Personal Essay Questions (Washington)

The personal essays are perhaps the most important part of your Act Six application. Therefore you should allow time to carefully consider, thoughtfully compose and thoroughly edit each essay. You will be evaluated on content, mechanics and style.

It is critical that you compose your essays in a separate word processor so you can use spell check and edit carefully. When you have a final product, copy and paste your essays into the online form.

Use plain text only, as no formatting or special characters will be preserved. Insert a blank line between each paragraph. Responses to each question must be no longer than 400 words or 2,500 characters. Use the word count feature of your word processor to check the length before pasting.

The following three personal essay questions are required for all Tacoma-Seattle, Spokane and Yakima Valley applicants:

1. Act Six seeks to identify service-minded leaders who will become agents of positive transformation on the college campus and in their communities at home. In an opening paragraph, describe something that you appreciate and something you would like to change about your current community. In the next paragraph, describe what leadership skills you will need to improve during college to serve your community and bring about the transformation you hope for.
2. Describe a concrete way that your ethnic or cultural background has shaped your life.
3. Describe any personal hardships or unusual circumstances you have had to overcome. How have these experiences shaped you as a person and how can they help you in the future?

Tacoma-Seattle area students who wish to apply to Northwest University must also submit an additional essay.