How to Write a Self-Evaluation for Class or Work

What is a Self-Evaluation?

A self-evaluation is your opportunity to reflect on your strengths, weaknesses, and success. The content may take on different structures depending on the context of your self-evaluation—day-to-day work, management skills, teamwork skills, as a student, as a teacher, etc.—but the content will always cover these areas, at minimum.

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Planning for a Self-Evaluation

Unless a self-evaluation exercise is sprung on you like a pop quiz, you’re likely to have plenty of runway on which to gather your thoughts and narrow down what you’ll include in the final evaluation. Taken one step at a time, this isn’t as overwhelming as it may seem:

• List your successes. No success is too small—at least not at this part of the exercise. Stretch beyond listing out mere requirements that you can check off and think of the moments when you went above and beyond.
• List your growth opportunities. Don’t frame anything as a “weakness” or “failure”—this isn’t just a semantic issue; this is a matter of potential. Not only will this approach show self-awareness and honesty, but it also highlights your problem-solving and planning skills.
• Gather proof of your successes and plans for achieving growth. Once you have your lists of successes and growth opportunities, find data points for each item.
• Trim your lists. Narrow your focus to your biggest successes and actionable growth and improvement goals. Your data points should illuminate which list items are most valuable to include in your self-evaluation.

Writing Your Self-Evaluation

Depending on the context (mid-year or end-of-year reviews, a freshman-level class, or a senior-level seminar, etc.), you’ll likely be provided a rubric for your self-evaluation. Instruction provided or not, there’s sure to be a point during the self-evaluation in which you can add additional information. This is where you can deploy the strengths and growth opportunities you collected during planning.

• Choose and follow a structure. Is it better to transcribe the lists you created or create a “Stop, start, continue” outline? Whatever you decide, stay consistent throughout your writing.
• Be specific. It’s not enough to say you accomplished something. What did you do to accomplish that something? What were the results—and how are they exceptional? When sharing growth opportunities, outline how you plan to accomplish that growth rather than merely saying that you intend to do or learn something.
• Tie everything back to a goal. What’s a success for you may not be a success in the context of your work. Taking good notes might be a win for you if you’d struggled in the past but the self-evaluation requester won’t find this relevant. All successes and improvement opportunities should connect to a business goal in a professional evaluation or a learning outcome in an educational evaluation.

Self-evaluations are the perfect time to let the evaluation requester know about your biggest achievements. There’s no guarantee they noticed everything about your work; the onus is now on you to ensure you help them gain a clear picture of your contributions.