Personal statement time
Are personal statements some kind of torture that American uni’s and scholarship bodies have made up? I mean what wrong with a few competency based questions? No, instead I have to tell a story, throw in some key words and generally make it a jolly good read. What’s even worse there is no set word limit for the Fulbright personal statement. GULP!
I haven’t attempted a personal statement since I applied for my undergrad, so I’m a bit rusty with the whole concept. The first draft of the personal statement I’ve done is all over the place. It also has the potential to be a bit long, or is that a bit short? So its safe to say I don’t like my draft.
I’ve done a couple of things to help me get the information I need to improve my draft.
To get a better idea on word limits I phoned up Fulbright UK office to get a bit more guidance on what they expect from the personal statement. Yep, got it confirmed, no set word limit. But they like it concise. (No comment.)
Fulbright have a couple of good resources on their website and they even have attached a link to a useful video.
I’ve had a look at other examples online. Here are a couple I dug up:
Their International experience
My conclusion after reading them is that I flatly refuse to write in the style I saw. While it might suit a 22 year old, it doesn’t me at 32, nor my writing style. So I have a problem.
Upside I got some really good piece of advice from a friend. To write a good personal statement all I need to do is identify my personal brand. I can do this by identifying what is my offer to Fulbright, my unique selling points. Then write the personal statement selling those three/ four things. Brilliant, I can do that. Now what’s my brand?
Anyone got any hints/tips on how to write a good personal statement?
5 responses to “Personal statement time”
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sarah's mba journey 
This is how I did my MBA essay brainstorming for two of the top U.S. b-schools, and it is likely to be of some use as well for personal statements.
1. Start by thinking about (and scribbling down) the highlights of your life, e.g. international experiences, significant milestones in your life (personal, academic, athletic, & professional), accomplishments you are proud of. I like post-its or index cards because you’ll want to be able to group them later. It will definitely be all over the place — but that’s not the point. The point is to get down enough that you can start sifting it for patterns.
2. Sift for patterns. You’ll usually find that there are some broad themes that pop up from that, things that will say “this is what matters to me” or “this is who I am”. In my case, it was “leaving organizations better than when I found it” and “building connections”. For you, it could be anything, but if you have been in any way consistently following what you believe, you will have some kind of consistent pattern. (Note, this could take some time, it took me almost two weeks to sift through the accumulated experiences of my lifetime to find that pattern. You will also likely find a few themes that are interesting, but not particularly relevant to MBA programs or scholarship applications. Those you’ll need to cut out, because you don’t want to dilute the message you’re sending.)
3. The “relevant” patterns are the seed of your brand. “Who are you?” “What matters to you?” Then you need to add to this, “What can you do/what have you done?” Think of it as if you’re marketing a product, like an iPad or a MacBook. Why should the customer (the Fulbright Foundation), pick you? What can you do (this basically is what have you done)? What do you stand for? Think of something like the BodyShop, which stands for sustainable trade & no animal testing. What matters to you, and why does it matter?
4. In the end, you’re going to have to distill all of this down to a few simple, crisp sentences that say, This is who I am, this is what matters to me, and this is what I can do/have done. (This does take a lot of time. It’s deceptive–the shorter and simpler a statement is, the harder it is to write. Hemingway, for example, looks simple. Until you try writing a short story in that style. It takes many careful edits to get it down to that level of spare, precise prose.) This is what you want to convey–your “brand”.
5. Why MBA? (This should be extremely familiar to you from your MBA essays.)
6. Now that you know what you want to convey, you need to put all of that into the personal statement: picking and choosing from your experiences & accomplishments to create a story that persuades people that your brand is something they want to back with their money, so to speak.
Good luck!
Terrifiϲ) liked almost everything very much)
keep it up aոd don’t quit)