I would not write this as a stream of conciousness type essay. It needs to be superbly organized, though they want you to think it’s pretty laid back. Superbly organized does not however, mean that it has to be choppy or stiff. I would frame the essay around one event that was significant, and use that to show what and how you think. What did X event make you feel? see? learn? The best way to accomplish this is through the descriptions of the event itself, rather than by writing “Event X taught me Y” after your description. When you’re writing about the event, just launch right in. Something like” Mrs. R was a deaf lady who blahblah blah, every day I would yadaydayada… If you just start the story your reader will be captivated and want to read more. If you start with “I think that world hunger and war are bad, but free medical care is good” type of stuff, your reader will vomit on your essay before they can finish it. good luck

Word count. If your essay only needs to be 500 words long, it will be very different from an essay that needs to be 2,000 words long. Be aware of the word requirement and stick to it, or at least within 10% of it. You don’t want to weary your teacher by writing an essay that is much longer than required, or much shorter than required.

My friend wrote a creative writing piece for his college app, and he was rejected from nyu, berkeley, and ucla. Even though it may seem like the prompt asks you to be creative, the application process is still reviewed very superficially. In his case, his personal essay was so abstract that the readers couldn’t get a sense of who he is.

Feel free to discuss abstract ideas, but if your talking about a series of thoughts, possibly with no link between them, that might not be a great idea.

But it would depend on the class, the more free form it is the less structure you probably need.

hi there,

take a look at this: http://www.ielts-exam.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=7&id=15&Itemid=28