Personal Essay Questions (Portland)

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 work processor to check the length before pasting.

The following seven personal essay questions are required for all Portland applicants:

1. Why do you want to attend George Fox University and/or Warner Pacific College? If both, why did you rank them in the order that you did?
2. Students at both George Fox University and Warner Pacific College receive top tier instruction delivered in the context of Christ-centered faith. While George Fox, Warner Pacific, and Act Six do not expect or require any faith commitment from students, all are committed to exploring Christian perspectives on important issues including diversity, leadership, reconciliation and service. What impact does this commitment have on your decision to apply for the Act Six initiative?
3. Reflecting on your own personal experience, describe one example of the challenges you have faced in leadership and one example of the rewards you have gained from leadership.
4. Act Six seeks to identify service-minded leaders who will become agents of transformation on the college campus and in their communities at home. Describe something that you would like to change about your current community. How do you envision using your college education to serve your community and bring about the transformation you hope for?
5. Describe a concrete way that your ethnic and cultural background has shaped your life. Reflecting on that background, what unique perspectives and strengths would you bring to the college campus and how would you hope to grow personally as a part of a multicultural Act Six cadre?
6. Describe any personal hardships or unusual circumstances you’ve had to overcome. How have these experiences shaped you as a person and how can they help you in the future?
7. Is there anything else about yourself that you want to tell us? If your academic record is not as strong as it could be, you should tell us in detail how you intend to improve on your academic performance.