If you have survived a difficult experience or dealt with a hard issue in your life, write with honesty about how the issue affected you, where you derived the strength to endure it and what you learned and how you grew from the experience. Hard times you may wish to write about could include a parent's alcoholism, the death of a close friend, the loss of a beloved trout stream to pollution or growing up in severe poverty.
Write about a time you had to make a tough decision. Explain the circumstances that led you to have to make the decision. Show why you agonized and the pros and cons of each side, and why you eventually made the decision you made. Touch on the consequences and lessons of that choice.
Tough choices many young people face include whether to confront a friend who cheated on a test, which parent to live with after a divorce and whether to euthanize an aging, ailing pet.
Identify an experience---formal or not---that marked a transition period from one stage of your life to another. A rite of passage could be as small (yet hugely significant) as gifting childhood dolls to a younger sibling or as large and dramatic as killing your first deer or taking a weeklong canoe journey in the wilderness with other teenagers. Show how you came to embark upon this rite of passage, how the experience challenged you and how you changed as a result of it.