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Personal Statement Writing Guide

So you've written your personal statement but it’s still not quite right.

You have three choices:

Access the finest personal statement samples on the web.

Allow the best Ivy League educated admission experts to sort it out.

Read a powerful personal statement writing guide on your subject area.

Get Into Uni has been around long enough to know what makes a good personal statement, by specializing in this sector we have been able to establish a robust and effective techniques: ensuring specific audience targeting, excellent structure and clarity. We work with you to apply a range of techniques that will get your personal statement across with impact.

Read on and find out how to write your personal statement.

Step one: The first step is always to ensure that the objectives of the personal statement are clearly understood, and the target audience precisely defined. We have developed a personal statement writing guide in this section, which will provide you with the elements of a successful application.

Our track record in helping students gain a place at university is extensive, we you offer tenacity, drive and indomitable spirit, so we can help you create a personal statement that inspires and wins you a place.

We will help you:

Create an introduction that will immediately catch the attention of the busy Admissions Officer who spends no more than a few minutes reading each personal statement.
Nail correct grammar ensuring succinct and effective communication from the writer to the reader.
Limit unnecessary words, lighten overweight phrases, strengthen weak verbs, and eliminate run-on sentences and cliches.
Create a perfect structure, which includes separate sections, introductions and conclusions.
Make sure that paragraphs have "hooks" linking them to preceding and continuing paragraphs.
Ensure your text is as "transparent" as possible to the reader.
Talk to the Admissions Officer in simple language, utilizing short sentences sparingly for major impact.
Create a fresh approach loaded with influential keywords.
Tailor the message to adhere to academic standards regarding expression, structure, and format.
Write a personal statement that builds on your strengths and clearly articulates your desires, ambitions and motivations.
Make sure you have no grammatical mistakes nor misspelled words or fragments.
Ensure proper use of pronouns and verbs.
Demonstrate that you’re a proficient, credible and astute person.

Need help writing the personal statement?
By following the advice in our personal statement writing guide and by choosing Get Into Uni to edit your statement, we will instantly help you shape your raw ideas into a work of art.

Ok, so now that you have a taster of some of the great things that we do, don’t forget that the personal statement is one of the most important factors in being accepted at your chosen university. We hope you find our writing guide useful in building your personal statement.

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The right choice

The first step of getting a place at school is to research the program. It is important to consider that every good school may not be right for you. This section of our guide will provide advice on how to make the right choice, followed by tips on how to get a place. Intelligent people with the drive and ambition can get into any university if the research stage is done correctly.

The first step is to research the schools and select ten top ones – make sure your research goes beyond geographical regions. Try the following links to discover which school would be best.

Identifying specific schools is based on successful academic research is always a good start, your academic department at school will be able to provide advice on university programs.

The process of choosing your school is made up by:

Financial considerations.
Research and status of the school or department.
The Teachers.
The cost of living.
Added value.

Planning the personal statement - Step one

Your goal is to build a successful personal statement, often referred to as a statement of purpose, application essay or admissions essay.

Each essay may require a different approach dependent upon the school of application.

The goal of any personal statement is to make sure you get a place at university. One of the biggest complaints Admissions Officers have is that all applications sound the same.

The first step in writing the personal statement is to read what is asked from you.

Write down how you are going to approach the question. You need to find an angle that sets you apart from the other applications. Spend half an hour writing down some of the most unusual things you have done that have achieved positive results, or some of the experiences that have led to this career choice.

At Get Into Uni we have read thousands of essays and the most unusual experiences are demonstrated in those that get results.

As you begin applying to programs it is important to think of influences that have been central to your decision.

Grab a piece of paper and think of the answers to the following:

What subjects did you enjoy most at college? Why and who inspired you?
What do you do outside school? Has this impacted upon your decision to study?
What is the most important thing you have learnt so far?
Have you experienced travel or been in situations that are unfamiliar?
What is your favorite book?
What education milestones that you have encountered?
How has your interest in the subject developed?

We understand that answering these questions is hard and it will take time to complete but the most important thing is to define a theme and try to keep the motives of study complete. Now you have this information it is time to write the first draft.

Added value

You need to think how the school or program will add value to you and your personal development. It is worth asking your Teachers to evaluate the schools of your choice. We also recommend e-mailing professors to gain more information and advice on the program of your choice for example:

Sample letter:

Dear Dr <insert name here>

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to invent something that would improve people’s lives.

I know that developing a groundbreaking new idea is only the beginning of success. I decided to pursue a career in engineering following high school and I am now seeking a graduate program to broaden my skill base. I was hoping it would be possible to set up a telephone call with you to discuss my skills and the program in more detail before I apply.

Kind Regards

Your choice of Study

If you are not sure what subject to study at school then rethink and focus on trying to find out what it is you wish to do as a career.

Parents may encourage you to study for a subject that holds little interest to you. Remember – this is a big decision to study further and you need to be happy with your choice of subject.

Maybe you could seek the help of a career professional? Some schools may admit you as a unspecified student - so that you can take a number of elements to decide which area you wish to focus on in the future.

Managing your application

Applying for college requires more than typing up the application and writing a personal statement or statement of purpose. Some of the steps you may encounter during the application may involve:

Select a maximum of ten schools and mail these schools.
Obtain information through online application packs.
Take the standard school tests and send your results.
Organize letters of recommendation.
Forward transcripts and test results to your potential schools.
Planning, writing and finalizing an excellent personal statement.
Ensuring your personal statement is free from errors and sums up why you wish to study your subject.
Distribute your application to your chosen schools and pay the fee.
Follow up the application by contacting the schools - once you have an outcome.

Planning ahead

When you embark on applying to school, you may encounter some or all of these tasks. That is why it is important to start planning your work in plenty of time. Narrowing down your school choices will ensure that your time is better spent focusing on each of your chosen programs.

Make sure you get it done on time

Most students leave the application to the last minute which means the Admissions Department will receive an influx of applications to read. The Admissions Officer will normally evaluate candidates and prioritize these into categories. Think about the reader receiving hundreds or thousands of admissions essays – will they spend more than 4 minutes looking over your personal statement?

If you feel the Admissions Officer will not have enough time to fully appreciate your personal statement you need to do two things:

Make sure you get your personal statement in early.
Create a powerful, stunning personal statement that they will want to read!

Some schools fix a rolling date of admissions, so before embarking on the application make sure you are fully aware of the application process. The earlier your application gets to the Admissions Officer the greater chances are that the Admissions Officer will review this without having a huge workload.

If your application is received late the consequences are that the Admissions Officer has already read hundreds of essays before yours. For programs that are highly sort after it is even more important to make sure your application reaches the admissions office on time. If you are unsure about when to apply for a program discuss this with the school admissions unit.

Step one: Choose a maximum of ten schools and mail these schools to obtain information.

This is the most important step and as we have previously highlighted it is important to make sure you can prepare your application with a planned approach. The first hurdle is to choose your schools and filtering your choices to ten.

The next task is to research each school and apply for application forms and catalogs. It is important to make sure you read the catalog and note any information which you will need in order to complete the application form.

Hate planning?

Not everyone likes planning but it is important as you will be applying for a number of schools making sure your application for each one is complete, which is detrimental to your success.

Step two: Taking the standard school tests and sending your results.

Dependent upon the program or school to which you are applying you may be required to sit an admissions test. Tests require expensive revision and a great deal of time and planning so you are able to fully revise and produce your best result.

Make sure that your test results are forwarded to the schools that you are applying for.

Step three: Organize letters of recommendation.

It is recommended that you make an appointment with your teacher to ask for the letter of recommendation. Ask them advice on the schools for which you are targeting, and discuss your motives for applying for each school.

Remember to thank your professor for helping you write the letter of recommendation.

Step four: Forward transcripts and test results to your potential schools.

It is important that if you take any tests to forward these to the schools for which you are applying.

Step five: Planning, writing and finalizing an excellent personal statement.

We will provide more advice on what to write in the statement of purpose in a later section of this application guide. For now, the personal statement is important as the emphasis of the writing is reflected on you. You cannot change who you are or what you have done so the personal statement should really highlight the best you have done and what you can achieve.

Step six: Ensuring your personal statement is free from errors.

Almost 98% of our clients submit personal statements with at least one error. Therefore, it is essential that you ensure your personal statement is free from errors. Get Into Uni can help you shape a powerful admissions essay/statement of purpose.

Step seven: Distribute your application to your chosen schools and pay the fee.

Application fees range in the different type of schools across the country. Therefore, make sure you have made the right choice and you have narrowed these down before you apply.

Step eight: Follow up the application by contacting the schools once you have an outcome.

We always recommend that you follow up your application three weeks before the cut off date. Applying to multiple programs at different schools may mean contacting a number of colleges. Be sure you follow up and gain feedback on your application.

Visiting your schools

The three most immediate ways to stand out from other applications is to show you are a committed student. This may include visiting the campus, submitting an outstanding admissions application or contacting the staff at the university.

Finding out information from students already on the course is another good way to gain favorable content for your application essay.

Remember, the first element is to find out if the program is right for you. Interviews have generally disappeared over the last few years but it is important to show your level of academic preparation and form a lasting impression. An application form is always a difficult way to determine your suitability for your program so a visit puts a name to a face.

When you visit a campus make sure that you look smart and come across as enthusiastic. Look clean and healthy as first impressions do count. Remember to make an appointment first and ever just turn up. Before you visit be sure to research the course and prepare questions to ask about the program, research opportunities and facilities. If you come across as being interested then they are more likely to feel that you are a good fit for the course.

Be well prepared and be yourself.

Writing Guide

The key to any personal statement is to answer:

Why are you applying for the subject?
Why do you wish to study at the university you have chosen?
What can you offer?
Will you be able to cope with the workload?
Are you a good student?

Pretend you are writing the statement for a friend. Keep the focus on the content and the answers to the questions in “planning the personal statement” in the previous section. Don’t be worried about using vivid images.

Introduction

Start by writing your introduction based on your experiences or a powerful event in your life. Some students use powerful sentences in the first paragraph for example:

“ Why would I want to go to university? I have a first-class occupation and a superb salary. However, I cannot escape a burning need to help people. Working in the banking industry will not fulfil this goal. Your program will.”

You can see the opening is bold and will result in the Admissions Officer to read on. You must try to describe events in detail rather than saying “I like tennis” think about why you like tennis and how has this helped you as a person.

The middle

At this point you are free to begin to demonstrate your dedication to the profession. Again, try to demonstrate real life examples rather than just say what has happened. Weave in your career plans and have a few themes that filter through your essay.

“The course helped identify my strengths and allowed me to work on my weaknesses, importantly it provided the chance to interact with other law students, and hardened my dedication to the profession.”

The end

The conclusion should end powerfully and sum up your desires to study. Emphasis must be placed on your main skills and knowledge. The main point of the conclusion is to underline your desire to study. Read the sample conclusion below.

“Through my intensive schoolwork, hands-on work experience, and prolonged personal interest, I have demonstrated my considerable commitment to the arts.”

Having reached the conclusion, Admissions Officers need to feel that they know more about you than when they started.

The fact that you enjoy basketball is impressive, but what is more interesting is the inspiration behind it: the fact that you have watched Michael Jordan, and why he inspired you.

Final tips

Remember to keep the discussion personal. How much you revel about yourself is up to you. Many students fall into the trap of keeping the reader at arms length.

Now you have written the first draft you can send it to Get Into Uni to be edited or continue revising your draft to perfection. ALWAYS get your draft proofread. There is no correct number of drafts. Listen to the reader and take on board the advice they give.

You are just moments away from working with an Ivy league-educated Editor who will provide plenty of fresh creative ideas, to really make your personal statement stand out.

Just think! - by purchasing one of our services you are making the most valuable investment possible; you are investing in your own future.

Grammar And Style

Hot Tips from Get Into Uni Staff:

Limit the use of long words.
The first mistake students make is to use very long words. There's nothing wrong with long words, but if used inappropriately, long words can hinder your application. For example words such as functionality and methodology have their correct use. But if you need a concise approach, think about using function and method.

Use a combination of long and short sentences.
Perfecting your sentences is the most critical element of any personal statement. A good personal statement will contain a mixture of both long and short sentences. Read your personal statement aloud, count how many words each sentence contains and look to remove unnecessary words.

Apply - Show, Don’t Tell rule (SDT)
One rule in writing is "Show Don’t Tell" the rule is not always obvious. Admissions Officers don’t necessary believe what they are told. So when you really need them to believe something, it's better to show it to them rather than to tell them about it. A persuasive personal statement convinces the reader.

Show don't tell.
"I'll never forget how upset I felt after Sarah was ill. I was upset."
The passage above names the feeling rather than showing what they felt. Wording can be improved from changing "upset" to "distressed".

Get your grammar right.
Given the importance of your personal statement, grammar and punctuation are critical. Punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence or paragraph, therefore, it is useful to be aware of the grammar and punctuation errors that frequently occur.

Grammar guide:

Keep your sentences short and to the point.
Every sentence begins with a capital letter and ends in a full stop, question mark, or exclamation mark.
Avoid using superfluous words.
Use simple words. For example, use instead of utilize/utilization, sign(s) instead of signage, link instead of linkage, and (as an adjective) local instead of localized.
Use serial commas, those commas that are before the "and" in a series.
When using quotation marks, the comma and the full stop are placed inside the closing quotation mark. The semicolon is placed outside the closing quotation mark.
Use one space after full stops and colons (referred to as close spacing). Word processing programs now incorporate proportional spacing, which typewriters did not, and this precludes the need for double spaces between full stops.
Most words with "multi" (multi page, multidisciplinary, multimedia) do NOT have a hyphen. This is also true for most “non” words; nonnative, nontoxic, nonsmokers.
Use "that" for clauses that restrict the meaning of a sentence; use "which" for clauses that provide additional information and are not necessary to understand the sentence.
Avoid the overuse of bold and italics to emphasize text. If everything is in bold or italics, then nothing is being emphasized.
Cut down your words.

Use these hints to reduce your word count now.
You can normally delete the following without changing the meaning of the paragraph:

Amazing, fantastic, nice, terrific, cohort, context, interaction, materialize, syndrome, pretty, ambience, wanted, really, very, believe, always, honestly, seriously, confidentially, personally, surprisingly, even, for my sake, as much as possible, even, only, concerned, why, where, who, what, how, if, ideally, economically, officially, obviously, clearly, surely, undoubtedly, to conclude, conclusion, introduce, knew, surprised, therefore, however, moreover and illustrating.

Remove "that" - unless it is necessary.
Reword sentences containing: and, I, the, he, she, his, and her.
Delete adverbs "ly" endings.
Amend using the ending "ing".
Delete "just" and "so".
Erase "was" and "were" (these normally make the sentence passive and you should not have more than 2% in one document).

The advice of other readers will become invaluable as you build and improve your essay. Get Into Uni is a leading editing company in the USA. In all our editing services we demonstrate how your personal statement can be brought to life in a way that is relevant to you. Quickly ask yourself the following:

Are the paragraphs linked to represent you in a clear and concise way?
Are your sentences short?
Are there errors?
Are sentences clear and easy to read?
Is the vocabulary suited to Admission Officers?
Are the long sentences easy to follow?
Have you avoided excessive repetition?

You are just moments away from working with an Ivy League-educated Editors who will provide plenty of fresh creative ideas, to really make your personal statement stand out.

Just think! - by purchasing one of our editing services you are making the most valuable investment possible; you are investing in your own future.

What if I am a foreign student?

The support for international students differs between universities. Most importantly try to talk to the college regarding accommodation and fees.

Note: This guide is not intended to replace the advice of Tutors, Admissions Officers, or Teachers; Get Into Uni simply provides advice and exercises to help you write a compelling personal statement.