This is a collection of personal statement elements and examples related to upbringing, family, and biography to help you write your personal statement. Use these examples to help you write an authentic personal statement that effectively expresses your background and values.
Integrity and humility from my father
My father is the epitome of integrity for me. He drives a city bus and has been doing it for 30 years without missing a day of work, even when he’s not feeling well, and he’s won the company’s end-of-year driver of the year award five times during his career. I admire my dad’s professionalism, as he has never had a major accident, and always follows safety rules when the elderly are on board.
He is also very humble, waking up at the crack of dawn to run the first train of the day, and he always says that it’s nothing to him, that there are many people who go to work at that early hour. Watching him, I realized that the most professional and beautiful thing is when you take pride in what you do and do it with integrity. I also learned from him how important it is to respect and care for people and always stick to your principles in social life.
My parents are both working, so I learned responsibility from a young age by taking care of my younger siblings and doing chores around the house. When my parents weren’t around, I took care of my brother with the idea that I was the head of the household, so I grew up being told that I was mature and matured compared to my peers,
In middle school, which was an all-boys school, I was the beautification chairman in my class, taking care of the posters and helping the teacher keep the classroom tidy. I volunteered for the job because other students were bothering me, and I did it as a service to the class, but I did so well in my freshman year that my friends nominated me for my sophomore and junior years, and I fulfilled my responsibilities all three years.
Practicing the sincerity and caring I learned from my father at every important moment in my life has helped me grow into a conscientious young man who is always considerate of others.
Realizing the value of inclusiveness and caring through my younger brother
Growing up, I was the older brother who racked up grades with a slight sense of superiority over my younger brother, who was relatively uninterested in academics. Unlike me, who was born with average grades, he was popular among his peers from an early age due to his likable face, tall stature, and energetic personality. The only thing he couldn’t focus on was studying, so I felt like I had to make up for the overwhelming gap in grades in order to preserve his dignity, and instead of playing with my friends, I would spend my time solving problem books and studying for exams in order to secure my own grades. I also had a slight arrogance that even if my brother had a more socially acceptable specification, I would still be the winner in life because I had achieved so much more intellectually. This was a time when my inferiority complex towards my brother led me into a false sense of entitlement.
Turning my back on sports and active friendships that my brother excelled at, and focusing solely on accumulating grades that would validate my existence, I may have gotten higher test scores than before, but I had lost a lot of the joy in life. As a result of neglecting my friends and relationships, and rejecting everyone else’s favorite TV shows, entertainment, and internet topics as “unintellectual,” I found myself in a self-righteous bubble that I couldn’t share with anyone else. Once I realized that what I thought was the perfect answer, with all my knowledge and energy, might not be the perfect answer for someone else, and that a harmonious answer that satisfies everyone comes from a broader, inclusive idea that cares about everyone, not just the pursuit of practicality, I worked to open myself up and erase the prejudice that made me think that hanging out with everyone was just silly.
My father, a steady hand
Growing up, my father, with his unwavering steadfastness in dealing with people and organizing his life, was like an elm tree, always standing firmly rooted. Growing up in the countryside, working with his bare hands, doing menial labor and all sorts of odd jobs, and striving for the goal of one day creating a restaurant that would “stay in the same place year after year and be open to everyone,” his passion always kept him on a straight path, doing whatever it took to reach his goal. His determination was so great that he was able to convince his mother, who dreamed of marrying and living in luxury in a nice house, to become his partner in the future. The amount of effort he put into gathering the momentum to make a single, swift charge toward his goal, without being frivolous or greedy, was beyond imagination.
It wasn’t just about having the right flavors or items to jump on the bandwagon, it was about developing recipes that he truly loved and that were packed with nutrition and flavor to keep people full. From a young age before I can remember, my father was all-in on preparing to open a restaurant, and once he had enough money, he didn’t look at land or industry until he was sure he had enough money, and he was focused on building a restaurant that would leave a huge mark on his life, not just as a means to make money or a business, but as the pride of his life. Prudence, running in a straight line in preparing for what he wanted to accomplish, but never making a final judgment call in a frenzy. His philosophy that the choice of soil and the variety of trees needed to be carefully selected in order to grow a long-lasting tree was proven by his restaurant, which is still going strong more than 20 years later.
Growing up as a people person
I’ve always loved people, young and old, and I think it’s the warmth of people that has always been the most important thing to me. When I was born, I was said to be very handsy and liked to hang out with and hug everyone. My father started working at the city office, which is now a community center. Being a public servant was not a popular job in those days, but he was very satisfied with his job. It wasn’t a particularly high-paying or popular job, but he was more satisfied with being able to help others. The day-to-day life my dad describes isn’t that unique, but it’s typical. Younger people don’t bother him as much because they know how to fill out all the necessary forms or forms or know what they need to do, but he always says that it’s the older people who don’t know how to read or don’t know what to do, so when he helps them, he feels like he’s had a very rewarding day. My mother is also a government employee, but she doesn’t work in general office work like my father, she works in a specialized job. But I think I have a lot of my father’s traits, and while it’s important to do things professionally, treating people as people is more appealing to me.
A supportive older sister, 5-year-old Tull
My parents were always busy with work, and as a kid, I used to feel a little sad. When it was raining or snowing, I would often walk home in the rain while my mother would wait with an umbrella for me and we would walk home together. But I never resented my parents, because they helped me grow up to be a person who was responsible for my own future and took responsibility for the things I did. I didn’t want to be a burden on my parents, who were working outside the home, so I did the best I could with what I was given. My older sister, who was five years my junior, was the object of my envy: she was a good student and an excellent athlete, and she took care of me a lot in place of my busy parents. She was also the one who encouraged me to be grateful to my parents and to work hard and do my own thing. I believe that having a good-natured competition with my sister, who was always recognized, helped me to improve. As a result, we became famous sisters, to the point where the word “sister” is used in many places. Even when I was in the midst of thinking about my future, she helped me a lot. When I was a junior in high school, I was thinking about where to go to college, and she was already a senior in college, so she gave me practical advice based on her own experience. She knew more about what I was interested in than anyone else, and with her help, I was able to build a more solid future for myself. To this day, my sister and I are each other’s biggest supporters. I believe that with each other’s help, we have been able to enjoy life confidently and live successfully.
Aesthetics from my mother and creative thinking from my father
My mother has a great sense of aesthetics, and our home has never been the envy of any magazine. I’ve always admired her ability to take a curtain that seemed to have gone out of style and never recovered and turn it into something that decorates the house. She didn’t teach herself to design, but she had a knack for it, and I’ve been told that I was born with an eye for design. My parents sent me to art school because I loved to draw from a young age, and I was told that I was born with an eye for design. While studying art, I became more interested in industrial art rather than fine art. I got this idea after following my mother to numerous art exhibitions and experiencing the excitement of the Great Exhibition of Industrial Art. After that, I knew that product design was the way to go, and I learned computer design. My mother was very helpful in encouraging me to pursue my dream of product design.
My father is an inventor, and he takes pride in his inventions, even owning patented technologies. He has a very creative mind, always thinking about how to make life easier. Despite his advanced age, I’m often surprised to hear him think out of the blue. He always puts convenience at the forefront of his inventions. I think it’s because of his influence that I prioritize practicality and convenience in my designs. I think my parents have a lot of genetic help in designing convenient and practical products with an aesthetic sense, and I think that if you actively utilize these abilities, the best product designs will be born.
Growing up with passionate parents
My parents are both over sixty now, but they are still studying at Citizen’s University. My mother is completing her education at a nursery school to become a storytelling grandmother, and my father is studying to become a nursing caregiver, and he is also taking courses at the Entrepreneurship Promotion Center because he is planning to start a business. I don’t think there are many people who are studying like this at my parents’ age, and they were even more passionate when I was younger, so they were passionate people who went out to work in the morning and came back at night to study and study again. My father was in sales, and he was so passionate that he was the number one salesman in the city where I lived, and my mother was the same way, so growing up with them, I grew up passionate as well. I was the kind of kid who did two or three things when others did one thing, and if I liked something, I had to go and see it and experience it. I was fascinated by design from a photo book of foreign designers that I saw in middle school, so I studied art and went to design school, and I chose to major in web design, and I’ve been doing related things ever since. I’ve been freelancing for a very long time and gained experience in various places.
Learning from my father about hard work and integrity
My father owns a factory. It produces auto parts, which are now recognized as the main parts of cars and are exported to many countries. However, his factory was very poor in the beginning, and he once went bankrupt. It was very difficult for our whole family, and my father had a very hard time because he was in debt, but we stood together as a family, and it became a springboard for him to stand up, and he eventually succeeded in making a comeback. My father’s belief is that you should never lose faith in people. Because, while his business failures came from his faith in people, his successes also came from his faith in other people. He went into debt with a personal guarantee from a friend who was a business partner, but it was his faith in his employees, who continued to trust and invest in him, that brought the company back to life by creating parts that met new requirements and were recognized for patents.
And another of my father’s tenets is his integrity to always do his best. He was always up at the crack of dawn to go to the factory, and he would stay late at night to work in the factory, and he would meet with buyers from other companies and work tirelessly to make contracts, even though he would now leave it to his employees, and he still comes to work early, personally attends to their needs, and carefully encourages his employees. Growing up with my father and seeing his beliefs firsthand, I have become a person who is still driven by faith in others and integrity.
I learned to value integrity and diligence as the highest values
My parents’ values of integrity and diligence have been a huge influence in shaping me into a person who lives a well-planned life with integrity. My father, a business owner, has never lost his focus, even as he leads a team of over a hundred employees. He would always start his day at 5 a.m. and wouldn’t let go of his book until 6 a.m. Watching him work, I couldn’t be lazy. I admired his self-discipline and willingness to learn, and I knew I wanted to be a great person like him. My father, a self-made man who lost his grandparents early in life, worked hard because he didn’t want to pass on poverty to his children. But while he made sure our family had plenty to live on, he didn’t want us to be wasteful. My father was frugal with his money, saving it for things for himself, but supporting things for his family, and I believe I have a rich life because of him. My father was also careful to take care of those around him. He regularly donates to rehabilitation centers, and he used to say that when he thinks about his own struggles, he can’t pass up a neighbor who is struggling. He encourages me to be happy in my life, saying, “I’m happy today because I’ve lived a life of diligence and doing the best I can.” Indeed, my dad is a man who always lives in a state of gratitude. He is grateful for the passage of the day, grateful for the good weather, and he has influenced me to be a positive person with a grateful heart every day. I have grown into a positive person with a positive attitude who doesn’t look past the difficulties around me to take advantage of the small happiness in life.
Always improving
I believe that a person who is always improving is someone who finds their own deficiencies and works to fill them before someone else tells them to do so, and I believe that such a person is someone who is constantly improving themselves. I have watched a person like that from the sidelines, and I was able to acquire that quality, and that person is my father. He owns a small parts factory. When I was growing up, he made his money as a subcontractor, producing machine parts that were ordered by large companies who handed him drawings, but as the number of subcontractors grew, it became more and more common for them to be unable to deliver without bribes or connections. My father realized that it would be very difficult to run a factory in the future, so he decided that he needed to make things that could be produced in-house. He didn’t have enough education, so when I was in elementary school, he didn’t want to be late, so he completed his education through high school with a GED. He got a job as a production worker in a large company, and he learned to run the factory at night or on weekends. Later, he drew and produced the designs he thought of himself, and now he runs the factory with various certifications and patents. My mother always says that I was influenced by my father. She says that my father couldn’t pay attention to what I was doing because he was always focused on his work, but I also pay attention to what I want to do once I am focused on it to the point that I don’t even notice if there is a war going on next to me. Also, when I was young, I used to dream of making cars and robots by looking at the designs my father would draw, and now I am trying to inherit his abilities and become the best service engineer.
An inconspicuous child meets a gift and discovers the weapon of a smile
As a child, I was an inconspicuous child. I didn’t stand out for being good at school or being good at the arts, I was just okay at whatever I did. I was average at everything I did. Just the right age kid who wasn’t trying to stand out by being silly or acting silly, but wasn’t overly mature either. My parents cherished, loved, and praised me for everything I did, but I knew early on that there wasn’t much I could do to earn a prize for myself, other than an attendance award. It wasn’t that I didn’t try, but after a few times of feeling like no matter how much effort I put into a homework assignment or piece of artwork, it was always just a matter of trying to stay in the middle, neither too far down nor too far up.
What changed my life was a gifted teacher in elementary school who told me, “You have a beautiful smile!” when I thought I had no personality or abilities that made me different from anyone else, and that I was just going to go through the motions of life, spinning a boring wheel. I was still just an extremely average looking kid, but because of her praising my smile every time she saw it, my life started to change little by little. I started to look up and down to see if my smile was really as pretty as she said it was, and to try to make it a little bit prettier, and that smile really started to become a weapon to get people to like me. To this day, I don’t know if my smile really looked pretty to my teacher, or if it was just a trick she used to cheer me up when I wasn’t feeling confident, but her compliment remains a happy memory that always makes me smile.
Growing up with a laissez-faire approach to education
My father raised me with a laissez-faire approach, which when you first hear it, you might think is very irresponsible. Of course, my mother was always against it, but she was less powerful than my father, so she couldn’t stop him. My father encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do, even stealing. The first thing I ever stole was a robot from a stationery store when I was in fifth grade. Here’s how it started: I asked my dad to buy me a robot, but he wouldn’t buy me one because he had a lot of robots at home. I remembered how my friends would borrow erasers and never give them back, and I figured I could borrow one from the owner. So I walked up to the owner of the stationery store and asked to borrow the robot, saying that I would play with it, and he sent me away, saying that this was not a lending item. But I wanted it so badly that I secretly put the robot in my pocket, and when I came to my father, I brought it out. When my father saw it, he asked me how I got it. I told him that I borrowed it from my uncle. He didn’t believe me, and he told me to borrow another robot. I went back and got another robot, again without my uncle’s knowledge, and put it in my pocket. When my father saw it, he told me that he was now going to return it to the owner. I was surprised and said no, and he asked me why not. When I hesitated, he asked me why I had lied to him. But I insisted that I hadn’t lied. Then he dragged me away and tried to take me to the owner. I was crying and screaming and struggling. He grabbed me again and asked me if I had stolen the goods. I said yes, and he asked me why I was crying, and I said I was afraid the owner would find out. He asked me if I could go home, and I said yes, and he did. But that’s when the trouble started. From that day on, I didn’t want to go to the stationery store, and I didn’t see the owner, and I didn’t see him, and I went to him with the robot and begged him to forgive me. Fortunately, he forgave me, and I never stole again. Later, my father told me that he had paid the owner for the goods and told him about my situation in order to prevent me from stealing again. Since then, I have always believed in taking responsibility for my actions and have always tried to make the right decisions.
Learning the power of positivity from a father who never let go of hope
When I was in sixth grade, my father, a proofreader, was suddenly hospitalized after suffering a stroke. He was hospitalized in such a critical condition that he had to go into surgery right away and was not allowed to see his family for a while. I still remember the look on his face when I was finally allowed to see him. His face was puffy and swollen, and he had to be hung upside down to keep the blood flowing. Seeing him like that, my mother, sister, and I despaired, but he never let go of hope.
The doctors gave up, but he didn’t give up. He tried to eat as much as he could, and he kept a smile on his face for us through it all. He worked harder than anyone else through the painful rehabilitation, and sometimes it was so painful that I suggested that he take a day off from rehabilitation. He said, “I wouldn’t want to do that to my daughter,” and started again. Today, he still has a slight left-sided wobble, but he’s fully recovered and is able to function like a normal person. I learned the power of positivity and the power of will from that scene, and based on that, I tried to become a positive and determined person myself. I entered Kyung Hee University without studying or going to a cram school, and I received scholarships consistently. There were many difficult tasks and many physically demanding tasks, but I thought about my father’s will and did it to the end. As a result, I was able to graduate from school with good grades.
Growing up with a dog and learning the love connection
We’ve always had a puppy in the house since I was a kid, and I still remember the day I brought my first puppy home. I met the cutest little puppy at a friend’s house in the neighborhood, and ever since then, I’ve come home and talked about puppies. I also vaguely remember writing a long letter to Santa Claus for Christmas, asking for a puppy to live with me. Santa didn’t grant my wish that winter, but instead, my parents allowed me to adopt a puppy. Before they brought the puppy home, my parents asked me to make a few promises. They told me that a puppy is weaker than a person, so we should take good care of it, and that it has a shorter life span than a person, so we should take responsibility for it and take care of it until the moment when its fate is different. I actually remember crying my eyes out when I heard that. I thought I was going to have a cute little brother, and I couldn’t believe he was going to die before me. My parents told me that if I could accept and be responsible for both of those things, then I could bring the puppy home and keep it. My brother and I thought about this all day, and then we realized that since there are still two of us, we can take turns taking care of the puppy, and that if he goes to heaven first, of course we will be sad, but if we love him as much as we can, it will be okay. The puppy that came into our home and became part of our family grew up well with us and went to heaven, and now the puppy that she gave birth to has grown up and is with us. Raising a puppy taught me how hard it is to be responsible for a life, but it also taught me the joy and love of the process. Perhaps this is what my parents wanted to teach us.
Growing up with an intellectual curiosity
My parents decided to go back to farming for my brother, who suffers from atopy, and my own nagging illnesses influenced their decision. I had just entered elementary school and was having fun in school, and while I was sad to be separated from my new friends, I was also excited to leave Seoul and live in a new area. After five years of homesteading, my brother was able to regain his clear skin. My dad, who was obese due to his sedentary job, has been able to reduce his belly fat by working on the farm.
Living in the countryside not only helped me find health, but it also inspired me to become interested in the environment. My parents, who became interested in organic farming after they returned to the farm, would go to the mountains to collect herbs whenever they had time, and I was able to see and learn about many interesting plants and animals along the way. We didn’t have a TV or computer at home, so I had to rely on books for all my knowledge, and my parents would buy me any book I wanted. When they started farming, they also bought a lot of agricultural books, and we quickly became a family of learners. We would sit together and my father and mother would do research on agriculture, and I would devour many books on the humanities, social sciences, and nature. It was a very happy time, and I still get excited when I think of us sitting in the warm sunshine studying together.
Reading books taught me how to learn on my own, and I developed an inquisitive mind. By studying on my own, I was able to learn what worked for me through trial and error, and the repetition of making a plan and sticking to it encouraged me to explore to gain deeper knowledge. Initially, I was more interested in psychology. As I gained a better understanding of psychological research methods, I became intrigued by statistical techniques, which led me to pursue a master’s and doctoral degree in statistics.
Overcoming a negative mindset with tenacity
Compared to my peers, I was a student who often looked at the negative possibilities. The recession that hit my father’s business was enough to shake me out of my youthful prejudice that life was always happy and rosy. Up until that point, I had always been a naturally optimistic person, but once I realized that my life could have its own dark clouds, I was plagued by anxiety that a newsworthy accident could happen to me at any moment, just like the person in the old Korean phrase “kiwoo.
As a believer in such disturbing possibilities, I’m grateful to this day for the advice of friends who analyzed the odds of a person having an accident and tried to reassure me by saying things like, “The odds of you having that accident are the same as the odds of you winning the lottery.” Also, their encouragement to not just sit back and wait for misfortune to strike, but to think about fighting it, helped me realize that if great fortune is rare, so is great misfortune, and I’ve taken practical steps to ensure that I’m well prepared when it does strike, such as insurance, savings, and exercise to build a stronger physical foundation. This shift in my thinking helped me to build my foundation as a strong young person who is prepared to face any misfortune that comes my way.
Living in the U.S. for a year, I learned to be extraordinarily adaptable
As a child, I lived in the United States for about a year due to my parents’ circumstances. Their attempts to settle in the U.S. with the help of relatives didn’t work out and they had to return to Korea. My family has different memories of that year. For my parents, it was a time of hardship as they had to adapt to a new environment and earn money for us; for my younger sister, it was lonely as she was separated from her friends and had to spend a year in a strange place; but for me, it was a land of new opportunities where I was able to enjoy a variety of experiences thanks to my extraordinary adaptability.
For me, it was only a year, and any longer than that and it might have become a somewhat difficult memory, overwhelmed by a sense of foreignness and resistance that a child can’t bear, but I was always excited to step into a foreign land that I had only seen on TV and in movies, and I took a positive attitude, even when faced with the attitudes and unfamiliar stares of my fellow schoolmates. Maybe it was my youth that gave me the courage to be so bold, because I could only have had the energy to stutter my way through the rudimentary English I had learned in Korea, and to keep going with a serious attitude, even when people didn’t want to deal with me. I was the only one in my family to come back with improved English skills, and while my parents were starting over in Korea, that year’s experience never left my mind, and I gradually gravitated towards study abroad and language-related endeavors. While I may not be as ambitious as I was as a child, I’ve still worked hard to hone my passion for taking on new worlds, and the result is a working adult who has studied abroad and returned home to a world that’s vastly different from that brief childhood visit, ready to knock on your door and start over.
A personality that dug into shortcomings, overcome by a homeroom teacher
As a child, I was a pessimistic child who saw only the shadows in the world. Because I didn’t have many friends due to my poor family situation, my parents’ feuding and moving from place to place, I got into the habit of assuming the worst. It was depressing to think that other people had friends and decent parents and I didn’t, so I would make up theories to myself, such as “there’s no real love in the world, no one really likes anyone, and everyone is just pretending.” Even the kids who are laughing and talking at school are actually gossiping about each other when they go home, and because it’s a hyper-competitive society, everyone is trying to step on each other’s toes.
Because of my tendency to look for the flaws, it was my homeroom teacher at the time who helped me to develop proper character. When I could only come up with the most negative analysis of a situation, he would assign me “reverse thinking” assignments to get my head in the right place. She was also the one who nudged me towards positive thinking by playing a game where if I made a negative comment like “The cup is only half full of water, it’s going to dry up!”, she would counter with a rebuttal like “The cup is half full of water, it’s still possible to drink from it.” At first, I thought her ideas were rosy and childish, but as I stayed with her after school every day and repeated the game, I started to think, “If there’s someone who cares about me like this, maybe the world is a more positive place than I thought.” Slowly, that shift in my thinking began to take place, and the positive doors that she opened for me became a crucial stepping stone to a better life.
Inheriting my foodie tendencies
Growing up with a gourmet father and a mother who had an innate sense of touch and a keen sense of taste, I was able to train my palate in an environment where taste was a natural part of everyday life. With a mother who went out of her way to source the highest quality ingredients possible, who spent a significant portion of our household finances on food, and whose kitchen was equipped with utensils that would rival those of any fine-dining restaurant, I grew up with a tongue that was keener than most children’s, and one that was naturally trained to discern the flavors of food from a young age, to the point where I could identify the subtleties of ingredients in my food and even gauge their condition.
My parents wanted me to be able to extract the essence of ingredients from their subtle flavors, rather than preferring sharp or strong flavors, and I was able to sensitize my senses from an early age by being exposed to meals where my parents tried to set my palate on the right path by maximizing the flavors of each ingredient, rather than the instant or processed foods that most kids my age preferred. As a result, I remember struggling with many flavors that my friends would tell me were delicious or that I liked, even when I went out to eat my favorite foods, because they were too strong for my heightened senses. My family was too poor to go out to eat, so I was vulnerable to the strong flavors of the food I ate outside of the home. With my parents living a slightly different life than other adults, especially in the kitchen and eating, I realized that I would have to lead a somewhat distant eating lifestyle from my friends, and I gradually worked on that.
