Video 1: About the Personal Statement
As we head into fall application season we wanted you to have some additional resources for making the impact you want through your written voice. Because the essay can be such a barrier for so many of us, we have created a series of videos so that you can write your scholarship or college application essay with confidence.
Hi. I’m Tricia Hester, cat-lover, English teacher, and FuturesNW volunteer. In this video we will be talking about the purpose of the personal statement and common myths that interfere with students writing impactful personal essays.
We know everyone has a story to tell. That story might be buried beneath the seemingly mundane, but it’s there. Bright, engaging and important. This is the story that the people in charge of admissions and scholarships want to hear.
Transcript of video:
Understanding the purpose of your writing can help you create a truly impactful essay. Simply put, the purpose of a personal statement is to persuade an admissions board that you are a good fit for their college or university or to persuade a scholarship board that you are the best fit for that scholarship money.
However, admissions boards are not typically looking for a traditional argument essay; they’re not looking for a sales pitch. (Unless that’s what they explicitly ask for.) So, what are they looking for? They’re looking for a window into who you are. They want to see your individuality, creativity, and values. They want to see if you can reflect on your experiences and come away with important life lessons.
They are also looking for how you express yourself in writing, how well you make logical connections, how well you’ve developed your style, and how well you can answer a prompt. For those of you who haven’t yet come to know yourself as a writer, the personal statement can seem like a huge obstacle to completing your application. However, it can also be an opportunity to shape the narrative your application creates about you. Thousands of applicants may have your grades, have taken the same classes, scored the same on standardized tests. But only you have lived your life and thought about those experiences the way you have. The personal statement offers an opportunity for you to become an individual in the eyes of an admissions or scholarship board.
What are the stakes of the personal statement?
The weight of the personal statement really depends on the situation. If you are applying to a state university with a solid GPA and good test scores, then your personal statement will carry less weight. You shouldn’t blow it off by any means, but it may not be as important as if you are applying to that same university with a lower GPA and lower test scores. In this case, your personal statement can make a significant difference. In the case of scholarships, the stakes of the personal statement vary. Some scholarships rest solely on the strength of an essay while others will consider it as one of many factors.
Before I begin the how to of the personal statement, I want to talk about some common myths that can interfere with writing a truly authentic, meaningful statement.
Myth #1: You should write about an epic event.
I’ve heard many, many juniors and seniors claim that they don’t have anything to write about, that they haven’t done anything exciting or important. The reality is that admissions boards do not need (or even want) to hear about an epic, life-changing, world-altering event. The reality is that you can write an excellent personal essay about the simplest moments; in another video, I’ll use an example of a brief essay written by a student who was admitted to Yale. She wrote about ordering Papa John’s pizza.
Myth #2: You should cover your bases.
You do not need to tell the admissions or scholarship board everything there is to know about you. You may be creative, hardworking, empathetic, athletic, determined, curious, driven, etc. etc. But you cannot capture your entire self in a novel much less in a few hundred words. Writing a well-focused essay will impress your audience far more than one that gives them a comprehensive list of adjectives that describe you. Think about what the rest of your application -- your transcripts, tests scores, and extracurriculars – doesn’t already cover and focus on writing an essay that fills in one of those gaps.
Myth #3: The thesaurus is your best friend.
A thesaurus can be a wonderful tool for learning new words or jogging your memory of a word you already know. You can use it to help you find exactly the right word to communicate your meaning. However, it is not your friend when it comes to elevating the vocabulary of your college essay. For starters, using a thesaurus to replace known words with longer or less common words will make your vocabulary usage inconsistent. Those words won’t fit with your style; they won’t sound like you. Another reason to steer clear of the thesaurus is that it doesn’t always give you exact synonyms, and if you are unfamiliar with the word you insert into your essay, you may not notice that you’ve changed the meaning of your sentence from “The smell of my grandmother’s pies made me hungry” to “the smell of my grandmother’s pies made me rapacious.” Unless the aroma of pies makes you inordinately greedy or predatory, this substitution will obscure your meaning and distract your readers.
Thanks so much for joining me today, for more resources and information in supporting your personal essay development check out the other videos in this series and explore the links to resources in the show notes or at http://www.futuresnw.org/applications-and-testing.