In Part 1, we discussed the need to write Personal Statements as essays, and not as mere activity and achievement lists. We also talked about the need for originality and substance, rather than over-polished style, in writing a good Personal Statement. In this post, we will be looking at a couple of additional characteristics of (most) strong Personal Statements. Of course, there is really no set way of writing a Personal Statement, and thus, there are no fixed characteristics of good Personal Statements either. But there are certain patterns that occur among a large part of highly regarded Personal Statements, and two of them are:

1. Takeaways (What You Learnt)

   The people who will actually read your Personal Statement (e.g. admissions officers, Human Resource Dept. officers) are those that probably have a detailed listing of all your personal information, the activities you participated in and your achievements. So, repeating all this - in any form whatsoever - will not gain any points with them. What they will be looking for is what you learnt from your experiences. Through this, they believe that they will be able to judge your character, e.g. whether you are flexible and adaptable, or rigid and closed-minded.

   Generally, there are ways to fake these takeaways, but more often than not, they will be spotted as it is truly difficult to write about something you did not really experience or believe in.

2. Contributions (What You Gave)

   On the surface, many activities you will participate in will seem like one-sided affairs, where you are supposed to be the one receiving the benefits, e.g. school and competitions. Indeed, you are supposed to be learning from school, and gaining experience, reputation and prizes from competitions. But it is actually possible for you to contribute towards the success of these activities, thus advancing the arrangement into a two-way one. In fact, many of us do, but never bother writing about them in our Personal Statements. Consider the time when you debated on behalf of college and won. You would have brought prestige to your school and some measure of pride to your teachers and fellow students.

   Of course, you could fake your contributions. In fact, it should be easier than faking your takeaways since there are less people that write about their contributions to presumedly one-sided activities. But again, faked contributions tend to sound overly hackneyed, e.g. brought prestige, made someone happy, etc.

So, these are the two characteristics that, in my experience, are most often highlighted by guides on writing good Personal Statements. However, this does not mean that the rest of the characteristics are not as important. In fact, they could even be more important, but I will leave those for Part 3.