-by Adeola Adesuyi
Writing a personal statement is arguably one of the most important parts of an application to a variety of programs. These statements give applicants the opportunity to be creative and express themselves beyond the numbers. Here are a couple of tips for writing, given to me by former pre-health advisors and professors.
- Find the perfect opening statement.
- In any piece of writing, captivating your audience in the first few sentences can be very helpful in keeping them interested. Try using a hook, or a catchy sentence – or perhaps an influential story that you feel is important to your profile.
- Highlight your strengths.
- While in some cases it can be appropriate to explain shortcomings in other aspects of your application, your personal statement is a tool that you can use to really concentrate on and show admissions committees what you do/did well!
- Use examples!
- In focusing on your strengths, try giving concrete examples of how you were able to demonstrate those characteristics in a variety of situations.
- Don’t overdo it!
- It’s important to be as honest as possible when discussing yourself and your experiences/achievements in your statement; try to avoid excessive exaggeration or, conversely, being self-deprecating.
- Get someone to proofread.
- Having a second (or third…or more) eye can be super helpful in catching things like grammatical errors and other mistakes you might not have picked up on yourself. However, it’s important to maintain your own voice.
- Read it aloud.
- Make sure it makes sense! Reading things out loud can put sentence construction into perspective, and you may find that you need to re-word certain aspects in order to get your point across.
- Go beyond academic experience.
- Don’t just put your resume in narrative form – it can oftentimes be helpful to explain non-academic experiences that may contribute to your overall profile.
- Stop re-reading after you’ve submitted your application!
- Trust in yourself that you’ve proofread, done everything necessary to make your statement awesome, and take a deep breath!