This week-long workshop combines whole group instruction, individual work time, and one-on-one writing conferences, resulting in a draft of either the Common App Personal Statement or the UC Personal Insight Questions. During whole-group instruction, students will learn the place of the essay(s) in admissions, the strategy of choosing the right individual topic in order to round out an application, and the function of supplemental questions (for Common App schools). We will read and critique sample essays together so that students have a sense of personal writing as a genre and the wide range of topics that are possible for creating an engaging piece of writing. Whole-group instruction will be approximately an hour on the first day of the workshop, and much less for the remaining four days. Students will have a 20-minute (approximately) one-on-one meeting with the instructor each day, where we will generate topics together and discuss feedback and editing. Students will need a laptop and access to Google Docs.