The personal statement is a difficult piece of writing, maybe the most difficult piece of writing you will ever do, and therefore you have to do it very carefully. It is an opportunity for you to give a picture of yourself. It may take a great deal of time and energy but at least you will have written something you are proud of, which says something important about you. So I would suggest first of all: write it for yourself as much as for graduate schools in America; do a job that you like, something that has integrity, which says something important about you. If things don’t turn out the way you hope, at least you will have written something difficult but satisfying.
Importance - How important is the personal statement? This depends on your marks to a certain extent. If your marks are very high, then it may not be as important as it is for someone whose marks are not so good. Nevertheless it is important. A person with high marks can spoil his/her chances of admission with a bad essay. At highly competitive schools, where most applicants score at the 97th percentile level on standardized tests, a winning personal statement may be the deciding factor in admission.
What Are Universities Looking For? - First of all don’t second guess. Don’t try to figure out what you think they want and supply it because you won’t be able to do that. Nor can you understand the mind of a 50 year old American who is living 10,000 miles away from you and may have woken up that morning with a headache and then was bitten by a dog on his way to the office. There is no way you can second guess, you cannot read their minds. Having said that, I can tell you some things which all college admissions officers want to see in the application:
• A Picture of Your Overall Personality -
How will you give a picture of your personality? I would suggest that you imply rather than state the facts. For instance, don’t say ‘I am a smart person.’ Demonstrate it, imply it. Don’t say ‘I am energetic.’ Give evidence by the fact that you worked after school for six hours every day and still had time to play on the volleyball team.
• Academic Background and Work Experience - It would be a mistake to talk about your high school. Start with your undergraduate career. School records may be worth mentioning if there is something extraordinary about them.
• Continuity - Admissions officers are looking for some continuity in what you have done, what you want to do in the near future and what you hope to do in the distant future. So, connect them.
• Commitment and Motivation - Rather than simply saying ‘I am committed’, find a way of inferring that you are indeed highly committed and motivated to your proposed field of study.
• Communication Skills - They will be looking at your writing skills - how well you can present yourself clearly and intelligently when writing, hence the importance of spending considerable time on the statement.
These five points are very general but almost every university wants to know about them. They may be too general but if you miss one of them you are probably missing something important.
General Do's and Don'ts
Do's
• Do take a lot of time writing your personal statement. - Don’t do this at the last minute. Plan to spend a month or so preparing for the essay. Plan to let it rest for a week, so you have time to mull it over and get a perspective on it. Don’t be hasty and sloppy.
• Do read the question carefully. - If they ask you why you want to go to law school, answer that. If they ask what your career goals are, answer that question. Don’t go off on a tangent or get too verbose.
• Do write the length of personal statement they ask for.
If they ask for 200 words give them that or 190 or 220. You don’t give them a 1000 and you don’t give them 50.
• Type your final draft unless they tell you not to. - Type it well with no mistakes. Buy some good paper. If you’re writing it, see that it is clear and legible.
• Do write a separate personal statement for each university. - There is no reason why you can’t take a paragraph from one essay and apply it to another. Your essays don’t have to be every word different but each university would like to think that you are especially interested in their program. Each university is different. Make something about your essay distinctive to that university and mention its name. Don’t write an all-purpose general essay. Admissions faculties don’t like that.
• Do as much research on the university as you can. - If you can get hold of a catalogue, read it. If you can find someone who went to the university, talk to them. Find out as much as you can about the university. You don’t want to say ‘I have always wanted to go to Harvard because I wanted to find out about the Great American West’. As most of you know, Harvard is not in the Great American West. It is in Massachusetts.
• Accentuate your positive qualities. - If you had the highest mark in class, make sure that they know it. Make sure that they know that you were able to hold a full-time job while going to school. Make sure that they know that you won any awards. Make sure that they know that you were captain of a team.
• Mention your positive achievements as they apply to your graduate admission. -
The information you provide in your personal statement about your important achievements must be related to your field. If you are applying for medicine and you have won a poetry prize, don’t mention your poetry prize because you may not have space. It is a good thing, but you may need to fill your application with more relevant information. On the other hand, you could mention your work as organizer of blood donation camps or your internships as a psychiatric care worker.
• Do mention your work experience, or volunteer work that you may have done or extra-curricular activities if they relate to your field. - For example, if you are going to apply to business school and you were on the basketball team you may think that it is not relevant. However if you learnt leadership qualities, if you learnt how to endure defeat, if you learnt management skills by being captain of the basketball team, then it is relevant. You have to show the relevance. If you had a job after school, working in the college bookstore or you have done volunteer work at a hospital, this is relevant - you have learnt management skills at the shop. You have learnt to interact with people while you worked in the hospital.
• Be definite in your application. - Don’t say - ‘I hope to do this’; ‘I might like to do that’. Say ‘I want to do this’, ‘I am planning to do this’, ‘I intend to do that’. Your language is definite. It is not hesitant and indecisive.
Don'ts
• Don’t try to second-guess admissions faculty, as I have already said, and don’t flatter them. - Don’t say ‘I’ve always wanted to study at the University of Montana because I have heard that it is the best university in the world to study medicine.’ It may not be and even if it is, it sounds like flattery.
• Don’t be phony. -
Be honest. Admissions faculty can spot a dishonest essay a mile away. It would not be to your advantage to be dishonest as you might get into a university and then find it was not the right place for you.
• Don’t glorify yourself. -
Don’t say - ‘I was the best tennis player in the whole city of Madras’. That is boasting. However being modest and subtle are also not good qualities. There is a medium between being modest and boastful.
• Do not repeat materials that are already on the application. -
Don’t say ‘My major is Physics’ because you have already said that somewhere else. Instead say ‘While I majored in Physics I also took ...’ or ‘My Physics major enabled me to take special courses in... and...’. Do mention your knowledge and experience in the field at the university level. It is usually a poor idea to mention your high school experience unless something exceptional happened at that time that changed your life or affected your career choice. Follow these guidelines and your personal statement for graduate school will stand out among all personal statement submitted.
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