Character Counts

How to Showcase Character in Your College Application

By
​UFit College Consulting

There are many parts that sum up a college application: personal statement, essays, activities, awards, academic profile, recommendations, and test scores. From all these tangible pieces of your application, admissions officers read, evaluate, and form opinions about who you are, not only as a student, but as a person. What can you do to make sure that you are represented not only by your academic record, but also by your character? 

A student’s character assessment has increasingly become an important part of the college application process. Admissions officers want students who will be contributing members of their college community, will uphold the values of the university and its mission, and exhibit traits such as kindness and compassion. They are looking for students who will be a good friend and a source of inspiration for fellow students.

A person’s character can be stratified in many layers. Most admissions officers look for evidence of the these four types of character.: 

• Civic character - good citizenship, responsible behavior, leading or taking a stand 
• Academic character - perseverance, grit, ingenuity, intellect, discipline
• Inquisitive character - curiosity, engagement, out-of-box thinking
• Moral character - compassion, kindness, and trustworthiness

It is important to exhibit these strong character traits in your application without spelling them out. Usually, character assessment tends to be an inference-based exercise. It is something that should be inherent in your application and easily revealed to the reader. 

There are several ways in which your application can reflect your character and who you are as a person: 

• Essays: College essays are the first and foremost way to illustrate your character. In addition to the personal statement, the college-specific essays are also devised to elicit responses that will shed light on a student’s character. The essay responses are the lens through which colleges can formulate an opinion about a student's character -- a sort of descriptive data point, distinct from the quantitative aspects of an application. The choice of stories and anecdotes you discuss in your essays can be very telling.

 

• Recommendation Letters: Another way to highlight your character is through your recommendation letters. Recommendation letters from academic and non-academic sources are important to provide an accurate picture of a student’s qualities and characteristics inside and outside the classroom. Colleges pay close attention to recommendation letters as these have the ability to offer a true assessment of a student as an academic and community member. It is therefore very important for students to ensure that they request recommendation letters from people who can speak to their various positive qualities, such as teachers, coaches, supervisors, and mentors. 

 

• Community Service: Colleges will also take note of any dedicated hours of community service in your application and any community service awards that you may have garnered. Sometimes, students will focus on adding community service hours to boost their application without demonstrating true passion for a cause. Admissions officers are adept at identifying students who have simply logged in community service hours for the sake of their application versus those who have been consistently dedicated to a specific community service project or social cause. 

 

• Extracurricular Activities: Activities that show initiative, leadership, or action, to bring about change, will allow admissions officers to take notice of these qualities.

 

• Interviews: Interviews are another descriptive data point that some colleges will reference to assess a student’s qualitative traits. While interviews are usually optional and supposed to be a casual conversation, make no mistake that they are evaluative and could play an important role in your application. Students should view interviews as an opportunity to demonstrate their interest in the school and provide insight beyond what is included in the application.  While interviews aren't weighted as heavily as other parts of the application, a strong interview can be another opportunity to showcase your character.

Demonstrating character in a college application is not about creating a checklist of items to draw attention to your qualities, but more about being true to yourself and to your commitments. Your accomplishments, interactions, interests, and passions will be the gateway to illustrate your multidimensional strengths and character traits. 

At UFit College Consulting, we can help you develop an application that will bring your innate qualities to the surface and accurately represent you and your character, beyond the quantitative aspects of your application.

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