Personal Statements

When I’m writing a letter of recommendation for an undergraduate applying for graduate school (one of the many parts of my job for which I have received no training and my skill in which has never been assessed by anyone), I pretty much always want to look at the personal statement (or, their answers to the program-specific questions which many professionally-oriented programs ask). If I don’t know the student really well, the personal statement helps me write the letter, just because it keeps them fully in my head; and if I do know the student really well it seems wrong not to offer to comment on/offer editorial advice, especially if I know (as I often do) that the student doesn’t have a parent who will be able confidently to do this. For all I know my own confidence is misplaced, but I don’t think it is – I have read thousands of personal statements over the years {mainly for nursing school, clinical psych, teacher ed, school counseling, medical school and law school and, of course, philosophy), and although I only know directly what other people (my immediate philosophy colleagues) think about the statements of students who apply to Philosophy PhD programs, I have observed the fate of those students whose statements I’ve looked at.

The main thing I want to say about personal statements is that in my experience many candidates agonize over them and spend far too much time trying to get them exactly right. In philosophy the main purpose of the personal statement is to convey that you know what you are doing, that you are genuinely interested in the program you’re applying to, and that you are not a complete flake. Some people, it is true, have genuinely interesting stories behind their desire to X, whatever it is, but most really don’t.[1] But they usually seem compelled to tell a story as compellingly as possible. Here’s a quote from a recent email (used with permission):

Hi Brighouse, I hope you had a nice weekend and that you have a good week ahead of you! I wanted to email you to ask for your help with my personal statements. I have spent a lot of time attempting to write some of them and I am really struggling. They feel very cliched to me and I am not sure how to make myself stand out as an applicant in so few words!

Actually, what she sent me was better than she thought, but I’d guess it would have been still better, and less stressful, if she’d had a good sense of what to do. Here’s the advice I’ve been giving recently, roughly, and obviously tailored to the specific student to whom I’m writing (in addition to specific advice about what they have written). To be honest, I usually give this advice only after they’ve already agonized a bit – I hereby resolve to start telling them ahead of time.

1. The personal statement will rarely affect whether or not you get in. Mostly that will be your letters of rec, resume, grades (and GRE and writing sample, if those are applicable). Helping your recommenders write letters that really represent you is a much more valuable use of your time than turning an ok statement into a good one. Stop stressing out about it.

2. If you have an amazing story, tell it. But don’t try to invent one, or to make a rather boring story (like mine) sound amazing. Tell the committee i) why you want to become (say) a nurse; ii) what qualifies you for their program iii) what will make you a good (say) nurse; iv) why you are interested in their program in particular; v) what you specifically think you have to learn.

3. Someone else might be able to tell you qualities you have that suit you to the profession in question if you can’t figure it out yourself – e.g., in the case of the student whose email I quote above, she had said something about herself in the draft statement that seemed both negative and false; and I was able (easily) to tell her a positive truth about herself that, when she wrote it in the revised statement, nevertheless did not seem self-aggrandizing.

4. If there is something in your transcript or resume that looks weak, and you have a good explanation for it, the ideal thing to do is i) ask your lead letter writer to mention and explain it and ii) mention in your statement that they will explain it. If someone else explains a weakness, it is much less likely to come over as special pleading or excuse-making.

5. Don’t use lots of adverbs and adjectives. Don’t use colloquialisms. Don’t actually try to use clichés, but do relax a bit about them – mostly your statement is not going to stand out from the crowd, and that’s ok! Stand out from the crowd once you are there, if you want to.

6. Be direct and straightforward, without being self-denigrating.

7. Make sure you stay within the word limit. Get someone skilled (who might be me) to look it over, and suggest edits which save you words.

8. Give yourself a time limit. Remind yourself that the chances this will make a difference to your prospects are small. If it is truly awful that might sink you (so get someone like me to read it to ensure that it is not truly awful); if it is good enough, then making it better is unlikely to yield much benefit.

Any amendments, revisions, contrary advice, would be welcome.

[1] I don’t. I encountered Philosophy in secondary school, and decided that, unlike History, I’d never learn how to read Philosophy unless someone taught me. I went to graduate school because I liked doing Philosophy and couldn’t think what else to do. Then I became a professor because I was not imaginative or bold enough to go work for dissidents in Russia during the waning months of perestroika (really, a left wing dissident member of the Moscow City Soviet asked me to come and work for him).