Your Education. Your GuruFinder.

Avoiding the Frankenstein Essay

Once you’ve finished your personal statement, you may feel a little apprehensive about what you have written, and as such it is only reasonable to seek out second and third opinions in order to make sure that you have overlooked nothing, the prose is tight, and you have made a compelling case for your candidacy.  But, just as an excellent revision and editing can make an average essay excellent, bad editing can wreck an essay.  On such occasions, one is smart to heed the old aphorism that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.’

Once you have completed your first draft, you need to think carefully about how you go about using advice from other people.  Here are six pointers for how to get the best advice in order to turn your draft into an excellent final version you are proud of and happy with.

1. Be careful about who you pick.

Obviously, you want to get advice from someone who writes well, can be frank with you, and has some understanding of the field to which you are applying.  If you choose to get advice from a boyfriend or your mother, for example, then be careful because they might give you an overly glowing review because of their esteem and love for you or may lack the qualifications to point out minor problems with your approach.  Similarly, asking your English major friend to look at your Engineering graduate school essay is not a bad idea, but if you go that route, also have someone involved in Engineering (preferably in an academic capacity) is a good idea.

Good people to talk to are your academic advisor (if you are applying to graduate or professional schools) or guidance counselor (if you are applying to college).  I know that many people will take their essays to message boards and post them to see what people think of it.  The problem here is that you have no real way to gauge someone’s level of expertise and you may get too much feedback from too many sources.

Which leads us to point #2…

2.         Don’t give it to too many people.

If you get critique on your essay from 8-9 different people and you incorporate all of their suggestions, you will be pulled in too many directions and the essay will lose its sense of voice and focus.  The old joke that a camel is a horse designed by committee works here.  Your essay cannot be everything to everyone, and you have to accept this fact.  There will always be something that someone would have done differently, so they will often naturally advise you that you should do something different than what you are doing.

3.         Ask follow-up questions

Whenever someone suggests a change, don’t be afraid to ask them about it.  Sometimes you will agree with their rationale, but disagree with the execution of the change.  Also, through a conversation people will often help you see larger problems that you may have missed.  People are often hesitant to give tough advice, and a friendly conversation can help you to avoid this problem because by talking to someone, the person will see that you are serious about valuing their advice.

4.         Don’t be afraid to ignore advice.

At the end of the day, this is *your* personal statement, and *your* future depends on how well you execute it.  When someone suggests changes, consider their level of expertise, think about it carefully and if you disagree, then don’t do it.  Not every piece of advice given is good; often, you will receive terrible advice.

The final decision is yours, so take your role as the gatekeeper of advice seriously, and only let the best suggestions that work well with your theme, tone, approach and goal through.

5.         BUT, try to avoid pride of authorship

In my capacity as an admissions essay consultant, I often encounter customers who are furious when I tell them that they have things that they need to work on.  It is almost as if they paid me $100 for me to tell them that their work was perfect, and they should not change a single letter.

Because a personal statement is so, well, personal, it can sometimes sting when someone gives you some pointed advice.  Try to see the bigger picture and embrace the process that will help you to move towards a better and stronger essay.  Do your best not to see a critique of your essay as a criticism of you as a person, and rather see it as a positive moment that moves you one step closer to your goal.

6.       Consider using an essay editing service

They can be a bit expensive, but in the end it makes sense to spend a hundred dollars in order to give yourself a better chance of getting into the graduate program of your dreams.  Getting into a top school, as opposed to an average one, is worth investing in, especially when the cost is less than a pair of fancy Nikes or a new purse.

Some things to consider:

-Make sure that they guarantee your satisfaction.

-Ask if they will work with you beyond just receiving a revision back from you.  Often, it will take 2-3 exchanges with your editor to completely understand what you want to say, how you want to say it, and what core message you want to convey.

The company for which I work, Gurufi.com, will guarantee your satisfaction and has an excellent record in working with clients until they are 100% satisfied that their essays sparkle.

When you read a really good personal statement, you feel drawn in and engaged. There is something special going on, and you know it right away. This special something that grabs the reader’s attention and pulls them through the essay is what personal statement writers often search for, but too frequently do not find. In my experience working with literally thousands of essay-writers, the single most common worry that they have is that their essay does not stand out or does not grab the reader’s attention.

Having read so many excellent essays, and having also read so many more terrible ones, I know that, beyond grammar and syntax, the single biggest mistake that people make is that they do not tell stories. Stories can turn a dry and dull essay into one that shines, and gives the reader important insights into who you are and what you hope to accomplish. Frankly, this makes sense. Think about your own life and the people you know. Picture the most interesting or fascinating person you know. They are probably an excellent story-teller. Through their stories, you laugh, become fascinated or even feel revulsion or share a profound emotional experience. The human mind is naturally hard-wired to want to hear stories, and if you make story-telling the central aspect of your essay can really shine.

What do I mean by “tell stories”? Take for example, the following two passages, each of which describe the same person and the same events.

Version One

“In 2004, I got the Excellence in Science Award from the Korean Institute of Technology for my investigation of nerve regeneration. This award demonstrates my ability to do high level science and proves that I can excel at a research.”

Version Two

“By June of 2004, I began to feel frustrated by my lack of progress. I had tried literally hundreds of different ways to trigger axonal regeneration, but every one ended in failure. Refusing to give up, I scoured the literature until I came across a possible solution. Animal research on worms had suggested a novel combination of electrical and chemical stimulation could prompt axonal growth. Though nobody had ever tried this in a mammalian model, over the course of three months I worked out the myriad logistical and practical problems associated with this process, and in the end the results exceeded my expectations: I had successfully regenerated axons in a mouse model. When I won the 2004 Excellence in Science Award from the Korean Institute of Technology, it almost seemed like an afterthought because the true reward had come in discovering that I had the mettle, intelligence, patience and vision to understand and solve a complex research question.”

Notice that Version Two is just more interesting. In the end, you feel like you know the person better, and more importantly you understand the problems they encountered and the process that they used to solve the problem. This is vital. As any writing manual will tell you, “show, don’t tell.” In other words, don’t just tell the reader that you are great at something, use stories that *prove* it.

Here are some additional thoughts and hints on story-telling in your personal statement.

-First, be very careful about the stories that you choose. Select stories that highlight an admirable trait such as persistence in the face of prolonged or acute difficulty, the ability to produce excellent results in your given field, or an important intellectual accomplishment. The story should help the reader feel as though they are a little more certain that you can excel in a given intellectual pursuit.

-Second, break the story down into steps. Begin by presenting the reader with the difficulty that you encountered, making sure that you explain it with sufficient detail so that they know what the problem was and the difficulties you would have to overcome to solve it. From there, go step-by-step through what you did, making sure to offer all relevant and germane details that help the reader know and understand your actions.

-Third, do not focus so much on results; focus on the process and how the overall experience transformed you. If you just say, “I found discovery X,” then that is not likely to be very compelling. The reader won’t know you if you did this through dumb luck, what your precise role in this accomplishment was or what you had to overcome to make this happen.

-Fourth, do not focus on awards and prizes. One of the biggest cultural differences in applicants from Asia is that they often give particular emphasis and prominence to the awards and prizes that they win. This is not a good idea because for the most part this is neither interesting nor compelling to Western readers. What you did to earn the prize is *far* more important and impressive to them.

-Fifth, if you really want someone to understand how difficult something was, you will need to give a lot of attention to the problems that you overcame. Describe the obstacles, setbacks and averted disasters so that the reader gets a sense of how you approach problems and overcome them. Also, one way that a reader will evaluate you is on your ability to grow and adapt to new situations. If your essay shows that you can find a way to get past difficult moments, then that makes you more compelling.

-Finally, you will notice that Version Two is much longer. That is fine. Telling stories will take more space, but a good personal statement will sacrifice breadth for depth. If you choose just a few stories, each of which do a great job of making the reader feel they know how you think and how you approach challenges, then that is far better than just giving an exhaustive and cursory account of every little thing that you have done. Depth and detail are your friend.

The question naturally arises, then, as to how many stories to include in your personal statement. The frustrating answer is that this is more art than science, and depends on a number of things. Here are some guidelines to use:

-It is always helpful to begin with your most compelling story. Grab the reader’s attention right away and offer them a glimpse of your personality and strong traits by telling them about something impressive that you did.

-Some disciplines like business or law should have lots of stories; in fact, the bulk of the essay should really be stories. Additionally, applying to programs in the sciences naturally lends itself to story-telling because you can take the reader through some of your important moments in the lab or doing field research. Likewise, medical school essays should include at least one more story about a challenge that you faced while shadowing a doctor, doing volunteer work, or something of the like. Conversely, for some disciplines like Philosophy, Literature or History, it really does not make sense to use a lot of personal stories because you should instead be engaging the current debate in the literature and what you want to do within it.

-Do not get so caught up in telling stories that you forget to cover information such as what you hope to study in the future, the professors you hope to work with, etc.

-Do not include a story just because it is interesting if it does not relate to the program you are applying to or to some vital trait you possess. For example, if you write about hitting the game-winning home run in a baseball game, you will have a lot of work to do in demonstrating that this is germane to your application for a Ph.D. in Biology.

-Make sure that the story casts you in a positive light. Remember, the object of your essay is to convince the reader that you are prepared and ready for this next important challenge, and if you do not convey that you are a prepared and qualified person, then you will have wasted your time.

Using these hints and ideas, you should begin pulling together a series of stories and accomplishments to include in your essay. From there, we will begin the actual construction of your essay by writing the most important paragraph: the first one.

The flashing cursor mocked me. As I sat, some seven years ago, trying to figure out how to convince Yale University that I had the goods to earn admission into their Ph.D. program, I did not know how to approach the challenge. I had two pages to tell someone who had never met me who I was, what I had done, what I would do and why they should admit me. Though I would quickly discover that it was hard to cram all of that into under 1,000 words, at that moment the gravity and enormity of the undertaking made it seem as though completing a single line was impossible, to say nothing of two full pages.

Eventually, I found the onions to just start typing, and in the end I rewrote my essay so many times that literally not a single original sentence from my first draft remained. I probably spent 60 hours on this essay, and even then I had nightmares about misspelled words, dangling participles and a narrative that might not gel. When, a few months later, I met with some Yale professors at a reception for admitted students, I could not have been happier than when a professor told me how much he liked me personal statement.

I know, though, that my haphazard approach was not the correct one, and had I to do it over again, I would take a more structured approach. For that reason, I am drawing out the discussion of how to write a personal statement over the course of several blog posts. If you follow these steps, you will actually save yourself some time. So, with no further ado…

Step 1.) Get a business card that is blank on the back.

Too many people write a personal statement that is unfocused and scattered, and is in fact just an attempt to regurgitate their resumes in narrative form. This is a mistake. Your personal statement should recount your important accomplishments, but its larger focus is to answer two questions: who are you and why should we admit you?

In order to answer this question, you need to have a distilled and clear idea of what the answer is. With that in mind, on the back of the business card write an answer to the question, “why should you admit me?” The reason that you are doing this on the back of the business card is that this will force you to distill the core theme of your application down to its most basic. Don’t cheat; super-small handwriting or multiple cards defeats the purpose of the exercise. Here, as an example, is what I would have written in 2003 when I applied to Yale:

-You should admit me because my legal career in South Africa and the United States has exposed me to the complexities of history and how they impact us today. I want to investigate this.

In only 35 words, I have succinctly summed up the direction and purpose of my graduate application. Having established this organizing principle, my works is much clearer when I want to make my outline.

Step 2.) Choose 3-5 Important and Relevant Accomplishments

As I noted above, one the most frequent problems that I find with personal statements is that they try to cover too much ground. They want to discuss everything on their resume. The result is an essay that is watered down and unfocused. When I think about the 5-10 best admissions essays that I have ever read, they only focused on 1-2 accomplishments. Focusing in on one moment allows you to give more detailed analysis, which in turn allows the reader to gauge your intellectual heft. For example, if you are applying for a science Ph.D., then select just a few of the most important challenges that you overcame within the field of your science and discuss them at length. Were there lab breakthroughs? Setbacks that you learned from? Use those.

Step 3.) Customize Your Essay

If you are applying 10 schools, you will not (or at least you should not) write 10 completely distinct essays. Rather, 60-70% of the essays will be the same, but your section in which you discuss your particular reason for applying to each specific school will differ greatly. For every school, write down 2-3 professors with whom you would like to work (preferably ones with whom you have corresponded positively) and also write down 2-3 reasons that you want to apply to that specific school. The more specific, the better.

With these three things, you now have stuff you will need to begin writing your outline and crafting your essay. We will cover this territory next.

An important and oft-neglected aspect of the graduate admissions process is reaching out to specific professors within your chosen field. This is important because during the admissions process, the Admissions Committee will often refer applicants’ files to specific professors with whom it seem likely that these candidates will want to work. If the professor responds positively, then it will greatly improve your chances. Having previous exchanges with that professor will help you in this respect. Also, if you contact a professor at a university, they will sometimes take the step of themselves contacting the admissions committee on your behalf, which will also greatly enhance your chances of admission.

The first step is to take the list of universities to which you are applying and from that list select one or two professors at each school with whom you would like to work. Using the advice I laid out in previous posts, you should by now have a rough list of schools and professors. Using the departmental website as well as search engine search, you should be able to quickly identify the major publications for each of these professors. Usually, university webpages will have a list of the professor’s major publications. If not, you can certainly find what you need through Lexis-Nexis.

Now comes the heavy lifting. You need to read these articles. When you contact the professors, you need to sound as though you know what you are talking about, and the only way to do that is if in fact you do know what you are talking about.

Once you have understood the professor’s research interests and identified some important questions in the field, you need to think carefully about how you see your own past, ongoing or and future work within this context. Remember, you want to make certain that the reader feels as though your approach and interests fit well within the intellectual direction, technical capacities and philosophy of the department.

Remember to keep this email short. You are sending an unsolicited email to someone who is very likely quite busy. Your email should be no more than 250 words. Be direct, clear and to-the-point. Also, remember to keep a polite and formal tone.

Begin with a brief introduction of who you are and why you have written to them. From there, quickly transition into talking about their research. Discuss why you know about it and why it interests you. At this point, transition to discussing your own research and why you feel that you would be a good fit at the department.

Finally, thank them for taking the time to read your email, and let them know that you have attached your resume and, if relevant, writing sample.

Here is a sample template email that you could use when emailing a professor:

Prof. Jones,

How are you? My name is Jason Smith, a senior at North Tech University, and I have written to you today because I am preparing my application to State Tech University Graduate Department of Science. As an admirer of your work, I have applied to State Tech very much motivated by the prospect of working with, and learning from, you in the future.

I first encountered your work on the Jones Perpetual Motion Device when I read your article, “Defying the Laws of Physics: Perpetual Motion and the New Energy Frontier,” that appeared in The Journal of Impossible Physics in May, 2004. Fascinated by this new and emerging field, I have myself devoted a great deal of time to studying this area. Indeed, I have completed an article on cyclonic verbatrons that is currently under peer review at the National Journal of Apocrypha. The work examined the limitations of verbatrons in terms of regulating unlimited energy output, and very much takes up several of the important questions that your article left open for future debate.

I have attached a copy of my resume and the draft article to which I just referred. I thank you for taking the time to look through these materials, and I look forward to the prospect of discussing these exciting and challenging issues with you in the future.

Regards,

Jason Smith