Our daughter Jasmine sent a ton of applications to med schools and is now busy sending off secondaries. Most of them want a portrait either with the application or the secondary (essay to follow up application).
She tried taking selfies but discovered it doesn't work well with her T2i, arms aren't long enough and hard to compose the shot. So she asked me. I am generally poor at portraits except when I get a good shot and then get inspired in PP. But, she put on a pin stripped jacket for that serious/business like look and posed kneeling in the middle of a bed with an off white wall behind her (only blank wall in house not cluttered with stuff hanging on it). Lighting was an incandescent high on the ceiling to her left front plus daylight from a window to her right front at eye level. I used my 6D with a Canon 100mm macro f/2.8 hand held.
She started with her hair in a businesslike (her words) tie back style, I then got her to let it down and comb it out. (Dad I just took a shower and shampooed. I can't do a thing with it. I said the frizzies could be removed in PP.) Got 5 with her hair up (two don't really count she was mugging) and at best a little Mona Lisa smile. (She either looks very serious or grins like a clown when asked to smile. She does have a very real sweet smile but I don't have the reflexes to get it when it flashes by at warp 9. I should have used burst while getting her to smile.) Then 4 with her hair down with various "smiles". Oh, she also kept her glasses on because she wears them all the time and that is "Her", and yes I did get her to move them up a little-usually she has them riding even lower on her nose. She downloaded the 9 shots and gave me back my SD card. She picked #1, I have no idea what she did with it, my version here has been cropped to 8x10 ratio only.
I would have used #2 or #3.
#2 Minimal smile - PP in LR and PS, changed background color from off white, cropped to 8x10 ratio then softened with clarity slider.
#3 Her big smile - PP same as #2.
I did remove the frizzies with clone and spot healing, but I am not very good at it.
#4 is with frizzies etc before I made a stab at cleaning it up.

Only for my learning experience, suggestions? She already sent it off as an attachment to ??? secondaries.

Mentally abusive natural father whose favorite way to hurt her was "You are ugly and stupid." At age 9 she refused to visit or even be around him. I have been Daddy since she was 4, but by that time her self image was damaged.
Intellectually she knows she is good looking and smart but somewhere inside there are doubts that sometimes come out.
She knows her mother is good looking and when I show her pictures of her mother at her age she says "Mom was beautiful.". When we put her pictures next to her Mom's pictures and point out that they look enough alike to be sisters or even twins she has trouble seeing it. Most of our family friends referred to her as "Little Debra" or "Mini-Debbie".