NTU Singapore: Personal essay (choose one topic, 300 words)

Maximum 300 words; choose 1 of 3 topics; appears on some application forms (e.g. NUS High School Diploma)

Section B, Personal Essay (some application forms): Please choose an essay topic (choose only 1 option). There is no standard writing style nor a right or wrong answer. (a) Share an event or incident you have encountered personally and why and/or how it has affected you or is especially meaningful to you. (b) Describe a person who has had an influence on you, and share with us why and/or how the person has influenced you. (c) Why are you interested in the degree programme(s) that you have chosen on your application?

What it’s really asking

This optional personal essay, built into some NTU forms, lets you choose one of three set topics. Whichever you pick, NTU wants a short, sincere, specific piece. For most applicants the strongest choice is topic (c), because it lets you make a direct, relevant case for the programme you want.

Why they ask it

Even where this essay is offered, it sits beside a grades-led decision, so it is a tie-breaker and a chance to show focus. Topic (c) in particular rewards the same thing the rest of NTU rewards: clear, evidenced reasons for wanting this specific course. Topics (a) and (b) can work, but only if you keep them tied to who you are as a future student of that subject.

Three ways in

Make topic (c) earn its place

If you pick topic (c), open with the specific thing about the field that pulls you, then prove it with something you have actually done.

Keep (a) and (b) on-direction

If you pick the event or person topics, choose one that genuinely shaped your academic direction, not just an emotional memory.

One idea, well made

Keep it concrete and under 300 words. One clear, evidenced idea beats three vague ones competing for the same small space.

✕ Weak opening

“There are many reasons why I am interested in studying business, and I believe NTU is the perfect place for me to pursue my dreams.”

✓ Strong opening

“I started reselling sneakers at fifteen, and the spreadsheet I built to track margins taught me more about business than any class had.”

✦ Annotated example · Personal essay (topic a): an incident that shaped me. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

The power cut on the night before my grandmother's recipe was due. I had promised our neighbourhood heritage fair a written record of her achar, the spiced fruit pickle she had made for forty years and never measured once. I had one evening to capture it, and the kitchen went dark.¹We lit candles. With no laptop, I did the only thing left: I watched her hands. She did not weigh the salt; she read it by how the brine clung to a spoon. She judged the chillies by smell, adding more when the air did not sting enough. For the first time I was recording a person, not a procedure.²I scribbled by candlelight in fractions that meant nothing, two candle-lengths of stirring, salt until the spoon drags. The next morning I retyped it into proper measurements and felt, oddly, that I had lost something in the translation. The exact grams were correct and somehow emptier than my dark-kitchen notes.³That night changed how I pay attention. I had assumed knowledge worth keeping was the kind you could write down cleanly. My grandmother's hands taught me that some understanding lives in judgment built over decades, and that capturing it honestly means recording the judgment, not just the result.⁴I asked her, later, how she had learned it. She shrugged and said she had watched her own mother the same way, in a kitchen with worse light than ours. The recipe, it turned out, had never lived on paper at all. It lived in a chain of people paying close attention to each other, and I had nearly let it end with a software file.⁵I keep both versions of the recipe now. The clean one feeds anyone who asks. The candlelit one reminds me that observation is its own discipline, that the most important variable is often the one nobody thought to measure. I have started watching my chemistry experiments the same way, noting what I see before what I expect.⁶

1Chooses topic (a) and opens mid-incident with stakes and a deadline. A small, sensory, personal scene immediately signals an authentic voice over a generic life-lesson essay.
2Turns an inconvenience into a genuine shift in perception. Showing rather than explaining the realisation keeps the essay vivid and avoids the cliche of stating the lesson too early.
3Names a real tension (precision versus lived knowledge) that reveals how the writer thinks. NTU's readers reward genuine reflection, and this is reflection earned through the incident rather than imposed on it.
4States the affect the prompt asks for, why and how the incident matters, but only after the scene has done the work to make it believable. The insight feels discovered, not decorative.
5Adds a generational dimension that deepens meaning and raises the personal stakes. This extra beat earns the essay's emotional weight honestly and keeps the applicant's voice central.
6Extends the lesson outward to academic life, showing transfer of insight without overclaiming. The two-versions image gives the essay a clean, memorable structure that lands near the 300-word target.

Stuck? Start here

Which of the three topics lets me say the most about who I am as a future student of this subject?
What is the single most specific, true detail I can open with?
How does my chosen topic connect back to the exact programme I have applied for?

Before you submit

I chose only one topic and answered it directly.
The essay opens with a concrete, true detail rather than a generic statement of passion.
Everything ties back to my chosen programme and stays under 300 words.

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