How to Write a Personal Statement

Around here, we spend a lot of time talking about applications and the writing samples that comprise those applications. For MBA candidates, the focus is on essays and how to both answer a school's question while also injecting your key message points into the response. Essay writing requires a specific approach, which is an intuitive concept for most applicants, given the specific nature of the essay questions and the variety of issues that matter to individual schools. But what of the personal statement? How do you take a blank page and vague instructions and maximize the opportunity before you? Personal statements also require a specific approach, one that can best be understood as a three-step process.

Before examining the three steps to writing a great personal statement, note that there will always be subtle differences in strategy, depending on the program type. For the personal statement on a law school application, the goal is always to maximize the space in whatever way that circumstances dictate. On a medical school AMCAS personal statement, there is always going to be a "stand out from the crowd" element to consider. For many grad school programs, candidates need to make sure they understand the program in question. You can go right down the list and find a caveat for every type of graduate school. That said, once you account for those nuances, you will always come back to the following three steps:

1. Determine Your Position. Positioning focuses on the major thrust of the personal statement. What is the strength you most want to advertise? The weakness you most need to mitigate? Is there a unique factor you can showcase? What is the one hole in your application that the admissions committee is dying for you to resolve in this space? This can be different for each applicant, but the one thing that is certain is that the personal statement exists for you to tell the reader what he or she needs to know. Forget what you think you should write about or what makes for the best traditional essay – it all depends on a hierarchy of needs. If someone has a perfect test score and flawless transcripts from a great college, while sporting an incredible resume, then the only concern is how entertaining the writing needs to be and maybe stating some goals. For someone with amazing grades and test scores, but zero real life experience, that individual had better be sure to talk about how he or she can lead and relate to people. And on and on.

Talk to anyone who works full-time in admissions and you will learn that they are constantly amazed by the fact that applicants avoid the “big issues” in their profile and instead write about something trite or off topic. Who cares if an applicant did relief work when the admissions officer's big question is whether or not the applicant is smart enough? It may sound harsh, but that is how it works. Therefore, your biggest challenge as an applicant is to figure out how to frame your personal statement and what the scope should be, based on the preliminary facts that are in your favor, and those that are not.

2. Understand Key Application Themes. In addition to your primary positioning (aka answering the reader’s biggest question), you also need to try to round out the key application themes for the type of program to which you are applying. This is an area that often requires insider perspective and the help of a great advisor or consulting company. For law school, the five key applications themes are:

1. Intellect (both intellectual curiosity and intellectual horsepower).
2. Motivation.
3. Discipline.
4. Collegiality.
5. Leadership.

(Note that leadership is not as important in the law school process as it would be on the MBA side – it is mainly self-serving as law schools simply want to ensure that they have enough "leaders of men" to run their student programs. A fairly cynical take to be sure, but producing leaders and putting them in the work force is just not a major priority. That said, it is still better to show leadership than not.)

In addition to coming up with a great position and knowing where to focus your energies, you also want to be sure that all of the key application themes are covered somewhere in your application. Some of these aspects may be evident on your resume or in your test scores/grades (or, conversely, it may be evident that you do not possess them), but others require some elaboration. The themes above will help you understand your positioning (example: if you have a low college GPA, it is likely that the admissions officer's "big" question will about your level of focus and discipline, requiring you to make that your position on the personal statement), but they also ensure that you have proper balance throughout your application. If your resume and educational/career path are not typical of someone in your program of interest, then it becomes mandatory to showcase motivation in your personal statement. If you are highly accomplished but lack the type of activities on your resume that indicate leadership and collegiality, then the personal statement becomes the place to broadcast those traits. Learn the key themes, identify which are missing from your application, and then use the personal statement to introduce and bolster these areas.

3. Add Some Entertainment Value. Adding some entertainment value to your personal statement often comes down to framing, especially if there is a risk of the writing sample reading like a laundry list or a glorified resume. Lists and recycled resumes are to be avoided, but sometimes candidates need to drive home accomplishments or events in a way that starts to resemble a list. It becomes a bit of a catch-22. A great way to deal with this dilemma is to embed a hook and frame the personal statement in that way. You can root things around “challenges” or "accomplishments" or any other device that gives the personal statement a narrative thrust and a unifying thread. Then you can create a setup in the intro, 3-4 nice exemplary paragraphs, and a conclusion that brings it all home. Be sure to get right to the point, stating the big takeaway point in the very first line – then work from there.

Overall, the personal statement is not the place to cover everything under the sun. You just want to triage what is most important and then build a compelling and detailed narrative to support that position.

To receive assistance on any type of personal statement, be sure to visit our website to read about services for law school, medical school, and grad school.