how to write an essay on self awareness

Self Awareness Essay

Self awareness essentially means having a keen awareness of oneself. Ironically, many people do not give enough importance to understanding their own selves. One way to be aware of oneself is by discussing with friends and family members. Those who want to start a self-health awareness essay can write one on the changes they have undergone in their life. It is essential to start with the person’s goals when writing this self awareness essay.

Importance of Self Awareness

BYJU’S self awareness essay is a great tool to help kids understand the importance of self awareness. Without it, there can be no self-confidence, leading to negative thoughts. People must be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Health awareness is an essential factor in everyone’s life, and hence, engage them in writing essays on the topics of well-being.

Self awareness allows one to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviour. It can also help people form a more accurate perception of the world. Without self awareness, people are less likely to see things or problems that could negatively impact them.

Self awareness is essential because, time and time again, people learn that when they don’t take the time to understand themselves, they make bad decisions that can have negative consequences.

When you are self-aware, you are aware of your actions and how those actions affect others. This can be seen in a person’s facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. By looking for signs of self awareness in someone else, it is easier to understand what that person might be feeling or thinking about. BYJU’S essay on self awareness aims to encourage students in their journey of self awareness by exploring what self-awareness is and how it can improve one’s life.

To conclude, it is always essential to be self-aware. It helps us understand ourselves better to make decisions that are good for our mental health. For more essays, poems and other kids learning activities, visit BYJU’S website.

Frequently Asked Questions on Self Awareness Essay

What is self awareness.

Self awareness is the ability to recognise one’s mental state, including thoughts, feelings, sensations, and intentions. In a sense, it can be viewed as knowledge of self or being aware of oneself. To be self-aware is to perform tasks with intention and awareness of consequences that are important for the performance of these tasks.

Why is it important to be self-aware?

Self awareness is critical because it helps you be aware of your thoughts and feelings. It helps you to make better decisions and avoid making mistakes. Furthermore, it aids you develop a sense of control over your life and protecting yourself from harmful people who might take advantage of you if you aren’t cautious.

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Have a language expert improve your writing

Check your paper for plagiarism in 10 minutes, generate your apa citations for free.

Knowledge Base
College essay

How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples

Published on September 21, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on May 31, 2023.

An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability. Your essay shouldn’t just be a resume of your experiences; colleges are looking for a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

To write about your achievements and qualities without sounding arrogant, use specific stories to illustrate them. You can also write about challenges you’ve faced or mistakes you’ve made to show vulnerability and personal growth.

Start with self-reflection, how to write about challenges and mistakes, how to write about your achievements and qualities, how to write about a cliché experience, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

Before you start writing, spend some time reflecting to identify your values and qualities. You should do a comprehensive brainstorming session, but here are a few questions to get you started:

What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
Whom do you admire most and why?
What are the top five things you are thankful for?
What has inspired your hobbies or future goals?
What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

As you self-reflect, consider how your values and goals reflect your prospective university’s program and culture, and brainstorm stories that demonstrate the fit between the two.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing about difficult experiences can be an effective way to show authenticity and create an emotional connection to the reader, but choose carefully which details to share, and aim to demonstrate how the experience helped you learn and grow.

Be vulnerable

It’s not necessary to have a tragic story or a huge confession. But you should openly share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences to evoke an emotional response from the reader. Even a cliché or mundane topic can be made interesting with honest reflection. This honesty is a preface to self-reflection and insight in the essay’s conclusion.

Don’t overshare

With difficult topics, you shouldn’t focus too much on negative aspects. Instead, use your challenging circumstances as a brief introduction to how you responded positively.

Share what you have learned

It’s okay to include your failure or mistakes in your essay if you include a lesson learned. After telling a descriptive, honest story, you should explain what you learned and how you applied it to your life.

While it’s good to sell your strengths, you also don’t want to come across as arrogant. Instead of just stating your extracurricular activities, achievements, or personal qualities, aim to discreetly incorporate them into your story.

Brag indirectly

Mention your extracurricular activities or awards in passing, not outright, to avoid sounding like you’re bragging from a resume.

Use stories to prove your qualities

Even if you don’t have any impressive academic achievements or extracurriculars, you can still demonstrate your academic or personal character. But you should use personal examples to provide proof. In other words, show evidence of your character instead of just telling.

Many high school students write about common topics such as sports, volunteer work, or their family. Your essay topic doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but do try to include unexpected personal details and your authentic voice to make your essay stand out .

To find an original angle, try these techniques:

Focus on a specific moment, and describe the scene using your five senses.
Mention objects that have special significance to you.
Instead of following a common story arc, include a surprising twist or insight.

Your unique voice can shed new perspective on a common human experience while also revealing your personality. When read out loud, the essay should sound like you are talking.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

Writing process
Transition words
Passive voice
Paraphrasing

Communication

How to end an email
Ms, mrs, miss
How to start an email
I hope this email finds you well
Hope you are doing well

Parts of speech

Personal pronouns
Conjunctions

First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Courault, K. (2023, May 31). How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved October 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/college-essay/write-about-yourself/

Is this article helpful?

Kirsten Courault

Other students also liked, style and tone tips for your college essay | examples, what do colleges look for in an essay | examples & tips, how to make your college essay stand out | tips & examples, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Self Awareness — Self-awareness: My Experience On Path to Better Me

Self-awareness: My Experience on Path to Better Me

Categories: About Myself Personality Self Awareness

About this sample

Words: 742 |

Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 742 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Development of my self-awareness, zimmer's principles of self-awareness, works cited.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2018). Self-Awareness. In Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 239-242.
Davis, M. H. (2018). Empathy, Perspective Taking, and Self-Awareness: The Link to Leadership. In Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 731.
Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House.
Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books.
Goleman, D. (2012). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam.
Maslow, A. H. (2013). Toward a Psychology of Being. Martino Fine Books.
Riggio, R. E. (2018). Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology (8th ed.). Pearson.
Tolle, E. (2004). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library.
Vohs, K. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Zimmer, E. (Speaker). (2010). Erik Zimmer: "Gamify Your Life" [TED Talk]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/erik_zimmer_gamify_your_life

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1863 words

1 pages / 572 words

2 pages / 1137 words

2 pages / 1016 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Self-awareness: My Experience on Path to Better Me Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Self Awareness

‘Self-awareness, has evidently been the key issue from a formative and a transformative point of view’, is a rich and entangled topic. As individuals, we can never completely comprehend ourselves, if there is such a desire. In [...]

Reflecting on my journey, I realize that my weakness is overthinking, a trait that has at times hindered my progress and clouded my decisions. Overthinking, characterized by incessant rumination and an unrelenting quest for [...]

Cultural self-awareness is an essential skill in today's interconnected and diverse world. It involves recognizing and understanding one's own cultural background, biases, and values, and how they influence interactions with [...]

Understanding yourself is a fundamental pursuit that shapes the course of our lives and contributes to personal growth and well-being. As humans, we possess a complex and intricate inner world that often remains unexplored. [...]

Chang, E. (2016). The power of an open mind. Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 569-571.Greene, J. D. (2013). Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them. Penguin Books.Krumrei-Mancuso, E. J., & Rouse, S. [...]

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the endangerment of finding the ridicule of others, rather than to be false and finding my own detestation. Why should I worry about what others think of me? I don’t give a shit about how [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

15 Tips for Writing a College Essay About Yourself

What’s covered:.

What is the Purpose of the College Essay?
How to Stand Out Without Showing Off
15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself
Where to Get Free Feedback on Your Essay

Most students who apply to top-tier colleges have exceptional grades, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities. How do admissions officers decide which applicants to choose among all these stellar students? One way is on the strength of their college essay .

This personal statement, along with other qualitative factors like teacher recommendations, helps the admissions committee see who you really are—the person behind the transcript. So, it’s obviously important to write a great one.

What Is the Purpose of the College Essay?

Your college essay helps you stand out in a pool of qualified candidates. If effective, it will also show the admissions committee more of your personality and allow them to get a sense of how you’ll fit in with and contribute to the student body and institution. Additionally, it will show the school that you can express yourself persuasively and clearly in writing, which is an important part of most careers, no matter where you end up.

Typically, students must submit a personal statement (usually the Common App essay ) along with school-specific supplements. Some students are surprised to learn that essays typically count for around 25% of your entire application at the top 250 schools. That’s an enormous chunk, especially considering that, unlike your transcript and extracurriculars, it isn’t an assessment of your entire high school career.

The purpose of the college essay is to paint a complete picture of yourself, showing admissions committees the person behind the grades and test scores. A strong college essay shows your unique experiences, personality, perspective, interests, and values—ultimately, what makes you unique. After all, people attend college, not their grades or test scores. The college essay also provides students with a considerable amount of agency in their application, empowering them to share their own stories.

How to Stand Out Without Showing Off

It’s important to strike a balance between exploring your achievements and demonstrating humility. Your aim should be to focus on the meaning behind the experience and how it changed your outlook, not the accomplishment itself.

Confidence without cockiness is the key here. Don’t simply catalog your achievements, there are other areas on your application to share them. Rather, mention your achievements when they’re critical to the story you’re telling. It’s helpful to think of achievements as compliments, not highlights, of your college essay.

Take this essay excerpt , for example:

My parents’ separation allowed me the space to explore my own strengths and interests as each of them became individually busier. As early as middle school, I was riding the light rail train by myself, reading maps to get myself home, and applying to special academic programs without urging from my parents. Even as I took more initiatives on my own, my parents both continued to see me as somewhat immature. All of that changed three years ago, when I applied and was accepted to the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco. I would be studying Arabic and learning my way around the city of Marrakesh. Although I think my parents were a little surprised when I told them my news, the addition of a fully-funded scholarship convinced them to let me go.

Instead of saying “ I received this scholarship and participated in this prestigious program, ” the author tells a story, demonstrating their growth and initiative through specific actions (riding the train alone, applying academic programs on her own, etc.)—effectively showing rather than telling.

15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself

1. start early .

Leave yourself plenty of time to write your college essay—it’s stressful enough to compose a compelling essay without putting yourself under a deadline. Starting early on your essay also leaves you time to edit and refine your work, have others read your work (for example, your parents or a teacher), and carefully proofread.

2. Choose a topic that’s meaningful to you

The foundation of a great essay is selecting a topic that has real meaning for you. If you’re passionate about the subject, the reader will feel it. Alternatively, choosing a topic you think the admissions committee is looking for, but isn’t all that important to you, won’t make for a compelling essay; it will be obvious that you’re not very invested in it.

3. Show your personality

One of the main points of your college essay is to convey your personality. Admissions officers will see your transcript and read about the awards you’ve won, but the essay will help them get to know you as a person. Make sure your personality is evident in each part—if you are a jokester, incorporate some humor. Your friends should be able to pick your essay from an anonymous pile, read it, and recognize it as yours. In that same vein, someone who doesn’t know you at all should feel like they understand your personality after reading your essay.

4. Write in your own voice

In order to bring authenticity to your essay, you’ll need to write in your own voice. Don’t be overly formal (but don’t be too casual, either). Remember: you want the reader to get to know the real you, not a version of you that comes across as overly stiff or stilted. You should feel free to use contractions, incorporate dialogue, and employ vocabulary that comes naturally to you.

5. Use specific examples

Real, concrete stories and examples will help your essay come to life. They’ll add color to your narrative and make it more compelling for the reader. The goal, after all, is to engage your audience—the admissions committee.

For example, instead of stating that you care about animals, you should tell us a story about how you took care of an injured stray cat.

Consider this side-by-side comparison:

Example 1: I care deeply about animals and even once rescued a stray cat. The cat had an injured leg, and I helped nurse it back to health.

Example 2: I lost many nights of sleep trying to nurse the stray cat back to health. Its leg infection was extremely painful, and it meowed in distress up until the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t mind it though; what mattered was that the cat regained its strength. So, I stayed awake to administer its medicine and soothe it with loving ear rubs.

The second example helps us visualize this situation and is more illustrative of the writer’s personality. Because she stayed awake to care for the cat, we can infer that she is a compassionate person who cares about animals. We don’t get the same depth with the first example.

6. Don’t be afraid to show off…

You should always put your best foot forward—the whole point of your essay is to market yourself to colleges. This isn’t the time to be shy about your accomplishments, skills, or qualities.

7. …While also maintaining humility

But don’t brag. Demonstrate humility when discussing your achievements. In the example above, for instance, the author discusses her accomplishments while noting that her parents thought of her as immature. This is a great way to show humility while still highlighting that she was able to prove her parents wrong.

8. Be vulnerable

Vulnerability goes hand in hand with humility and authenticity. Don’t shy away from exploring how your experience affected you and the feelings you experienced. This, too, will help your story come to life.

Here’s an excerpt from a Common App essay that demonstrates vulnerability and allows us to connect with the writer:

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

In this essay, the writer isn’t afraid to share his insecurities and feelings with us. He states that he had been “ appallingly ignorant ” of his brother’s pain, that he “ often felt out of step ” compared to his brother, and that he had felt “ more and more alone ” over time. These are all emotions that you may not necessarily share with someone you just met, but it’s exactly this vulnerability that makes the essay more raw and relatable.

9. Don’t lie or hyperbolize

This essay is about the authentic you. Lying or hyperbolizing to make yourself sound better will not only make your essay—and entire application—less genuine, but it will also weaken it. More than likely, it will be obvious that you’re exaggerating. Plus, if colleges later find out that you haven’t been truthful in any part of your application, it’s grounds for revoking your acceptance or even expulsion if you’ve already matriculated.

10. Avoid cliches

How the COVID-19 pandemic changed your life. A sports victory as a metaphor for your journey. How a pet death altered your entire outlook. Admissions officers have seen more essays on these topics than they can possibly count. Unless you have a truly unique angle, then it’s in your best interest to avoid them. Learn which topics are cliche and how to fix them .

11. Proofread

This is a critical step. Even a small error can break your essay, however amazing it is otherwise. Make sure you read it over carefully, and get another set of eyes (or two or three other sets of eyes), just in case.

12. Abstain from using AI

There are a handful of good reasons to avoid using artificial intelligence (AI) to write your college essay. Most importantly, it’s dishonest and likely to be not very good; AI-generated essays are generally formulaic, generic, and boring—everything you’re trying to avoid being. The purpose of the college essay is to share what makes you unique and highlight your personal experiences and perspectives, something that AI can’t capture.

13. Use parents as advisors, not editors

The voice of an adult is different from that of a high schooler and admissions committees are experts at spotting the writing of parents. Parents can play a valuable role in creating your college essay—advising, proofreading, and providing encouragement during those stressful moments. However, they should not write or edit your college essay with their words.

14. Have a hook

Admissions committees have a lot of essays to read and getting their attention is essential for standing out among a crowded field of applicants. A great hook captures your reader’s imagination and encourages them to keep reading your essay. Start strong, first impressions are everything!

15. Give them something to remember

The ending of your college essay is just as important as the beginning. Give your reader something to remember by composing an engaging and punchy paragraph or line—called a kicker in journalism—that ties everything you’ve written above together.

Where to Get Free Feedback on Your College Essay

Before you send off your application, make sure you get feedback from a trusted source on your essay. CollegeVine’s free peer essay review will give you the support you need to ensure you’ve effectively presented your personality and accomplishments. Our expert essay review pairs you with an advisor to help you refine your writing, submit your best work, and boost your chances of getting into your dream school. Find the right advisor for you and get started on honing a winning essay.