Personal Statements Effectively presenting yourself in graduate school application essays *

Personal Statements
Effectively presenting yourself in
graduate school application essays
*Created by Jared Featherstone,
James Madison University Writing Center
Three types of prompts
• A. Open prompt: In this case, the application asks for a
general personal statement (“Tell us about yourself in
250-300 words”).
• B. Specific question: In this case, the application gives a
specific question (“Why do you want to study at the
University of _________?”)
• C. Set of specific questions: In this case, the application
will list several questions for you to answer in your
statement. The difficulty here is how to organize your
response.
Following a process
• Whether you have been given an open prompt, a single
question, or a set of questions, the writing process will be
similar.
• We will now explore the steps of the process:
preparation, organization, drafting, revising, editing
Essential steps of the process
• 1. Prepare before you begin drafting.
• 2. Develop a plan of organization (this may occur before
and/or after the initial draft).
• 3. Allow time to revise and edit multiple drafts.
• 4. Have other people read your personal statement.
Preparation
• You’ll need to take a few steps before you actually begin
writing. Preparing will greatly enhance the quality of the
essay you write.
• Allow yourself time to prepare before you begin drafting
the essay. Trying to prepare, draft, and revise the night
before the application is due will usually result in an
ineffective application essay.
Preparation: Do your research
• Personal statements should reflect a clear understanding
of the particular graduate program, the audience (the
committee members or senior faculty and their research
interests), and the career path of someone in this field.
Preparation: Finding the info
• All of this information can be found online. Here are
some places to look.
• 1. the department’s web site
• 2. the home pages of the senior faculty or hiring
committee
• 3. any recent publications by faculty.
• 4. For information about the career field, ask professors
at your undergraduate institutions for information and
references.
Preparation: Ask questions; take notes
• It can be very helpful to take some notes before trying to
craft elegant paragraphs. There are a few questions you
might ask yourself. Take notes as you reflect on each of
these.
• 1.What about this program is attractive to me?
• 2. What characteristics, experiences, or skills might
distinguish me from other candidates?
• 3. What are my specific research interests and how do
they fit with this program and faculty?
Preparation (questions continued)
• 4. What work or internship experience of mine relates to
this graduate program?
• 5. How does my undergraduate work relate to this
program?
• 6. Are there any outstanding academic or personal
achievements that might be worth mentioning?
• 7. Are there any great personal or academic challenges
that I have had to overcome?
Preparation (questions continued)
• 8. How does this graduate program connect with my
career goals?
• 9. What are the most compelling reasons that a graduate
program would want me instead of other candidates?
• 10. Can I provide evidence of my motivation to pursue
this field of study?
• 11. Are there any problems on my academic record that
should be explained?
Preparation: general prompts
• For those writing from a general prompt, you might look
back over your responses to the questions provided in
the previous slides.
• Look for connections between the answers. Can you see a
story emerging? Can you discern a unifying theme or
idea? What connections can you draw between your
answers?
Preparation: specific prompts
• In the case of a specific prompt, you will also want to
provide some basic answers to the questions they have
given.
• One strategy for this is to write down each question and
take notes on whatever comes to mind. This will at least
give you some material to work from later.
Organization
• Now that you have rough material to work from, you can
begin to organize your thoughts.
• One common way of organizing:
▫ I. Personal story
▫ II. Connect personal story to career goals and explain
those goals.
▫ III. Connect career goals to education and describe
relevant accomplishments
▫ IV. Show how this graduate program fits into your
goals and why the program is a good fit for you
Organization: the personal story
• A common, effective way to start the statement is with a
brief personal story or scene.
▫ Be sure to choose a RELEVANT story, one that ties
closely with your goals and gives the reader details
that will distinguish your application.
▫ Avoid clichés. This is a sure way to make you sound
like everyone else.
Drafting
• Using the rough or detailed outline you have composed,
write a first draft of the statement.
• Don’t worry about getting every sentence perfect in the
initial draft.
• Read the draft several times to make improvements.
• Reading out loud can be very helpful.
• Allow others to read the draft and offer you feedback.
Revising
• Revision is the process of re-examining the ideas in your
essay.
• In addition to the feedback you’ve gained from other
readers, there are methods for examining your own
work.
Revising: reverse outline
▫ One method is to do a “reverse outline” of your essay.
Using the margin of your document or a separate
paper, write the main idea of each of your paragraphs.
▫ If you have trouble determining the main idea of a
paragraph, the paragraph probably needs to be
refocused.
▫ Once you have done this for the essay, you will be able
to see if you have covered all of the important points
and how much space you have given to each area.
Editing
• Editing involves choosing the best words, rewriting
sentences, adding punctuation, and checking spelling.
• Although other readers can help you identify the need
for changes in your writing, you’ll want to develop your
own ability to find errors and make corrections.
Editing: wordiness
• One problem that can slow an essay down is wordiness.
• Wordy sentences will hurt you by taking up space that should
be used for more relevant material, boring your readers, and
reducing the readability of your writing.
• When looking for words to chop, look for repetition, excessive
adjectives and adverbs, and long noun phrases. Note the
efficiency of the more concise version in red:
▫ As far as scientists are concerned, the new spores should be
smaller in size than the previous spores produced earlier.
▫ Scientists report that the new spores should be smaller than the
previous spores.
Editing strategies
• Conciseness: http://ualr.edu/owl/concisewriting.htm
• How to find and correct common errors:
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/editing.html
Things to avoid in your statement
• 1. Overstatement
• 2. Telling instead of showing
• 3. Becoming enthralled with your own metaphors
• 4. Talking around the questions
Avoid Overstatement
• When you overstate your abilities or hardships, the
readers will get the sense that you are trying very hard to
impress them.
▫ “My debilitating course load of 12 credits gave me
chronic anxiety throughout my junior year.”
▫ “My fall internship allowed me to develop
unprecedented research skills.”
Avoid telling instead of showing
• You may have heard the “show don’t tell” warning if
you’ve taken a creative writing class.
• Whether it is in a narrative portion of your personal
statement or in a paragraph about your academic
successes, you’ll need to give details.
▫ Telling: “I have an impressive record of academic
success at JMU.”
▫ Showing: “I have received a 4.0 average every
semester at JMU, and I have been an active member of
the Phi Kappa Phi honor society.”
Avoid flashy metaphors
• Students often come up with metaphors to describe their
personalities or experiences. The problem occurs when the effort to
convey and maintain this metaphor distracts from the more
important content of the statement. Note the attempt to maintain
this clichéd metaphor:
▫ “As a freshman, I was a lonely caterpillar who did not realize her
potential…When I began to take courses in my major, I felt my wings
begin to emerge…I can foresee cross-pollinating with other scholars in
graduate school.”
• This doesn’t mean that you should ever use metaphors or make an
attempt to be creative. You’ll just want to avoid letting that attempt
take the place of more useful content.
Avoiding talking around the
question
• If the essay prompt gives specific questions, be sure to
answer them directly with clarity and detail.
• For instance, a prompt may ask the applicant to
demonstrate lab experience. Instead of describing a
particularly rigorous lab or memorable learning
experience, the writer repeatedly mentions “extensive
lab experience” without any detail.
Additional Resources
• Purdue OWL’s tutorial on personal statements:
▫ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/642/01/
• University of Central Florida:
▫ http://uwc.ucf.edu/Writing%20Resources/Handouts/
personal_statements.htm
• Indiana University
▫ http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/personal_s
tatement.shtml
• Sample statement, Sweet Brian College:
▫ http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/6_3.htm
JMU Writing Center
• The University Writing Center can also help you at any stage of this
writing process.
▫ http://www.jmu.edu/uwc/
▫ 540-568-1759
• “We help writers help themselves by providing individualized
instruction to students, faculty, and staff during any stage of the
writing process. Located on the fourth floor of Wilson Hall, the
Writing Center actively supports writing across all disciplines. Our
Writing Consultants offer writers help with scholarly and creative
work, business writing, formatting and citation, grammar and
punctuation, research strategies, and ESOL support.”