Getting admission into a graduate program is never a linear process. It is a winding road filled with transcripts, standardized tests, references, and personal statements. I know you have heard it ad nauseam, but your personal statement (also called SOP or Statement of Purpose) is the most important part of your application. Think of it as a first date but with the school’s admissions board. And like all firsts, you have to make it count- and impress the socks off them while you are at it. Writing a personal statement can be overwhelming. I should know I have written four for myself and many more for different clients. However, with these commandments, the road to graduate school and writing a personal statement becomes less steep.

Read Other Personal Statements

Writing skills are a condition sine qua non for any graduate program. Asides being a “nice to meet you” of sorts, a personal statement calibrates your writing abilities- or lack of it. Therefore, it becomes important to get a lay of the land before penning anything down. It is not enough to read model personal statements and “ooh” and “aah” at the writers’ lexical fluency. Learn to read like a writer, not a reader. Look out for impressive metaphors and piquant methods of self expression. Trace the personal story the writer is trying to chart and figure out how you can chart yours. It is important to note that copying parts or the entirety of someone’s personal statement is going to get you rejected.

Work with your CV/Resume

Everyone thinks they know themselves until they have to write a personal statement. Suddenly, they feel unfit for the course, the lack of skills becomes obvious and they give up. One of the most important rules for writing a personal statement is to work with your CV. Start at the bottom- with those competitions you won and jobs you did in high school- and work your way to the top. It is easy to feel you don’t have enough skills when you are writing offhand. With your CV as a guide, it becomes easier to represent and highlight the skills you have.

Tell a Story

When people think of stories, they think of fiction, mythology and folktales. Most people don’t think of stories when they think of non-fiction. However, the truth remains that stories are woven into every aspect of our lives. The generic and popular way to start a personal statement is with a thought-provoking quote. The memorable way to start is with what I like to call a turning point story. This story revolves around the moment it all clicked. The moment you knew this was the path for you.

It could be:

A book you read that made you love writing

A science project you did that deepened your curiosity about electrical systems

An injustice you witnessed that drove you to become a lawyer

A situation in your country that motivated you to become an environmentalist or economist

Anything at all.

Stories stay with us long after we have forgotten the details. They make a person memorable and give a personal statement character.

Talk Results, Not Roles

While you might have worked in a lot of snazzy places or taken courses that are in line with the course at hand, you have to be result-oriented in writing your SOP. Instead of just saying, “I worked as ABC at XYZ company in 2019 before moving to DEF company” (role-oriented), show results and the impact you had there. A perfect example would be “During my time as a copywriter at Greenlife, my copies boosted sales by 75% and revived sales of the Imoxidil product line”. This not only shows your role at the company but also the impact you had there.

Stick to the Word Count

Admission boards are finicky about word counts. Overwriting is just as problematic as underwriting. Besides giving insight into your academic and career trajectory, admission boards use the personal statement to gauge your writing abilities. Graduate school is hard. While no one expects you to be Achebe or Shakespeare, you should have attained a certain level of authorial and lexical dexterity- and part of that includes having a certain economy of words and making sense within the stipulated word count. If the word count is 500 or 1500, stick to it. Don’t write more, don’t write less.

Don’t Impress

So the first time I tried to write a personal statement, I came ready to impress. I had watched tons of videos on YouTube and I felt lexically equipped to charm the pants off whoever was going to read my SOP. I was applying for a writing course, so I knew I had to bring out the big guns. You know that thing they do in movies where the main character does something unconventional and still comes out successful? Like that part in Longshot (2019) where Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) gave a very millennial and “hip” speech and still ended up being President.

I did something similar…without the swearing, of course.

For both our sakes, don’t do that.

You will get the boot. I did…from four different schools.

Sometimes, vanilla is the way to go. Keep the exciting stuff outside. While your personal statement should show a varied vocabulary and mastery of the English Language, avoid the need to use pretentious words like discombobulating, gargantuan, repudiate, etc. Keep the GRE register away. Be expressive but relatable.

Aim to Impress

…within reason.

Put your best foot forward. Don’t just state accomplishments and work history. Your personal statement shouldn’t be a slightly fleshed-out version of your CV. Highlight your role in company growth or how each accomplishment impacted your life. Chart your academic trajectory. Talk about volunteer work, personal development, and hobbies. It gives depth and texture to your personal statement. Talk about community service and NGOS you have volunteered at or hobbies that segue well with the tenets of the course. Show interest in the course and draw parallels between certain course modules and courses you have done in the past.

P for Personalize

The average graduate school applicant applies to at least three schools. Writing one personal statement is hard. So it goes without saying that writing three personal statements is three times harder. However, resist the urge to submit a generic, cookie-cutter SOP to all schools. It is very tempting and easy to do so. However, it makes it even easier for the board to slide your application off the table. Each school is special. While it might be the same course, they each have a different melange of modules and staff. It is not enough to write a generic personal statement and substitute the names of the universities for each personal statement. Give each SOP a soul and a unique lexical fingerprint.

Talk about modules that excite you and modules similar to the ones in your previous study.

Talk about the staff you are interested in working with and how their works resonated with you.

Talk about the facilities, the city, and the places that held you spellbound.

Talk about research interests and link up to former research you have done if possible.

If your current degree interest is unrelated to your previous one, be smart about it and sell the angle of how you are a multipotentialite and how what you learned in previous places trickles into this one. The admission board doesn’t want to see perfection. They want to see interest and effort. So tailor your personal statement to the specific school, course, modules, and city.

Avoid Kisses of Death

You might dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s and still find that your application was rejected. If this is the case, then your personal statement might have a kiss of death. A kiss of death is something that ruins your application from the word “go.” For the whole application, it could be something as simple as using a popular relative of yours or a religious leader (who has had no academic or working relationship with you) as a referee. At the level of your personal statement, kisses of death can come as:

• Misspellings, heart-breaking grammar, and ill-punctuated work. Use tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid to eliminate these.
• Using overly long and complex sentences. Keep it simple and only use long sentences and semicolons only when necessary.
• Using passive voice a lot.
• Talking about your failing mental health and or how you need to gain admission to understand your problem. Argumentum ad misericordia (appeal to pity) won’t work. Graduate school is an academic commitment and a tasking point in your career journey, not an investigation into a personal problem. They need to be sure you are up to the task, mentally, emotionally and physically.
• Being professionally inappropriate. Even if you are applying to film school, talking about the X-rated movie you starred in isn’t going to win you points.
• Being excessively altruistic. Being a heal-the-world Pollyanna is not really a bad thing in real life but it can often come off as pretentious on paper.
• Spilling too much personal information. While you should personalize your SOP, avoid damaging personal information like your mental health history (or that of your family) or how you had to wrestle with fate to get the bare necessities of life. Spilling too much information points to a lack of interpersonal boundaries.
• Name dropping popular relatives in the field in hopes that it would better your chances.
• Bashing your previous school and blaming them for your poor terminal grade
• Copying and pasting parts or all of a model SOP you saw online. You would think this is a no-brainer, but it isn’t.

Click here to read an article about kisses of death for your graduate application in general.

The Line of Best Fit

Draw clear connections between the course and future career goals. It is not enough to be interested in the modules, course, staff, school, city and the entire state. There should be congruence between the course and your future career goals. The course should be more than a passing fancy, “something that speaks to you” or just an attempt to “keep busy”. It should be a defining point in your career trajectory.

If you are taking an MBA in Economics hoping you to secure a place with the World Bank Group, say it.

If you are applying for a course in Risk Management expecting the knowledge gained would help you revive your floundering business, state it.

If you feel the MSc. in Forensics and Criminality tallies with your dreams of working with the FBI, say it. Congruence and streamlined aspirations make you appear serious and invested in the course.

Start Early

It can feel intimidating to condense your life into 500 words. This is why many students leave their personal statements until the last minute. They feel overwhelmed by the task at hand or worse, are waiting for the proverbial inspiration to strike. News flash: it won’t. So get started as early as 1–4 months before the application deadline. Don’t leave it until hours before the deadline. Starting early gives you time to rewrite and revise your work accordingly, write multiple drafts and give it to others to read and revise before turning it in.

Ask for Help

With the admission process, it can sometimes take an entire village. No matter how good you are at writing, it always pays to have a second pair of eyes go through your work for errors, misspellings and inconsistencies your eyes sped over. Even the best authors have beta readers for that purpose. So ask for help from friends, lecturers, previous professors, mentors, and supervisors. Ask them to read your personal statement, edit and suggest necessary structural changes. When sending them your personal statement, it is important to send them the link to the course also so they can peruse the course requirements and modules and find out if your SOP is on track.

Consult a Professional

This option works if you are busy, pressed for time, or don’t know where to start even after poring through many personal statements and going through this list. You can ask for samples before committing to them writing a personal statement for you. Make sure that whoever you hire 1) is an articulate and circumspect writer 2) has knowledge of writing personal statements. Click here to talk to me if you want me to write a personal statement for you.

Originally published on Medium.

Do you like writing? Then you’d love Dear (Nigerian) Writer, You’ll Suffer and The Ultimate Hack to Writing Better.