Have you ever wondered how I wrote my Personal Statement (PS) to get into one of the top technical universities in the world (despite having terrible GRE scores)?
I went on a scavenger hunt across the internet (as you are currently doing), reading any and every article I could find relating to writing a personal statement. But all of the articles I found were thin, malnourished, kinda like a naive aspiring model. I wanted a fat load of information! I wanted to find the Jabba the Hutt of articles.
But you know what? I couldn’t find my fat article friend. So I had to spend hours doing research and drawing my own conclusions on how to write the perfect personal statement for my grad school applications.
Lucky for you, I’ve written this article with the exact steps that I took (and that you should take) to write my PS! (BTW if you don’t want to read this article, you can watch the YouTube video I made here.)
Writing a PS can be broken down into 4 parts: research, plan, write, review. Only 4 steps?? Easy! So let’s get into it.
RESEARCH
You’re probably thinking “Umm Jess…I haven’t started grad school yet. Why are you making me do research??”
I’m sorry you feel that way. And I’m also sorry (not sorry) to inform you that this section is the single most important part of writing your personal statement. Why? Because how are you going to start writing a PS if you don’t know what to write? Are you just going to sit down and start writing generic phrases like “It’s always been my dream to attend MIT” or “I knew Stanford was for me ever since I got the university sweater for Christmas when I was five?” And then you’re going to send the same letter to every top university?
No! You’re not generic! You have hopes and dreams for your life! Now, we just need to effectively communicate those dreams onto paper.
So here’s what you’re going to do…
Let’s say you’re applying to MIT for mechanical engineering. Do you already know what field you want to study? (No, “mechanical engineering” is not an answer. You need to be more specific) Start going through the different mechanical engineering fields. Maybe you want to work in control systems? Fluid mechanics? Structures and materials?
You’ve decided you want to work in fluid mechanics. Great! Now go to the university’s mechanical engineering department website and start looking at all of the professors and labs that classify under fluid mechanics. Found a few professors and/or labs that interest you? We’re not done yet. Now try to find their latest research work and read a few of their papers (not the entire paper, just the abstract, intro & conclusion). You can find papers produced by that lab by going to Google Scholar and searching the professor’s name and sorting by “date” to find the most recent papers.
Now repeat for each university program that you’re applying to.
Why are we doing all of this? Because you need to know why you want to attend a university before you start writing. I’m sorry but an answer like “because of the reputation of the institution” is not good enough. You need to be specific. After you’ve done your research, you’ll be able to give a much better answer such as:
I want to do novel research in the biomedical field to find new and better ways for the hearing impaired to hear music. Prof. X at this institution has been pushing the boundaries in novel hearing aid technology. Specifically, his most recent work published in the Journal of Biomedical Research titled “A novel device that allows the hearing impaired to hear classical music” is exactly the type of device I would like to improve for future generations.
Do your research.
PLAN
Write out your answers to the following questions:
- Why do you want to study a Master’s?
- How will these program courses benefit you?
- What are you aspiring to be/do in your future career and how will this master’s program help you achieve those goals?
- How can your work contribute to the department/University/society?
- What research have you conducted? What did you learn from it?
- If you changed your field of study:
- The reasons for deciding to change your field of study
- How changing your direction of study will help you with your future career.
When answering these questions, you want to back up any CLAIMS with EVIDENCE. This is where you introduce your education, theses, projects, work experience, hobbies, skills, etc. Don’t just say “I’m a leader and work great in teams” but show how you’re a great leader and that you’re good at working in teams. For example, maybe you can use your past research as an example of how you were able to use your leadership skills to achieve great results from your independent research project.
WRITE
Now that you know what you want to write, this section should be the easiest. There is no strict format for personal statements, but in general, they should have an introduction, some body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Start with the body paragraphs. Take your answers in the previous section and form them together to create one cohesive story. The easiest thing to do here is reread your answers in the previous section and then just start writing (you can edit later).
Once you’ve finished your body paragraphs, make sure you’ve implicitly mentioned why you want to study the specific program that you’re applying to. And make sure you brought up any notable research experience, projects, or past internships.
Please note that I used the word “notable.” Don’t start summarizing your entire CV (that’s what a CV is for), just mention past experience that can be related to the topic you want to study.
Finally, make sure you’ve answered any of the questions asked by the institution (maybe they want to know any past research that you’ve done).
Regarding the conclusion, it should just be a couple sentences (no more than 3). You don’t need to reiterate everything in your PS; you have a limited amount of room so don’t waste it. Just pick a few key points that you want to reiterate and then finish writing.
Finally, the introduction. Having a hook or a nice anecdote at the beginning of your PS is nice but not necessary. To think of an anecdote, start by answering the question “why do you want to study here.” Maybe your answer is “because I like the school.” Ask yourself “why” again. Your answer could be “because I like the fact that many of the students end up working at NASA.” Ask “why” again and keep repeating this process until you find something tangible. If you can’t think of a good anecdote then just move on and introduce what you want to study and why.
REVIEW
You’re almost done! Now all you need to do is review your PS (and try to convince some of your friends to read through it too).
To make the review process easier, I created a Personal Statement Checklist that you can download for FREE. Basically, go through the checklist and make sure you apply the changes to your PS. If any of the points aren’t clear, my podcast co-host (Elisabeth) and I dedicated an entire episode to explaining the checklist. So be sure to check it out if you need clarification.
If you want even more…
If this blog post isn’t detailed enough for you, I made a comprehensive 18-page, step-by-step guide to help you write your PS. The guide also includes my very own PS that I used to get into the mechanical engineering grad school program at ETH Zurich. For additional resources, you can check out STEMinine Blog!
Below, you can watch my video on the subject. Bonus: I also go through the differences between a Personal Statement, a Motivation Letter, and a Letter of Intent.
