Which circle slowly with a silken swish.
—Elinor Wylie
Of the thousands of personal essays I’ve read over the past 20 years, one of my favorite introductions is from an application to law school, and it opens thus:
My interest in the law began with donuts. As a child, I developed early persuasive skills during family disagreements on how to divide boxes of the treats. My parents belonged to the “biggest people deserve the most donuts” school of thought; while as the youngest family member, I was a devout believer in the “one person, one donut” principle. The debates were often cutthroat, but when it came to donut distribution, I sought justice at any cost.
This opening, taking from a sample essay in the book, How to Write the Perfect Personal Statement , by Mark Allen Stewart, isn’t just effective because of its cleverness. It’s also efficient in detail, humorous and surprising in delivery, focused in theme, universal in appeal, and even moralistic in meaning. This writer is concerned with justice, even at an early age when decisions of right and wrong could be reduced to the distribution of donuts. Obviously, the paragraph that follows the opening discusses justice at a more advanced level, and gradually this law school applicant addresses social issues such as poverty, nationalism, and prejudice, and he emphasizes his passion to address them through law. As he later sums up near the close of his essay, “My identity rests on these convictions”—and we believe him.
This example shows just how much can be accomplished in even a short personal essay by the introduction alone. It also demonstrates that stylistic creativity is not always about flashy word choice or complex sentencing—sometimes the best style is the most artfully simplistic, the most pithy. Whatever else readers think of the content of a personal essay, if they can take delight in the style, they are more likely to assess the writer as worthy of being read and re-read, and thus more likely to plop the application into the acceptance pile.
This chapter is about helping you write stylish personal essays, with an understanding that style is revealed through everything from mechanical correctness to efficiency of presentation to nuances of tone. Put simply, to write with style is to invite and earn your reader’s respect.
Common Stylistic Tools, Good and Bad
Like the resume, the personal statement has evolved to the point where there are both built-in and commonly used stylistic devices as well as room for individuality and creativity. And as with the resume, there are appropriate ways to word certain material and there are certain risks not worth taking. The very language you use and the rhetorical approach you take can be guided by the informed practices of others.
Avoiding Formalities and Generic Phrases
Many writers feel the need to use excessive formalities and niceties within personal statements, partly because they’ve seen others do so and partly because they worry that the weight of the occasion calls for refined or austere language. Thus, we find statements such as the following in personal essays, often in the opening or closing:
It is with great pride and deep respect that I hereby do apply for the honor of the Rhodes Scholarship. Herewith you will find my complete application materials.
I sincerely hope that the graduate committee of Mythic University deems my application worthy of full consideration so that I may contribute to a program already deserving of its national reputation.
The problem with these examples should be painfully obvious. In the first case, the committee already knows what applicants are seeking, so the generic sentences become useless; in the second case—an elliptical construct—the writer unintentionally insults readers, as though they might not give every application equal consideration or as if they are unaware of their program’s own reputation.
Avoid such mannerly drivel. Instead, assume a respectful, individual tone throughout your writing, and trust that you will be treated both respectfully and individually. When tempted towards formalities, take a cue from some of the writers showcased in Chapter 5, whose formal comments on their fit for their respective scholarships are both meaningful and self-reflective, as follows:
I look forward to the challenges that this project presents as well as the opportunities for further maturation as a practicing scientist.
Ensconcing myself in British culture, intellectual environment, and vigorous research at Oxford is the chance of a lifetime. I hope to be able to seize it.
Effective Jargon and Informality
In general, jargon is underrated. Jargon—the specialized language of a discipline—is so often overused or used poorly that it gets a bad rap. However, to use jargon economically and effectively is to show that you are an “insider,” comfortable with the vocabulary and discourse of your field of study. To create written context where jargon is the natural choice also promotes an efficiency of understanding and a direct connection with the reader. For instance, in the extensive sample essay from biological science in Chapter 4, the specialized but simple term “invasives” is used instead of “pest species that invade an area.” In an essay from a military pilot in the same chapter, terms such as “biplanes” are used comfortably, as are acronyms such as NGA and GIS, suggesting that the writer is having an informed, relaxed conversation within a specialized community—thus there is no need to define simple specialized terms that the audience can readily understand. These writers use jargon to save their readers time and to communicate directly and professionally.
At the same time, there are other good reasons to converse informally in a personal statement, as follows:
- to facilitate clear narrative;
- to involve yourself as a character in the action;
- to provide contrast to the denser surrounding material.
In the essay written by a military pilot cited above, the writer refers to “challenges [he] faced as an undergrad,” notes that he “can do little to affect Congressional funding,” and wryly comments, “I don’t expect the military to begin training squadrons of GIS wizards.” Here, the writer shows the courage to be plain speaking and informal, sending the message that he can comfortably shoot from the hip.
Of course, both jargon and informalities can be overused and can be inappropriate for your target audience, and if readers feel that jargon is used only to impress or that informalities turn too colloquial, they will only be annoyed by your style. But when you manage both jargon and informalities sparingly and with purpose your audience will barely notice—they’ll be too busy reading comfortably.
Using Narrative and Anecdotes
Compact stories and nifty narratives, especially in the opening of a personal statement, can communicate efficiently and creatively with your readers, while potentially providing welcome relief during the reading of hundreds of application essays that strongly resemble each other. Some stories put us right in the moment alongside the writer:
“When I received my first microscope set at the age of eight, I couldn’t wait to swab the inside of my cheek and smear my cells on a slide.”
Others invite us directly into the writer’s mind:
“I remember thinking about the long, cold nights that Edwin Hubble spent staring into the telescope at the Mt. Wilson Observatory.”
Still others surprise us and create a bit of suspense:
“Some protestors around me carried large flashlights; I clutched a bullhorn.”
These examples, all imbedded within personal essays written by students, represent how writers used narrative snippets to engage and inform the reader. Note how these examples do more than just narrate—they also underscore the writer’s passion for a field of study or a commitment to a cause. When you use small tales to capture our attention, be sure they are both relevant and revealing, so that we’re impressed not just with your ability to tell a quick story, but also your desire to tell a meaningful one.
Avoiding Cuteness and Gimmicks
Especially when using narrative or setting your sights on originality, it can be easy to lapse into a voice that is merely trite and cute. In Mark Allen Stewart’s book, How to Write the Perfect Personal Statement, such a lapse is critiqued by the Dean of Admissions at the UCLA School of Law as follows:
Humor is fine; it’s a welcome break, as long as it is actually humorous. I hate seeing essays that begin with something like: “In the matter before the court of UCLA, regarding the admission of . . .” Everyone who uses this approach thinks it’s unique, but it’s not.
Other misguided gimmicks that a surprising number of writers attempt when writing personal essays:
- Listing the impressive icons—probably long since dead—who have graduated from your school, blatantly placing yourself amongst their ranks. This may be good PR for your institution, but it’s bad PR for you.
- Sprinkling your essay with 50-cent vocabulary, obviously aided by a thesaurus. Choose the best word for the circumstances, not the fanciest.
- Bleeding your heart all over the page, as though your compassion or sensibilities or literary muscles have simply overtaken the writing process. I’ve seen students write about “dripping in agony” over an exam, or “languishing with deep-infested guilt” while watching a hungry child eat a meal. Such writing is obviously overwrought, and readers will worry that its writer is as well.
- Referring to yourself throughout the essay in the third person and telling some tragic or heroic tale, then revealing at the end that the essay’s humble protagonist is (surprise) indeed you. Such a tactic is not only gimmicky and self-indulgent, but transparent.
There are also gimmicks of form, as discussed in the Mark Allen Stewart book cited above: medical school applicants submitting essays in the form of a diagnosis; applicants who submit essays in leather binding, on parchment scrolls, or written in calligraphy; business school applicants with essays structured like a corporate prospectus.
Such gimmicks are meant to be cute, obviously, but it is doubtful that a selection committee would find them to be anything but odd. In fact, readers would likely question your suitability for graduate study if you stoop to such gimmickry. To put it bluntly but truthfully: children and puppies are cute; grad students are not. Remember that.
Creative Beginnings and Calculated Risks
Without question, the most common place for writers to exercise their freedom in personal statements, as well as the most common place where writers feel uncertain about what they’ve done, is in their beginnings. Even personal statements that are scientific in tone and content might have creative beginnings. Although there’s nothing wrong with a straightforward opening simply stating your purpose, especially if you have just one page for your essay, most writers take a bolder tack. Readers of personal statements are used to openings that tell stories or borrow quotations, essays that discuss relevant current events, and even daring writers who risk a bit of well-conceived humor or surprise.
Personal Stories
As the most common creative beginning, a personal story tells a tale by briefly setting a scene, often capturing some formative moment of your past when your interest in your course of study blossomed. Whether setting the scene in a classroom or on a mountaintop, remember that your goal is make readers feel they are there with you, and remember that the setting itself can be a character in your “short story”—influencing both the action and a response to that action.
Here is a perfect example of a lengthy creative beginning that winds its way into a formal thesis statement, excerpted from a Rhodes Scholarship essay in Chapter 5:
Soaked in sweat, I sat deep in thought on the small mound of sand and broken rocks in northern Kenya, where 1.7 million years ago a desperately ill Homo erectus woman had died. Her death had entranced me for years. KNM-ER 1808 had died ofHypervitaminosis A, wherein an overdose of Vitamin A causes extensive hemorrhaging throughout the skeleton and excruciating pain. Yet a thick rind of diseased bone all over her skeleton—ossified blood clots—tells that 1808 lived for weeks, even months, immobilized by pain and in the middle of the African bush. As noted in The Wisdom of the Bones, by Walker and Shipman, that means that someone had cared for her, brought her water, food, and kept away predators. At 1.7 million years of age, 1808’s mere pile of bones is a breathtaking, poignant glimpse of how people have struggled with disease over the ages. Since that moment two summers ago, I’ve been fascinated by humans’ relationship with disease. I want to research paleopathology, the study of ancient diseases, in relation to human culture, specifically sex and gender.
Note how this opening confidently integrates technical detail and even slips in an informal citation on the journey to the thesis. Here, setting acts as a character, moving our story’s protagonist to imagine a woman’s long-ago death, and we also recognize the writer’s seriousness of purpose about her work as she (as a character in the tale) contemplates the woman’s fate from a “small mound of sand and broken rocks in northern Kenya.” Just as she was taken to this important place and moment in her life, we are taken there with her as well through narrative.
Here is another example from an introduction to a student's application to medical school:
When I was little my grandfather gave me piggyback rides, brought me donuts every day when he came home from work, and taught me about nature. A simple farmer who survived World War II and lived most of his life under Russian occupation, he told me why trees grow so high, why I should not pull a cow by its ear, and why I should not chase chickens across the back yard. As fond as I was of him, as I grew and became more educated I also saw how this great man made bad choices about his health. I constantly nagged him about his smoking and poor diet. He loved bacon with eggs and milk straight from the cow. In response to my nagging he would simply say, "Eh, you are so young, what do you know?" One morning after breakfast when I was sixteen, he had a heart attack and died in the kitchen while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Here we find a writer who simultaneously evokes the memory of his beloved grandfather and also introduces us to his own sensibility. Simple details about his simple upbringing make up a brief but vivid tale with a tragic end, and thus we understand a very personal motivation behind this writer's choice of career.
Other essays open with much briefer and less narrative personal stories, sometimes relying on just one line to set the context, with the writer heading to a purpose statement shortly thereafter. Here are some straightforward but artful beginnings to personal statements from Donald Asher’s book Graduate Admissions Essays :
I attended seventeen different schools before high school.
I spent the morning of my eighteenth birthday in an auditorium with two hundred strangers.
Radio has been my passion for as long as I can remember.
Clearly, the style of an opening that shares a personal story can range from the flashy to the plain—what matters most is that the opening truly is personal.
Compelling Quotations
Like many writers and readers, I’m a sucker for a good meaty quotable quote, which is part of why quotations are used to open each chapter of this handbook. We tape handwritten quotes on our bathroom mirrors, clip them onto the visors in our cars, and paste them into our e-mail signature lines. In a personal essay, not only do quotes set context for the reader, they also allow you to ride on the broad shoulders of another who actually managed to say or write something that was worth quoting. Quotations might be used at the start of the essay, in the closing, or they might appear at a key moment within the body as a way to set context or emphasize a point. In Chapter 5 of this handbook, a quotation is used as an opening to a science-related essay by an applicant for a National Science Foundation Fellowship. In the same chapter, another writer uses a narrative opening in her essay to repeat a favorite quote that her mother used to say: “To find out where you’re going, you need to know where home is.”
Keep in mind that some quotations are highly overused and that quotations can also come off as merely trite and silly, depending on the taste of the reader. Some find Forrest Gump’s “Life is like a box of chocolates” hilarious; others just groan when they hear it. If using a quotation, be sure that you’re not just propping yourself up on it as an apology for a lack of substance to your text. Comment on the quotation’s relevance to your life rather than just let it sit there, and choose the most meaningful quote for the circumstances rather than one that simply tickles your fancy.
The Use of Surprise or Humor
Indeed, the weapon of surprise is a key ingredient in a Monty Python skit about the Spanish Inquisition (no one expects it, just in case you forgot). But in a personal statement humor and surprise can fall flat in the hands of a fumbling writer. Nevertheless, some writers take these calculated risks, and do so with style. Witness this passage from a sample essay in Chapter 4, as a film student explains how he spent his freshman year in a different major:
With a high school education grounded rigorously in math and science, I entered Mythic University on an academic scholarship with Polymer Science and Engineering as my intended major. I like to joke that, after seeing Mike Nichols’ film The Graduate and hearing that terrific line, “plastics,” delivered poolside to a wayward Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), I was inadvertently led into the hands of the great polymer Satan. But, by sophomore year, I quickly escaped the plastic devil’s clasp and found a new home in the film department.
Here, this student uses self-deprecating humor as many do in the personal statement: to explain what might otherwise look like a curiosity in his background. Readers need not question his devotion to film despite his beginning in the sciences—he even blends the two interests together by being influenced into his initial major by a film, aligning himself briefly and humorously with the hapless character of Benjamin Braddock.
Others use humor or surprise less expansively, but again with the purpose of revealing something personal and using intentional self-commentary. In Mark Allen Stewart’s How to Write the Perfect Personal Statement, one writer quips that his high school classmates voted him “Most likely to have a publishable resume,” which shows that this writer can simultaneously poke fun at and uplift himself. In Donald Asher’sGraduate Admissions Essays . Another writer opens her essay unconventionally with a surprising admission—“Skeletons. Like everyone else I have some hanging in my closet”—then later reveals herself as a “survivor of sexual assault.” Here, the writer’s tone is surprisingly frank, which under the circumstances could help her be viewed as mature and courageous, despite the risk she takes.
Perhaps what unifies these disparate approaches above is that the writers clearly know they are taking a risk with their rhetoric—there’s nothing accidental or highly cutesy about it. All of them reveal a passion for their chosen fields, and the humor and surprise are attention-getting without being too distracting.
Perhaps a good rule of thumb, then, is this: If using humor or surprise, aim it squarely at yourself without making yourself look silly or undermining your character, and dispense with it quickly rather than push it over the top. No matter how well you tell a joke, some readers may not care for it. And remember that not everyone likes, or even "gets," Monty Python.
Topical Context
It’s often said that one of the best ways to prepare for an interview for a national scholarship is to read The New York Times and be ready to discuss current events. If you make it to the interview selection stage, it’s already clear that you have an excellent academic record and look good on paper. What’s unclear is how you will present in person. By showing yourself to be not just committed to your field but also knowledgeable about the world, you paint yourself as a mature thinker, an informed citizen, a responsible student of life.
In a personal statement, writers typically create topical context by narrating a recent event of some consequence, citing a respected source, or simply establishing an arena for discussion. “Martial arts and medicine,” opens one personal essay from Richard Stelzer’s How to Write a Winning Personal Statement for Graduate and Professional School, using an intentional sentence fragment to grab our attention and to crisply define two intertwined themes in the writer’s life. Other essays—the first from the Asher book and the second from the Stelzer book cited above—lend a sense of importance to their subject matter through topical references:
As I write this statement, Governor Mario Cuomo makes preparations to vacate the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York, after New Yorkers rejected his appeal for another term.
As the United States launched yet another small war in a distant corner of the globe, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen returned to life and captivated a hometown audience in Pekin, Illinois, with the folksy eloquence that made him nationally famous.
As these politically savvy allusions show, writers who use topical references impress upon their readers that they are both informed and concerned. Here, the color of one’s political stripes is irrelevant—what matters is that they are painted clearly. Whether employing a political reference or citing a current event, when you create topical context you represent yourself as a keen observer of the world.
Definitions, Metaphors, Similes, and Analogies
Take a tip from Einstein. In one of his famous papers published in 1905 when he was 25 years old, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” he completely transformed our understanding of physical laws and introduced his theory of relativity. In order to do this, he first proposed that the laws of physics are absolute, then he made both time and distance relative. Equations aside, to help us accept what was then an unthinkably brash concept, he wrote about how we merely understand time as a condition of simultaneity:
We have to take into account that all our judgments in which time plays a part are always judgments of simultaneous events. If, for instance, I say, “That train arrives here at 7 o’clock,” I mean something like this: “The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.”
Note what Einstein turns to as he aims to help us re-invent our notion of time: trains and clocks. In other words, he uses comparisons to things that we see as everyday. In particular when we contemplate science, we turn to comparisons—often by using similes, metaphors, or analogies—to simplify and to define. Such comparisons, when deployed well, can have the impact of the proverbial “light bulb” illumination for our readers—they understand suddenly, and hopefully they agree. And even if they disagree with our ideas—and Einstein’s paper on relativity was first rejected in its dissertation form, so take comfort—they have to consider them carefully.
Well-made comparisons, then, make us think, and the rhetorical tools by which we compare, such as metaphor, are handy, well-established, and universal. In fact, to explain what happened to him in 1905 with the explosion of his seminal papers and the birth of the world’s most famous equation, Einstein even used a metaphor: “A storm broke loose in my mind,” he famously said.
Providing Definitions
An important consideration in writing personal statements is when to provide definitions of key terms and concepts. The decision can be driven largely by audience and context, based on your audience’s likely level of understanding of the subject matter and the importance of the definition to the context of your essay.
At times, the material itself will be technical enough and important enough to context that you will need to supply a quick definition, as in this excerpt from a personal essay about neuroscience appearing in Chapter 4:
One of the projects I worked on during that summer was developing a diagnostic procedure for HIV encephalitis using PK11195, a ligand for the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor present on the mitochondria of macrophages.
Here, the definition of PK11195 is important to audience and context—both of which are clearly scientific—and the efficient wording demonstrates that the writer is both comfortable with the language of science and understands her project. In this same essay, however, the writer did not specifically define “HIV encephalitis,” “ligand,” and “pathogenesis,” fully aware that her audience members would already be familiar with these terms.
A further example from Chapter 4, written by a student studying medieval literature, is a more conversational and expansive definition:
Ogam is not a spoken language, rather, a code of inscriptions that gave the Irish language an alphabet and supplied the Irish people with a means of writing on stone, wood, and other natural elements with relative ease.
In this essay, the writer’s goal is to study Ogam in graduate school, so she supplies a contextual and historical explanation of its meaning in plain, direct language.
For help in supplying definitions, don’t hesitate to turn to authoritative sources, including your advisors and dictionaries specific to your field, citing your sources as needed.
Making Fundamental Comparisons
In addition to definition as a stylistic device, one of the best ways to make fundamental comparisons in writing is by using analogies, similes, and metaphors. Analogies, similes, and metaphors can be used to compare unlike but arguably similar things, either by implicit or explicit comparison. Such comparisons help aid our understanding and can be used to clarify or strengthen an argument, and they do so with efficiency. As with definitions, issues of audience and context help guide us in deciding when to employ these devices.
Here, we need not worry about exact distinctions among similes, metaphors, and analogies, other than a reminder that when we use them we often rely on phrasings such as “like” or “as,” and that when we make a fairly loose comparison we might use quotation marks around the words whose meaning we’re “stretching” (as I just did). Here are just a few commonly used similes, metaphors, and analogies from various disciplines:
In discussions of grammar, we might refer to a colon as acting like a flare in the road—a symbolic promise that something important is coming. A semicolon in a sentence’s middle acts like a caesura does in music or verse—as a timely pause linking two related parts.
In biology, mitochondria are often referred to metaphorically as the powerhouse of the cell, while the liver is loosely referred to as the body’s “garbage can.”
In discussing fungi, there’s a bright yellow fungus that grows on wet logs in the northwestern US, and it can be compared visually to a pat of melting butter. Underground, the roots of some mushrooms resemble the legs of a toe-standing ballet dancer.
In information technology discussions, we often speak of cyberspace as a metaphorically parallel world, with clipboards for saving information, surfing as virtual travel, and gophers allowing us to tunnel through to some desired goal.
As examples from personal essays written by students, what follows are a few fundamental comparisons that writers made through analogy, simile, and metaphor, with their surrounding material further explaining the comparisons. Notice how none of the comparisons are difficult to grasp, but all are illuminating.
These ripples of space-time curvature, called gravity waves, are radiated outward much like ripples in a pond.
The model uses the compartmentalized cascade to treat the intrinsic pathway as a “black box” leading to the output of thrombin in the common pathway.
I established a home for myself in a metaphysical and emotional space: the space where my family, passions, and goals all intersect.
As these writers did, when composing personal essays you should consider the similes, metaphors, and analogies available—even if they are commonly used—as efficient ways to demonstrate stylistic creativity, represent your understanding of a topic, describe related phenomena, and discuss fundamental concepts important to your field.
Using Active Verbs to Summarize Achievements and Describe Phenomena
Good writers seem almost to compose by faith and intuition, confident that their instincts rather than their knowledge of grammar will guide them towards the best diction and syntax. When we write well, we learn to “feel” our way through an essay rather than pull up a rote system of rules and regulations to guide us.
That said, many find it helpful to turn to lists when they write, either because they find the word they’re looking for on the list or because the act inspires them to think in relation to a class of words they’re looking for. In fact, as writers become more specialized within a field, they turn again and again to mental or physical word lists to write effectively. Read a good weather forecast and you’ll find the weather patterns described with such active verbs as “hammered,” “trounced,” “sliced,” and “eased.” Read a good sportscast and you’ll find gleeful discussions of how a losing team was “throttled,” “bashed,” “whipped,” or “humiliated.”
Active verbs in particular are useful tools for writers of personal essays, because they help you to (1) efficiently summarize your achievements, and (2) describe relevant phenomena, which may be in the form of research that you’ve completed. Below is a list of commonly used active verbs in these two categories, organized randomly to emphasize that these lists are not to be used in the way that many blindly use a thesaurus—as though one verb can be swapped for another. In fact, in assembling these lists I chose verbs that are unlike each other in meaning, to emphasize that writers should always be aware of both the denotations and connotations of their chosen words. Consider both the meaning and usage of any active verbs you choose to be certain that your writing has maximum muscle. When unsure of a verb’s usage and meaning, always look it up in a well-thumbed dictionary.
Transitions
In personal essays, often the best transitions are simply contextual and straightforward, especially if you’re working under the constraint of a low word count. For instance, to discuss graduate research plans, you might simply open a sentence with “For my graduate research, I plan to . . . .” In broader circumstances, to transition from one idea to another, writers turn to the list below—handy because the transitions are sorted by function, emphasizing the work they do. When choosing a transition from this list, focus on providing connective tissue that moves us through time, provides example or interpretation, or advances argument.
Smart Revision Strategies
In general, good writers love to revise. It gives them a sense of accomplishment, and they find it easier or more satisfying than composing a first draft. I once revised a short story that I wrote over a two-year period, whittling it down from 35 pages to 13, dropping a character, changing the central theme, and ultimately producing one of my most well-published pieces. Some writers even revise their work after it’s been published, just for themselves, nagged by some imperfection they perceive or based on how their readers have reacted.
Of course, when you write a personal statement or application essay, you don’t have the luxury (or curse) of endless opportunities to revise. Nevertheless, you do have to expect that your first draft of the material might require multiple re-readings and revisions to be ready for submission. My best student writers tend to report that they re-read and revise their personal essays at least seven times, even if they change only one word or two each time, and they seek feedback from professors, advisors, Writing Center tutors, Career Services staff, friends, and even their parents. As they revise, they consider how to effectively use their space, tailor their content, perfect their grammar and mechanics, and improve their tone. As the discussions that follow will show, these principles are often tightly related to one another.
Revising for Space
When revising to save space or meet a word count, the first tactic is to think in physical terms. If your essay runs just a few lines over a boundary, look carefully at your paragraphs. Often, an entire line might be taken up by just a word or two, and shortening that paragraph accordingly can save a line. Of course, in physical terms, you can also experiment slightly with font and form, but keep in mind that astute readers will be critical of anything that is physically difficult to read because of how you managed space.
More important in revising for space is for you to look at your material holistically and ask yourself if any essay part is taking up more proportional space than it should or is simply too long to justify its value. I once worked with a student who was having trouble conforming to her word count, so we looked at her first draft carefully for any weak areas, deciding that her introduction wasn’t really worth the space it took up. Here was her original introduction:
There are moments in my day when students buzz by like bees do, I take a confused pause and ask myself: oh no, where am I going? The pause is almost unnoticeable, nevertheless daunting. Of course, the quick answers are: the student union, class, work, and a never ending list of meetings. However the larger question looms over my body as I hustle to register students to vote and plan more ways to increase political awareness on campus. I used to dread the exploration of my future possibilities; this looming entity was a cloud ready to break apart and drown me in a rainstorm. Despite my love of running around in rainstorms, I found more comfort in my mother’s words: to find out where you’re going, you need to know where home is.
Upon reflection, the writer realized that not only was the opening lengthy, it was also redundant with other parts of the application. Readers would learn plenty about her energy and political activism in her resume and list of activities. And as far as the introduction’s creativity, the writer realized she was just using it to show off a bit, and in the process using clichés (“students buzz by like bees”) and providing irrelevant detail (her “love of running around in rainstorms”).
Fortunately, this writer spared her readers and hacked her introduction down to the material that was the most original—her mother’s comforting words, which were a central theme in her essay. Her revised introduction read thus:
I have always found comfort in my mother’s words: to find out where you’re going, you need to know where home is.
Much nicer—crisp, interesting, and meaningful. By revising six sentences down to one, the writer emphasized what she cared about most in her original introduction, which also turned out to be the material that was the most personal.
Revising for Content
Recognizing the audience’s need for content, especially guided by the application question criteria you’re addressing in a personal essay, you should always consider ways to revise that will provide further substance. For instance, knowing from the application question that his readers were interested in specific details about his planned master’s research, one writer changed this:
As part of my master’s research at Mythic College I am interested in the information overload issue—it can cause anxiety, poor decision-making, and reduced attention span.
. . . to this:
For my master’s thesis at Mythic College I plan to focus on cognitive architectures that allow us to make simulations of and predictions about human performance in situations such as driving vehicles or piloting fighter aircraft.
In this revision, we learn much more meaningful information about the planned research, including the practical applications of the work. Thus, we are more likely to assess that this student is indeed ready to begin his research.
As this example demonstrates, revising for content is usually about providing more concrete detail based on audience needs, keeping in mind that the content you choose reveals you as a person, as a thinker, and as a student. The more these three parts can be blended together through your content revisions, the better.
Revising for Grammar and Mechanics
Like many teachers, I sometimes urge my students to read their work aloud as a proofing tactic and so that they can literally hear how their writing might sound to others. This can be very effective, in that it helps you listen to your own sentence rhythms, sense gaps in logic, intuit where punctuation is needed, and identify words that you’re misusing or overusing. However, a curious problem surfaces with this practice. Writers who read their work aloud tend to insert words that aren’t really there on the page, or substitute correct words for incorrect ones, not even realizing they’re doing it. Cognitively, what’s happening is that they’re revising, effectively and automatically, even if someone else looking over their shoulder at the printed work has to point it out to them.
The key to revising your work for grammar (both word choice and wording) and mechanics (small but important matters such as punctuation) is to, in effect, listen to your work anew. The best writers adopt an objective “listening ear,” learning to detect their problems of grammar and mechanics both intuitively and methodically, pretending they’re encountering the work for the first time no matter how many times they’ve re-read it.
Meanwhile, you can count on two things: (1) we tend to repeat the same errors over and over in our writing, and (2) other writers make the same errors we do. If we have one comma error in an essay, we’re likely to have others; if we have a particular usage problem such as the distinction between “affect” and “effect,” we can be sure other writers have it too. Therefore, by studying the most common errors and revising accordingly, we’re likely to improve our work substantially. And when we make particularly common errors in our personal essays (such as confusing “it’s” with “its”), our audience is justified in viewing us as lazy and unthinking, in that such errors are so easy to reason through and correct.
Grammatically, writers tend to make their most obvious errors in these areas:
Subject/verb agreement, which can usually be addressed by identifying each subject and verb in your sentences, ignoring the other words mentally, and making certain that they match in number and sound. Also, remember that the word “and” linking two subjects makes them plural (“Grammar and mechanics are related”), and that when subjects are connected by the word “or” the subject closer to the verb determines the verb’s number (“Either the punctuation marks or the usage is flawed”).
Verb tense, which must be considered both for consistency and context. Writers can switch verb tenses within a paragraph as long as the context calls for it, but unnatural shifts in verb tense stand out loudly (“The sample was heated and then cool before storage”). As a general principle, the simplest verb tense should be chosen for the circumstances (avoid “has,” “have,” and “had” as helpers except when necessary), and favor the present tense when possible (it brings the material “closer” to the reader).
Runs-ons and fragments, which can again be addressed by identifying your subjects and verbs, and in some cases by assessing sentence length.
Commonly confused terms, which are easy to look up in any style handbook, and therefore a potential source of great irritation to your educated readers. Just to rehearse and briefly describe a few, “affect” is usually a verb meaning "to influence," while “effect” is usually a noun meaning "outcome" or "result." “It’s,” of course, always means "it is," while “its” always shows possession. The abbreviation “e.g.” is Latin for exempli gratia and means “for example,” while “i.e.” is Latin for id est and means “that is.” The word “imply” means "to suggest" or "to indicate," while “infer” involves a person actively applying deduction. The word “that” is used to define and limit a noun’s meaning, while “which” is used to provide descriptive information not central to the noun’s definition.
From a mechanics standpoint, writers do themselves a great favor by learning to understand punctuation conceptually and fundamentally, as follows:
A comma is a separator. Therefore, when you use one you should identify why the material is worthy of separation. Common reasons include that you used a transition word that creates a natural pause, you wrote a lengthy, complex sentence with multiple subjects and verbs, and that you supplied a list of three or more related items or phrases in a row. All three of these reasons helped me punctuate this paragraph with commas.
A colon is an arrow pointing forward. It tells us that new information, which is promised by the wording before it, is about to arrive. The colon is especially handy for introducing an announced piece of evidence, a focused example, or a list. Contrary to popular belief, the colon can be used to point us forward to a single word or to an entire sentence. My favorite example of the former is an old George Carlin joke: “Weather forecast for tonight: dark.”
A semicolon is a mark of co-dependency. This mark is so often mentally confused with the colon that I am often forced to repeat to my students: “The colon is two dots; the semicolon is a comma below a dot.” (Though it’s sad to have to say it, at least the explanation actually involves a semicolon.) As my explanation demonstrates, the semicolon is usually used to join phrases or sentences having grammatical equivalency, and it emphasizes that the joined parts are related, even co-dependent, in context.
A dash redefines what was just said. I’m amazed at how many writers simply don’t use the dash at all—except excessively in e-mails—because they’re afraid of it. But the dash is a powerful way to make an important aside, as I did above, and to tack on an additional comment of consequence—a comment that redefines. When typing the dash, be certain that you don’t type a hyphen, but two hyphens in a row or a long bar (which Word is perfectly happy to provide automatically as you juxtapose two typed hyphens or via its pull-down symbol map).
Speaking of Word, by all means do use the grammar checker to test grammar and mechanics in your personal essay, but don’t trust it blindly. To state the obvious, the grammar checker does not think, and it doesn’t know the contextual difference between, say, “mescaline” (an illegal hallucinogen) and the word “miscellaneous.” I choose this particular example because one of my students once accidentally claimed on her resume that she was in charge of “mescaline responsibilities” at her summer job. With that one slip, she could have worried and alienated both her former employer and her future one. 
Revising for Tone
Put simply, tone is the writer’s attitude towards the subject. We discern the writer’s tone by both the words chosen and the content selected, and in personal statements many writers unknowingly send the wrong message about themselves because of their tone. They often do this because they feel they should explain some blemish on their record (“It took me a long time to decide on the right major”) or because they mistakenly think that arrogance might be taken as confidence (“I invented a totally new method of scientific research”). Instead, such writers are likely to be perceived as indecisive and lacking in confidence in the first case, and hubristic and naive in the second.
If I had to boil the issue of tone in personal statements down to one word, it would be this: affirmation. Your job is to affirm—what is true, what you’ve accomplished, what you value, how you think, how you see the world, what your plans are, what your research means, what program you’d like to attend, and so on. Too many writers focus on the negative, stressing their uncertainties, their doubts, and even their failures. There’s always a positive way to spin a point—watch the spin doctors and politicians on television news shows if you need a primer—and in a personal statement a positive, affirmative tone is critical.
As examples, here are some sentences taken from personal essays that I’ve read, but altered so that they’re spun as negatives:
I only completed a generalist degree in a field called earth sciences, which gives you a little bit of everything without any real specializations.
Unfortunately, government red tape and bureaucracy are intertwined with how we learn about our environment in school.
My long-term goals remain uncertain, but I feel very sure that I don’t want to be a professor.
Though these are altered to make a point, many personal statements do contain such negative attitudes, with writers unwisely expressing dark feelings about themselves and towards the very fields in which they plan to study. Here are the positively spun versions of the same sentences, as they originally appeared:
As a scientist, my training began in earth sciences—a bachelor’s degree combination of geography, meteorology, and geoscience.
Many of our existing federal ecosystem management protocols are based on a rich tradition of physiographic study.
My future plans lean more towards industry and research than academia.
As you revise personal essays, concentrate on exuding an affirmative, positive tone. Be upbeat but not overbearing. Explain but don’t equivocate. Be realistic but not pessimistic. Speak confidently but don’t brag. Be idealistic but not naive. Tell the truth about yourself and your background but don’t apologize for either.
Do all this in your tone, and your readers may pay you the simple compliment most commonly coveted by writers: “I like your style.”
评论