise—your mission is to connect with the readers. Who are you beyond your grades and your test scores?
You can ask yourself, “if I read this essay, would I want to meet the person who wrote it?”
Which Prompt is right for me?
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM EACH PROMPT:
Tell us how your Background, Identity, Interest, or Talent has shaped you.
Recount an Obstacle/Failure you’ve faced. How have you grown?
Reflect on a time you challenged a Belief. How have you grown?
How has a moment of Gratitude affected or motivated you?
Share an Event/Realization that sparked new understanding of yourself/others.
Describe a Passion that makes you lose all track of time.
Share any essay on any topic of your choice. (take caution!)
Nora Salle: As you're trying to, you know, looking to connect with your reader, you are going to be wondering, “which prompt is right for me?” So, let's take a look at the prompts.
You will choose one of these seven options to answer when you submit your essay. Since the prompts are pretty long, we are going to summarize the main takeaways here for you, but you can, of course, find the full versions in your Common App portal.
So, students at home, if you're still trying to figure out which prompt that you want to write about, I want you to take out something to write with and make a little list. Go ahead and jot down which prompts do seem inspiring, or like a good fit to you, something that you connect with, that you would like to write about. And also, go ahead and cross off any prompts that you feel that… you're confident that “these are not the prompts that are for me, that I want to write about.”
So, the key takeaways from each prompt are as follows.
Prompt number one: Tell us how your background, identity, interest, or talent has shaped you.
Prompt number two: Recount an obstacle or a failure that you've faced, and how have you grown?
Prompt 3: Reflect on a time that you've challenged a belief. How have you grown?
Prompt 4: How has a moment of gratitude affected or motivated you?
[Prompt] 5: Share an event or a realization that sparks new understanding of yourself or of others.
And [prompt] 6, we have: Describe a passion that makes you lose all track of time.
And [prompt] 7 is: Share an essay on any topic of your choice.
So, looking at 7, I know this prompt sounds like it may be easier to answer, but that's exactly why you should be cautious of it.
What makes the other prompts, as you can see, so meaningful is that they have these follow-up questions, and that's where you can find a lot of the meaning there. You'll be exploring how you've grown. How has this experience affected the decisions you've made? How have you changed since? How do you continue to demonstrate this growth in various aspects of your life?
It's through answering these follow-up questions that transform your writing from just a topic to really exploring a theme.
So, now, with all of that being said, Kyra, will you give us big takeaway number two?
Big Takeaway #2. The story you tell matters much more than the prompt you use to tell it.
Kyra Jee: I will. Okay, so yes, ultimately, the story that you choose to tell about your growth over time matters a lot more than the prompt used to tell it. In fact, Anna, if you'll go back a slide to those prompts, I want to show our students something here.
Every single one of these prompts can be boiled down to just one much simpler question, which is: What is a key moment? You know, you could call it whatever we like. We can think of an interest, a key obstacle, a key belief, a key moment of gratitude, a moment that sparked understanding and passion, but what is a key moment that helped you grow into the person you are today?
That's all they want to know. The person you are today, a senior in high school, is older and wiser and more mature than you were when you were a freshman.
So, in your Common App essay, that's really what we want to answer. Who were you before? And then what happened, and who are you now?
Big Takeaway #3. Who were you before? And then what happened? And who are you now?
Kyra Jee: For that reason, the prompts are helpful, but they're kind of like window dressing. The real question you need to answer, the real prompt is: Who were you before, and then what happened, and who are you now?
If you can do that through talking about an identity, awesome! Through a challenge, through questioning a belief, through a passion—all of those could be great avenues to get to this final point here. So important, we're gonna say it all these different times.
Yes. Who are you now?
Debunking Common Misconceptions
1. “The Common App should reiterate only my most impressive accomplishments to make sure I look good.”
TRUTH: Yes, the ultimate goal is highlighting your strengths! BUT, sometimes showing growth REQUIRES vulnerability, too: letting readers see how much you’ve grown.
Kyra Jee: Very good. Okay, now that we've given you all a long list of things that we want you to be considering, let's break down some of the bad misconceptions that will get in the way of you doing your best.
Myth number one! “The Common App should reiterate only my most impressive accomplishments to make sure I look good.”
Not true! In real life, you can kind of imagine, if a stranger introduced themselves to you with two and a half pages worth of non-stop bragging, you might not feel very close to them.
Sometimes showing real growth requires that we show a little bit of vulnerability along the way, too. It's okay to talk about how you fell in order to show what was so meaningful about getting back up.
Debunking Common Misconceptions
2. “I should focus on why I want to study ___.”
TRUTH: It’s okay to reference your major! BUT, especially if you have several major-related experiences, save them for the Supplemental Essays. Use the Common App to show deeper reflection on who you are in other parts of your life.
Nora Salle: Alright, myth number two: “I should focus on why I want to study… why I want to study my major.”
So, again, not true. Truth: It is okay to reference your major—but, especially if you have several major-related experiences, save them for those supplemental essays, where you can explore more in depth of why this major is right for you, the path that you're choosing.
You should use the Common App to show a deeper reflection on who you are in other parts of your life. Again, how have you grown? … What was the experience, and how have you grown, and how do you continue to grow now?
Kyra Jee: A great way to think about this is: if you look at your high school experiences, how many… for how many of you is, like, your time on a sports team, or your time in a club, or your time with a student organization, an instrumental part of your high school life? You're not literally looking back to only your time in class most of the time, you're also thinking about who you are outside of the class, but in the context of being a high school student.
So, in the same way, colleges are curious about: Who will you be literally in the classroom? What kind of class participant? What kind of student will you be? But also, who will you be on their campus?
This is especially true for smaller schools. If you've got a school with maybe, like, 4,000, or 6,000, or 8,000 students, your professors will know you. You will know your students—your fellow students, they will know if you're absent. And so, trying to think about how the class is put together of personalities and ambitions is one of the many, many small factors that they are looking for in this essay.
Debunking Common Misconceptions
3. “The Common App should be formal and academic.”
TRUTH: It’s better to sound like you—a brilliant teenager—than to sound overly professional, grown-up, or like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. These are great storytelling devices: dialogue, onomatopoeia, figurative language, first-person, and imagery!
Kyra Jee: Yeah. Let's take a look at myth number 3: “The Common App should be formal and academically written. I should sound like a professor who's an expert in this field 40 years deep.”
Not true. It's true that there are some similarities between the writing conventions for the Common App Personal Statement and writing conventions that you may have learned for essays you write in class, or maybe prepping for AP exams.
So, for example, you should be using multiple paragraphs to organize your ideas, and there should be a thesis statement that emphasizes your central message; but unlike a classroom essay, you can and should use first-person narration.
“I thought, I felt, I went”—we should be using this liberally. It is called the Personal Statement. You can use contractions, so saying something like, “I don't, I can't, I wouldn't”—that's all fine. That's the way that you talk, and—even in mind, that's the way that we talk—and we want your essay to sound more like telling a story than writing an academic paper.
When you are talking to friends about what you did over the weekend, or you are describing something amazing that happened to you, you might use dialogue to tell that story. You might use metaphor, rhetorical questions, kind of squeeze in a little bit of imagery.
All of these are great storytelling devices that you can use in your Common App to kind of move them along with you for two and a half pages over the course of your memory and why it mattered to you.
And you don't need to title your Common App Personal Statement, or any college application you write. I will just say that.
Nora Salle: Yes, all those things are exactly right, and I want to just stop and repeat here again: Do not worry about trying to sound more professional. Don't try to sound more grown up.
Doing that can actually give your readers kind of a bad impression. You know, like, maybe someone wrote it for you, or… you didn't feel like you could be totally honest about the true you, or that you took the time to dig in to figure out, you know, who the true you is in this Personal Statement.
Your essay should sound like it was written by you, about you, and you—a brilliant teenager who's telling a story about something that they're proud of, an experience of growth, something particular to them, something impactful.
So, it should sound like you, and very much come from you.
Debunking Common Misconceptions
4. “The Common App should be flowery/fluffy and artsy.”
TRUTH: Adding suspense, extended metaphors, humor, and figurative language can bring your essay to life … but these rhetorical devices should still have clear purpose. In short, make sure your essay doesn’t just happen inside your head. Take action!
Kyra Jee: Mm. I like the way you put it. It should sound like you, a smart teenager, versus needing to sound like an engineer 20 years deep into your career. You're just getting started. It's a good place to learn.
Okay, myth number 4 is probably my favorite: that the Common App should be flowery, or it should be fluffy, it should be artsy and poetic.
I hear this a lot! When I ask students, like, you know, “what have you heard about this essay,” this is usually the first thing they'll say. And it's something we try to help our students come back from in their first couple of drafts with us. I think sometimes new writers fall into the trap of fixating way more on how the sentence sounds, and less about what the paragraph is accomplishing, which is a little bit more important.
Or, sometimes they forget to answer the follow-up questions. When Nora was reading us the Common App prompts, we talked a little bit about how there are follow-up questions, usually at least one or two, in each of the longer versions of those prompts. We need to answer things like, “How have your actions been influenced by what you learned from those experiences? How have you grown? How have you changed?”
And so, what that means is that adding, you know, suspense, extended metaphors, humor, figurative language—all of that is great, and it can help bring your essay to life, but these rhetorical devices should still be used with a purpose …
Don't just tell me that you “became braver by dousing the fires of fear.” Show me how you also signed up for, you know, the winter showcase, and you jumped out there to kind of get back into the mindset of a performer, and were willing to tackle stage fright if it meant being there for your team. Give us something that happens outside of your head, along with that growth arc.
Debunking Common Misconceptions
5. “I have nothing to write about.”
TRUTH: Yes, you do! Start by making lists. How has your understanding of yourself and the world around you changed since you started high school? What was the catalyst? And then what happened?
Kyra Jee: And last but not least, myth number 5: “I have nothing to write about.”
Yes, you do. I promise. You do not have to have saved the world, or been valedictorian, or even been published in a research journal to write a memorable, compelling, and effective college essay.
All you really need is three things. You need help identifying meaningful moments of growth from your high school career. Two, you need help structuring your essay into a story that readers can pull those truths from. And three, help with articulating the specific details: the who, what, when, where, why, how of your anecdote—and then pack all of that into 650 words.
So, Nora, how do those three things translate into our last big takeaway?
Big Takeaway #4. Expect to write multiple drafts.
Give yourself TIME to write multiple drafts!
Nora Salle: Okay, yes. Well…
Here's the big takeaway number 4: Expect to write multiple drafts. You must prepare to write multiple drafts if you want to have a good Common App Personal Statement.
Yes, you could do it all the week before your first early action deadline, but is that really the best possible version of you that you want to show, and [have you] given [yourself] enough time to write all of those details?
So, truly, truly, the best essays I've worked on with students tend towards probably 4 to 6 drafts. But honestly, sometimes there—some students have written as many as 6 to 8.
And so, accepting the real reality of multiple drafts, and also just the flow and process of what you can learn through multiple drafts and improve through multiple drafts, will help you defeat that temptation to procrastinate until you have the “perfect idea.”
The only way to get that perfect idea really is simply to start trying it out on paper, and start as soon as possible. Start right now. Start brainstorming, start reflecting, start thinking, start opening things up. And that's gonna be your best bet to really starting your drafts and getting the best personal statement that you can.
Kyra Jee: Our seniors can start now, I agree.
Nora Salle: Seniors, yes.
Kyra Jee: Our juniors can think some more about it.
Big Takeaway #5. The “So What?”
What’s the point of telling this story? What does the reader learn about you?
Nora Salle: And our last big takeaway for today is the “So What?”
You know, you’re asking yourself: What is the point of telling this story? What does the reader learn about you? So when you're in the revising stage, it's important to double check. What's the point? What's the point of telling the story? Again, how am I connecting with this reader, and what is the reader learning about me?
So let's take a look at three examples of what some students wrote their Common App Personal Statements about, and also what the readers learned from them in that process.
Crafting Your Personal Statement
The “So What?”
The realization that NOT taking action due to fear of failure is the same thing as failure. Have courage!
The Topic
Getting lost in a foreign country and finally asking a stranger for directions…
Kyra Jee: Yes.
All of the examples you're about to see were written by past ILUMIN students with help from their essay specialist team. For the sake of our hour-long webinar, we weren't going to read… or we won't have time to read three two-and-a-half page long essays, but we still want to give you something a little bit more concrete.
We've been talking a lot about concepts, we've been talking a lot about, you know, thesis statements for how an essay might look, and we wanted to give you three examples for what that actually translated to for three students.
As we go through these examples, I want you to notice how many of the most effective, memorable, meaningful essays started with the smallest and most ordinary of details.
So here in teal is student number one, who spent the two weeks of their summer abroad program getting completely turned around in a foreign city, stumbling around street signs they couldn't quite read—a desperately shy student, I must say—and finally realizing that they needed to ask for directions, they needed to ask a stranger, and they needed to do it right now, because it's getting late, and they need to get back to the hotel they're staying at.
This essay was phenomenal. Their “so what?”, their main point, like Nora was describing in the last takeaway, was this realization that by not taking action due to a fear of failure, sometimes we kind of already failed. Instead, we need to have courage, we need to take risks, we need to be brave, we need to check in with people and ask for help, and kind of endure that sense of awkwardness to kind of increase our sense of bravery in the world.
And in their conclusion of that essay, they also were able to answer those “And then what happened?”-type follow-up questions. They wrote about some ways that they brought this lesson back into their real life—clubs they joined, things they said yes to, times that they were willing to stop and lend a hand and volunteer and answer, even if it might be wrong, because they were willing to take a risk.
Crafting Your Personal Statement
The “So What?”
A humorous, adventurous tale of getting resourceful + realizing that, by not underestimating themself, they could “open windows of opportunity—literally!”
The Topic
Accidentally locking themself out of the house…
Kyra Jee: Let's go again with another example: student number 2, who was a student who told me that they had nothing to write about—a common misconception.
During one of our brainstorming sessions together, you know, we asked them, “Okay, forget school for a second, forget your major. Looking back at junior year of high school, what is the one thing you are most proud of doing?”
And the student said, “Well, I broke into my own house.”
I said, “Okay, tell me more about that.”
They wrote an essay, their Common App—a very funny Common App—about climbing over their backyard fence, climbing into their bedroom window, popping the screen, having forgotten their keys, and just needing to find a way to get back into the house. And later, kind of realizing that by not underestimating themselves in the moment, they could open windows of opportunity, which in this case was literal.
So… you can imagine, we went from a student who said they had nothing to write about—was pretty deep into fall as well, for not having anything on the page yet, which was okay, because what we did have was a resourceful, determined, adventurous young person with a good sense of humor.
I wanted to share this example with you to show you that the topic for the essay—the initial spark or prompt of it—was not necessarily an impressive achievement all by itself, getting locked out of your own house for getting your keys. It might have even been kind of embarrassing to another student, but this student found a way to write about it in a way that was meaningful, and it became something bigger than it was.
So, yes, if you have a jaw-dropping accomplishment, a time that you—again, thinking about those many different prompts and their keywords—that you confronted a worldview that changed, an incredible moment of gratitude that impacted the way that you see the world… If you have one of those standout moments, maybe that should be your Common App Personal Statement!
But if you're like, “I've been looking at the prompts, I'm looking at them, I just don't have a really, really big capital letter moment,” that might be okay. You might have a couple of different smaller moments, things that might have been smaller mistakes, or smaller joys, or smaller victories, that can become bigger through this question of, “So what does this mean about you?”
Crafting Your Personal Statement
The “So What?”
A very earnest, warm essay about making small, everyday connections with strangers during tough times—a good reminder for a pre-med student
The Topic
Finally landing a volunteer position at the hospital, only to be assigned the gift shop shift for months…
Kyra Jee: And last but not least, let me tell you about student number 3, who was truly a phenomenal pre-med/bio/life sciences student on paper. She had great grades, she took all the right classes, great test scores over the summer, she was doing summer research. Like, the last piece of the puzzle here was volunteering, kind of getting back into her community and a little bit out of the academics.
So, when we finally landed a volunteer position at her local hospital, we were so excited. We were like, “this is it.”
And then we found out that they had assigned her to work at the gift shop for, like, 90 days in a row. Other students were shadowing nurses, other students were in-taking patients, other students were, like, helping at the information desk, and she was in the gift shop.
She got very nervous, and for a second, she thought we wouldn't even be able to write about it at all. She was like, “I might as well have gotten a job at the mall; how am I gonna learn about being a doctor?”
But what came of this was a realization she had, because this is the kind of girl that she was: She realized that if you are shopping in a hospital gift shop, you are there for a reason. Something big is happening in your life. Hopefully it's something great that's happening, but also maybe it's something that's terrible, and you are not there because you had a lot of other places to be at the moment. You had to be there for a reason, and so was she.
What came of this was a very earnest and very warm Common App Personal Statement. She didn't write about her accomplishments, she didn't go on about her summer research project—certainly she had a lot to say—but really what was more important [were these] 90 days she had to learn about what it means to make these small, everyday connections with strangers.
More than being a USABO Bio Olympiad competitor, more than a 5 on the AP Bio exam as a junior. Like, what she really needed to know about being a pre-med… aspiring pre-med student, was that… You should need to practice the patience and compassion and earnestness of wanting to be a small moment of humanity in a stranger's tough day.
So we were able to put together an application that didn't just have an impressive activities list, didn't just have research and all of those great factors; it also told us who the student was, what happened to her, and how she was able to go into the world afterwards a little bit different.
And there you have 3 examples of Common App Personal Statements and some of those big takeaways in action. Nora, will you bring us to a timeline of what's next?
Simplified Essay Timeline
Summer
Finish researching/balancing your College List
Open your Common App Portal; Collect all Supplemental prompts
Begin brainstorming for the Common App Personal Statement
September
Complete first drafts of the Common App Personal Statement
Complete first drafts of EA/ED supplemental essays due 11/01
October
Finalize the Common App Personal Statement
Finalize the Common App Activities List
Continue drafting EA/ED essays due between 10/15-11/15 and UC PIQs
Begin submitting your college applications!
November through January
Finalize EA/ED supplemental essays in time for RD/ED2 deadlines
NOTE: The UC Application is due 12/01!
Submit the last of your college applications by or before early January
Nora Salle: Yes, it would be my pleasure! Thanks so much for sharing those wonderful “So what?”s that those students had. They were really inspiring.
So, to wrap things up tonight, let's take a brief look at a very simplified application timeline. So, before senior year even begins, we would like to see our students researching their college lists and beginning to brainstorm for the Common App—and, if applicable, getting a head start on the UC Personal Insight Questions for those UC schools.
By August—so by now, since August is now over, and for those of you, you know, next year, thinking about this for their August—we should have a finalized college list, and should be able to collect the school-specific supplemental essays from the Common App Portal—starting to know more and more what you will need for the specific schools.
And by early September—so September 1st today—we should see the personal statements starting to solidify, plus some early drafts of a few supplemental essays as well. So, it's really important to remember that your Common App is due by your very earliest deadline. So, if you're writing your Common App, and your very first deadline is—you know, if you don't know what that deadline is, one, find that out!
So, that's usually November 1st for most early action or early decision applications, but it can be as early as October 15th—that's a month and a half from now, for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at UT Austin. So if you're thinking about either of those schools, you should definitely, you know—that Common App should be solidifying now, and things should be really developing.
By November and December, this is when all the supplemental essays and the UC PIQs need to be done for regular decision. So, finalize your early application, early decision, supplemental essays in time, and note that the UC application is [usually] due on the 1st of December, so keep that in mind if you are applying for UC schools.
[Note: For the 2026-27 application cycle, the UC application deadline has since been changed to November 30th, 2026.]
Also, submit the last of your college applications by or before early January. So, January and February is when you can submit any last rolling applications, but it's really, really important that you have a very, very clear timeline of when your specific college deadlines are, when those early decision deadlines—early action and early decisions applications are due by and, when your dates are as well.
So keep all of these things in mind, and also make sure, you know, if you're a senior, that you are solidifying your Common App right now—and if you are, if that's in the future still, keep this timeline in mind starting in summer before you even start your actual senior year.
Kyra Jee: One thing to think about here is you're balancing all of those EA and ED and RD deadlines and all of this business, is that, you know, kind of in the first week of January is really our last big stretch of college application deadlines. Most of you will be done by the turn of the new year, and then we've got these—or most colleges will be done by the turn of the new year—and then the Ivy League schools are kind of due 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, they're all back-to-back. And other schools have January 15 deadlines as well.
So it's very tempting sometimes to just get started on your favorite schools first. And I do think that if you are someone who has a great idea for an essay right now, and you want to jot it down before you lose the momentum, sure, start a few different Google Docs and jot some ideas down for your essays all the way down the line.
But I, at least for my kiddos, who are applying to a mix of EA, ED, and RD schools—we're starting on those 10/15 and 11/1 ones. That way, you can kind of move in this order of, “What’s due first on my list, and then how can I take that info and recycle it on over into another essay?”
But maybe this is a topic for two weeks when we do our supplemental essay webinar, so I'll let Anna move us on.
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Kyra Jee: Thank you.
Okay, hopefully tonight you've had a chance to hear a little bit more about how we support our seniors in developing their college application essays.
At ILUMIN Education, our hourly essay consulting program matches students up with a member from our wonderful essay team, like Nora, to go through any essays from any school at any stage in the process. We meet with students on Zoom to brainstorm and strategize, then we hop to Google Docs and that beautiful suggestions feature and comments feature to put words on paper together.
So, whether you are working on your UCs, on this beautiful Common App Personal Statement, school-specific supplemental essays, honors program essays, activities list, letters of recommendation, brag sheets—anything that involves writing, I know that we would be very excited to walk with you through your own college application journey.
And that is everything that we have to share with you for today.
Thank you for joining us!
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Kyra Jee: Anna, how much time, about, do we have for questions from our guests?
Anna Lu: We have plenty of time for questions. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to just drop them in the Q&A box. If we don't get any questions, I'm just going to assume that you two perfectly answered any questions anyone may have had otherwise. But I'll give everyone a little bit of time to kind of think about it.
Other than that, do we have any last kind of extra thoughts about the Common App essay? Fun little tips for anybody?
Kyra Jee: Thoughts about the Common App essay? Well, I suppose it depends on what kind of questions that we might get from our crowd.
Anna Lu: Very true. We've had webinars where no one's had questions. I think we've had very thorough presentations for those ones.
So I'll give everyone a couple minutes, but otherwise, thank you so much to everybody for joining us. There is a poll that I've launched, if you would like to answer that, please feel free. It is not binding, we're just trying to gauge your interest [in a free consultation].
But yes, so far, no questions.
Oh, we have one, never mind. Is the UC application due around December 1st?
Kyra Jee: It is. Now, the date has fluctuated just a smidge. I think the last 3 years in a row, it was, like, 11/30, or November 30th, and then December 2nd, and then December 1st, but at least for this year, December 1st is the published deadline for the UCs.
[Note: For the 2026-27 application cycle, the UC application deadline has since been changed to November 30th, 2026.]
You are only going to submit your UC application once. I think sometimes students will get this mixed up with the Common App… No matter how many of the UC schools you're applying for, it all gets kind of submitted in one big go, and they all get this exact same application.
So if you're thinking about your UC PIQs, there's no, like, “Dear Berkeley, I love you,” in my PIQ essay. It's… this is my application to the UCs overall. So all of your schools will be going in by [11/30]...
Maybe a couple of exceptions there, actually, as I think about it. So, if you're applying to a major that has a portfolio—so if you are a music major, a theater major, a film major, if you've got some kind of performing or visual arts as part of your application to the UCs—you might have an earlier deadline. You might have, what are they called? You might have audition deadlines as well. So those are great things to take a look at for independent research.
Also, the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara! That is another separate deadline. I love the College of Creative Studies at Santa Barbara, and if you haven't heard about it, let that be a little bit of homework for you to research today. But occasionally, there are some very few special programs that might have different deadlines, but by and large, it's 12/1.
[Note: For the 2026-27 application cycle, the UC application deadline has since been changed to November 30th, 2026.]
Anna Lu: That's why it's crucial to do your research if you're interested not only in a specific school, but also a very specific program. There's so much variation on deadlines and requirements—definitely good to just have that all up-to-date for yourself.
Kyra Jee: I recommend a spreadsheet. The biggest spreadsheet you've ever worked on.
Anna Lu: Love a good spreadsheet.
Any other questions? Other than that, we might get out early, and for those of us on the West Coast, an earlier dinner, perhaps.
Going once, going twice… All right, then I think we are good.
Thank you so much to everyone for joining us! Like we said, like I said earlier, we will be posting this full webinar recording on our YouTube channel, so if you missed anything, you can just go look at that and go through our lovely slides.
But again, thank you so much, everybody. We will be hosting another webinar soon, specifically on the supplemental college essays, which is [another whole] ballgame as well. So, if you're interested in that, please keep an eye out for our announcements regarding that.
Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great evening, and thank you, Nora and Kyra, so much.
Kyra Jee: Thank you for joining us.
Anna Lu: Alright, bye everybody!