Characteristics of a Mediocre Personal Statement

Your personal statement is your ticket to the college you want to study at and course that you want to pursue.  Through your personal statement for college, you can introduce yourself to the admissions committee.  This is your chance to tell them that you have what it takes to study in a specific university.  This is also your chance to explain and clarify things about you that you think need explaining.(1)  A mediocre essay can hurt your chances of getting admitted to your dream school.(2)  This is  why it is really very important that you make your essay very appealing just like those personal statement samples you see online.  Read the characteristics of a mediocre essay below so that you’ll know what to avoid when writing a quality personal statement for college.

Characteristic #1: stating the same information as the ones in your transcript of records

Your personal statement is not your resume.  The latter provides information about your accomplishments.  The former, on the other hand, gives in-depth information about yourself.  The essay is your means of telling the admissions committe who you really are.  This may include writing about your foibles and shortcomings.  The tendency of a mediocre sample personal statement is that it only restates the information on your resume.

Characteristic #2: having no main thesis or focus (same as talking around in circles)

A good personal statement should have a thesis or a focus.  The thesis is actually the thread that ties together the sentences and paragraphs in your essay.  Your focus is your direction in writing.(3)  So if you want to have an essay that is well-structured, make sure that you have a main focus on your essay.

Characteristic #3: being hastily written, resulting in work full of grammatical and typographical errors

The characteristics of a good essay include being free from grammatical and typographical errors.  This is very important because having a hastily written one would give the admissions committee the idea that you are a careless person.

(1)  www.unm.edu/~pre/law/archuleta.htm
(2)  www.alma.edu/academics/departments/pre-professional/law/personal_statement
(3)  depts.washington.edu/owrc/Handouts/Developing%20Your%20Thesis.pdf

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