Writing a personal statement is a critical aspect of the college application process. It provides an opportunity for students to showcase their achievements, skills, and personal qualities.
However, many students make common mistakes while writing their personal statements, which can negatively impact their chances of being accepted into their desired college or program.
In this article, we highlight some common mistakes students tend to make while writing their personal statements. We will also share some tips on how to write statements that stand out.
1) Follow The Rules and Guidelines
Oftentimes, colleges require a specific format for personal statements.
Maybe a specific document type, a specific font or font size, or some other technical rules. If they’ve given you a word limit, stick to it.
It is best to follow these guidelines and rules religiously while writing the essay.
This will show the selection committee that you know how to follow rules. Failing to follow the rules will lead to instant rejection.
2) Oversharing
Agreed, it is a personal statement. But that doesn’t mean you overshare and be too personal.
Your personal statement must tell those who read it – who you are and not the details about your life or some really personal story.
3) Not Being Personal
Another mistake a lot of students do is to remove the ‘Personal’ from the ‘Personal Statement’.
Don’t take the backseat. Talk about yourself!
Mention your strengths and accomplishments.
The selection board wants to know about you, writing an essay about general topics isn’t going to convince them.
You must be the subject of the essay.
Write about how the given topic affects you and how you worked to overcome the challenge or what you learned. Being generic can make you seem uninterested in the application process.
4) Failing to Interpret the Prompt Correctly
This is a big mistake a lot of students make while writing their statements.
Admissions officers use prompts to guide applicants in crafting a response that highlights their strengths and qualifications.
If the prompt is not read properly or misinterpreted, your essay may very well fail to answer their questions and convey the information sought from you.
5) Focussing Only on Academic Achievements
Academic achievements are certainly important but your admission officer wants to see a well-rounded applicant who has interests and hobbies both in the classroom as well as outside the classroom.
Including extracurricular activities, sports, community service, etc. can help provide a more comprehensive view of your character and values.
6) Experiences
Another common mistake that students make while writing their personal statement is to include half a dozen different experiences in their essays.
While it may be tempting to do so, it can have a negative effect.
It is always better to include only 2 or 3 experiences in vivid detail rather than 6 or 7 that just barely scrape the surface of your acquired skills.
7) Avoid Sob Stories
Never, never write sob stories in your essay!
You shouldn’t rely on the pity of your admission officers. In fact, your admission officers must never once, while reading your essay think, you’re trying to gain pity.
It is of utmost importance to remain professional.
If there has indeed been some tragic event that has significantly affected your life, you can mention it, but remember to put a positive spin on it, highlighting the different things you learned from the experience or how that event made you a stronger or more compassionate human being, for example.
8) Going Too Far Back in the Past
The academic committee wants to know you as you are today, not who you were 3 or 5 years ago.
It is definitely important to include achievements from then but elaborate more on your activities and achievements of the recent past as compared to those of a few years back.
9) Faking It
Don’t inflate your achievements, or use over-the-top adjectives. The drama, the stuffy personality, the adjectives, and the adverbs, all have to go.
Let your achievements and personality speak for themselves.
Be simple and genuine. It is better to write a simple, and genuine essay over an inflated essay with bombastic language and overly academic language.
10) The Fine Line
When you write your essay, you must ensure you balance the question of how the college in question benefits from having someone such as yourself and how you benefit from going to the college in question specifically.
While walking along this fine line, it is important not to fall too much on either side – moving toward the former will make you seem arrogant while moving toward the latter will make you seem desperate.
This may seem challenging and sometimes even intimidating for someone who has no experience. But writing the perfect essay is of utmost importance in order to get selected for your desired college.
Therefore, it makes sense to take the help of industry professionals such as Writers Per Hour, who deliver custom, high-quality, well-written essay papers to ensure you have the best chance of being selected for your desired college.
11) Different Schools = Different Essays
Using the same essay while applying to different schools is a big mistake.
No, changing the names of the schools and program names will not suffice!
Write the essay, specially for each of the different schools you are applying to.
Some students even go as far as to include some names of researchers in the school that they hope to work with. This will show that you have done your homework and are willing to invest time and energy in school.
12) Proofreading
It’s not over when you finish writing your essay. You have to proofread again and again and again.
Take the help of your parents or friends or even your English teacher when you proofread. Even the tiniest of errors can have a negative impact on your chances.
Scour your essay for spelling errors, punctuation errors, and grammatical errors. Check the font, font size, line spacing, the margins. Check if the first word of every sentence is capitalized.
These errors can break the flow of the reader and cause the reader to focus on the error rather than the content.
Proofreading is a very important step. You’ll be amazed at the number of mistakes you come across when you proofread.
The Final Word
So now you’ve seen some of the most common mistakes students make while writing their personal statements. We hope we alerted you in time before you committed to one of these and jeopardized your admission chances!
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