Learn to Write Your Personal Statement

Entering a college may sometimes be a harsh task. Not only should your grades be excellent to get to the higher educational establishment, but also the admission committee must approve you for the chosen department. In order to secure their decision, it is strongly recommended to pay much attention to your personal statement – an essay that you create when entering the college. In this piece of writing, you are supposed to tell about yourself and explain the commission why you deserve to be approved for that place. In different words, a personal statement is called a college essay, generally meaning completely the same. When you get down to the writing, you should remember that it is not a freeform essay. Actually, what you are doing is answering an essay prompt. It is a question that the college administration asks you to answer, when preparing the personal statement. Apart from that, you are also obliged to provide the college staff with a supplement essay, which is a piece of writing from your school that perfectly demonstrates your skills and is a good addition to the personal statement. Moreover, some educational institutions will ask you for two or even more supplement essays, which may definitely distress you. Luckily, this guide is a perfect article for all the graduates and it will explain you some most frightening questions:

• What is a personal statement?
• Why do colleges make you write the statement?
• What types of essay prompts do colleges give?
• What do you need to write a perfect personal statement?

MAIN REASONS OF ASKING FOR A COLLEGE ESSAY

Despite many myths of why colleges require entrance essays, there is a single official fact, which says that they only need to know more about you, your personality, knowledge and skills. Usually, tests do not show the entire image of a person, while an essay (if written honestly and not bought from the online services) does show your best sides and may reveal the parts that even you did not know about.

WHAT MAKES A STRONG PERSONAL STATEMENT?

Your appearance and your knowledge are vivid and can be either easily noticed or easily checked. Your identity is, on the other hand, unbelievably difficult to discover. As an average person, you are likely to hide from people your real “you” and colleges are the places that help you reveal all inner desires and wishes. Admission committee consists of people who are responsible for analyzing the students entering their college. Of course, your grammar, punctuation and style are relevant; however, this essay cannot be called a simple academic piece of writing. Here, you are obliged to show how determined, ambitious, and single-minded you are. Perhaps, you are entering a teachers training college, so show your care towards others, especially children. Maybe you are applying for a journalism department, which is why you should express your desire towards creating sensations or filming or producing – anything that is relevant for the specialization. Two students with almost identical test results have completely similar chances for entering the college unless a committee has an additional source of information – a personal statement. This text shows who of them is more likely to develop.

WRITING SKILLS

Even though you should care more about the content, the way you are writing actually influences the result. You may ask, “What makes a strong personal statement?” The answer is a combination of the key factors. Thorough content and the absence of mistakes create the environment that makes your chances for entering really high.

CALLBACK TO PERSONAL LIFE

With a clear view of your school results, you can take the advantage of your personal statement indeed. Perhaps you had a rapid increase of an average grade in the middle school – the commission will be definitely much interested in your success, so you should explain everything in a paragraph of your college essay. The same with the grade decline – maybe your family drama prevented you from studying at your maximum. This is a nice story for the committee as well. Therefore, do not be scared to describe intimacy – if you are applying for a certain college, you already treat them as a family.

ANSWERING A COLLEGE HINT

In order to ease your life, colleges tend to provide students with different topics, so called essay prompts, so that the students could gather their mind and give an extended answer. If you are not capable of coming up with necessary thoughts, you can always get personal statement writing help. Just ask your relatives, friends, schoolmates to describe you and even a few words will push you into a right direction.

A college may ask you to highlight the recent personal experience that became a turning point of your life. Here, the committee may want to understand what is significant for you and what may influence your decisions in the future.

Another interesting and tricky theme for discussion may be problem solution. You are faced with a certain issue and the task is to explain how you would cope with it. The task is also closely oriented, as college is a place full of different obstacles and possible failures. The commission is interested how you can react to some of them.

THE SECRET OF A PERFECT ESSAY

So, now you know the answer to the question, “what is a personal statement?” You know what can await you in this task. Moreover, you even know where to get personal statement writing help. Now, it is time to get to the final ingredient of the ideal college essay. No wonder that it is honesty. All you need to do is to write without any lies or overestimation. You do not create the personal statement to impress or influence the committee somehow, as they have already seen thousands of similar essays. You are presenting the main treasure of your life – your personality, and by doing it in the dishonest way, you may simply destroy everything that you have been building during the years at school.