Personal Statements
  • Organization for Prompted Personal Statement

    • Organization for Prompted Personal Statement

    Once you have your more general personal statement, you will need to tailor it for specific audiences. This means that whenever you are asked to submit a statement, you make adjustments to your personal statement to fit the requirements, expectations, or tone of the unique situation. 

    Specific Prompts

    There may be times when you will need to start from scratch because there is a specific prompt or the circumstance renders the general statement irrelvant, but you will usually have at least some part of the general statement that you can use as a starting point. This will typically be the case when the person or organization requesting the personal statement is looking for specific information that would not be included in a resume that is necessary for the applicant.

    Examples of information they would try to find through providing a specific prompt would be:

    When you face a specific personal statement prompt, be sure to look at each part of the question and consider:

    1. What does the reviewer expect to learn from my answer?
    2. How would my answer separate me in a positive way from other applicants?
    3. How to I show myself in the best light in this question?
    4. What information is not included in my personal data and resume that they already have access to?

    Brainstorming

    Before you begin writing, break down the prompt into the individual pieces. Make sure that you fully understand what it is asking and that you include answers to every part of it. Once you have the prompt broken down into pieces, begin your brainstorm. Your brainstorm should give you a chance to write down all ideas you have about each section.

    At this stage, nothing is good or bad. The only purpose of the brainstorm is to get all of the ideas out of your head and onto paper. Then you can begin to look for patterns and evaluate the strength of the different points. You may want to mark the ideas you like so that they stand out. Then, review your general personal statement and identify any parts of it that would be useful in responding to this particular prompt.

    Development

    Once you know what the reviewer wants to know and have brainstormed your ideas of your response, you need to consider how to develop those ideas further. To do this, consider the points in your brainstorm in terms of your motivation, your qualifications, and the expectations of the reviewer. Choose a limited number of items from your brainstorm to include. Because a personal statement is so brief, you want to thoughtfully construct your ideas. 

    As you develop your ideas, you may find yourself writing much more than you can actually include in your final product. This is ok during the drafting stage. You want to fully build a mental image for your reader, but you also want to discard the irrelevant points later. After you have drafted your ideas, think about these questions to eliminate the extra thoughts.

    1. Does the reader need to know this?
    2. Is anything here sufficiently included in the materials I have already submitted?
    3. How does this sentence add to the reader's understanding of me?
    4. Is the information memorable and unique?
    5. Do I fully answer the question?

    Your supporting ideas should be relevant to answering the question. 

    Cohesion

    The most important thing to remember as you finalize your personal statement is that it should feel very clear and direct. It should be obvious to the reader why you included specific details. Every idea needs to point back to the prompt. The response should show unity in the tone and content. You do not have room for any stray ideas in this short of a writing task. After you think you have answered the question as completely as you can, give yourself time to look over it again for cohesion and/or ask for someone to review it for you.

    Exercises

    Exercise 1: Analyze the Prompt

    Before you begin writing, you always need to be sure you fully understand the question so that you include all of the necessary details. Use the questions below to analyze the prompt.

    Prompt: Our university has a high number of applicants, but only a few can be accepted to this very competitive program. Why should you be selected to attend this school? What makes you a uniquely strong applicant? Please do not include references to your transcript as we already have access to that information.

    1. What does the reviewer expect to learn from my answer?
    2. How would my answer separate me in a positive way from other applicants?
    3. How to I show myself in the best light in this question?
    4. What information is not included in my personal data and resume that they already have access to?

    Exercise 2: Most Relevant

    Part A: A student is applying for a college that uses the admissions essay prompt shown below. He has already decided to highlight his ability creatively solve problems. Now he is deciding what anecdote would be most relevant to his main idea. Read the options he brainstormed and choose the one you find the most relevant. 

    Prompt: "We are looking for applicants that are innovative in their field of study. Tell us about a time when you innovated in your work."

    Goal: Illustrate my ability to creatively solve problems

    1. Winning a prize in a local art contest
    2. Organizing a fundraiser when a school dance needed a larger budget
    3. Redecorating the break room at work to improve motivation
    4. Creating a school club for volunteer work in the city
    5. Developing a promotion to bring in more customers during a slow month at the restaurant 

    Part B: Discuss your decision with a partner. 

    • Did you choose the same option or different options?
    • Why did you choose the option that you did?
    • How would you use it in an essay?

    (Prompt excerpt from https://edtechbooks.org/-AHdW)

    Exercise 3: Give Feedback on Development

    Here is an example body paragraph from a student's application essay to an international relations program at a US college. Use the questions from the development section of this chapter to give feedback to the writer about the development of this idea.

           I have had the opportunity to visit the United States and [country name], where I learned a lot about international cultures. Both countries I have many international friends, which made me gain an understanding of their behavior, how they like to work or study, and their treatment with others. Besides that, I am a very open minded person, so I have the ability to acquire knowledge about how I will understand people’s cultures based on their financial conditions, countries, or families. And this is because I have really good friends from other countries who are close to me and tell me their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, I can contribute a great deal to many cultures where the government has difficulties in how to connect with their people and other nations.

    Exercise 4: Give Feedback on Cohesion

    Here is an example body paragraph from a student's application essay to a psychology program at a US college. Be prepared to discuss how the writer effectively creates cohesion in this paragraph or how the writer can improve this paragraph to clearly tie it back to the prompt (Why do you want to study psychology at this university?).

           Besides this when I worked for [company] back in [country name], I was able to encounter people from all over the world, and working with customers gave me the experience of listening to what they had to say in order to fix and solve their requests or problems. I learned how to be emphatic to give them the best solution and I had to put myself in their place so I can know how to treat them because of their emotional state. I also learn to pay attention to detail, whether it be from people's body language or something in their tone of voice, or the system that was used to fulfill the procedures for the [company], and I learned to prevent any problem that could delay the [company's] operation. These abilities are useful in psychology, especially when people don’t want to open up, persistence and empathy can help people feel understood so they can feel that they can trust you. When people open up, I can use my listening skills to help them overcome their problems in an accurate way and treatment.

    This content is provided to you freely by EdTech Books.

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