Before you start worrying about writing your personal statement for your university application, be sure to know if you even need one.
Not all programs ask for a personal statement.
A client recently contacted me to help him write his personal statement. I asked him for the program and school details so I could start doing the research. It turned out he didn’t need to write a personal statement. What he needed to write were answers to “personal insight questions”.
These are short essay answers to specific questions provided by the school. The applicant must answer four of these questions (which he/she can choose among 8 options), with each answer limited to 350 words.
This type of writing requires a very different approach from the personal statement. 350 words is not a lot of space, so the essays need to be dense. They need to be brief, yet fully developed. And, they need to be targeted, meaning you cannot stray from the question’s focus.
This type of writing is easier in that you don’t need to brainstorm too many ideas, as the overarching theme and scope is outlined for you in the question. You also don’t need to find that “hook” since the admissions officers are already expecting a clear answer and are looking for it, so you already have their attention.
It is also harder in that you have less flexibility in terms of what to include. Yes, you can choose the questions that best align with your experiences, but then you have to have enough to say about them. You don’t need to write 350 words, but you should certainly write more than 200. Altogether, this means you have to adapt your experiences to the question whereas the personal statement gives you a blank slate that you shape as you wish.
What’s the point here?
Different schools will ask for different things, such as
- Personal Statement
- Statement of Purpose
- Personal Statement of Purpose
- Statement of Intent
- Letter of Intent
- Motivation Letter
- Supplementary essays (such as the personal insight questions)
- A combination of the above
Start your process by finding out what you need to write. Then find, or request, any information regarding the application’s writing requirements: Is there a prompt? Is there a word/character limit? Are there tips or samples available? And so on. Once you know what to write, do some research as how to write it in terms of content, style, scope, length, form, etc.
Finally, start collecting your ideas to suit the task and write your first of many drafts.
