A brief and comprehensive guide with tips focused on helping you write memorable college admissions essays and personal statements for your undergraduate and graduate school applications.
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A personal statement, also known as a statement of purpose, is a priority tool used by college admissions teams as a part of the college application process. The personal statement is particularly useful as it essentially serves as a self-manifested demonstration of your unique qualifications. The personal statement also provides a glimpse into your writing ability, creativity, and career goals. Admissions committees look to personal statements to gain insight about you and understand your motivations as they relate to school and career choices.
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Getting starting on your graduate school statement of purpose can be stressful and perplexing as the statement of purpose is unlike any other writing assignments you regularly complete. I would even venture to say it’s worlds apart from the personal statement you wrote for undergrad. While a personal statement should intentionally focus on the writer’s personal narrative (i.e. on who you are and how you got there), a graduate school statement of purpose, on the other hand, should emphasize the writer’s academic interests, skills, and career goals. But of course, your grad school statement shouldn’t be devoid of personality either.
Here are four questions to consider before you start writing your graduate school statement of purpose.
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Brainstorming ideas for your college admissions essay can be the most challenging part of the process of writing a personal statement. I recommend that before you start writing you consider a few questions: what do colleges want to know about me? What makes me interesting and more qualified than my peers? How will I contribute to learning and the campus culture once admitted? And how can I answer these questions in 1000 words or less?
Each response to those questions is unique. Nonetheless, you should deliberately plan time to brainstorm ideas for the content of your personal statements. When choosing a topic, it’s important to dig deep and be vulnerable. These elements are key to telling the story you want to convey to admissions officers.
In preparing to write your college admissions essays, here are some questions collected from around the web to get you started with brainstorming topics:
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There are some clichés in personal statements that seem to happen over and over again. While having one or two clichés won’t prevent you from getting into a good college, it is nice to avoid them as don’t add depth to your writing, nor do they particularly work to help your application stand out. There are also a number of common occurrences I’ve seen when reading personal statements that are just annoying and don’t add any value to the application.
To help you out, here’s a short list of clichés and topics/ideas to avoid when writing your personal statement:
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What should I wear to a college interview?
I’m struggling with figuring out what to wear for a college admissions interview I have scheduled for next week. I know that people say not to go too over the top, but my interview is going to be inside at a medical office during the business day. Should I wear a full suit?
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When you’re writing a narrative or telling a story in your personal statement, using sensory details is one of the most effective ways to captivate the reader which makes your essay more likely to stand out. Sensory details help the reader figuratively see, hear, feel, smell, and taste your words.
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The revision process is one of the most critical steps in writing effective personal statements and essays. Still, you make ask WHY EXACTLY is revising my essay important? Three main reasons:
To develop better content
To correct formatting and grammatical errors
To become a better writer over time
So, how should you go about revising your essay. Here are some tips:
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Before you start writing your college admissions essay, it’s important to understand the essay prompt. As simple as it seems, this can be difficult if you can’t figure out exactly what the prompt is asking. Here are some points to consider after reading the prompt and before you begin writing:
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A couple weeks ago, I put together this quick list of resources about writing personal statements and thought it’d be helpful to share on my blog. Enjoy.
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In writing a personal narrative as the primary basis of your college admissions essay or personal statement, your goal should be to construct a coherent story from the facts of a situation or series of events. Ideally, this narrative consists of a beginning, middle, and end.
The beginning of your essay should draw the reader in with an exciting start which introduces the story or narrative you’re telling. Here are some strategies to help you plan the opening:
It’s important to consider grammar, style, and organization when writing your application essays because bad writing is the absolute first thing any admissions committee member notices when reading admissions essays. Most college applicants, however, don’t have issues with the grammar and so it rarely has a major impact on a candidate’s score.
With this in mind, I tell writers to instead focus on the content, clarity, and composition of their college application essays by examining the following questions
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In honor of the start of college admissions season, I’m offering some tips I learned during my time as an admissions application reader and writing consultant tailored to help veterans write college application essays that actually stand out.
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