This is the only way that I can do it.
—Gertrude Stein
I remember writing my first resume. It was a few years before the days of the personal computer, and my typewriter had just one unattractive font but also had a fancy function key that allowed for italic type. So I decided my resume would stand out if I did it in all italic type. Then I reasoned that a particular section would stand out even more if I typed everything in all capital letters and all italic type (thankfully, my typewriter didn’t have boldface). In composing my “Experience” section, I’d had so many part-time menial jobs in high school and college that I couldn’t figure out how to format the section without losing detail, so I naively came up with the self-styled strategy of just making my “Experience” section one long narrative sentence in one bulky paragraph (in all italics, of course), with each job description separated by ellipsis dots.
Obviously, it was pretty pathetic. Here’s a mercifully short excerpt from “Experience,” just as I originally wrote it and in its original form:
worked for a concrete block company moving concrete blocks . . . painted inside/outside of house . . . worked for YMCA at unskilled labor positions . . . worked weekends for the All American Cleaning Company . . . did evening restaurant work. . . various cleaning jobs for private home owners . . .
In writing my resume, I had unwittingly made up my own rules of form and content, ignoring all the tried and true models available, and I told myself that I was just being creative and unique. Thus, I ignored my own ability to be selective and sidestepped practical conventions. For my poor reader, I’m sure that reading my resume involved both abundant confusion and significant eye strain.
Ignoring the practical details of writing—particularly when composing a personal statement or application essay, where the conventions are well-established and the needs of the readers are well-known—just doesn’t make sense. Further, the consequences of not studying and following the practical conventions for writing personal statements are substantial, potentially changing the course of your life.
So use this chapter to answer the common questions many students have about writing personal essays, and realize that such an essay is a professional and public document to be viewed critically by the eyes of strangers, not a private and personal exercise in creative self-indulgence.
Defining the Personal Statement
Because a personal statement is unlike other documents you write in college, many students struggle with understanding the fundamentals of its definition. First off, don’t let the term itself confuse you—some application materials will use other terms such as “personal essay,” “reflective essay,” “statement of purpose,” or “narrative.” Regardless of the term used, such essays are defined by their comment elements, as detailed below.
One of the best extended definitions of the personal statement I’ve seen appears on a website from the Fellowships Office at Bryn Mawr (see the article "Advice from Fellowship Foundations "). Below I offer a condensed version adapted from that website.
A personal statement is:
- A picture. Provide a snapshot of who you are as a person.
- An invitation. Your job is to “bridge the assumed distance of strangers.” Invite your reader to get to know you.
- An indication of your priorities and judgment. Your selection of material reveals your priorities and ability to discern effectively.
- A story, or more precisely, your story. The personal statement allows you room for creative, meaningful self-reflection.
A personal statement is not:
- An academic paper with you as the subject. The objective distance of academic writing disengages the reader from you in a personal statement.
- A resume in narrative form. Other parts of your application, which might include a resume, already tell readers about your accomplishments. A personal statement must reveal and interpret well beyond a resume.
- A journal entry. A common mistake is allowing your personal statement to read like a diary. Share only relevant material selectively, in a voice that remains both individual and professional.
- A plea or justification. Don’t beg and don’t defend the (incorrect) assertion that you are more worthy than other candidates—it only backfires.
Of course, nuances to this definition may be added based on the circumstances. For instance, at times an application might require three different essays with highly specific parameters, and perhaps one of these essays involves a personal narrative while another poses you a philosophical question to answer. Always look to the application itself to determine the degree to which the definitions above apply, and know that when there is a series of questions in an application at least one of them is usually designed to elicit a personal essay from you.
Issues of Length and Form
Normally, the length of a personal statement will be dictated by the application—500 words or 800 words are typical limits, as are one-page or two-page limits. If you’re given, say, a count of 1,500 words, you need not write to the maximum length, but to compose only one-half of the word count might be an opportunity missed. In any case, what matters most is that the material you present conforms as closely as possible to these word or space restrictions—parts of your application might literally not be read if you violate the rules—and that your presentation is aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. To achieve these goals, I promote the following tips:
- If your personal statement is a stand-alone document within your application, open it with a simple heading such as “Personal Statement for Janet Lerner.” Thus, if your documents would get separated somehow, they could more easily be reassembled.
- If there are any pages to your essay beyond one, number them, and perhaps include your name on those pages as well.
- Choose a publishing font that is highly readable, such as Times or Bookman. Some fonts allow for more tightness to the text, which is fine as long as the essay remains readable. Ideally, use no more than a 12-point size and no less than a 10-point size, favoring the larger, and use the same font size throughout the document.
- Allow for ample enough margins that the reader isn’t distracted by cramped-looking text. Margins of at least one inch are standard.
- Single space your text, skipping a line between paragraphs. You can indent paragraph beginnings or not, as long as you’re consistent.
At times, especially when you fill out an application electronically or have to cut and paste, word limits will be defined by physical space. In such a case, keep enough white space between your text and the application text that the material isn’t crowded, and choose a font different from that used in the application if possible. Also, if your application is electronic and requires you to cut and paste text or conform to a word or character count, check the material that you input carefully to be certain that it’s complete and reads just as you wish it to. In some cases, you may lose special characters or paragraph breaks, and words over the maximum allowable count may be cut off. The safest practice is to proofread anything you send electronically within the very form in which it is sent.
Selecting Detail
For most writers, one of the first struggles in personal essays is selecting detail, then the second struggle is figuring out what material to de-select. Obviously, especially if you have just 500 words, only one or two meaty examples per paragraph will be possible. To generate and select relevant detail, the following guidelines will almost always apply.
Read the Question or Prompt Carefully to Extract Definitive Criteria
Always begin by discerning the criteria of the question itself. Sometimes you’ll just be given a broad sweeping statement such as “Discuss those personal qualities you think will aid the committee in making its decision.” Such a statement is highly open to interpretation, yet there is definitely a wrong way to go about answering it as well—for instance, discussing your charm, financial hardship, or ability as a magician would be completely off target. More often, you’ll be given a more concrete, clear prompt with criteria imbedded. For the sake of context, here’s a typical sort of prompt:
In no more than 800 words, discuss your personal motivations, academic interests, relevant research or experience, long-term objectives, and your specific interest in attending Mythic University.
In this case, a typical response would be to follow with one paragraph devoted to each of the discussion points, with a savvy writer using the diction of each criterion within topic sentences for focus and context. Some writers would opt to be more creative in their approach, but even so a reader should not feel that any part of the question has been dodged.
Articulate a Personal or Professional Inspiration
Some writers open their statement with an inspiring quote or a narrative (discussed further in Chapter 3), while others make a comment about their academic discipline. What matters is that readers have clear context through your opening, and that we understand immediately that you are talking about something of motivational meaning to you. Briefly sketch out a positive influence: a memorable self-defining experience, a high school or college project that ignited deeper interest, an inspiring teacher or role model, a relative who followed a career path that you emulate—even a core theme that will carry through the rest of your essay. Always remember the typical fundamental goal of the opening: to provide a quick, meaningful snapshot of who you are as a person.
Discuss your Academic Background or Research as a Set of Learned Skills
Again, some writers might desire to be creative throughout their personal statement, but a more traditional route is to open the second or third paragraph with a discussion of academic background or research in relation to skills you have acquired. Certainly, work experience could be relevant as well, especially if you were a teaching assistant for a class and you plan on holding an assistantship in graduate school, but you must be careful not to rehearse resume-like details about any jobs you’ve held. Readers will be most interested in specific, skills-oriented detail: lab techniques acquired; analytical tools used; participation in team decision-making; journal research and publication experience; oral presentation skills. Think in relation to those skills most valued in your discipline, and describe your background in a way that highlights those attributes.
Many writers approach a discussion of their background by forecasting ahead to what they wish to study in graduate school, employing their past experiences to project future aptitude. For example, in Chapter 4 of this handbook, one writer uses these sentences to describe his thesis research:
My project involves the taphonomy, stratigraphy, and identification of a middle-Ordovician coral bioherm as well as its bryozoan constituents. The research is now well underway, involving many aspects of a sound paleontological study: sampling, analysis, identification, and finalization into a report.
Clearly, the writer’s intention here is to wed his present and the future—to project ahead to graduate research within his field of paleontology. By focusing on the techniques and skills relevant to his academic field while describing his thesis project, he lays the foundation for his intended future area of research.
In many cases, especially if you apply for a national scholarship or to a sciences program, you may be expected to discuss your research interests and background thoroughly as the heart of your personal essay. Specific details that might be included in these cases are the hypothesis of your undergraduate research, the exact nature of a research question you would like to focus on in graduate school, and even the name of a professor you would like to work with in graduate school and a rationale for how you made that choice.
Establish Some Long-Term Objectives
Some students hesitate greatly over this criterion, feeling as though they’re committing to an unbreakable covenant, while others reach too high or actually get too specific—“I intend to win a Nobel Peace Prize,” they claim, or “I plan to write four textbooks.” Keep in mind the needs of your readers here: They simply wish to confirm that you have a seriousness of purpose, and that you have the ability to envision some concrete plans (else why would you be applying for graduate study?). Your long-term objectives can usually be rendered briefly rather than expansively, perhaps woven into the beginning or end of your final paragraph. Good options here include articulating a plan to continue work in a particular research area, a desire to earn a PhD or teach at the university level, or future plans to work as an independent or corporate consultant. Also, depending on the context you’ve created in the essay, personal goals may be just as relevant as professional ones: to serve the public through grass-roots activism; to be the first member of a large family to earn a graduate degree; to write and publish.
Close with Specifics About the Target Program or Scholarship
Learning all you can about the target program or scholarship, which usually begins with a visit to the school or award website, will give you concrete closing material for your essay. Some students go a step further, e-mailing professors at their target program or past winners of their target scholarship, reading publications of the target program’s faculty, or making it a point to meet grad students and faculty connected with the target program at a conference. Such material, of course, could be integrated to give natural closure to your personal essay, thus affiliating you with the program of choice. Your goal is to create a personal and professional link between yourself and the graduate school. Go beyond simply inserting the school name into the final paragraph; prove that you have done your homework.
Finally, as a practical matter, many students visit their target programs on their own, sometimes even before they apply. Not only does this give them the opportunity to get a feel for the area and meet other grad students or faculty, it also helps them generate relevant material to include in their personal statement.
Citing Sources
Although many personal statements will not include any citation of sources, in some cases—particularly if your work is in the sciences and you need to provide a brief literature review—you will need to cite sources at the end of your essay in a “References” section. Chapter 1 discusses the ethical concerns associated with source citation as you write personal essays (see "Student Writing and Ethics" section). To address the more practical problem of citation mechanics, below are ways to address common mechanics challenges:
- In the simplest terms, the two basic citation styles appropriate for personal essays can be referred to as the number system and author-year system. In the number system, a number is provided in the text corresponding to a numbered source cited fully at the essay’s end. In the author-year system, the writer provides the author and year of the source in parentheses after the corresponding text, then cites the source fully at the end of the essay in a references list alphabetized by authors’ last names.
- When you use a references section at the end of an essay, provide full bibliographic information for your sources—e.g., author, article title, book or journal title, relevant page numbers, and website address if relevant. Because the mechanics of citation vary slightly from one journal to the next, most writers model their references page on that of a respected journal in their field.
- For convenience in a personal essay, it is acceptable to cite sources—especially if you use just one or two—in numbered footnote form at the bottom of the page. However, if you have more than a few sources, a separate section entitled “References” at the end of the essay is best.
- Sometimes, rather than a formal footnote or end citation, a contextual narrative citation will be sufficient if you are using a well-known quote or paraphrase (“Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge”) or attributing authorship and context directly (“As stated in a funding proposal authored by our research group, the hypothesis for my thesis research is . . .”).
- If you include figures or tables taken or adapted from a published source, cite the source directly in the figure or table caption, using the same citation style employed throughout the essay.
To see the above tips in action, browse through the sample essays in the later chapters of this manual, where you will find ample evidence of how other writers met their source citation challenges. For further detail about source citation practices, you can also go to Chapter 5 of the manual Style for Students Online.
Figures, Tables, and Equations
Especially when lengthy application essays are permitted and desirable, and especially in the sciences, you might wish to include figures, tables, and equations within your personal essay, or they might be necessary to include in a part of the application where you describe an area of research or write a literature review. Obviously, the presentation of figures, tables, and equations must be both mechanically sound and necessary to the rapid understanding of the material. Both aesthetically and contextually, you should apply the same standards that you would if submitting material for publication.
Some commonly overlooked fundamentals of figures and tables follow:
- Figures are drawn or photographed pictures; tables are lists of numbers and words. Be sure to define them appropriately—many writers call a graphic a figure when it is really a table, or vice versa.
- Use line graphs to plot continuous variables (e.g., unbroken time measures); use charts or bar graphs to plot discontinuous variables (e.g., percentages that occurred in intervals).
- The caption for a figure appears below the graphic; for a table, above.
- Leave ample white space around the graphic that it doesn’t interfere with the reading of the text, but when considering space constraints keep in mind that modern word processing allows you to imbed graphics directly within paragraphs if needed.
- While producing a figure or table and its caption, follow the old maxim that the graphic could be ripped from the paper and still make sense. Thus you will caption the figure or table so that the reader can make immediate sense of the trend or data displayed.
- If using multiple graphics in your essay, refer to them consecutively by number, both within a relevant paragraph of text and within the caption.
- If the graphic comes directly from or is adapted from a source, it is critical that you cite the source after the caption, then include full bibliographic information for the graphic at the end of the essay.
For equations, follow these principles of aesthetics and grammar:
- Grammatically, treat an equation as a single noun that is a member of a sentence.
- Commonly, “we” is used to introduce equations, promoting the active voice and fluid readability.
- Short equations can be included as part of a sentence without any special spacing, as long as the equation flows within the sentence as a readable unit. Otherwise, equations are normally centered on the page, with a line skipped before and after. If an equation is too long for a single line, break it just before a “verb” or “conjunction.”
- When appropriate, define members of the equation just after presenting it, normally introducing those members with the word “where.”
- Equations may include punctuation marks after them, but your practice must be consistent within the essay.
Managing Controversial Topics
On university campuses, not a week goes by without spirited debate or sponsored speakers addressing such controversial issues as sexuality, religion, racial intimidation, crime, politics, drinking, animal rights, the use of firearms, environmental ethics, and other issues specific to a particular campus. Therefore, admissions and scholarship committee members are not strangers to these topics, and some members are even an integral part of the debates. Effective attention to controversial issues in one’s personal statement requires a writer who can handle nuance and audience in a sophisticated way. So much depends on the context for the discussion, and the writer who takes a stance on such issues in an application should have a good reason to do so.
As one example, note how one writer in Chapter 5 of this handbook addresses the issue of civil rights regardless of sexuality in her policy proposal for a Truman Scholarship. The Truman Scholarship seeks students who will be “agents of change” and requires applicants to write a mock proposal to a government official. Thus, by definition, students must take a stance on a potentially controversial topic. This student does so by first establishing that sexuality-based discrimination occurs, tying this practice directly to public opinion and policy. She cites sources ranging from the Journal of Counseling Psychology to recent testimony in a government hearing, showing that her convictions are grounded in research and awareness. In her boldest and most direct appeal to her target audience—a particular Republican senator—she states: “Your recent support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is commendable, but this bill is not sufficient.” Here, she shows herself to be both informed and opinionated. She purposely pushes.
In this case, the student has chosen to express her views on a topic of controversy in a context where sound argument defending her views is clearly welcomed, no matter the direction towards which her views lean. In fact, selection committee members are always looking for writers who can argue about difficult topics effectively—not for writers who necessarily share their personal views.
In cases where you create the context for the controversial topic yourself, perhaps because you genuinely see the issue as a driving force in your life, you simply need to be sure that you present yourself as informed, involved, and insightful. Wherever your personal and political views fall, show yourself as one invested in the struggle for such principles as fairness, justice, dignity, morality, truth, spirituality, safety, and tolerance, and trust that your readers will respect the struggle as long as you argue about it effectively. Show yourself as one whose views are shaped by experiences and information, and consider highlighting the benefits to others or to your profession if your views are accepted. Also, if you bring up controversial issues in a personal essay, you should certainly be ready to discuss them further in a follow-up interview.
Issues of Diversity, Under-representation, and Open-ended Questions
In recent decades, academic programs and scholarship awards alike have taken a specific interest in increasing their diversity pool among candidates, paying special attention to fields where certain populations have been under-represented, such as women in engineering or African-Americans in medicine. Often, this specific interest is reflected right in the application, either in the form of a statement of commitment or a question inviting some discussion of how you as a candidate would contribute diversity to a particular program or discipline.
As one extensive example, study the following paragraph from the cover sheet used by the University of California, Santa Barbara, in its graduate application:
UC Santa Barbara is interested in a diverse and inclusive graduate student population. Please describe any aspects of your personal background, accomplishments, or achievements that you feel are important in evaluating your application for graduate study. For example, please describe if you have experienced economic challenges in achieving higher education, such as being financially responsible for family members or dependents, having to work significant hours during undergraduate schooling or coming from a family background of limited income. Please describe if you have any unusual or varied life experiences that might contribute to the diversity of the graduate group, such as fluency in other languages, experience living in bicultural communities, academic research interests focusing on cultural, societal, or educational programs as they affect underserved segments of society, or evidence of an intention to use the graduate degree toward serving disadvantaged individuals or populations.
In considering this issue, especially if the question response allows only one paragraph for a reply, note how other parts of the application will help to address issues of diversity or under-representation as well. Checkbox data including gender, ethic background, and citizenship will reveal relevant background information about you, along with lists of your chosen activities and membership in organizations. Select information for such lists accordingly, and consider ways that your essay material can complement or underscore these traits.
Also, carefully examine the wording of open-ended questions and determine whether they are trying to tease out information in a particular area. As a demonstration, note the variety in these questions adapted from different applications:
Write a short essay about a topic of importance to you.
What other personal information would you like to share with the scholarship review board?
The graduate program at Mythic College is especially interested in enhancing diversity among our students. Describe experiences in your background that would contribute to such diversity.
To determine the best answer to such questions, writers need to consider what information they have shared in other parts of the application, avoiding redundancy and favoring either emphasis or a fresh response that will draw favorable attention. Depending on context and your personal taste, all three of the above questions might legitimately get the same written response. What would be especially hurtful to the application, however, is if you choose to make no response at all to such a question and wrongly deem it irrelevant, sending the message that you self-define as both lazy and uninteresting.
In defining such areas as diversity, it is also important to think beyond categories of ethnic identity and gender. I’ve seen savvy students answer diversity questions by discussing themselves as a returning adult student, an engineer interested in law, a poet among scientists, one who daily manages a physical disability, a woman who has survived a life-threatening illness, a conservative Republican attending a highly liberal school, a horticulturalist living in the city, a speaker of three languages, a world traveler, an ROTC student, a man who aims to devote his life to service. Such responses not only draw our attention, they also show that the writer understands and embraces diversity in a way that is not narrowly defined—where diversity draws positive attention to both the individual and the collective.
Most importantly, share something truly individual about yourself in any diversity or open-ended question. Note how the following answer—excerpted from a Udall Scholarship application in Chapter 5 from a writer invited to share additional information—showcases how the writer perceives herself as a strong, driven individual.
I was raised by two strong women—my mother and my grandmother. Three generations of women living under one roof provided me with a unique experience while growing up. My mother was the first woman in my family to pursue higher education and continued her pursuit even after having a child. As I was growing up I watched her finish her nursing degree at Oakland University and begin a career in Neonatal Nursing. My interest in the sciences and the environment most definitely stemmed initially from my mother’s interest and passion for the subject. While my mother was attending classes and studying, my grandmother was my primary caregiver and she too encouraged my exploration and growth. Throughout my life, my mother and grandmother have continued to be my source of inspiration and encouragement.
Finally, recognize that some writers choose to give no specific space to issues of diversity or under-representation even when invited, either because they would prefer not to, they know that a reference of theirs will address the issue in a recommendation letter, or because they feel other issues are more worthy of their limited space. It’s possible in some cases that the option of silence may suit you well, as long as you’ve made a strong, complete application otherwise.
Describing Interesting Personal or Educational Experiences
Rarely, but occasionally, while working with a student on a personal essay, I can’t help but wince. It’s a concerned, gut response to the student taking an unnecessary and unwise risk. The most ready example I recall is the day that one of my students spent an entire paragraph discussing a suicide attempt. And this student was no dummy—in fact, held a 3.9 GPA. What I’m sure happened was that the student misconstrued the context for the personal essay and interpreted it almost as a confessional opportunity. I’ve witnessed other students use the personal statement to stumble sloppily through discussions of the death of a pet, a protest rally that turned into a small riot, a bad case of lactose intolerance, a religious conversion, and ten years away from school “bumming around with a rock band.”
Writers who do this are often focusing on one small part of their application (such as a poor semester of grades) or something they view as so self-defining (such as a political cause) that they feel almost obliged to discuss the topic. But despite the writer’s personal agenda, audience and context are key here, with the astute writer only taking chances when the risk is clearly worth it. At the same time, as the following discussion makes clear, there are times when the uniqueness of your experience is indeed worth showcasing.
As reported in the book How to Write a Winning Personal Statement for Graduate and Professional School , the Stern School of Business at New York University does something a bit unusual in its application questions to applicants. As many programs do, the school uses a series of questions rather than just one, but the third question asks students to describe themselves to their classmates, allowing for some creative elbow room. The answers to this third question, says the Director of Admissions and Aid, are her favorite. Though most applicants simply write creative essays, others send in poems, games, puzzles—even cassette recordings or videotapes. Obviously, in most graduate applications, students don’t have such options when it comes to delivering the material. However, those with particularly interesting personal tales or educational paths should always look for ways to highlight them in writing.
Many schools pride themselves not only on their programs but on something flexible or specialized about the education they offer. My alma mater, Juniata College, has students build a “program of emphasis” rather than declare a major, allowing students to customize their program of study. St. John’s College engages all its students in a classics-grounded course of study “based in the great books of the Western tradition,” which includes four years of math and one year of music for all students. Mount Holyoke, an all-women’s college, has a program in speaking, writing, and arguing, and sponsors an annual intercollegiate poetry competition. Not all readers will know the details about these programs, and the personal statement provides a perfect opportunity for graduates of such programs to take advantage of interesting experiences built right into their education. Writers who flesh out such detail in their personal statements both educate their readers about their background and affiliate themselves with programs of earned reputation.
Other educational background worthy of consideration for your personal statement includes:
- Participation in a first-year or senior seminar, assuming the seminar was academic and required you to produce meaningful work and some deliverable product.
- Past academic scholarships and the criteria by which you won them, especially if they are competitive national awards.
- Any co-op or work experiences directly relevant to graduate study, especially if the work you did was integrated into senior thesis research.
- Study at more than one school or study abroad, in particular if you are fluent in multiple languages.
- Honors education classes or an honors thesis.
- The completion of an integrated bachelor’s/master’s program, with discussion of program particulars.
- Completion of a senior thesis, especially if some facet of the thesis research can be continued at graduate school.
- Educational training through the military or professional certification programs, with an emphasis on relevance to graduate study.
- A transfer of schools or a return to school after time away, emphasizing positive lessons learned from the experience and giving evidence of accomplishments and motivation.
Finally, sometimes writers have such interesting personal stories that they capture their audience just by sharing something meaningful about their lives. Interesting stories I’ve read about in personal statements include a man who grew up in four different countries while his parents worked for the Peace Corps, a blind student from South Korea who was adopted into an American family and completed an internship involving service to disabled high school students, a woman who left an international modeling career to return to school full-time, a student who completed a bachelor’s degree over an eight-year period while battling multiple sclerosis, a student whose father went to jail for the duration of the student's high school years, and a student who had placed a novel with a major publishing house at the age of 19. Such personal stories and accomplishments are too interesting, and in some cases too moving, not to share. As you compose your personal statement, mine your educational and personal experiences to be sure you’re not overlooking something of interest that will both define and uplift you in the eyes of your readers.
Discussing Shortcomings and Challenges
Many applications, especially those for law school and business school, ask students to explain some challenge they’ve overcome or even to discuss a failure in their lives. The best writers tend to handle this issue directly but creatively, discussing a challenge that doesn’t undermine their abilities or character and emphasizing positive lessons learned from the experience. An excellent example of how one writer handled this issue is in Chapter 4 of this handbook, within two essays written by a student in business. The writer frames his challenges within ultimately positive experiences—the completion of a 3500-mile bike trip and a successful team business project—so that he both answers the questions but keeps favorable attention on his accomplishments.
Even unprompted, many students—especially if they had a bad semester of grades, a prolonged illness, a personal crisis, a switch of majors, or took some time off from school—feel compelled to provide an explanation in their personal statement or elsewhere in their application. This can be risky, of course, because it may draw a disproportional amount of attention to something negative, and it may be unnecessary anyway. Consider whether an explanation is already taken care of by the circumstances (such as one poor semester during sophomore year followed by two years of high grades in your major) or whether the matter might be best handled by a sympathetic advisor writing you a letter of recommendation (who can be encouraged to explain the issue for you if privy to the necessary information). Weigh carefully the decision to reveal anything negative unprompted, and discuss it with a trusted advisor.
An interesting window into the kinds of challenges students discuss in writing is provided in examples from Donald Asher’s popular bookGraduate Admissions Essays . Here, students reveal the following tales in their personal essays:
- Working 35 hours per week for five years to finance community college without taking out a student loan.
- Taking a job as a court interpreter before applying to law school to gain some relevant experience.
- Working in a West African village and experiencing language barriers, distrust, and cross-cultural embarrassment.
- Juggling the simultaneous experiences of being a student athlete, a resident assistant, and a class president.
- Starting a service program for disadvantaged high school students only to find that some of those students didn’t show up for their appointed meetings.
- An acknowledgment of good study skills lacking in the first two years of college study, followed by a gradually rising GPA.
In all these cases, of course, the writers focused on the value of these experiences and stressed eventual success even among some admitted mishaps. Such willingness to discuss one’s personal challenges—and in the process admit a propensity to take on too much, or confess a naiveté about the world, or realize that lofty goals must sometimes be adjusted to reality—can go a long way in gaining a selection committee’s trust.
Addressing Application Details Beyond your Understanding
At times, you’ll be faced with uncertainty about how to complete parts of an application or about whether you’ve followed the proper protocol for processing. This is especially true for students who must submit material online or in pdf form (sometimes without acknowledgment of successful transfer of material), and for those who, even after considering the relevant material elsewhere in this chapter, choose to leave something blank or incomplete. Here, the help of an academic advisor, scholarships director, or a staff member at the target program is in order. Assuming you’ve done your best to follow directions and research your options, there is never harm in a focused e-mail or phone call to a staff member to decide how to handle an uncertainty or check on a submitted application’s status.
As a final assurance regarding this topic, I’ve known students who have been accepted to grad school even when their application did not include the required number of reference letters, when they sent an application in a word processing program forbidden by the target program, and when they took the chance of leaving some questions unanswered. In all these cases, the students either felt that the risk they took was unavoidable or they checked with an authority about how to handle the circumstances. By taking small risks or admitting uncertainty, we sometimes gain exception.
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