Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi, welcome to www.engvid.com , I'm Adam. In today's video, I'm going to talk to you about writing a personal statement. Now, a personal statement is one of the documents that you will have to submit to a university when you're applying for admission there. Not all schools want it, but most schools do want some form of written document from you to apply with. Now, personal statement is just one type of document, but that's the type I'll talk about today. I'll mention the other types, but that will be a separate video for them, because it's a different approach to each one. So, before you do - before you do - before you start writing your personal statement, you have to be ready. Now, what this means is you can't write a personal statement the night before. You can't write it a week before. Some people spend anywhere from six months to a year preparing their personal statement. Now, personally, I don't think you need a year, you just need to work hard for awhile, but you need more than a week, okay? There's a lot of work to do, I'm going to show you some of the things you need to keep in mind, we're going to look at six different things you need to understand about the personal statement, but this is such an important document, such an important piece of paper, that you have to spend time on it. You have to know what's involved, okay? So, we're going to start with that. First of all, know the parameters. Now, what does this mean? I've seen lots of people; I've seen lots of examples of personal statements where the people did not get onto the school's website and find out what they actually need to do. They didn't look at the instructions. They didn't look at the limits. They didn't look at anything. They just started writing a personal statement, okay? What they didn't understand is what font size can you use? Usually the school will tell you, they will give you some instructions about what you can and can't do, okay? If you think, oh, I don't have enough to write, I'll use a 14 font, a size 14 font, to fill up the pages, okay, they - the admissions committee, the people who read this, they will see a 14 font - garbage, you're done, you're not getting into this school. They didn't even read one word yet. They saw you couldn't follow instructions, you obviously can't be a good student - goodbye, okay? Know the font. Know the spacing. Do they want double-spaced or single-spaced? Some of them don't care, they say you can write double or single, but make sure you know. If they want double-spaced, send them double-spaced personal statement. If they want single, make it single. Some of them will tell you how - the margins, they want one inch each side. They want two inches on the top and bottom, one inch on each side. Make sure you format your personal statement the way they want it. If you don't, it means you can't follow instructions, and this is for a personal statement. How are you going to do when your teachers give you instructions, right? You can't follow these basic instructions? You won't follow your teachers' instructions, they don't want you at their school, you're done, they haven't even read your personal statement yet. Now, very, very important. Some of them will give you a word limit. Some of them will say no more than 1000 words. Some will say no more than 1250 words. Some of them will say 900 words. Make sure you know what the limit of words is. Now, they might not give you a word limit. They might give you a character limit. Character means like, each letter and space and period and comma, each one of these is a character. A 900 character usually includes spaces, so make sure when your final draft is ready, you do not have more than 900 characters. Now, again, don't sit there counting each one. Make sure you do this on Word or some sort of word processor that can count for you, okay? And you can look at the top of the tabs in Word, for example, and there'll be a place that says word count. There will also show you character count. Make sure you don't go over your limit. Some of them will just give you a page limit. No more than two double-spaced pages. Okay. No more than one single spaced page, it's almost the same thing, but again, know how much you need to write, don't go beyond it. If they're giving you two pages, don't write half a page. If they're giving you one page, don't write a page and a half. Generally, I say anywhere between a page and a quarter to a page and a half should be enough. That's usually the standard, but again, every school will have their own instructions. Make sure you know what they want. Make sure you give them what they want. Okay? Now, some of them will just say "Write a personal statement", basically, why do you want to come to this school, or why do you want to join this program. Others will give you a very specific question, okay? If they give you a question, make sure you answer that question. Make sure that you build your - you construct or organize your personal statement around that question. If you ignore the question, you're - again, you're ending up in the rejection file, you know, you aren't getting admitted. Now, keep in mind, the personal statement is not the only thing they're looking at, but if you have very good grades, very good extracurricular activities, very good volunteering but you still have a terrible personal statement, all those things might not help you. On the other hand, if you have so-so grades and so-so everything else but your personal statement is amazing, that could actually get you into university. Very important document, okay? And sometimes, you will have everything the same, they'll - let's say there's five seats in a class, in a particular course. There are ten people, each of them have basically the same grades, the same experience, the same volunteer experience, etc. What's going to make the difference between who gets in and who doesn't? The personal statement, okay? Don't underestimate the value of this document. Now, the next thing, and this where a lot of people make a mistake. Do they actually want a personal statement, okay? Or, do they want a statement of intent, or a statement of purpose? Call it both ways. Do they want an essay? Do they want a personal statement of intent? Make sure you understand what it is they're asking for. A personal statement and a statement of intent are not the same thing, okay? This - the way you write this and the way you write this are different, okay, and that's why I said I'll make a different video for the statement of intent because, right now, we're just concentrating on the personal statement. So, let's take this question and go to the next step. So, we're taking about a personal statement. What is the first thing you have to notice about personal statement? First thing you have to notice is that they want a person. It's personal, okay? What they don't want to know is they don't want to know what are you, they want to know who are you. They want to see the person. They want to see the personality, okay? They want to see the person that's going to be coming into their classrooms and interacting with other students, interacting with faculty, interacting with school staff, somebody who can lead, somebody who can work hard and succeed and go on to give the school a good reputation once they enter the working world. So, they want to see a person. Now, what does this mean? They want to know your personality. They want to know, what have you done or - that shows who you are. They don't want to know what's on your transcripts. They see your transcripts. They know what's on your transcripts. Don't tell them that in the personal statement. Again, you can take out highlights. I was in the top 3% of my class in whatever, sure. That's not on your transcript, necessarily. But don't tell them I took this, this, and that course and I got A's in everything. Yeah, they know, they can see your transcript. Don't tell them that here. They don't want to see a student. They want to see a person. Okay? And I'll say that many times. If you have to submit a CV or a resume, don't tell them what you've done in terms of work or volunteer experience. They can see it in the resume. They can see it in the CV. Show them the person, don't show them the worker. Show them the person, don't show them the student, okay? All of that, they have other documents for. Again, all they want to see is the person. Now, you're asking, okay, yeah, I understand, you've said it enough times, but I could tell you that - I've said it to people ten times, and they still didn't do it. Very, very important to make sure they see a person, okay? They want to see uniqueness. They want to see some sort of imagination, okay, they want to see creativity. If you go online, if you do a Google search, or Bing or Yahoo or whatever search engine you use and you put "personal statement samples", the internet's full of them. Read some of these. You will read examples of what not to do and you will read examples of what to do. I once read a sample of a girl who got into all the ivy league schools. How did she organize her personal statement? She basically put all of her information into a story about going to Costco. For those of you who don't know, Costco is a huge supermarket in the States and Canada and everywhere. She compared her life and she compared her academic career and her work experience to a shopping trip to Costco. Now, you're thinking, well, that's a little bit strange. Yeah, it is a little bit strange, but it worked, and what did it show the most? That she was thinking outside the box. So, this is very important. Think outside the box, be creative, be original, be fresh. The people who are going to be reading your statement, they're going to be sitting in a room, they're going to have a stack of statements, okay? It's extremely boring work, but they have to do it, and the more boring your personal statement, the more average it is, the more bland it is, the more unoriginal it is, the more tired you're making them and a little bit more angry you're making them. Don't make them angry, give them something fresh, wake them up. As soon as you've woken them up, you already have an advantage in your admissions process, okay? Very, very important. Be a person. Don't be a student. Don't be a worker. Now, I'm going to talk a bit more about how you should do this, especially the introduction paragraph is super important. We're going to talk about that soon enough. Okay, so now, as I mentioned, time, right? So, your next step is to plan. Now, you have to plan your - you have to plan your overall approach to the personal statement. So, what you have to do is you have to find your theme or your arc. This is an arc, basically, right? So, this is what is holding your whole personal statement together and then all the information's going to come under this, under the arc, and it's all connecting to one central idea, and that's why I also call it a theme. Like, if you're into sports, that could be your theme. If you're a refugee from somewhere and you're looking for a better life and you're looking for a second chance, that's your theme. Or, another way to look at it is your "in". The one thing that lets you into the story and then you build your story from there, right? Very, very important to have this theme. You're not going to just list down random information. You're going to tell a story, okay, and that's what you're looking for. You're looking for the plot of the story of who you are and you're going to present that to the admissions committee, the people who are reading it. Again, I can't stress this enough, take time to do it. And you'll be surprised, I've helped lots of students write personal statements, okay, and it's amazing to me. Like, they always send me their first draft and I always - almost always send them back an email and I say, "Yeah, we're going to have to start from the beginning, because you're not doing what a personal statement is. You're not telling me a story, you're giving me facts, a lot of the facts which I can get from your other documents, okay, so we're going to start from scratch." And what I do is I create a list of questions for them, and what you can do is create a list of questions for yourself. But be very broad with your questions, okay? Make sure you ask all the who, what, when, where, how, which, etc., why, why do you want to come to this school? Why do you want to study this? When did you know you wanted to study this? So, you're applying, for example, to medical school, okay? Why are you applying to medical school? Why do you want to be a doctor? Did somebody push you to be a doctor? Did you ever have an experience at a doctor's office where you came out and you said "You know what? This is what I want to be, this is what I want to do with my life." What is that point in your life, that light bulb switched on and you realized this what you want to study? If you're going into business, why? Why do you want to go into business? Do you want to be rich? Okay, good. You're not going to say that on your personal statement. What you can say is why do you want to be rich? Do you want to make lots of money so that you can help poor people? Do you want to make lots of money so that you can control the world? Do you want to be president? Always ask one more question. Whatever your answer is, go a little bit more. Again, very important, I want you to dig deep into yourself. Don't be afraid of asking yourself these questions, okay? Now, when I help students write a personal statement, I send them minimum fifteen questions, sometimes thirty questions, and I'm not going to use all the answers in the personal statement, I'm not going to ask them to do that, but I want them to think. I want them to find that little piece of information, that little piece of their history to build a story around, okay? I want them to find their theme, okay? Ask non-typical questions. Don't say "Why do you want to be doctor?" Okay, obviously, that's a question you need to think about, but I want you to think, "Why do you want to help people? Why does seeing somebody sick become unsick make you feel good? How does it make you feel good? What situation - what example, what experience in your life has helped you understand that feeling about yourself?" Okay? Lots of questions. Give non-typical answers to typical questions. Even if you're - in your list of questions, you have very typical questions, "Why do you want to go to this school?", look for non-typical answers. Why do you want to go to MIT? Well yeah, it's the best technical school in the world, but why MIT? Why this particular school? There are lots of good technical schools. Well, MIT has, on-campus they have this particular building where you can do this, that, and that. Be very, very specific with your answers. Now, all the details you're going to collect are going to help you come up with your theme, with your arc, the one thread that goes through all this information and connects it all together, the one thing that helps you create a story, okay? Because, again, they have your transcript, they have your CV, they want to know who you are as a person, okay? Think of it like this: when you get to university, you're going to meet lots of new people and you're going to meet new classmates, new teachers, new people who are not your classmates but go to your school, in your dormitory, you'll meet them at the cafeteria, whatever. You're going to start interacting with people. People are going to want to know, who are you? Do I want to be friends with you? Why do I want to be friends with you? Well, tell them here. Tell them in the personal statement. Make the admissions committee, people, want to be friends with you, because you're a special person, okay? And don't think - sorry, one last point before I go on - everybody thinks they're special, which is fine. Everybody is special, but if everybody is special, nobody is special. Right? So, don't assume that everybody is basically different and you're the one special one, okay? Another thing that a lot of people forget, and I forgot to mention this before too, you're not the only one applying. The admissions committee is reading a lot of these things. What makes you stand out? Okay? What makes you different from the other people? So, I had one student. She was applying to a program that, on average, every year, they had 700 people applying, 700 applicants, for 25 seats in the program. So, one of the questions I asked her, "What makes you better, or what makes you more qualified, or what makes you a better candidate than 675 other people?", okay? That's what she had to think about and come up with an answer the beset she could and then we worked through it and got her theme, okay? Now, you have your plan, you have your theme, you're ready to go. Are you going to start researching the school? Not yet, you can start thinking about your introduction. All of the other details will come later, because I want you to establish your theme, I want you to establish your story, that's happening in the introduction, okay? The introduction is what is going to make or break your personal statement. This is where you catch the reader's attention, you hold it, and make them want to go on to read the other important information. So, you need a hook. You need that first sentence to just grab the reader's attention and hold it, and that comes in the first sentence. Now, I've seen lots of personal statements where somebody says, "My name is Bill Smith and I really want to go to your school." No. Terrible sentence. Why? A: They have your whole application package, they know your name. They know you want to apply to this school because you sent an application. They know you want to go here. Don't tell them the obvious. You're writing a story, grab their attention. Give them something unique, okay? I had one - I helped one person write a statement. I found out she liked sports. That was her hook. We started straight with the sports analogy. What makes successful people successful? In sports, it's their ability to win, it's their ability to play in a team and to strategize, to have a target and work hard to reach it. Again, I'm obviously paraphrasing here, but that's the key point. We used sports as her theme.