If you only had five minutes to convince an admission committee that you’re a good pick for their school, what would you say? How would you catch and hold their interest? If you know the answer, then you have a good idea of how to prepare a short but effective personal statement on your application to graduate school. 

It’s all about you
Schools aren’t interested in hearing about how your dog ran away or about the time you met a famous movie star, but they do want to know why you want to study the field you’ve chosen, and why you want to study it at their school. Storytelling is an effective way to convey your motivation and commitment and the experiences that drive you. A brief anecdote about some event that exposed you to your chosen field can be effective as long as you don’t stray too far and you make it interesting. Don’t write in clichés, though, by starting off with something like “I knew I wanted to study ____ when …” 

Every story has a beginning, and yours will obviously need to have an end as well. You want your story to have a point, a reason for being told that relates to why you’re applying to a particular school. Develop a nice segue from your story to a description of your goals and what you hope to achieve personally and professionally by pursuing your degree. Read your story over and over and make sure it flows smoothly and makes sense. It even helps sometimes to read it aloud so you can “hear” the words and decide if they sound right. 

It’s about them, too
It's important to share a great story about you, but you also need to let the school know why you’ve chosen them. Ideally, you should relate those reasons to the theme of your story, although it might be hard to do so. (And don’t do it if it isn’t true!) On the other hand, if you’ve decided to apply to a certain school because they ranked as the number one school for meeting members of the opposite sex, don’t tell them that. Avoid discussing any rankings, gushing about how prestigious the school is, or even tossing in generic praise. (We like to call this “sucking up” and admission committees see right through it).

However, if you can mention a few faculty members and make reference to some of their work, that is a bit more impressive because it shows you’ve taken some time to research the school a little further than the average Joe.  Whatever you can do to effectively demonstrate that you know the school and can express how it’s suited for you and how you’re suited for them should work…as long as you avoid the sucking up stuff. 

It’s all about you — again
The first thing you should do is list all of your positive attributes and accomplishments — not! Stick with concrete experiences that demonstrate your leadership capabilities and positive qualities. Details are important and will help this portion of your statement to be interesting and successful in its purpose, so long as you don’t get bogged down in too many details. You don't need to list all of your accomplishments and activities because they’ve already been summarized elsewhere on your application. This is about conveying your motivation and some of your more intrinsic qualities that make you a highly qualified candidate for the school you’ve chosen to apply to. 

A good example of how to do this might be by focusing on a research experience you had, since research will be a mainstay of this next phase of your student life. Be specific! If you worked for a year under a professor, you might emphasize one particular project and explore that in depth. It doesn’t need to have been a major life-changing undertaking — any practical experience can be used as long as you demonstrate your enthusiasm and aptitude for the field you’ve chosen to study. 

Pay attention!
Of course, you should always read the application instructions carefully. Some schools will ask for a statement of purpose describing your specific research interests in lieu of, or in addition to, a personal statement that emphasizes your character and qualities. You might write a beautiful personal statement but if you don’t meet the expectation of the application, you haven’t done yourself any favors!