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For many people, the good news about graduate, law,
and medical school admissions is that you don’t have
to write an admissions essay.
But the bad news is that you have to write a
personal statement. And writing a personal statement
can be even more intimidating than writing an
admissions essay because the instructions for
writing a personal statement often don’t tell you
what to write about.
Relax. It’s really pretty straightforward.
Your personal statement is your chance to
introduce yourself to the admissions committee. Use
it to tell the committee who you are, why you want
to study at their school, and why they should accept
you as a student.
Sometimes you will be given specific instructions
as to what to include in your personal statement:
Describe
briefly your reasons for wanting to teach. Explain
how your previous education and experience led you
to the decision to pursue a graduate degree in
education. Give details about previous teaching
experience and other work with young people.
Other times, however, the instructions are
completely open-ended:
Provide
evidence in support of your application.
If the application gives clear instructions for
writing the personal statement, by all means follow
them. (That goes for instructions regarding word or
page limits, too.) But even if you are given
specific instructions on what to write about, see
our checklist of questions [link] that an effective
personal statement should answer and make sure that
your statement covers all of those points.
You should also make sure that your personal
statement is, at a minimum, competently written.
Follow the conventions of standard written English.
Present your information and ideas in a logical way
that any reader could easily follow. Proofread your
final draft carefully for misspellings, grammatical
slips, and typos.
You’ll be doing yourself a big favor, however, if
you see to it that statement is not just competent
but also lively, engaging, or even compelling.
A strong personal statement goes beyond giving
the admissions committee information about the
applicant’s background and qualifications. It also
gives an idea of the applicant’s personality,
vision, and life and work goals. Those are often the
pieces of information that convince an admissions
committee that they want a particular applicant as a
student and future colleague.
It’s a cold, hard fact of life that the top
graduate and professional degree programs always
have many more qualified applicants than they have
seats to fill. Decisions about who gets admitted and
who does not are inevitably based on limited
information that is presented in an impersonal
manner. Your best opportunity to influence that
process – by rounding out the body of data that the
admissions committee has available for review, and
by providing a context for that data that is
favorable to you – lies in your personal statement.
Make the most of it!
Click on the links below for more tips on writing
an effective personal statement:
Law School Personal Statements
Medical School Personal Statements
Graduate School Personal Statements
General Tips on Writing Personal Statements
Personal Statement Checklist |
